Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1167 page)

After careful examination of the scanty audience, he failed to discover her — thus far. She would certainly arrive, nevertheless. My money’s worth for my money was a leading principle in Mrs. Gallilee’s life.

He sighed as he looked towards the door of entrance. Not for long had he revelled in the luxury of a new happiness. He had openly avowed his dislike of concerts, when his mother had made him take a ticket for this concert. With her quickness of apprehension what might she not suspect, if she found him among the audience?

Come what might of it, he still kept his place; he still feasted his eyes on the slim figure of the young girl, on the gentle yet spirited carriage of her head. But the pleasure was no longer pleasure without alloy. His mother had got between them now.

The solo on the piano came to an end.

In the interval that followed, he turned once more towards the entrance. Just as he was looking away again, he heard Mrs. Gallilee’s loud voice. She was administering a maternal caution to one of the children. “Behave better here than you behaved in the carriage, or I shall take you away.”

If she found him in his present place — if she put her own clever construction on what she saw — her opinion would assuredly express itself in some way. She was one of those women who can insult another woman (and safely disguise it) by an inquiring look. For the girl’s sake, Ovid instantly moved away from her to the seats at the back of the hall.

Mrs. Gallilee made a striking entrance — dressed to perfection; powdered and painted to perfection; leading her daughters, and followed by her governess. The usher courteously indicated places near the platform. Mrs. Galilee astonished him by a little lecture on acoustics, delivered with the sweetest condescension. Her Christian humility smiled, and call the usher, Sir. “Sound, sir, is most perfectly heard towards the centre of the auditorium.” She led the way towards the centre. Vacant places invited her to the row of seats occupied by Carmina and Teresa. She, the unknown aunt, seated herself next to the unknown niece.

They looked at each other.

Perhaps, it was the heat of the room. Perhaps, she had not perfectly recovered the nervous shock of seeing the dog killed. Carmina’s head sank on good Teresa’s shoulder. She had fainted.

CHAPTER V.

“May I ask for a cup of tea, Miss Minerva?”

“Delighted, I’m sure, Mr. Le Frank.”

“And was Mrs. Gallilee pleased with the Concert?”

“Charmed.”

Mr. Le Frank shook his head. “I am afraid there was a drawback,” he suggested. “You forget the lady who fainted. So alarming to the audience. So disagreeable to the artists.”

“Take care, Mr. Le Frank! These new houses are flimsily built; they might hear you upstairs. The fainting lady is upstairs. All the elements of a romance are upstairs. Is your tea to your liking?”

In this playfully provocative manner, Miss Minerva (the governess) trifled with the curiosity of Mr. Le Frank (the music-master), as the proverbial cat trifles with the terror of the captive mouse. The man of the bald head and the servile smile showed a polite interest in the coming disclosure; he opened his deeply-sunk eyes, and lazily lifted his delicate eyebrows.

He had called at Mrs. Gallilee’s house, after the concert, to get a little tea (with a large infusion of praise) in the schoolroom. A striking personal contrast confronted him, in the face of the lady who was dispensing the hospitalities of the table. Mr. Le Frank’s plump cheeks were, in colour, of the obtrusively florid sort. The relics of yellow hair, still adhering to the sides of his head, looked as silkily frail as spun glass. His noble beard made amends for his untimely baldness. The glossy glory of it exhaled delicious perfumes; the keenest eyes might have tried in vain to discover a hair that was out of place. Miss Minerva’s eager sallow face, so lean, and so hard, and so long, looked, by contrast, as if it wanted some sort of discreet covering thrown over some part of it. Her coarse black hair projected like a penthouse over her bushy black eyebrows and her keen black eyes. Oh, dear me (as they said in the servants’ hall), she would never be married — so yellow and so learned, so ugly and so poor! And yet, if mystery is interesting, this was an interesting woman. The people about her felt an uneasy perception of something secret, ominously secret, in the nature of the governess which defied detection. If Inquisitive Science, vowed to medical research, could dissect firmness of will, working at its steadiest repressive action — then, the mystery of Miss Minerva’s inner nature might possibly have been revealed. As it was, nothing more remarkable exposed itself to view than an irritable temper; serving perhaps as safety-valve to an underlying explosive force, which (with strong enough temptation and sufficient opportunity) might yet break out.

“Gently, Mr. Le Frank! The tea is hot — you may burn your mouth. How am I to tell you what has happened?” Miss Minerva dropped the playfully provocative tone, with infinite tact, exactly at the right moment. “Just imagine,” she resumed, “a scene on the stage, occurring in private life. The lady who fainted at your concert, turns out to be no less a person that Mrs. Gallilee’s niece!”

The general folly which reads a prospectus and blindly speculates in shares, is matched by the equally diffused stupidity, which is incapable of discovering that there can be any possible relation between fiction and truth. Say it’s in a novel — and you are a fool if you believe it. Say it’s in a newspaper — and you are a fool if you doubt it. Mr. Le Frank, following the general example, followed it on this occasion a little too unreservedly. He avowed his doubts of the circumstance just related, although it was, on the authority of a lady, a circumstance occurring in real life! Far from being offended, Miss Minerva cordially sympathized with him.

“It
is
too theatrical to be believed,” she admitted; “but this fainting young person is positively the interesting stranger we have been expecting from Italy. You know Mrs. Gallilee. Hers was the first smelling-bottle produced; hers was the presence of mind which suggested a horizontal position. ‘Help the heart,’ she said; ‘don’t impede it.’ The whole theory of fainting fits, in six words! In another moment,” proceeded the governess making a theatrical point without suspecting it — ”in another moment, Mrs. Gallilee herself stood in need of the smelling-bottle.”

Mr. Le Frank was not a true believer, even yet. “You don’t mean
she
fainted!” he said.

