The next day—the important Tuesday of the lecture on Matter; the delightful Tuesday of Teresa’s arrival—brought with it special demands on Carmina’s pen.
Her first letter was addressed to Frances. It was frankly and earnestly written; entreating Miss Minerva to appoint a place at which they might meet, and assuring her, in the most affectionate terms, that she was still loved, trusted, and admired by her faithful friend. Helped by her steadier flow of spirits, Carmina could now see all that was worthiest of sympathy and admiration, all that claimed loving submission and allowance from herself, in the sacrifice to which Miss Minerva had submitted. How bravely the poor governess had controlled the jealous misery that tortured her! How nobly she had pronounced Carmina’s friendship for Carmina’s sake!
Later in the day, Marceline took the letter to the flower shop, and placed it herself under the cord of one of the boxes still waiting to be claimed.
The second letter filled many pages, and occupied the remainder of the morning.
With the utmost delicacy, but with perfect truthfulness at the same time, Carmina revealed to her betrothed husband the serious reasons which had forced her to withdraw herself from his mother’s care. Bound to speak at last in her own defence, she felt that concealments and compromises would be alike unworthy of Ovid and of herself. What she had already written to Teresa, she now wrote again—with but one modification. She expressed herself forbearingly towards Ovid’s mother. The closing words of the letter were worthy of Carmina’s gentle, just, and generous nature.
“You will perhaps say, Why do I only hear now of all that you have suffered? My love, I have longed to tell you of it! I have even taken up my pen to begin. But I thought of you, and put it down again. How selfish, how cruel, to hinder your recovery by causing you sorrow and suspense to bring you back perhaps to England before your health was restored! I don’t regret the effort that it has cost me to keep silence. My only sorrow in writing to you is, that I must speak of your mother in terms which may lower her in her son’s estimation.”
Joseph brought the luncheon up to Carmina’s room.
The mistress was still at her studies; the master had gone to his club. As for the girls, their only teacher for the present was the teacher of music. When the ordeal of the lecture and the discussion had been passed, Mrs. Gallilee threatened to take Miss Minerva’s place herself, until a new governess could be found. For once, Maria and Zo showed a sisterly similarity in their feelings. It was hard to say which of the two looked forward to her learned mother’s instruction with the greatest terror.
Carmina heard the pupils at the piano, while she was eating her luncheon. The profanation of music ceased, when she went into the bedroom to get ready for her daily drive.
She took her letter, duly closed and stamped, downstairs with her—to be sent to the post with the other letters of the day, placed in the hall-basket. In the weakened state of her nerves, the effort that she had made in writing to Ovid had shaken her. Her heart beat uneasily; her knees trembled, as she descended the stairs.
Arrived in sight of the hall, she discovered a man walking slowly to and fro. He turned towards her as she advanced, and disclosed the detestable face of Mr. Le Frank.
The music-master’s last reserves of patience had come to an end. Watch for them as he might, no opportunities had presented themselves of renewing his investigation in Carmina’s room. In the interval that had passed, his hungry suspicion of her had been left to feed on itself. The motives for that incomprehensible attempt to make a friend of him remained hidden in as thick a darkness as ever. Victim of adverse circumstances, he had determined (with the greatest reluctance) to take the straightforward course. Instead of secretly getting his information from Carmina’s journals and letters, he was now reduced to openly applying for enlightenment to Carmina herself.
Occupying, for the time being, the position of an honourable man, he presented himself at cruel disadvantage. He was not master of his own glorious voice; he was without the self-possession indispensable to the perfect performance of his magnificent bow. “I have waited to have a word with you,” he began abruptly, “before you go out for your drive.”
Already unnerved, even before she had seen him—painfully conscious that she had committed a serious error, on the last occasion when they had met, in speaking at all—Carmina neither answered him nor looked at him. She bent her head confusedly, and advanced a little nearer to the house door.
He at once moved so as to place himself in her way.
“I must request you to call to mind what passed between us,” he resumed, “when we met by accident some little time since.”
He had speculated on frightening her. His insolence stirred her spirit into asserting itself. “Let me by, if you please,” she said; “the carriage is waiting for me.”
“The carriage can wait a little longer,” he answered coarsely. “On the occasion to which I have referred, you were so good as to make advances, to which I cannot consider myself as having any claim. Perhaps you will favour me by stating your motives?”
“I don’t understand you, sir.”
“Oh, yes—you do!”
She stepped back, and laid her hand on the bell which rang below stairs, in the pantry. “Must I ring?” she said.
