Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1205 page)

He pointed imperatively to the sofa. “Sit down again.”

She obeyed him — but he had not quite composed her yet. Her eyes sparkled; she went on talking. “Ah, you’re a hard man! a miserable man! a man that will end badly! You never loved anybody. You don’t know what love is.”

“What is it?”

That icy question cooled her in an instant: her head sank on her bosom: she suddenly became indifferent to persons and things about her. “When will Teresa come?” she whispered to herself. “Oh, when will Teresa come!”

Any other man, whether he really felt for her or not, would, as a mere matter of instinct, have said a kind word to her at that moment. Not the vestige of a change appeared in Benjulia’s impenetrable composure. She might have been a man — or a baby — or the picture of a girl instead of the girl herself, so far as he was concerned. He quietly returned to his question.

“Well,” he resumed — ”and what is love?”

Not a word, not a movement escaped her.

“I want to know,” he persisted, waiting for what might happen.

Nothing happened. He was not perplexed by the sudden change. “This is the reaction,” he thought. “We shall see what comes of it.” He looked about him. A bottle of water stood on one of the tables. “Likely to be useful,” he concluded, “in case she feels faint.”

Zo had been listening; Zo saw her way to getting noticed again. Not quite sure of herself this time, she appealed to Carmina. “Didn’t he say, just now, he wanted to know?”

Carmina neither heard nor heeded her. Zo tried Benjulia next. “Shall I tell you what we do in the schoolroom, when we want to know?” His attention, like Carmina’s attention, seemed to be far away from her. Zo impatiently reminded him of her presence — she laid her hand on his knee.

It was only the hand of a child — an idle, quaint, perverse child — but it touched, ignorantly touched, the one tender place in his nature, unprofaned by the infernal cruelties which made his life acceptable to him; the one tender place, hidden so deep from the man himself, that even his far-reaching intellect groped in vain to find it out. There, nevertheless, was the feeling which drew him to Zo, contending successfully with his medical interest in a case of nervous derangement. That unintelligible sympathy with a child looked dimly out of his eyes, spoke faintly in his voice, when he replied to her. “Well,” he said, “what do you do in the schoolroom?”

“We look in the dictionary,” Zo answered. “Carmina’s got a dictionary. I’ll get it.”

She climbed on a chair, and found the book, and laid it on Benjulia’s lap. “I don’t so much mind trying to spell a word,” she explained. “What I hate is being asked what it means. Miss Minerva won’t let me off. She says, Look.
I
won’t let
you
off. I’m Miss Minerva and you’re Zo. Look!”

He humoured her silently and mechanically — just as he had humoured her in the matter of the stick, and in the matter of the tickling. Having opened the dictionary, he looked again at Carmina. She had not moved; she seemed to be weary enough to fall asleep. The reaction — nothing but the reaction. It might last for hours, or it might be at an end in another minute. An interesting temperament, whichever way it ended. He opened the dictionary.

“Love?” he muttered grimly to himself. “It seems I’m an object of compassion, because I know nothing about love. Well, what does the book say about it?”

He found the word, and ran his finger down the paragraphs of explanation which followed. “Seven meanings to Love,” he remarked. “First: An affection of the mind excited by beauty and worth of any kind, or by the qualities of an object which communicate pleasure. Second: Courtship. Third: Patriotism, as the love of country. Fourth: Benevolence. Fifth: The object beloved. Sixth: A word of endearment. Seventh: Cupid, the god of love.”

He paused, and reflected a little. Zo, hearing nothing to amuse her, strayed away to the window, and looked out. He glanced at Carmina.

“Which of those meanings makes the pleasure of her life?” he wondered. “Which of them might have made the pleasure of mine?” He closed the dictionary in contempt. “The very man whose business is to explain it, tries seven different ways, and doesn’t explain it after all. And yet, there is such a thing.” He reached that conclusion unwillingly and angrily. For the first time, a doubt about himself forced its way into his mind. Might he have looked higher than his torture-table and his knife? Had he gained from his life all that his life might have given to him?

Left by herself, Zo began to grow tired of it. She tried to get Carmina for a companion. “Come and look out of window,” she said.

Carmina gently refused: she was unwilling to be disturbed. Since she had spoken to Benjulia, her thoughts had been dwelling restfully on Ovid. In another day she might be on her way to him. When would Teresa come?

Benjulia was too preoccupied to notice her. The weak doubt that had got the better of his strong reason, still held him in thrall. “Love!” he broke out, in the bitterness of his heart. “It isn’t a question of sentiment: it’s a question of use. Who is the better for love?”

She heard the last words, and answered him. “Everybody is the better for it.” She looked at him with sorrowful eyes, and laid her hand on his arm. “Everybody,” she added, “but you.”

He smiled scornfully. “Everybody is the better for it,” he repeated. “And who knows what it is?”

She drew away her hand, and looked towards the heavenly tranquillity of the evening sky.

“Who knows what it is?” he reiterated.

“God,” she said.

Benjulia was silent.

CHAPTER XLV.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck six. Zo, turning suddenly from the window, ran to the sofa. “Here’s the carriage!” she cried.

“Teresa!” Carmina exclaimed.

Zo crossed the room, on tiptoe, to the door of the bed-chamber. “It’s mamma,” she said. “Don’t tell! I’m going to hide.”

“Why, dear?”

