CHAPTER VIII.
Mrs. Gallilee made her appearance in the library—and Mr. Mool’s pulse accelerated its beat. Mrs. Gallilee’s son followed her into the room—and Mr. Mool’s pulse steadied itself again. By special arrangement with the lawyer, Ovid had been always kept in ignorance of his mother’s affairs. No matter how angry she might be in the course of the next few minutes, she could hardly express her indignation in the presence of her son.
Joyous anticipation has the happiest effect on female beauty. Mrs. Gallilee looked remarkably well, that day. Having rather a round and full face, she wore her hair (coloured from youthful nature) in a fringe across her forehead, balanced on either side by clusters of charming little curls. Her mourning for Robert was worthy of its Parisian origin; it showed to perfect advantage the bloom of her complexion and the whiteness of her neck—also worthy of their Parisian origin. She looked like a portrait of the period of Charles the Second, endowed with life.
“And how do you do, Mr. Mool? Have you been looking at my ferns?”
The ferns were grouped at the entrance, leading from the library to the conservatory. They had certainly not escaped the notice of the lawyer, who possessed a hot-house of his own, and who was an enthusiast in botany. It now occurred to him—if he innocently provoked embarrassing results—that ferns might be turned to useful and harmless account as a means of introducing a change of subject. “Even when she hasn’t spoken a word,” thought Mr. Mool, consulting his recollections, “I have felt her eyes go through me like a knife.”
“Spare us the technicalities, please,” Mrs. Gallilee continued, pointing to the documents on the table. “I want to be exactly acquainted with the duties I owe to Carmina. And, by the way, I naturally feel some interest in knowing whether Lady Northlake has any place in the Will.”
Mrs. Gallilee never said “my sister,” never spoke in the family circle of “Susan.” The inexhaustible sense of injury, aroused by that magnificent marriage, asserted itself in keeping her sister at the full distance implied by never forgetting her title.
“The first legacy mentioned in the Will,” said Mr. Mool, “is a legacy to Lady Northlake.” Mrs. Gallilee’s face turned as hard as iron. “One hundred pounds,” Mr. Mool continued, “to buy a mourning ring.”’ Mrs. Gallilee’s eyes became eloquent in an instant, and said as if in words, “Thank Heaven!”
“So like your uncle’s unpretending good sense,” she remarked to her son. “Any other legacy to Lady Northlake would have been simply absurd. Yes, Mr. Mool? Perhaps my name follows?”
Mr. Mool cast a side-look at the ferns. He afterwards described his sensations as reminding him of previous experience in a dentist’s chair, at the awful moment when the operator says “Let me look,” and has his devilish instrument hidden in his hand. The “situation,” to use the language of the stage, was indeed critical enough already. Ovid added to the horror of it by making a feeble joke. “What will you take for your chance, mother?”
Before bad became worse, Mr. Mool summoned the energy of despair. He wisely read the exact words of the Will, this time: “‘And I give and bequeath to my sister, Mrs. Maria Gallilee, one hundred pounds.”’
Ovid’s astonishment could only express itself in action. He started to his feet.
Mr. Mool went on reading. “‘Free of legacy duty, to buy a mourning ring—“’
“Impossible!” Ovid broke out.
Mr. Mool finished the sentence. “‘And my sister will understand the motive which animates me in making this bequest.”’ He laid the Will on the table, and ventured to look up. At the same time, Ovid turned to his mother, struck by the words which had been just read, and eager to inquire what their meaning might be.
Happily for themselves, the two men never knew what the preservation of their tranquillity owed to that one moment of delay.
If they had looked at Mrs. Gallilee, when she was first aware of her position in the Will, they might have seen the incarnate Devil self-revealed in a human face. They might have read, in her eyes and on her lips, a warning hardly less fearful than the unearthly writing on the wall, which told the Eastern Monarch of his coming death. “See this woman, and know what I can do with her, when she has repelled her guardian angel, and her soul is left to ME.”
But the revelation showed itself, and vanished. Her face was composed again, when her son and her lawyer looked at it. Her voice was under control; her inbred capacity for deceit was ready for action. All those formidable qualities in her nature, which a gentler and wiser training than hers had been might have held in check—by development of preservative influences that lay inert—were now driven back to their lurking-place; leaving only the faintest traces of their momentary appearance on the surface. Her breathing seemed to be oppressed; her eyelids drooped heavily—and that was all.
“Is the room too hot for you?” Ovid asked.
It was a harmless question, but any question annoyed her at that moment. “Nonsense!” she exclaimed irritably.