It was plain that she would do it, if he moved a step nearer to her. He drew aside—with a look which made her tremble. On passing the hall table, she placed her letter in the post-basket. His eye followed it, as it left her hand: he became suddenly penitent and polite. “I am sorry if I have alarmed you,” he said, and opened the house-door for her—without showing himself to Marceline and the coachman outside.
The carriage having been driven away, he softly closed the door again, and returned to the hall-table. He looked into the post-basket.
Was there any danger of discovery by the servants? The footman was absent, attending his mistress on her way to the lecture. None of the female servants were on the stairs. He took up Carmina’s letter, and looked at the address: To Ovid Vere, Esq.
His eyes twinkled furtively; his excellent memory for injuries reminded him that Ovid Vere had formerly endeavoured (without even caring to conceal it) to prevent Mrs. Gallilee from engaging him as her music-master. By subtle links of its own forging, his vindictive nature now connected his hatred of the person to whom the letter was addressed, with his interest in stealing the letter itself for the possible discovery of Carmina’s secrets. The clock told him that there was plenty of time to open the envelope, and (if the contents proved to be of no importance) to close it again, and take it himself to the post. After a last look round, he withdrew undiscovered, with the letter in his pocket.
On its way back to the house, the carriage was passed by a cab, with a man in it, driven at such a furious rate that there was a narrow escape of collision. The maid screamed; Carmina turned pale; the coachman wondered why the man in the cab was in such a hurry. The man was Mr. Mool’s head clerk, charged with news for Doctor Benjulia.
The mind of the clerk’s master had been troubled by serious doubts, after Carmina left his house on Sunday.
Her agitated manner, her strange questions, and her abrupt departure, all suggested to Mr. Mool’s mind some rash project in contemplation—perhaps even the plan of an elopement. To most other men, the obvious course to take would have been to communicate with Mrs. Gallilee. But the lawyer preserved a vivid remembrance of the interview which had taken place at his office. The detestable pleasure which Mrs. Gallilee had betrayed in profaning the memory of Carmina’s mother, had so shocked and disgusted him, that he recoiled from the idea of holding any further intercourse with her, no matter how pressing the emergency might be. It was possible, after what had passed, that Carmina might feel the propriety of making some explanation by letter. He decided to wait until the next morning, on the chance of hearing from her.
On the Monday, no letter arrived.
Proceeding to the office, Mr. Mool found, in his business-correspondence, enough to occupy every moment of his time. He had purposed writing to Carmina, but the idea was now inevitably pressed out of his mind. It was only at the close of the day’s work that he had leisure to think of a matter of greater importance—that is to say, of the necessity of discovering Benjulia’s friend of other days, the Italian teacher Baccani. He left instructions with one of his clerks to make inquiries, the next morning, at the shops of foreign booksellers. There, and there only, the question might be answered, whether Baccani was still living, and living in London.
The inquiries proved successful. On Tuesday afternoon, Baccani’s address was in Mr. Mool’s hands.
Busy as he still was, the lawyer set aside his own affairs, in deference to the sacred duty of defending the memory of the dead, and to the pressing necessity of silencing Mrs. Gallilee’s cruel and slanderous tongue. Arrived at Baccani’s lodgings, he was informed that the language-master had gone to his dinner at a neighbouring restaurant. Mr. Mool waited at the lodgings, and sent a note to Baccani. In ten minutes more he found himself in the presence of an elderly man, of ascetic appearance; whose looks and tones showed him to be apt to take offence on small provocation, and more than half ready to suspect an eminent solicitor of being a spy.
But Mr. Mool’s experience was equal to the call on it. Having fully explained the object that he had in view, he left the apology for his intrusion to be inferred, and concluded by appealing, in his own modest way, to the sympathy of an honourable man.
Silently forming his opinion of the lawyer, while he listened, Baccani expressed the conclusion at which he had arrived, in these terms:
“My experience of mankind, sir, has been a bitterly bad one. You have improved my opinion of human nature since you entered this room. That is not a little thing to say, at my age and in my circumstances.”
He bowed gravely, and turned to his bed. From under it, he pulled out a clumsy tin box. Having opened the rusty lock with some difficulty, he produced a ragged pocket-book, and picked out from it a paper which looked like an old letter.
“There,” he said, handing the paper to Mr. Mool, “is the statement which vindicates this lady’s reputation. Before you open the manuscript I must tell you how I came by it.”