The answer to this was given mysteriously in a whisper. “She said I wasn’t to come to you. She’s a quick one on her legs — she might catch me on the stairs.” With that explanation, Zo slipped into the bedroom, and held the door ajar.

The minutes passed — and Mrs. Gallilee failed to justify the opinion expressed by her daughter. Not a sound was audible on the stairs. Not a word more was uttered in the room. Benjulia had taken the child’s place at the window. He sat there thinking. Carmina had suggested to him some new ideas, relating to the intricate connection between human faith and human happiness. Slowly, slowly, the clock recorded the lapse of minutes. Carmina’s nervous anxiety began to forecast disaster to the absent nurse. She took Teresa’s telegram from her pocket, and consulted it again. There was no mistake; six o’clock was the time named for the traveller’s arrival — and it was close on ten minutes past the hour. In her ignorance of railway arrangements, she took it for granted that trains were punctual. But her reading had told her that trains were subject to accident. “I suppose delays occur,” she said to Benjulia, “without danger to the passengers?”

Before he could answer — Mrs. Gallilee suddenly entered the room.

She had opened the door so softly, that she took them both by surprise. To Carmina’s excited imagination, she glided into their presence like a ghost. Her look and manner showed serious agitation, desperately suppressed. In certain places, the paint and powder on her face had cracked, and revealed the furrows and wrinkles beneath. Her hard eyes glittered; her laboured breathing was audible.

Indifferent to all demonstrations of emotion which did not scientifically concern him, Benjulia quietly rose and advanced towards her. She seemed to be unconscious of his presence. He spoke — allowing her to ignore him without troubling himself to notice her temper. “When you are able to attend to me, I want to speak to you. Shall I wait downstairs?” He took his hat and stick — to leave the room; looked at Carmina as he passed her; and at once went back to his place at the window. Her aunt’s silent and sinister entrance had frightened her. Benjulia waited, in the interests of physiology, to see how the new nervous excitement would end.

Thus far, Mrs. Gallilee had kept one of her hands hidden behind her. She advanced close to Carmina, and allowed her hand to be seen. It held an open letter. She shook the letter in her niece’s face.

In the position which Mrs. Gallilee now occupied, Carmina was hidden, for the moment, from Benjulia’s view. Biding his time at the window, he looked out.

A cab, with luggage on it, had just drawn up at the house.

Was this the old nurse who had been expected to arrive at six o’clock?

The footman came out to open the cab-door. He was followed by Mr. Gallilee, eager to help the person inside to alight. The traveller proved to be a grey-headed woman, shabbily dressed. Mr. Gallilee cordially shook hands with her — patted her on the shoulder — gave her his arm — led her into the house. The cab with the luggage on it remained at the door. The nurse had evidently not reached the end of her journey yet.

Carmina shrank back on the sofa, when the leaves of the letter touched her face. Mrs. Gallilee’s first words were now spoken, in a whisper. The inner fury of her anger, struggling for a vent, began to get the better of her — she gasped for breath and speech.

“Do you know this letter?” she said.

Carmina looked at the writing. It was the letter to Ovid, which she had placed in the post-basket that afternoon; the letter which declared that she could no longer endure his mother’s cold-blooded cruelty, and that she only waited Teresa’s arrival to join him at Quebec.

After one dreadful moment of confusion, her mind realised the outrage implied in the stealing and reading of her letter.

In the earlier time of Carmina’s sojourn in the house, Mrs. Gallilee had accused her of deliberate deceit. She had instantly resented the insult by leaving the room. The same spirit in her — the finely-strung spirit that vibrates unfelt in gentle natures, while they live in peace — steadied those quivering nerves, roused that failing courage. She met the furious eyes fixed on her, without shrinking; she spoke gravely and firmly. “The letter is mine,” she said. “How did you come by it?”

“How dare you ask me?”

“How dare
you
steal my letter?”

Mrs. Gallilee tore open the fastening of her dress at the throat, to get breath. “You impudent bastard!” she burst out, in a frenzy of rage.

Waiting patiently at the window, Benjulia heard her. “Hold your damned tongue!” he cried. “She’s your niece.”

Mrs. Gallilee turned on him: her fury broke into a screaming laugh. “My niece?” she repeated. “You lie — and you know it! She’s the child of an adulteress! She’s the child of her mother’s lover!”

The door opened as those horrible words passed her lips. The nurse and her husband entered the room.

She was in no position to see them: she was incapable of hearing them. The demon in her urged her on: she attempted to reiterate the detestable falsehood. Her first word died away in silence. The lean brown fingers of the Italian woman had her by the throat — held her as the claws of a tigress might have held her. Her eyes rolled in the mute agony of an appeal for help. In vain! in vain! Not a cry, not a sound, had drawn attention to the attack. Her husband’s eyes were fixed, horror-struck, on the victim of her rage. Benjulia had crossed the room to the sofa, when Carmina heard the words spoken of her mother. From that moment, he was watching the case. Mr. Gallilee alone looked round — when the nurse tightened her hold in a last merciless grasp; dashed the insensible woman on the floor; and, turning back, fell on her knees at her darling’s feet.

She looked up in Carmina’s face.

A ghastly stare, through half-closed eyes, showed death in life, blankly returning her look. The shock had struck Carmina with a stony calm. She had not started, she had not swooned. Rigid, immovable, there she sat; voiceless and tearless; insensible even to touch; her arms hanging down; her clenched hands resting on either side of her.