Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1182 page)

Seeing his hands at work, Ovid was again reminded of Carmina’s discovery. His eyes wandered a little aside, towards the corner formed by the pillar of the chimney-piece and the wall of the room. The big bamboo-stick rested there. A handle was attached to it, made of light-coloured horn, and on that handle there were some stains. Ovid looked at them with a surgeon’s practised eye. They were dry stains of blood. (Had he washed his hands on the last occasion when he used his stick? And had he forgotten that the handle wanted washing too?)

Benjulia finished his letter, and wrote the address. He took up the envelope, to give it to Ovid — and stopped, as if some doubt tempted him to change his mind. The hesitation was only momentary. He persisted in his first intention, and gave Ovid the letter. It was addressed to a doctor at Montreal.

“That man won’t introduce you to society,” Benjulia announced, “and won’t worry your brains with medical talk. Keep off one subject on your side. A mad bull is nothing to my friend if you speak of Vivisection.”

Ovid looked at him steadily, when he uttered the last word. Benjulia looked back, just as steadily at Ovid.

At the moment of that reciprocal scrutiny, did the two men suspect each other? Ovid, on his side, determined not to leave the house without putting his suspicions to the test.

“I thank you for the letter,” he began; “and I will not forget the warning.”

The doctor’s capacity for the exercise of the social virtues had its limits. His reserves of hospitality were by this time near their end.

“Is there anything more I can do for you?” he interposed.

“You can answer a simple question,” Ovid replied. “My cousin Carmina — ”

Benjulia interrupted him again: “Don’t you think we said enough about your cousin in the Gardens?” he suggested.

Ovid acknowledged the hint with a neatness of retort almost worthy of his mother. “You have your own merciful disposition to blame, if I return to the subject,” he replied. “My cousin cannot forget your kindness to the monkey.”

“The sooner she forgets my kindness the better. The monkey is dead.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“Why?”

“I thought the creature was living in pain.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I heard a moaning — ”

“Where?”

“In the building behind your house.”

“You heard the wind in the trees.”

“Nothing of the sort. Are your chemical experiments ever made on animals?”

The doctor parried that direct attack, without giving ground by so much as a hair’s breadth.

“What did I say when I gave you your letter of introduction?” he asked. “I said, A mad bull is nothing to my friend, if you speak to him of Vivisection. Now I have something more to tell you. I am like my friend.” He waited a little. “Will that do?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Ovid; “that will do.”

They were as near to an open quarrel as two men could be: Ovid took up his hat to go. Even at that critical moment, Benjulia’s strange jealousy of his young colleague — as a possible rival in some field of discovery which he claimed as his own — showed itself once more. There was no change in his tone; he still spoke like a judicious friend.

“A last word of advice,” he said. “You are travelling for your health; don’t let inquisitive strangers lead you into talk. Some of them might be physiologists.”

“And might suggest new ideas,” Ovid rejoined, determined to make him speak out this time.

Benjulia nodded, in perfect agreement with his guest’s view.

“Are you afraid of new ideas?” Ovid went on.

“Perhaps I am — in
your
head.” He made that admission, without hesitation or embarrassment. “Good-bye!” he resumed. “My sensitive foot feels noises: don’t bang the door.”

Getting out into the lane again, Ovid looked at his letter to the doctor at Montreal. His first impulse was to destroy it.

As Benjulia had hesitated before giving him the letter, so he now hesitated before tearing it up.

Contrary to the usual practice in such cases, the envelope was closed. Under those circumstances, Ovid’s pride decided him on using the introduction. Time was still to pass, before events opened his eyes to the importance of his decision. To the end of his life he remembered that Benjulia had been near to keeping back the letter, and that he had been near to tearing it up.

CHAPTER XX.

The wise ancient who asserted that “Time flies,” must have made that remarkable discovery while he was in a state of preparation for a journey. When are we most acutely sensible of the shortness of life? When do we consult our watches in perpetual dread of the result? When does the night steal on us unawares, and the morning take us by surprise? When we are going on a journey.

The remaining days of the week went by with a rush. Ovid had hardly time to ask himself if Friday had really come, before the hours of his life at home were already numbered.

He had still a little time to spare when he presented himself at Fairfield Gardens late in the afternoon. Finding no one in the library, he went up to the drawing-room. His mother was alone, reading.

“Have you anything to say to me, before I tell Carmina that you are here?” Mrs. Gallilee put that question quietly, so far as her voice was concerned. But she still kept her eyes on her book. Ovid knew that she was offering him his first and last chance of speaking plainly, before he went away. In Carmina’s interests he spoke.

“Mother,” he said, “I am leaving the one person in the world who is most precious to me, under your care.”

“Do you mean,” Mrs. Gallilee asked, “that you and Carmina are engaged to be married?”

“I mean that; and I am not sure that you approve of the engagement. Will you be plainer with me than you were on the last occasion when we spoke on this subject?”

“When was that?” Mrs. Gallilee inquired.