He appeared to feel such embarrassment in approaching the subject, that Mr. Mool interposed. “I am already acquainted,” he said, “with some of the circumstances to which you are about to allude. I happen to know of the wager in which the calumny originated, and of the manner in which that wager was decided. The events which followed are the only events that I need trouble you to describe.”
Baccani’s grateful sense of relief avowed itself without reserve. “I feel your kindness,” he said, “almost as keenly as I feel my own disgraceful conduct, in permitting a woman’s reputation to be made the subject of a wager. From whom did you obtain your information?”
“From the person who mentioned your name to me—Doctor Benjulia.”
Baccani lifted his hand with a gesture of angry protest.
“Don’t speak of him again in my presence!” he burst out. “That man has insulted me. When I took refuge from political persecution in this country, I sent him my prospectus. From my own humble position as a teacher of languages, I looked up without envy to his celebrity among doctors; I thought I might remind him, not unfavourably, of our early friendship—I, who had done him a hundred kindnesses in those past days. He has never taken the slightest notice of me; he has not even acknowledged the receipt of my prospectus. Despicable wretch! Let me hear no more of him.”
“Pray forgive me if I refer to him again—for the last time,” Mr. Mool pleaded. “Did your acquaintance with him continue, after the question of the wager had been settled?”
“No, sir!” Baccani answered sternly. “When I was at leisure to go to the club at which we were accustomed to meet, he had left Rome. From that time to this—I rejoice to say it—I have never set eyes on him.”
The obstacles which had prevented the refutation of the calumny from reaching Benjulia were now revealed. Mr. Mool had only to hear, next, how that refutation had been obtained. A polite hint sufficed to remind Baccani of the explanation that he had promised.
“I am naturally suspicious,” he began abruptly; “and I doubted the woman when I found that she kept her veil down. Besides, it was not in my way of thinking to believe that an estimable married lady could have compromised herself with a scoundrel, who had boasted that she was his mistress. I waited in the street, until the woman came out. I followed her, and saw her meet a man. The two went together to a theatre. I took my place near them. She lifted her veil as a matter of course. My suspicion of foul play was instantly confirmed. When the performance was over, I traced her back to Mr. Robert Graywell’s house. He and his wife were both absent at a party. I was too indignant to wait till they came back. Under the threat of charging the wretch with stealing her mistress’s clothes, I extorted from her the signed confession which you have in your hand. She was under notice to leave her place for insolent behaviour. The personation which had been intended to deceive me, was an act of revenge; planned between herself and the blackguard who had employed her to make his lie look like truth. A more shameless creature I never met with. She said to me, ‘I am as tall as my mistress, and a better figure; and I’ve often worn her fine clothes on holiday occasions.’ In your country Mr. Mool, such women—so I am told—are ducked in a pond. There is one thing more to add, before you read the confession. Mrs. Robert Graywell did imprudently send the man some money—in answer to a begging letter artfully enough written to excite her pity. A second application was refused by her husband. What followed on that, you know already.”
Having read the confession, Mr. Mool was permitted to take a copy, and to make any use of it which he might think desirable. His one remaining anxiety was to hear what had become of the person who had planned the deception. “Surely,” he said, “that villain has not escaped punishment?”
Baccani answered this in his own bitter way.
“My dear sir, how can you ask such a simple question? That sort of man always escapes punishment. In the last extreme of poverty his luck provides him with somebody to cheat. Common respect for Mrs. Robert Graywell closed my lips; and I was the only person acquainted with the circumstances. I wrote to our club declaring the fellow to be a cheat—and leaving it to be inferred that he cheated at cards. He knew better than to insist on my explaining myself—he resigned, and disappeared. I dare say he is living still—living in clover on some unfortunate woman. The beautiful and the good die untimely deaths. He, and his kind, last and live.”
Mr. Mool had neither time nor inclination to plead in favour of the more hopeful view, which believes in the agreeable fiction called “Poetical justice.” He tried to express his sense of obligation at parting. Baccani refused to listen.
“The obligation is all on my side,” he said. “As I have already told you, your visit has added a bright day to my calendar. In our pilgrimage, my friend, through this world of rogues and fools, we may never meet again. Let us remember gratefully that we have met. Farewell.”
So they parted.
Returning to his office, Mr. Mool attached to the copy of the confession a brief statement of the circumstances under which the Italian had become possessed of it. He then added these lines, addressed to Benjulia:—“You set the false report afloat. I leave it to your sense of duty, to decide whether you ought not to go at once to Mrs. Gallilee, and tell her that the slander which you repeated is now proved to be a lie. If you don’t agree with me, I must go to Mrs. Gallilee myself. In that case please return, by the bearer, the papers which are enclosed.”
