Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1180 page)

They returned to the subject of his departure. It was still early in the week. She inquired if Saturday would be too soon to begin his journey. No: he felt it, too — the longer they delayed, the harder the parting would be.

“Have you thought yet where you will go?” she asked.

“I must begin with a sea-voyage,” he replied. “Long railway journeys, in my present state, will only do me harm. The difficulty is where to go to. I have been to America; India is too hot; Australia is too far. Benjulia has suggested Canada.”

As he mentioned the doctor’s name, her hand mechanically pressed his arm.

“That strange man!” she said. “Even his name startles one; I hardly know what to think of him. He seemed to have more feeling for the monkey than for you or me. It was certainly kind of him to take the poor creature home, and try what he could do with it. Are you sure he is a great chemist?”

Ovid stopped. Such a question, from Carmina, sounded strange to him. “What makes you doubt it?” he said.

“You won’t laugh at me, Ovid?”

“You know I won’t!”

“Now you shall hear. We knew a famous Italian chemist at Rome — such a nice old man! He and my father used to play piquet; and I looked at them, and tried to learn — and I was too stupid. But I had plenty of opportunities of noticing our old friend’s hands. They were covered with stains; and he caught me looking at them. He was not in the least offended; he told me his experiments had spotted his skin in that way, and nothing would clean off the stains. I saw Doctor Benjulia’s great big hands, while he was giving you the brandy — and I remembered afterwards that there were no stains on them. I seem to surprise you.”

“You do indeed surprise me. After knowing Benjulia for years, I have never noticed, what you have discovered on first seeing him.”

“Perhaps he has some way of cleaning the stains off his hands.”

Ovid agreed to this, as the readiest means of dismissing the subject. Carmina had really startled him. Some irrational connection between the great chemist’s attention to the monkey, and the perplexing purity of his hands, persisted in vaguely asserting itself in Ovid’s mind. His unacknowledged doubts of Benjulia troubled him as they had never troubled him yet. He turned to Carmina for relief.

“Still thinking, my love?”

“Thinking of you,” she answered. “I want you to promise me something — and I am afraid to ask it.”

“Afraid? You don’t love me, after all!”

“Then I will say it at once! How long do you expect to be away?”

“For two or three months, perhaps.”

“Promise to wait till you return, before you tell your mother — ”

“That we are engaged?”

“Yes.”

“You have my promise, Carmina; but you make me uneasy.”

“Why?”

“In my absence, you will be under my mother’s care. And you don’t like my mother.”

Few words and plain words — and they sorely troubled her.

If she owned that he was right, what would the consequence be? He might refuse to leave her. Even assuming that he controlled himself, he would take his departure harassed by anxieties, which might exercise the worst possible influence over the good effect of the journey. To prevaricate with herself or with him was out of the question. That very evening she had quarrelled with his mother; and she had yet to discover whether Mrs. Gallilee had forgiven her. In her heart of hearts she hated deceit — and in her heart of hearts she longed to set his mind at ease. In that embarrassing position, which was the right way out? Satan persuaded Eve; and Love persuaded Carmina. Love asked if she was cruel enough to make her heart’s darling miserable when he was so fond of her? Before she could realise it, she had begun to deceive him. Poor humanity! poor Carmina!

“You are almost as hard on me as if you were Doctor Benjulia himself!” she said. “I feel your mother’s superiority — and you tell me I don’t like her. Haven’t you seen how good she has been to me?”

She thought this way of putting it irresistible. Ovid resisted, nevertheless. Carmina plunged into lower depths of deceit immediately.

“Haven’t you seen my pretty rooms — my piano — my pictures — my china — my flowers? I should be the most insensible creature living if I didn’t feel grateful to your mother.”

“And yet, you are afraid of her.”

She shook his arm impatiently. “I say, No!”

He was as obstinate as ever. “I say, Yes! If you’re not afraid, why do you wish to keep our engagement from my mother’s knowledge?”

His reasoning was unanswerable. But where is the woman to be found who is not supple enough to slip through the stiff fingers of Reason? She sheltered herself from his logic behind his language.

“Must I remind you again of the time when you were angry?” she rejoined. “You said your mother was bent on separating us. If I don’t want her to know of our engagement just yet — isn’t that a good reason?” She rested her head caressingly on his shoulder. “Tell me,” she went on, thinking of one of Miss Minerva’s suggestions, “doesn’t my aunt look to a higher marriage for you than a marriage with me?”

It was impossible to deny that Mrs. Gallilee’s views might justify that inquiry. Had she not more than once advised him to wait a few years — in other words, to wait until he had won the highest honours of his profession — before he thought of marrying at all? But Carmina was too precious to him to be humiliated by comparisons with other women, no matter what their rank might be. He paid her a compliment, instead of giving her an answer.

“My mother can’t look higher than you,” he said. “I wish I could feel sure, Carmina — in leaving you with her — that I am leaving you with a friend whom you trust and love.”

There was a sadness in his tone that grieved her. “Wait till you come back,” she replied, speaking as gaily as she could. “You will be ashamed to remember your own misgivings. And don’t forget, dear, that I have another friend besides your mother — the best and kindest of friends — to take care of me.”

Ovid heard this with some surprise. “A friend in my mother’s house?” he asked.

“Certainly!”

“Who is it?”

“Miss Minerva.”

“What!” His tone expressed such immeasurable amazement, that Carmina’s sense of justice was roused in defence of her new friend.

“If I began by wronging Miss Minerva, I had the excuse of being a stranger,” she said, warmly. “You have known her for years, and you ought to have found out her good qualities long since! Are all men alike, I wonder? Even my kind dear father used to call ugly women the inexcusable mistakes of Nature. Poor Miss Minerva says herself she is ugly, and expects everybody to misjudge her accordingly. I don’t misjudge her, for one. Teresa has left me; and you are going away next. A miserable prospect, Ovid, but not quite without hope. Frances — yes, I call her by her Christian name, and she calls me by mine! — Frances will console me, and make my life as happy as it can be till you come back.”