“When you and I were alone for a few minutes, on the morning when I breakfasted here. You said it was quite natural that Carmina should have attracted me; but you were careful not to encourage the idea of a marriage between us. I understood that you disapproved of it — but you didn’t plainly tell me why.”

“Can women always give their reason?”

“Yes — when they are women like you.”

“Thank you, my dear, for a pretty compliment. I can trust my memory. I think I hinted at the obvious objections to an engagement. You and Carmina are cousins; and you belong to different religious communities. I may add that a man with your brilliant prospects has, in my opinion, no reason to marry unless his wife is in a position to increase his influence and celebrity. I had looked forward to seeing my clever son rise more nearly to a level with persons of rank, who are members of our family. There is my confession, Ovid. If I did hesitate on the occasion to which you have referred, I have now, I think, told you why.”

“Am I to understand that you hesitate still?” Ovid asked.

“No.” With that brief reply she rose to put away her book.

Ovid followed her to the bookcase. “Has Carmina conquered you?” he said.

She put her book back in its place. “Carmina has conquered me,” she answered.

“You say it coldly.”

“What does that matter, if I say it truly?”

The struggle in him between hope and fear burst its way out. “Oh, mother, no words can tell you how fond I am of Carmina! For God’s sake take care of her, and be kind to her!”

“For
your
sake,” said Mrs. Gallilee, gently correcting the language of her excitable son, from her own protoplastic point of view. “You do me an injustice if you feel anxious about Carmina, when you leave her here. My dead brother’s child, is
my
child. You may be sure of that.” She took his hand, and drew him to her, and kissed his forehead with dignity and deliberation. If Mr. Mool had been present, during the registration of that solemn pledge, he would have been irresistibly reminded of the other ceremony, which is called signing a deed.

“Have you any instructions to give me?” Mrs. Gallilee proceeded. “For instance, do you object to my taking Carmina to parties? I mean, of course, parties which will improve her mind.”

He fell sadly below his mother’s level in replying to this. “Do everything you can to make her life happy while I am away.” Those were his only instructions.

But Mrs. Gallilee had not done with him yet. “With regard to visitors,” she went on, “I presume you wish me to be careful, if I find young men calling here oftener than usual?”

Ovid actually laughed at this. “Do you think I doubt her?” he asked. “The earth doesn’t hold a truer girl than my little Carmina!” A thought struck him while he said it. The brightness faded out of his face; his voice lost its gaiety. “There is one person who may call on you,” he said, “whom I don’t wish her to see.”

“Who is he?”

“Unfortunately, he is a man who has excited her curiosity. I mean Benjulia.”

It was now Mrs. Gallilee’s turn to be amused. Her laugh was not one of her foremost fascinations. It was hard in tone, and limited in range — it opened her mouth, but it failed to kindle any light in her eyes. “Jealous of the ugly doctor!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Ovid, what next?”

“You never made a greater mistake in your life,” her son answered sharply.

“Then what is the objection to him?” Mrs. Gallilee rejoined.

It was not easy to meet that question with a plain reply. If Ovid asserted that Benjulia’s chemical experiments were assumed — for some reason known only to himself — as a cloak to cover the atrocities of the Savage Science, he would only raise the doctor in his mother’s estimation. If, on the other hand, he described what had passed between them when they met in the Zoological Gardens, Mrs. Gallilee might summon Benjulia to explain the slur which he had indirectly cast on the memory of Carmina’s mother — and might find, in the reply, some plausible reason for objecting to her son’s marriage. Having rashly placed himself in this dilemma, Ovid unwisely escaped from it by the easiest way. “I don’t think Benjulia a fit person,” he said, “to be in the company of a young girl.”

Mrs. Gallilee accepted this expression of opinion with a readiness, which would have told a more suspicious man that he had made a mistake. Ovid had roused the curiosity — perhaps awakened the distrust — of his clever mother.

“You know best,” Mrs. Gallilee replied; “I will bear in mind what you say.” She rang the bell for Carmina, and left the room. Ovid found the minutes passing slowly, for the first time since the day had been fixed for his departure. He attributed this impression to his natural impatience for the appearance of his cousin — until the plain evidence of the clock pointed to a delay of five endless minutes, and more. As he approached the door to make inquiries, it opened at last. Hurrying to meet Carmina, he found himself face to face with Miss Minerva!

She came in hastily, and held out her hand without looking at him.

“Forgive me for intruding on you,” she said, with a rapidity of utterance and a timidity of manner strangely unlike herself. “I’m obliged to prepare the children’s lessons for to-morrow; and this is my only opportunity of bidding you good-bye. You have my best wishes — my heartfelt wishes — for your safety and your health, and — and your enjoyment of the journey. Good-bye! good-bye!”

After holding his hand for a moment, she hastened back to the door. There she stopped, turned towards him again, and looked at him for the first time. “I have one thing more to say,” she broke out. “I will do all I can to make Carmina’s life pleasant in your absence.” Before he could thank her, she was gone.