“The atmosphere of the conservatory is rich in reviving smells,” Mr. Mool remarked. “Do I detect, among the delightful perfumes which reach us, the fragrant root-stock of the American fern? If I am wrong, Mrs. Gallilee, may I send you some of the sweet-smelling Maidenhair from my own little hot-house?” He smiled persuasively. The ferns were already justifying his confidence in their peace-making virtues, turned discreetly to account. Those terrible eyes rested on him mercifully. Not even a covert allusion to his silence in the matter of the legacy escaped her. Did the lawyer’s artlessly abrupt attempt to change the subject warn her to be on her guard? In any case, she thanked him with the readiest courtesy for his kind offer. Might she trouble him in the meantime to let her see the Will?
She read attentively the concluding words of the clause in which her name appeared—“My sister will understand the motive which animates me in making this bequest”—and then handed back the Will to Mr. Mool. Before Ovid could ask for it, she was ready with a plausible explanation. “When your uncle became a husband and a father,” she said, “those claims on him were paramount. He knew that a token of remembrance (the smaller the better) was all I could accept, if I happened to outlive him. Please go on, Mr. Mool.”
In one respect, Ovid resembled his late uncle. They both belonged to that high-minded order of men, who are slow to suspect, and therefore easy to deceive. Ovid tenderly took his mother’s hand.
“I ought to have known it,” he said, “without obliging you to tell me.”
Mrs. Gallilee did not blush. Mr. Mool did.
“Go on!” Mrs. Gallilee repeated. Mr. Mool looked at Ovid. “The next name, Mr. Vere, is yours.”
“Does my uncle remember me as he has remembered my mother?” asked Ovid.
“Yes, sir—and let me tell you, a very pretty compliment is attached to the bequest. ‘It is needless’ (your late uncle says) ‘to leave any more important proof of remembrance to my nephew. His father has already provided for him; and, with his rare abilities, he will make a second fortune by the exercise of his profession.’ Most gratifying, Mrs. Gallilee, is it nor? The next clause provides for the good old housekeeper Teresa, and for her husband if he survives her, in the following terms—”
Mrs. Gallilee was becoming impatient to hear more of herself. “We may, I think, pass over that,” she suggested, “and get to the part of it which relates to Carmina and me. Don’t think I am impatient; I am only desirous—”
The growling of a dog in the conservatory interrupted her. “That tiresome creature!” she said sharply; “I shall be obliged to get rid of him!”
Mr. Mool volunteered to drive the dog out of the conservatory. Mrs. Gallilee, as irritable as ever, stopped him at the door.
“Don’t, Mr. Mool! That dog’s temper is not to be trusted. He shows it with Miss Minerva, my governess—growls just in that way whenever he sees her. I dare say he smells you. There! Now he barks! You are only making him worse. Come back!”
Being at the door, gentle Mr. Mool tried the ferns as peace-makers once more. He gathered a leaf, and returned to his place in a state of meek admiration. “The flowering fern!” he said softly.
“A really fine specimen, Mrs. Gallilee, of the Osmunda Regalis. What a world of beauty in this bipinnate frond! One hardly knows where the stalk ends and the leaf begins!”
The dog, a bright little terrier, came trotting into the library He saluted the company briskly with his tail, not excepting Mr. Mool. No growl, or approach to a growl, now escaped him. The manner in which he laid himself down at Mrs. Gallilee’s feet completely refuted her aspersion on his temper. Ovid suggested that he might have been provoked by a cat in the conservatory.
Meanwhile, Mr. Mool turned over a page of the Will, and arrived at the clauses relating to Carmina and her guardian.
“It may not be amiss,” he began, “to mention, in the first place, that the fortune left to Miss Carmina amounts, in round numbers, to one hundred and thirty thousand pounds. The Trustees—”
“Skip the Trustees,” said Mrs. Gallilee.
Mr. Mool skipped.
“In the matter of the guardian,” he said, “there is a preliminary clause, in the event of your death or refusal to act, appointing Lady Northlake—”
“Skip Lady Northlake,” said Mrs. Gallilee.
Mr. Mool skipped.
“You are appointed Miss Carmina’s guardian, until she comes of age,” he resumed. “If she marries in that interval—”
He paused to turn over a page. Not only Mrs. Gallilee, but Ovid also, now listened with the deepest interest.
“If she marries in that interval, with her guardian’s approval—”
“Suppose I don’t approve of her choice?” Mrs. Gallilee interposed.
Ovid looked at his mother—and quickly looked away again. The restless little terrier caught his eye, and jumped up to be patted. Ovid was too pre-occupied to notice this modest advance. The dog’s eyes and ears expressed reproachful surprise. His friend Ovid had treated him rudely for the first time in his life.