Excepting bad temper, and merciless cultivation of the minds of children, Ovid knew of nothing that justified his prejudice against the governess. Still, Carmina’s sudden conversion inspired him with something like alarm. “I suppose you have good reasons for what you tell me,” he said.

“The best reasons,” she replied, in the most positive manner.

He considered for a moment how he could most delicately inquire what those reasons might be. But valuable opportunities may be lost, even in a moment. “Will you help me to do justice to Miss Minerva?” he cautiously began.

“Hush!” Carmina interposed. “Surely, I heard somebody calling to me?”

They paused, and listened. A voice hailed them from the outer side of the garden. They started guiltily. It was the voice of Mrs. Gallilee.

CHAPTER XVIII.

“Carmina! are you in the Square?”

“Leave it to me,” Ovid whispered. “We will come to you directly,” he called back.

Mrs. Gallilee was waiting for them at the gate. Ovid spoke, the moment they were within sight of each other. “You will have no more cause to complain of me,” he said cheerfully; “I am going away at the end of the week.”

Mrs. Gallilee’s answer was addressed to Carmina instead of to her son. “Thank you, my dear,” she said, and pressed her niece’s hand.

It was too dark to see more of faces than their shadowy outline. The learned lady’s tone was the perfection of amiability. She sent Ovid across the road to knock at the house-door, and took Carmina’s arm confidentially. “You little goose!” she whispered, “how could you suppose I was angry with you? I can’t even regret your mistake, you have written such a charming note.”

Ovid was waiting for them in the hall. They went into the library. Mrs. Gallilee enfolded her son in a fervent motherly embrace.

“This completes the enjoyment of a most delightful evening,” she said. “First a perfect lecture — and then the relief of overpowering anxiety about my son. I suppose your professional studies, Ovid, have never taken you as high as the Interspacial Regions? We were an immense audience to-night, to hear the Professor on that subject, and I really haven’t recovered it yet. Fifty miles above us — only fifty miles — there is an atmosphere of cold that would freeze the whole human family to death in a second of time. Moist matter, in that terrific emptiness, would explode, and become stone; and — listen to this, Carmina — the explosion itself would be frozen, and produce no sound. Think of serious people looking up in that dreadful direction, and talking of going to Heaven. Oh, the insignificance of man, except — I am going to make a joke, Ovid — except when he pleases his old mother by going away for the benefit of his health! And where are you going? Has sensible Carmina advised you? I agree with her beforehand, whatever she has said.”

Ovid informed his mother of Benjulia’s suggestion, and asked her what she thought of it.

Mrs. Gallilee’s overflowing geniality instantly flooded the absent doctor. He was rude, he was ugly; but what an inestimable friend! what admirable advice! In Ovid’s state of health he must not write letters; his mother would write and thank the doctor, and ask for introductions to local grandees who occupied a position in colonial society. She seized the newspaper: a steamer for Canada sailed from Liverpool on Saturday. Ovid could secure his cabin the next morning (“amidships, my dear, if you can possibly get it”), and could leave London by Friday’s train. In her eagerness to facilitate his departure, she proposed to superintend the shutting up of his house, in his absence, and to arrange the disposal of the servants, if he considered it worth while to keep them. She even thought of the cat. The easiest way to provide for the creature would be of course to have her poisoned; but Ovid was so eccentric in some things, that practical suggestions were thrown away on him. “Sixpence a week for cat’s meat isn’t much,” cried Mrs. Gallilee in an outburst of generosity. “We will receive the cat!”

Ovid made his acknowledgments resignedly. Carmina could see that Mrs. Gallilee’s overpowering vitality was beginning to oppress her son.

“I needn’t trouble you, mother,” he said. “My domestic affairs were all settled when I first felt the necessity of getting rest. My manservant travels with me. My housemaid and kitchenmaid will go to their friends in the country; the cook will look after the house; and her nephew, the little page, is almost as fond of the cat as I am. If you will send for a cab, I think I will go home. Like other people in my wretched state, I feel fatigued towards night-time.”

His lips just touched Carmina’s delicate little ear, while his mother turned away to ring the bell. “Expect me to-morrow,” he whispered. “I love you! — love you! — love you!” He seemed to find the perfection of luxury in the reiteration of those words.

When Ovid had left them, Carmina expected to hear something of her aunt’s discovery in the Square.

Mrs. Gallilee’s innocence was impenetrable. Not finding her niece in the house, she had thought of the Square. What could be more natural than that the cousins should take an evening walk, in one of the prettiest enclosures in London? Her anticipation of Ovid’s recovery, and her admiration of Carmina’s powers of persuasion appeared, for the time, to be the only active ideas in that comprehensive mind. When the servant brought in the tray, with the claret and soda-water, she sent for Miss Minerva to join them, and hear the good news; completely ignoring the interruption of their friendly relations, earlier in the evening. She became festive and facetious at the sight of the soda-water. “Let us imitate the men, Miss Minerva, and drink a toast before we go to bed. Be cheerful, Carmina, and share half a bottle of soda-water with me. A pleasant journey to Ovid, and a safe return!” Cheered by the influences of conviviality, the friend of Professors, the tender nurse of half-developed tadpoles, lapsed into learning again. Mrs. Gallilee improvised an appropriate little lecture on Canada — on the botany of the Dominion; on the geology of the Dominion; on the number of gallons of water wasted every hour by the falls of Niagara. “Science will set it all right, my dears; we shall make that idle water work for us, one of these days. Good-night, Miss Minerva! Dear Carmina, pleasant dreams!”