Miss Minerva held up the indicative forefinger, with which she emphasized instruction when her pupils required rousing. “Mrs. Gallilee’s strength of mind — as I was about to say, if you had listened to me — resisted the shock. What the effort must have cost her you will presently understand. Our interesting young lady was accompanied by a hideous old foreign woman who completely lost her head. She smacked her hands distractedly; she called on the saints (without producing the slightest effect) — but she mixed up a name, remarkable even in Italy, with the rest of the delirium; and
that
was serious. Put yourself in Mrs. Gallilee’s place — ”

“I couldn’t do it,” said Mr. Le Frank, with humility.

Miss Minerva passed over this reply without notice. Perhaps she was not a believer in the humility of musicians.

“The young lady’s Christian name,” she proceeded, “is Carmina; (put the accent, if you please, on the
first
syllable). The moment Mrs. Gallilee heard the name, it struck her like a blow. She enlightened the old woman, and asserted herself as Miss Carmina’s aunt in an instant. ‘I am Mrs. Gallilee:’ that was all she said. The result” — Miss Minerva paused, and pointed to the ceiling; “the result is up there. Our charming guest was on the sofa, and the hideous old nurse was fanning her, when I had the honour of seeing them just now. No, Mr. Le Frank! I haven’t done yet. There is a last act in this drama of private life still to relate. A medical gentleman was present at the concert, who offered his services in reviving Miss Carmina. The same gentleman is now in attendance on the interesting patient. Can you guess who he is?”

Mr. Le Frank had sold a ticket for his concert to the medical adviser of the family — one Mr. Null. A cautious guess in this direction seemed to offer the likeliest chance of success.

“He is a patron of music,” the pianist began.

“He hates music,” the governess interposed.

“I mean Mr. Null,” Mr. Le Frank persisted.

“I
mean — ” Miss Minerva paused (like the cat with the mouse again!) —
”I
mean, Mr. Ovid Vere.”

What form the music-master’s astonishment might have assumed may be matter for speculation, it was never destined to become matter of fact. At the moment when Miss Minerva overwhelmed him with the climax of her story, a little, rosy, elderly gentleman, with a round face, a sweet smile, and a curly gray head, walked into the room, accompanied by two girls. Persons of small importance — only Mr. Gallilee and his daughters.

“How d’ye-do, Mr. Le Frank. I hope you got plenty of money by the concert. I gave away my own two tickets. You will excuse me, I’m sure. Music, I can’t think why, always sends me to sleep. Here are your two pupils, Miss Minerva, safe and sound. It struck me we were rather in the way, when that sweet young creature was brought home. Sadly in want of quiet, poor thing — not in want of
us.
Mrs. Gallilee and Ovid, so clever and attentive, were just the right people in the right place. So I put on my hat — I’m always available, Mr. Le Frank; I have the great advantage of never having anything to do — and I said to the girls, ‘Let’s have a walk.’ We had no particular place to go to — that’s another advantage of mine — so we drifted about. I didn’t mean it, but, somehow or other, we stopped at a pastry-cook’s shop. What was the name of the pastry-cook?”

So far Mr. Gallilee proceeded, speaking in the oddest self-contradictory voice, if such a description is permissible — a voice at once high in pitch and mild in tone: in short, as Mr. Le Frank once professionally remarked, a soft falsetto. When the good gentleman paused to make his little effort of memory, his eldest daughter — aged twelve, and always ready to distinguish herself — saw her opportunity, and took the rest of the narrative into her own hands.

Miss Maria, named after her mother, was one of the successful new products of the age we live in — the conventionally-charming child (who has never been smacked); possessed of the large round eyes that we see in pictures, and the sweet manners and perfect principles that we read of in books. She called everybody “dear;” she knew to a nicety how much oxygen she wanted in the composition of her native air; and — alas, poor wretch! — she had never wetted her shoes or dirtied her face since the day when she was born.

“Dear Miss Minerva,” said Maria, “the pastry-cook’s name was Timbal. We have had ices.”

His mind being now set at rest on the subject of the pastry-cook, Mr. Gallilee turned to his youngest daughter — aged ten, and one of the unsuccessful products of the age we live in. This was a curiously slow, quaint, self-contained child; the image of her father, with an occasional reflection of his smile; incurably stupid, or incurably perverse — the friends of the family were not quite sure which. Whether she might have been over-crammed with useless knowledge, was not a question in connection with the subject which occurred to anybody.

“Rouse yourself, Zo,” said Mr. Gallilee. “What did we have besides ices?”

Zoe (known to her father, by vulgar abbreviation, as “Zo”) took Mr. Gallilee’s stumpy red hand, and held hard by it as if that was the one way in which a dull child could rouse herself, with a prospect of success.

“I’ve had so many of them,” she said; “I don’t know. Ask Maria.”

Maria responded with the sweetest readiness. “Dear Zoe, you are so slow! Cheesecakes.”

Mr. Gallilee patted Zoe’s head as encouragingly as if she had discovered the right answer by herself. “That’s right — ices and cheese-cakes,” he said. “We tried cream-ice, and then we tried water-ice. The children, Miss Minerva, preferred the cream-ice. And, do you know, I’m of their opinion. There’s something in a cream-ice — what do you think yourself of cream-ices, Mr. Le Frank?”

It was one among the many weaknesses of Mr. Gallilee’s character to be incapable of opening his lips without, sooner or later, taking somebody into his confidence. In the merest trifles, he instinctively invited sympathy and agreement from any person within his reach — from a total stranger quite as readily as from an intimate friend. Mr. Le Frank, representing the present Court of Social Appeal, attempted to deliver judgment on the question of ices, and was interrupted without ceremony by Miss Minerva. She, too, had been waiting her opportunity to speak, and she now took it — not amiably.