“If the young lady contracts a matrimonial engagement of which you disapprove,” Mr. Mool answered, “you are instructed by the testator to assert your reasons in the presence of—well, I may describe it, as a family council; composed of Mr. Gallilee, and of Lord and Lady Northlake.”
“Excessively foolish of Robert,” Mrs. Gallilee remarked. “And what, Mr. Mool, is this meddling council of three to do?”
“A majority of the council, Mrs. Gallilee, is to decide the question absolutely. If the decision confirms your view, and if Miss Carmina still persists in her resolution notwithstanding—”
“Am I to give way?” Mrs. Gallilee asked.
“Not until your niece comes of age, ma’am. Then, she decides for herself.”
“And inherits the fortune?”
“Only an income from part of it—if her marriage is disapproved by her guardian and her relatives.”
“And what becomes of the rest?”
“The whole of it,” said Mr. Mool, “will be invested by the Trustees, and will be divided equally, on her death, among her children.”
“Suppose she leaves no children?”
“That case is provided for, ma’am, by the last clause. I will only say now, that you are interested in the result.”
Mrs. Gallilee turned swiftly and sternly to her son. “When I am dead and gone,” she said, “I look to you to defend my memory.”
“To defend your memory?” Ovid repeated, wondering what she could possibly mean.
“If I do become interested in the disposal of Robert’s fortune—which God forbid!—can’t you foresee what will happen?” his mother inquired bitterly. “Lady Northlake will say, ‘Maria intrigued for this!’”
Mr. Mool looked doubtfully at the ferns. No! His vegetable allies were not strong enough to check any further outpouring of such family feeling as this. Nothing was to be trusted, in the present emergency, but the superior authority of the Will.
“Pardon me,” he said; “there are some further instructions, Mrs. Gallilee, which, as I venture to think, exhibit your late brother’s well-known liberality of feeling in a very interesting light. They relate to the provision made for his daughter, while she is residing under your roof. Miss Carmina is to have the services of the best masters, in finishing her education.”
“Certainly!” cried Mrs. Gallilee, with the utmost fervour.
“And the use of a carriage to herself, whenever she may require it.”
“No, Mr. Mool! Two carriages—in such a climate as this. One open, and one closed.”
“And to defray these and other expenses, the Trustees are authorized to place at your disposal one thousand a year.”
“Too much! too much!”
Mr. Mool might have agreed with her—if he had nor known that Robert Graywell had thought of his sister’s interests, in making this excessive provision for expenses incurred on his daughter’s account.
“Perhaps, her dresses and her pocket money are included?” Mrs. Gallilee resumed.
Mr. Mool smiled, and shook his head. “Mr. Graywell’s generosity has no limits,” he said, “where his daughter is concerned. Miss Carmina is to have five hundred a year for pocket-money and dresses.”
Mrs. Gallilee appealed to the sympathies of her son. “Isn’t it touching?” she said. “Dear Carmina! my own people in Paris shall make her dresses. Well, Mr. Mool?”
“Allow me to read the exact language of the Will next,” Mr. Mool answered. “‘If her sweet disposition leads her into exceeding her allowance, in the pursuit of her own little charities, my Trustees are hereby authorized, at their own discretion, to increase the amount, within the limit of another five hundred pounds annually.’ It sounds presumptuous, perhaps, on my part,” said Mr. Mool, venturing on a modest confession of enthusiasm, “but one can’t help thinking, What a good father! what a good child!”
Mrs. Gallilee had another appropriate remark ready on her lips, when the unlucky dog interrupted her once more. He made a sudden rush into the conservatory, barking with all his might. A crashing noise followed the dog’s outbreak, which sounded like the fall of a flower-pot.
Ovid hurried into the conservatory—with the dog ahead of him, tearing down the steps which led into the back garden.
The pot lay broken on the tiled floor. Struck by the beauty of the flower that grew in it, he stooped to set it up again. If, instead of doing this, he had advanced at once to the second door, he would have seen a lady hastening into the house; and, though her back view only was presented, he could hardly have failed to recognize Miss Minerva. As it was, when he reached the door, the garden was empty.
He looked up at the house, and saw Carmina at the open window of her bedroom.