The clerk instructed to deliver these documents, within the shortest possible space of time, found Mr. Mool waiting at the office, on his return. He answered his master’s inquiries by producing Benjulia’s reply.
The doctor’s amiable humour was still in the ascendant. His success in torturing his unfortunate cook had been followed by the receipt of a telegram from his friend at Montreal, containing this satisfactory answer to his question:—“Not brain disease.” With his mind now set completely at rest, his instincts as a gentleman were at full liberty to control him. “I entirely agree with you,” he wrote to Mr. Mool. “I go back with your clerk; the cab will drop me at Mrs. Gallilee’s house.”
Mr. Mool turned to the clerk.
“Did you wait to hear if Mrs. Gallilee was at home?” he asked.
“Mrs. Gallilee was absent, sir—attending a lecture.”
“What did Doctor Benjulia do?”
“Went into the house, to wait her return.”
Mrs. Gallilee’s page (attending to the house-door, in the footman’s absence) had just shown Benjulia into the library, when there was another ring at the bell. The new visitor was Mr. Le Frank. He appeared to be in a hurry. Without any preliminary questions, he said, “Take my card to Mrs. Gallilee.”
“My mistress is out, sir.”
The music-master looked impatiently at the hall-clock. The hall-clock answered him by striking the half hour after five.
“Do you expect Mrs. Gallilee back soon?”
“We don’t know, sir. The footman had his orders to be in waiting with the carriage, at five.”
After a moment of irritable reflection, Mr. Le Frank took a letter from his pocket. “Say that I have an appointment, and am not able to wait. Give Mrs. Gallilee that letter the moment she comes in.” With those directions he left the house.
The page looked at the letter. It was sealed; and, over the address, two underlined words were written:—“Private. Immediate.” Mindful of visits from tradespeople, anxious to see his mistress, and provided beforehand with letters to be delivered immediately, the boy took a pecuniary view of Mr. Le Frank’s errand at the house. “Another of them,” he thought, “wanting his money.”
As he placed the letter on the hall-table, the library door opened, and Benjulia appeared—weary already of waiting, without occupation, for Mrs. Gallilee’s return.
“Is smoking allowed in the library?” he asked.
The page looked up at the giant towering over him, with the envious admiration of a short boy. He replied with a discretion beyond his years: “Would you please step into the smoking-room, sir?”
“Anybody there?”
“My master, sir.”
Benjulia at once declined the invitation to the smoking-room. “Anybody else at home?” he inquired.
Miss Carmina was upstairs—the page answered. “And I think,” he added, “Mr. Null is with her.”
“Who’s Mr. Null?”
“The doctor, sir.”
Benjulia declined to disturb the doctor. He tried a third, and last question.
“Where’s Zo?”
“Here!” cried a shrill voice from the upper regions. “Who are You?”
To the page’s astonishment, the giant gentleman with the resonant bass voice answered this quite gravely. “I’m Benjulia,” he said.
“Come up!” cried Zo.
Benjulia ascended the stairs.
“Stop!” shouted the voice from above.
Benjulia stopped.
“Have you got your big stick?”
“Yes.”
“Bring it up with you.” Benjulia retraced his steps into the hall. The page respectfully handed him his stick. Zo became impatient. “Look sharp!” she called out.
Benjulia obediently quickened his pace. Zo left the schoolroom (in spite of the faintly-heard protest of the maid in charge) to receive him on the stairs. They met on the landing, outside Carmina’s room. Zo possessed herself of the bamboo cane, and led the way in. “Carmina! here’s the big stick, I told you about,” she announced.
“Whose stick, dear?”
Zo returned to the landing. “Come in, Benjulia,” she said—and seized him by the coat-tails. Mr. Null rose instinctively. Was this his celebrated colleague?
With some reluctance, Carmina appeared at the door; thinking of the day when Ovid had fainted, and when the great man had treated her so harshly. In fear of more rudeness, she unwillingly asked him to come in.
Still immovable on the landing, he looked at her in silence.
The serious question occurred to him which had formerly presented itself to Mr. Mool. Had Mrs. Gallilee repeated, in Carmina’s presence, the lie which slandered her mother’s memory—the lie which he was then in the house to expose?
