The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [86]
The Doctor all this while had had his glass of cognac raised, but it had remained motionless an inch from his lips, until now, as Steerpike ended and took a sip at his brandy, he sat down suddenly in a chair beside the table and set down his own glass untasted.
‘Well, well, well, well,’ he said at last. ‘Well, well, well, well, well! By all that’s intriguing this is really the quintessential. What maladdress, by all that’s impudent! What an enormity of surface! What a very rare frenzy indeed!’ And he began to whinny, gently at first, but after a little while his high pitched laughter increased in volume and in tempo, and within a few minutes he was helpless with the shrill gale of his own merriment. How so great a quantity of breath and noise managed to come from lungs that must have been, in that tube of a chest wedged uncomfortably close together, it is difficult to imagine. Keeping, even at the height of his paroxysms, an extraordinary theatrical elegance, he rocked to and fro in his chair, helpless for the best part of nine minutes after which with difficulty he drew breath thinly through his teeth with a noise like the whistling of steam; and eventually, still shaking a little, he was able to focus his eyes upon the source of his enjoyment.
‘Well, Prodigy, my dear boy! you have done me a lot of good. My lungs have needed something like that for a long time.’
‘I have done something for you already, then,’ said Steerpike with the clever imitation of a smile on his face. During the major part of the Doctor’s helplessness he had been taking stock of the room and had poured himself out another glass of brandy. He had noted the objets d’art, the expensive carpets and mirrors, and the bookcase of calf-bound volumes. He had poured out some more port for Mrs Slagg and had ventured to wink at Fuchsia, who had stared emptily back, and he had turned the wink in to an affection of his eye.
He had examined the labels on the bottles and their year of vintage. He had noticed that the table was of walnut and that the ring upon the Doctor’s right hand was in the form of a silver serpent holding between his gaping jaw a nugget of red gold. At first the Doctor’s laughter had caused him a shock, and a certain mortification, but he was soon his cold, calculating self, with his ordered mind like a bureau with tabulated shelves and pigeon-holes of reference, and he knew that at all costs he must be pleasant. He had taken a risky turning in playing such a boastful card, and at the moment it could not be proved either a failure or a success; but this he did know, that to be able to take risks was the key note of the successful man.
Prunesquallor, when his strength and muscular control were restored sufficiently, sipped at his cognac in what seemed a delicate manner, but Steerpike was surprised to see that he had soon emptied the glass.
This seemed to do the Doctor a lot of good. He stared at the youth.
‘You do interest me, I must admit that much, Master Steerpike,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, I’ll go that far, ha, ha, ha! You interest me, or rather you tantalize me in a pleasant sort of way. But whether I want to have you hanging around my house is, as you with your enormous brain will readily admit, quite a different kettle of fish.’
‘I don’t hang about, sir. It is one of those things I never do.’
Fuchsia’s voice came slowly across the room.
‘You hung about in my room,’ she said. And then, bending forward, she looked up at the Doctor with an almost imploring expression. ‘He climbed there,’ she said. ‘He’s clever.’ Then she leaned back in her chair. ‘I am tired; and he saw my own room that nobody ever saw before he saw it, and it is worrying me. Oh, Dr Prune.’
There was a pause.
‘He climbed there,’ she said again.
‘I had to go somewhere,’ said Steerpike. ‘I didn’t know it was your room. How could I have known? I am sorry, your Ladyship.’
She did not answer.
Prunesquallor had looked from one to the other.
‘Aha! aha! Take a little of this powder, Fuchsia dear,’ he said, bringing across to her the