The sad expression on that sweet young face grieved him. Was she thinking of her happy past life? or of the doubtful future, among strangers in a strange country? She noticed Ovid—and her eyes brightened. His customary coldness with women melted instantly: he kissed his hand to her. She returned the salute (so familiar to her in Italy) with her gentle smile, and looked back into the room. Teresa showed herself at the window. Always following her impulses without troubling herself to think first, the duenna followed them now. “We are dull up here,” she called out. “Come back to us, Mr. Ovid.” The words had hardly been spoken before they both turned from the window. Teresa pointed significantly into the room. They disappeared.
Ovid went back to the library.
“Anybody listening?” Mr. Mool inquired.
“I have not discovered anybody, but I doubt if a stray cat could have upset that heavy flower-pot.” He looked round him as he made the reply. “Where is my mother?” he asked.
Mrs. Gallilee had gone upstairs, eager to tell Carmina of the handsome allowance made to her by her father. Having answered in these terms, Mr. Mool began to fold up the Will—and suddenly stopped.
“Very inconsiderate, on my part,” he said; “I forgot, Mr. Ovid, that you haven’t heard the end of it. Let me give you a brief abstract. You know, perhaps, that Miss Carmina is a Catholic? Very natural—her poor mother’s religion. Well, sir, her good father forgets nothing. All attempts at proselytizing are strictly forbidden.”
Ovid smiled. His mother’s religious convictions began and ended with the inorganic matter of the earth.
“The last clause,” Mr. Mool proceeded, “seemed to agitate Mrs. Gallilee quite painfully. I reminded her that her brother had no near relations living, but Lady Northlake and herself. As to leaving money to my lady, in my lord’s princely position—”
“Pardon me,” Ovid interposed, “what is there to agitate my mother in this?”
Mr. Mool made his apologies for not getting sooner to the point, with the readiest good-will. “Professional habit, Mr. Ovid,” he explained. “We are apt to be wordy—paid, in fact, at so much a folio, for so many words!—and we like to clear the ground first. Your late uncle ends his Will, by providing for the disposal of his fortune, in two possible events, as follows: Miss Carmina may die unmarried, or Miss Carmina (being married) may die without offspring.”
Seeing the importance of the last clause now, Ovid stopped him again. “Do I remember the amount of the fortune correctly?” he asked. “Was it a hundred and thirty thousand pounds?”
“Yes.”
“And what becomes of all that money, if Carmina never marries, or if she leaves no children?”
“In either of those cases, sir, the whole of the money goes to Mrs. Gallilee and her daughters.”’
CHAPTER IX.
Time had advanced to midnight, after the reading of the Will—and Ovid was at home.
The silence of the quiet street in which he lived was only disturbed by the occasional rolling of carriage wheels, and by dance-music from the house of one of his neighbours who was giving a ball. He sat at his writing-table, thinking. Honest self-examination had laid out the state of his mind before him like a map, and had shown him, in its true proportions, the new interest that filled his life.
Of that interest he was now the willing slave. If he had not known his mother to be with her, he would have gone back to Carmina when the lawyer left the house. As it was, he had sent a message upstairs, inviting himself to dinner, solely for the purpose of seeing Carmina again—and he had been bitterly disappointed when he heard that Mr. and Mrs. Gallilee were engaged, and that his cousin would take tea in her room. He had eaten something at this club, without caring what it was. He had gone to the Opera afterwards, merely because his recollections of a favourite singing-lady of that season vaguely reminded him of Carmina. And there he was, at midnight, on his return from the music, eager for the next opportunity of seeing his cousin, a few hours hence—when he had arranged to say good-bye at the family breakfast-table.
To feel this change in him as vividly as he felt it, could lead to but one conclusion in the mind of a man who was incapable of purposely deceiving himself. He was as certain as ever of the importance of rest and change, in the broken state of his health. And yet, in the face of that conviction, his contemplated sea-voyage had already become one of the vanished illusions of his life!
His friend had arranged to travel with him, that morning, from London to the port at which the yacht was waiting for them. They were hardly intimate enough to trust each other unreservedly with secrets. The customary apology for breaking an engagement was the alternative that remained. With the paper on his desk and with the words on his mind, he was yet in such a strange state of indecision that he hesitated to write the letter!
His morbidly-sensitive nerves were sadly shaken. Even the familiar record of the half-hour by the hall clock startled him. The stroke of the bell was succeeded by a mild and mournful sound outside the door—the mewing of a cat.
He rose, without any appearance of surprise, and opened the door.