Watching Benjulia respectfully, Mr. Null saw, in that grave scrutiny, an opportunity of presenting himself under a favourable light. He waved his hand persuasively towards Carmina. “Some nervous prostration, sir, in my interesting patient, as you no doubt perceive,” he began. “Not such rapid progress towards recovery as I had hoped. I think of recommending the air of the seaside.” Benjulia’s dreary eyes turned on him slowly, and estimated his mental calibre at its exact value, in a moment. Mr. Null felt that look in the very marrow of his bones. He bowed with servile submission, and took his leave.
In the meantime, Benjulia had satisfied himself that the embarrassment in Carmina’s manner was merely attributable to shyness. She was now no longer an object even of momentary interest to him. He was ready to play with Zo—but not on condition of amusing himself with the child, in Carmina’s presence. “I am waiting till Mrs. Gallilee returns,” he said to her in his quietly indifferent way. “If you will excuse me, I’ll go downstairs again; I won’t intrude.”
Her pale face flushed as she listened to him. Innocently supposing that she had made her little offer of hospitality in too cold a manner, she looked at Benjulia with a timid and troubled smile. “Pray wait here till my aunt comes back,” she said. “Zo will amuse you, I’m sure.” Zo seconded the invitation by hiding the stick, and laying hold again on her big friend’s coattails.
He let the child drag him into the room, without noticing her. The silent questioning of his eyes had been again directed to Carmina, at the moment when she smiled.
His long and terrible experience made its own merciless discoveries, in the nervous movement of her eyelids and her lips. The poor girl, pleasing herself with the idea of having produced the right impression on him at last, had only succeeded in becoming an object of medical inquiry, pursued in secret. When he companionably took a chair by her side, and let Zo climb on his knee, he was privately regretting his cold reception of Mr. Null. Under certain conditions of nervous excitement, Carmina might furnish an interesting case. “If I had been commonly civil to that fawning idiot,” he thought, “I might have been called into consultation.”
They were all three seated—but there was no talk. Zo set the example.
“You haven’t tickled me yet,” she said. “Show Carmina how you do it.”
He gravely operated on the back of Zo’s neck; and his patient acknowledged the process with a wriggle and a scream. The performance being so far at an end, Zo called to the dog, and issued her orders once more.
“Now make Tinker kick his leg!”
Benjulia obeyed once again. The young tyrant was not satisfied yet.
“Now tickle Carmina!” she said.
He heard this without laughing: his fleshless lips never relaxed into a smile. To Carmina’s unutterable embarrassment, he looked at her, when she laughed, with steadier attention than ever. Those coldly-inquiring eyes exercised some inscrutable influence over her. Now they made her angry; and now they frightened her. The silence that had fallen on them again, became an unendurable infliction. She burst into talk; she was loud and familiar—ashamed of her own boldness, and quite unable to control it. “You are very fond of Zo!” she said suddenly.
It was a perfectly commonplace remark—and yet, it seemed to perplex him.
“Am I?” he answered.
She went on. Against her own will, she persisted in speaking to him. “And I’m sure Zo is fond of you.”
He looked at Zo. “Are you fond of me?” he asked.
Zo, staring hard at him, got off his knee; retired to a little distance to think; and stood staring at him again.
He quietly repeated the question. Zo answered this time—as she had formerly answered Teresa in the Gardens. “I don’t know.”
He turned again to Carmina, in a slow, puzzled way. “I don’t know either,” he said.
Hearing the big man own that he was no wiser than herself, Zo returned to him—without, however, getting on his knee again. She clasped her chubby hands under the inspiration of a new idea. “Let’s play at something,” she said to Benjulia. “Do you know any games?”
He shook his head.
“Didn’t you know any games, when you were only as big as me?”
“I have forgotten them.”
“Haven’t you got children?”
“No.”
“Haven’t you got a wife?”
“No.”
“Haven’t you got a friend?”
“No.”
“Well, you are a miserable chap!”
Thanks to Zo, Carmina’s sense of nervous oppression burst its way into relief. She laughed loudly and wildly—she was on the verge of hysterics, when Benjulia’s eyes, silently questioning her again, controlled her at the critical moment. Her laughter died away. But the exciting influence still possessed her; still forced her into the other alternative of saying something—she neither knew nor cared what.
“I couldn’t live such a lonely life as yours,” she said to him—so loudly and so confidently that even Zo noticed it.
“I couldn’t live such a life either,” he admitted, “but for one thing.”
“And what is that?”
“Why are you so loud?” Zo interposed. “Do you think he’s deaf?”
Benjulia made a sign, commanding the child to be silent—without turning towards her. He answered Carmina as if there had been no interruption.
“My medical studies,” he said, “reconcile me to my life.”
“Suppose you got tired of your studies?” she asked.
“I should never get tired of them.”
“Suppose you couldn’t study any more?”
“In that case I shouldn’t live any more.”
“Do you mean that it would kill you to leave off?”
“No.”
“Then what do you mean?”
He laid his great soft fingers on her pulse. She shrank from his touch; he deliberately held her by the arm. “You’re getting excited,” he said. “Never mind what I mean.”
Zo, left unnoticed and not liking it, saw a chance of asserting herself. “I know why Carmina’s excited,” she said. “The old woman’s coming at six o’clock.”
He paid no attention to the child; he persisted in keeping watch on Carmina. “Who is the woman?” he asked.
“The most lovable woman in the world,” she cried; “my dear old nurse!” She started up from the sofa, and pointed with theatrical exaggeration of gesture to the clock on the mantelpiece. “Look! it’s only ten minutes to six. In ten minutes, I shall have my arms round Teresa’s neck. Don’t look at me in that way! It’s your fault if I’m excited. It’s your dreadful eyes that do it. Come here, Zo! I want to give you a kiss.” She seized on Zo with a roughness that startled the child, and looked wildly at Benjulia. “Ha! you don’t understand loving and kissing, do you? What’s the use of speaking to you about my old nurse?”
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.
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.
Teresa grovelled and groaned at her feet. Those ferocious hands that had laid the slanderer prostrate on the floor, feebly beat her bosom and her gray head. “Oh, Saints beloved of God! Oh, blessed Virgin, mother of Christ, spare my child, my sweet child!” She rose in wild despair—she seized Benjulia, and madly shook him. “Who are you? How dare you touch her? Give her to me, or I’ll be the death of you. Oh, my Carmina, is it sleep that holds you? Wake! wake! wake!”
“Listen to me,” said Benjulia, sternly.
She dropped on the sofa by Carmina’s side, and lifted one of the cold clenched hands to her lips. The tears fell slowly over her haggard face. “I am very fond of her, sir,” she said humbly. “I’m only an old woman. See what a dreadful welcome my child gives to me. It’s hard on an old woman—hard on an old woman!”
His self-possession was not disturbed—even by this.
“Do you know what I am?” he asked. “I am a doctor. Leave her to me.”
“He’s a doctor. That’s good. A doctor’s good. Yes, yes. Does the old man know this doctor—the kind old man?” She looked vacantly for Mr. Gallilee. He was bending over his wife, sprinkling water on her deathly face.
Teresa got on her feet, and pointed to Mrs. Gallilee. “The breath of that She-Devil poisons the air,” she said. “I must take my child out of it. To my place, sir, if you please. Only to my place.”
She attempted to lift Carmina from the sofa—and drew back, breathlessly watching her. Her rigid face faintly relaxed; her eyelids closed, and quivered.
Mr. Gallilee looked up from his wife. “Will one of you help me?” he asked. His tone struck Benjulia. It was the hushed tone of sorrow—no more.
“I’ll see to it directly.” With that reply, Benjulia turned to Teresa. “Where is your place?” he said. “Far or near?”
“The message,” she answered confusedly. “The message says.” She signed to him to look in her hand-bag—dropped on the floor.
He found Carmina’s telegram, containing the address of the lodgings. The house was close by. After some consideration, he sent the nurse into the bedroom, with instructions to bring him the blankets off the bed. In the minute that followed, he examined Mrs. Gallilee. “There’s nothing to be frightened about. Let her maid attend to her.”
Mr. Gallilee again surprised Benjulia. He turned from his wife, and looked at Carmina. “For God’s sake, don’t leave her here!” he broke out. “After what she has heard, this house is no place for her. Give her to the old nurse!”
Benjulia only answered, as he had answered already—“I’ll see to it.” Mr. Gallilee persisted. “Is there any risk in moving her?” he asked.
“It’s the least of two risks. No more questions! Look to your wife.”
Mr. Gallilee obeyed in silence.
When he lifted his head again, and rose to ring the bell for the maid, the room was silent and lonely. A little pale frightened face peeped out through the bedroom door. Zo ventured in. Her father caught her in his arms, and kissed her as he had never kissed her yet. His eyes were wet with tears. Zo noticed that he never said a word about mamma. The child saw the change in her father, as Benjulia had seen it. She shared one human feeling with her big friend—she, too, was surprised.