With grace and dignity entered a small black female cat; exhibiting, by way of variety of colour, a melancholy triangular patch of white over the lower part of her face, and four brilliantly clean white paws. Ovid went back to his desk. As soon as he was in his chair again, the cat jumped on his shoulder, and sat there purring in his ear. This was the place she occupied, whenever her master was writing alone. Passing one day through a suburban neighbourhood, on his round of visits, the young surgeon had been attracted by a crowd in a by-street. He had rescued his present companion from starvation in a locked-up house, the barbarous inhabitants of which had gone away for a holiday, and had forgotten the cat. When Ovid took the poor creature home with him in his carriage, popular feeling decided that the unknown gentleman was “a rum ‘un.” From that moment, this fortunate little member of a brutally-slandered race attached herself to her new friend, and to that friend only. If Ovid had owned the truth, he must have acknowledged that her company was a relief to him, in the present state of his mind.
When a man’s flagging purpose is in want of a stimulant, the most trifling change in the circumstances of the moment often applies the animating influence. Even such a small interruption as the appearance of his cat rendered this service to Ovid. To use the common and expressive phrase, it had “shaken him up.” He wrote the letter—and his patient companion killed the time by washing her face.
His mind being so far relieved, he went to bed—the cat following him upstairs to her bed in a corner of the room. Clothes are unwholesome superfluities not contemplated in the system of Nature. When we are exhausted, there is no such thing as true repose for us until we are freed from our dress. Men subjected to any excessive exertion—fighting, rowing, walking, working—must strip their bodies as completely as possible, or they are nor equal to the call on them. Ovid’s knowledge of his own temperament told him that sleep was not to be hoped for, that night. But the way to bed was the way to rest notwithstanding, by getting rid of his clothes.
With the sunrise he rose and went out.
He took his letter with him, and dropped it into the box in his friend’s door. The sooner he committed himself to the new course that he had taken, the more certain he might feel of not renewing the miserable and useless indecision of the past night. “Thank God, that’s done!” he said to himself, as he heard the letter fall into the box, and left the house.
After walking in the Park until he was weary, he sat down by the ornamental lake, and watched the waterfowl enjoying their happy lives.
Wherever he went, whatever he did, Carmina was always with him. He had seen thousands of girls, whose personal attractions were far more remarkable—and some few among them whose manner was perhaps equally winning. What was the charm in the little half-foreign cousin that had seized on him in an instant, and that seemed to fasten its subtle hold more and more irresistibly with every minute of his life? He was content to feel the charm without caring to fathom it. The lovely morning light took him in imagination to her bedside; he saw here sleeping peacefully in her new room. Would the time come when she might dream of him? He looked at his watch. It was seven o’clock. The breakfast-hour at Fairfield Gardens had been fixed for eight, to give him time to catch the morning train. Half an hour might be occupied in walking back to his own house. Add ten minutes to make some change in his dress—and he might set forth for his next meeting with Carmina. No uneasy anticipation of what the family circle might think of his sudden change of plan troubled his mind. A very different question occupied him. For the first time in his life, he wondered what dress a woman would wear at breakfast time.
He opened his house door with his own key. An elderly person, in a coarse black gown, was seated on the bench in the hall. She rose, and advanced towards him. In speechless astonishment, he confronted Carmina’s faithful companion—Teresa.
“If you please, I want to speak to you,” she said, in her best English. Ovid took her into his consulting-room. She wasted no time in apologies or explanations. “Don’t speak!” she broke out. “Carmina has had a bad night.”
“I shall be at the house in half an hour!” Ovid eagerly assured her.
The duenna shook her forefinger impatiently. “She doesn’t want a doctor. She wants a friend, when I am gone. What is her life here? A new life, among new people. Don’t speak! She’s frightened and miserable. So young, so shy, so easily startled. And I must leave her—I must! I must! My old man is failing fast; he may die, without a creature to comfort him, if I don’t go back. I could tear my hair when I think of it. Don’t speak! It’s my business to speak. Ha! I know, what I know. Young doctor, you’re in love with Carmina! I’ve read you like a book. You’re quick to see, sudden to feel—like one of my people. Be one of my people. Help me.”
She dragged a chair close to Ovid, and laid her hand suddenly and heavily on his arm.
“It’s not my fault, mind; I have said nothing to disturb her. No! I’ve made the best of it. I’ve lied to her. What do I care? I would lie like Judas Iscariot himself to spare Carmina a moment’s pain. It’s such a new life for her—try to see it for yourself—such a new life. You and I shook hands yesterday. Do it again. Are you surprised to see me? I asked your mother’s servants where you lived; and here I am—with the cruel teeth of anxiety gnawing me alive when I think of the time to come. Oh, my lamb! my angel! she’s alone. Oh, my God, only seventeen years old, and alone in the world! No father, no mother; and soon—oh, too soon, too soon—not even Teresa! What are you looking at? What is there so wonderful in the tears of a stupid old fool? Drops of hot water. Ha! ha! if they fall on your fine carpet here, they won’t hurt it. You’re a good fellow; you’re a dear fellow. Hush! I know the Evil Eye when I see it. No more of that! A secret in your ear—I’ve said a word for you to Carmina already. Give her time; she’s not cold; young and innocent, that’s all. Love will come—I know, what I know—love will come.”
She laughed—and, in the very act of laughing, changed again. Fright looked wildly at Ovid out of her staring eyes. Some terrifying remembrance had suddenly occurred to her. She sprang to her feet.
“You said you were going away,” she cried. “You said it, when you left us yesterday. It can’t be! it shan’t be! You’re not going to leave Carmina, too?”
Ovid’s first impulse was to tell the whole truth. He resisted the impulse. To own that Carmina was the cause of his abandonment of the sea-voyage, before she was even sure of the impression she had produced on him, would be to place himself in a position from which his self-respect recoiled. “My plans are changed,” was all he said to Teresa. “Make your mind easy; I’m not going away.”
The strange old creature snapped her fingers joyously. “Good-bye! I want no more of you.” With those cool and candid words of farewell, she advanced to the door—stopped suddenly to think—and came back. Only a moment had passed, and she was as sternly in earnest again as ever.
“May I call you by your name?” she asked.
“Certainly!”
“Listen, Ovid! I may not see you again before I go back to my husband. This is my last word—never forget it. Even Carmina may have enemies!”
What could she be thinking of? “Enemies—in my mother’s house!” Ovid exclaimed. “What can you possibly mean?”
Teresa returned to the door, and only answered him when she had opened it to go.
“The Evil Eye never lies,” she said. “Wait—and you will see.”
CHAPTER X.
Mrs. Gallilee was on her way to the breakfast-room, when her son entered the house. They met in the hall. “Is your packing done?” she asked.
He was in no humour to wait, and make his confession at that moment. “Not yet,” was his only reply.
Mrs. Gallilee led the way into the room. “Ovid’s luggage is not ready yet,” she announced; “I believe he will lose his train.”
They were all at the breakfast table, the children and the governess included. Carmina’s worn face, telling its tale of a wakeful night, brightened again, as it had brightened at the bedroom window, when she saw Ovid. She took his hand frankly, and made light of her weary looks. “No, my cousin,” she said, playfully; “I mean to be worthier of my pretty bed to-night; I am not going to be your patient yet.” Mr. Gallilee (with this mouth full at the moment) offered good advice. “Eat and drink as I do, my dear,” he said to Carmina; “and you will sleep as I do. Off I go when the light’s out—flat on my back, as Mrs. Gallilee will tell you—and wake me if you can, till it’s time to get up. Have some buttered eggs, Ovid. They’re good, ain’t they, Zo?” Zo looked up from her plate, and agreed with her father, in one emphatic word, “Jolly!” Miss Minerva, queen of governesses, instantly did her duty. “Zoe! how often must I tell you not to talk slang? Do you ever hear your sister say ‘Jolly?’” That highly-cultivated child, Maria, strong in conscious virtue, added her authority in support of the protest. “No young lady who respects herself, Zoe, will ever talk slang.” Mr. Gallilee was unworthy of such a daughter. He muttered under his breath, “Oh, bother!” Zo held out her plate for more. Mr. Gallilee was delighted. “My child all over!” he exclaimed. “We are both of us good feeders. Zo will grow up a fine woman.” He appealed to his stepson to agree with him. “That’s your medical opinion, Ovid, isn’t it?”
Carmina’s pretty smile passed like rippling light over her eyes and her lips. In her brief experience of England, Mr. Gallilee was the one exhilarating element in family life.
Mrs. Gallilee’s mind still dwelt on her son’s luggage, and on the rigorous punctuality of railway arrangements.
“What is your servant about?” she said to Ovid. “It’s his business to see that you are ready in time.”
It was useless to allow the false impression that prevailed to continue any longer. Ovid set them all right, in the plainest and fewest words.
“My servant is not to blame,” he said. “I have written an apology to my friend—I am not going away.”
For the moment, this astounding announcement was received in silent dismay—excepting the youngest member of the company. After her father, Ovid was the one other person in the world who held a place in Zo’s odd little heart. Her sentiments were now expressed without hesitation and without reserve. She put down her spoon, and she cried, “Hooray!” Another exhibition of vulgarity. But even Miss Minerva was too completely preoccupied by the revelation which had burst on the family to administer the necessary reproof. Her eager eyes were riveted on Ovid. As for Mr. Gallilee, he held his bread and butter suspended in mid-air, and stared open-mouthed at his stepson, in helpless consternation.
Mrs. Gallilee always set the right example. Mrs. Gallilee was the first to demand an explanation.
“What does this extraordinary proceeding mean?” she asked.
Ovid was impenetrable to the tone in which that question was put. He had looked at his cousin, when he declared his change of plan—and he was looking at her still. Whatever the feeling of the moment might be, Carmina’s sensitive face expressed it vividly. Who could mistake the faintly-rising colour in her cheeks, the sweet quickening of light in her eyes, when she met Ovid’s look? Still hardly capable of estimating the influence that she exercised over him, her sense of the interest taken in her by Ovid was the proud sense that makes girls innocently bold. Whatever the others might think of his broken engagement, her artless eyes said plainly, “My feeling is happy surprise.”
Mrs. Gallilee summoned her son to attend her, in no friendly voice. She, too, had looked at Carmina—and had registered the result of her observation privately.
“Are we to hear your reasons?” she inquired.
Ovid had made the one discovery in the world, on which his whole heart was set. He was so happy, that he kept his mother out of his secret, with a masterly composure worthy of herself.
“I don’t think a sea-voyage is the right thing for me,” he answered.
“Rather a sudden change of opinion,” Mrs. Gallilee remarked.
Ovid coolly agreed with her. It was rather sudden, he said.
The governess still looked at him, wondering whether he would provoke an outbreak.
After a little pause, Mrs. Gallilee accepted her son’s short answer—with a sudden submission which had a meaning of its own. She offered Ovid another cup of tea; and, more remarkable yet, she turned to her eldest daughter, and deliberately changed the subject. “What are your lessons, my dear, to-day?” she asked, with bland maternal interest.
By this time, bewildered Mr. Gallilee had finished his bread and butter. “Ovid knows best, my dear,” he said cheerfully to his wife. Mrs. Gallilee’s sudden recovery of her temper did not include her husband. If a look could have annihilated that worthy man, his corporal presence must have vanished into air, when he had delivered himself of his opinion. As it was, he only helped Zo to another spoonful of jam. “When Ovid first thought of that voyage,” he went on, “I said, Suppose he’s sick? A dreadful sensation isn’t it, Miss Minerva? First you seem to sink into your shoes, and then it all comes up—eh? You’re not sick at sea? I congratulate you! I most sincerely congratulate you! My dear Ovid, come and dine with me to-night at the club.” He looked doubtfully at his wife, as he made that proposal. “Got the headache, my dear? I’ll take you out with pleasure for a walk. What’s the matter with her, Miss Minerva? Oh, I see! Hush! Maria’s going to say grace.—Amen! Amen!”
They all rose from the table.
Mr. Gallilee was the first to open the door. The smoking-room at Fairfield Gardens was over the kitchen; he preferred enjoying his cigar in the garden of the Square. He looked at Carmina and Ovid, as if he wanted one of them to accompany him. They were both at the aviary, admiring the birds, and absorbed in their own talk. Mr. Gallilee resigned himself to his fate; appealing, on his way out, to somebody to agree with him as usual. “Well!” he said with a little sigh, “a cigar keeps one company.” Miss Minerva (absorbed in her own thoughts) passed near him, on her way to the school-room with her pupils. “You would find it so yourself, Miss Minerva—that is to say, if you smoked, which of course you don’t. Be a good girl, Zo; attend to your lessons.”
Zo’s perversity in the matter of lessons put its own crooked construction on this excellent advice. She answered in a whisper, “Give us a holiday.”
The passing aspirations of idle minds, being subject to the law of chances, are sometimes fulfilled, and so exhibit poor human wishes in a consolatory light. Thanks to the conversation between Carmina and Ovid, Zo got her holiday after all.
Mrs. Gallilee, still as amiable as ever, had joined her son and her niece at the aviary. Ovid said to his mother, “Carmina is fond of birds. I have been telling her she may see all the races of birds assembled in the Zoological Gardens. It’s a perfect day. Why shouldn’t we go!”
The stupidest woman living would have understood what this proposal really meant. Mrs. Gallilee sanctioned it as composedly as if Ovid and Carmina had been brother and sister. “I wish I could go with you,” she said, “but my household affairs fill my morning. And there is a lecture this afternoon, which I cannot possibly lose. I don’t know, Carmina, whether you are interested in these things. We are to have the apparatus, which illustrates the conversion of radiant energy into sonorous vibrations. Have you ever heard, my dear, of the Diathermancy of Ebonite? Not in your way, perhaps?”
Carmina looked as unintelligent as Zo herself. Mrs. Gallilee’s science seemed to frighten her. The Diathermancy of Ebonite, by some incomprehensible process, drove her bewildered mind back on her old companion. “I want to give Teresa a little pleasure before we part,” she said timidly; “may she go with us?”
“Of course!” cried Mrs. Gallilee. “And, now I think of it, why shouldn’t the children have a little pleasure too? I will give them a holiday. Don’t be alarmed, Ovid; Miss Minerva will look after them. In the meantime, Carmina, tell your good old friend to get ready.”
Carmina hastened away, and so helped Mrs. Gallilee to the immediate object which she had in view—a private interview with her son.
Ovid anticipated a searching inquiry into the motives which had led him to give up the sea voyage. His mother was far too clever a woman to waste her time in that way. Her first words told him that his motive was as plainly revealed to her as the sunlight shining in at the window.
“That’s a charming girl,” she said, when Carmina closed the door behind her. “Modest and natural—quite the sort of girl, Ovid, to attract a clever man like you.”
Ovid was completely taken by surprise, and owned it by his silence. Mrs. Gallilee went on in a tone of innocent maternal pleasantry.
“You know you began young,” she said; “your first love was that poor little wizen girl of Lady Northlake’s who died. Child’s play, you will tell me, and nothing more. But, my dear, I am afraid I shall require some persuasion, before I quite sympathize with this new—what shall I call it?—infatuation is too hard a word, and ‘fancy’ means nothing. We will leave it a blank. Marriages of cousins are debatable marriages, to say the least of them; and Protestant fathers and Papist mothers do occasionally involve difficulties with children. Not that I say, No. Far from it. But if this is to go on, I do hesitate.”
Something in his mother’s tone grated on Ovid’s sensibilities. “I don’t at all follow you,” he said, rather sharply; “you are looking a little too far into the future.”
“Then we will return to the present,” Mrs. Gallilee replied—still with the readiest submission to the humour of her son.
On recent occasions, she had expressed the opinion that Ovid would do wisely—at his age, and with his professional prospects—to wait a few years before he thought of marrying. Having said enough in praise of her niece to satisfy him for the time being (without appearing to be meanly influenced, in modifying her opinion, by the question of money), her next object was to induce him to leave England immediately, for the recovery of his health. With Ovid absent, and with Carmina under her sole superintendence, Mrs. Gallilee could see her way to her own private ends.
“Really,” she resumed, “you ought to think seriously of change of air and scene. You know you would not allow a patient, in your present state of health, to trifle with himself as your are trifling now. If you don’t like the sea, try the Continent. Get away somewhere, my dear, for your own sake.”
It was only possible to answer this, in one way. Ovid owned that his mother was right and asked for time to think. To his infinite relief, he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Miss Minerva entered the room—not in a very amiable temper, judging by appearances.
“I am afraid I disturb you,” she began.
Ovid seized the opportunity of retreat. He had some letters to write—he hurried away to the library.
“Is there any mistake?” the governess asked, when she and Mrs. Gallilee were alone.
“In what respect, Miss Minerva?”
“I met your niece, ma’am, on the stairs. She says you wish the children to have a holiday.”
“Yes, to go with my son and Miss Carmina to the Zoological Gardens.”
“Miss Carmina said I was to go too.”
“Miss Carmina was perfectly right.”
The governess fixed her searching eyes on Mrs. Gallilee. “You really wish me to go with them?” she said.
“I do.”
“I know why.”
In the course of their experience, Mrs. Gallilee and Miss Minerva had once quarrelled fiercely—and Mrs. Gallilee had got the worst of it. She learnt her lesson. For the future she knew how to deal with her governess. When one said, “I know why,” the other only answered, “Do you?”
“Let’s have it out plainly, ma’am,” Miss Minerva proceeded. “I am not to let Mr. Ovid” (she laid a bitterly strong emphasis on the name, and flushed angrily)—“I am not to let Mr. Ovid and Miss Carmina be alone together.”
“You are a good guesser,” Mrs. Gallilee remarked quietly.
“No,” said Miss Minerva more quietly still; “I have only seen what you have seen.”
“Did I tell you what I have seen?”
“Quite needless, ma’am. Your son is in love with his cousin. When am I to be ready?”
The bland mistress mentioned the hour. The rude governess left the room.
Mrs. Gallilee looked at the closing door with a curious smile. She had already suspected Miss Minerva of being crossed in love. The suspicion was now confirmed, and the man was discovered.
“Soured by a hopeless passion,” she said to herself. “And the object is—my son.”