THE first signs of reviving life had begun to appear, when Marceline answered the bell. In a few minutes more, it was possible to raise Mrs. Gallilee and to place her on the sofa. Having so far assisted the servant, Mr. Gallilee took Zo by the hand, and drew back. Daunted by the terrible scene which she had witnessed from her hiding-place, the child stood by her father’s side in silence. The two waited together, watching Mrs. Gallilee.
She looked wildly round the room. Discovering that she was alone with the members of her family, she became composed: her mind slowly recovered its balance. Her first thought was for herself.
“Has that woman disfigured me?” she said to the maid.
Knowing nothing of what had happened, Marceline was at a loss to understand her. “Bring me a glass,” she said. The maid found a hand-glass in the bedroom, and presented it to her. She looked at herself—and drew a long breath of relief. That first anxiety at an end, she spoke to her husband.
“Where is Carmina?”
“Out of the house—thank God!”
The answer seemed to bewilder her: she appealed to Marceline.
“Did he say, thank God?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you tell me nothing? Who knows where Carmina has gone?”
“Joseph knows, ma’am. He heard Dr. Benjulia give the address to the cabman.” With that answer, she turned anxiously to her master. “Is Miss Carmina seriously ill, sir?”
Her mistress spoke again, before Mr. Gallilee could reply. “Marceline! send Joseph up here.”
“No,” said Mr. Gallilee.
His wife eyed him with astonishment. “Why not?” she asked.
He said quietly, “I forbid it.”
Mrs. Gallilee addressed herself to the maid. “Go to my room, and bring me another bonnet and a veil. Stop!” She tried to rise, and sank back. “I must have something to strengthen me. Get the sal volatile.”
Marceline left the room. Mr. Gallilee followed her as far as the door—still leading his little daughter.
“Go back, my dear, to your sister in the schoolroom,” he said. “I am distressed, Zo; be a good girl, and you will console me. Say the same to Maria. It will be dull for you, I am afraid. Be patient, my child, and try to bear it for a while.”
“May I whisper something?” said Zo. “Will Carmina die?”
“God forbid!”
“Will they bring her back here?”
In her eagerness, the child spoke above a whisper. Mrs. Gallilee heard the question, and answered it.
“They will bring Carmina back,” she said, “the moment I can get out.”
Zo looked at her father. “Do you say that?” she asked.
He shook his head gravely, and told her again to go to the schoolroom. On the first landing she stopped, and looked back. “I’ll be good, papa,” she said—and went on up the stairs.
Having reached the schoolroom, she became the object of many questions—not one of which she answered. Followed by the dog, she sat down in a corner. “What are you thinking about?” her sister inquired. This time she was willing to reply. “I’m thinking about Carmina.”
Mr. Gallilee closed the door when Zo left him. He took a chair, without speaking to his wife or looking at her.
“What are you here for?” she asked.
“I must wait,” he said.
“What for?”
“To see what you do.”
Marceline returned, and administered a dose of sal volatile. Strengthened by the stimulant, Mrs. Gallilee was able to rise. “My head is giddy,” she said, as she took the maid’s arm; “but I think I can get downstairs with your help.”
Mr. Gallilee silently followed them out.
At the head of the stairs the giddiness increased. Firm as her resolution might be, it gave way before the bodily injury which Mrs. Gallilee had received. Her husband’s help was again needed to take her to her bedroom. She stopped them at the ante-chamber; still obstinately bent on following her own designs. “I shall be better directly,” she said; “put me on the sofa.” Marceline relieved her of her bonnet and veil, and asked respectfully if there was any other service required. She looked defiantly at her husband, and reiterated the order—“Send for Joseph.” Intelligent resolution is sometimes shaken; the inert obstinacy of a weak creature, man or animal, is immovable. Mr. Gallilee dismissed the maid with these words: “You needn’t wait, my good girl—I’ll speak to Joseph myself, downstairs.”
His wife heard him with amazement and contempt. “Are you in your right senses?” she asked.
He paused on his way out. “You were always hard and headstrong,” he said sadly; “I knew that. A cleverer man than I am might—I suppose it’s possible—a clear-headed man might have found out how wicked you are.” She lay, thinking; indifferent to anything he could say to her. “Are you not ashamed?” he asked wonderingly. “And not even sorry?” She paid no heed to him. He left her.
Descending to the hall, he was met by Joseph. “Doctor Benjulia has come back, sir. He wishes to see you.”
“Where is he?”
“In the library.”
“Wait, Joseph; I have something to say to you. If your mistress asks where they have taken Miss Carmina, you mustn’t—this is my order, Joseph—you mustn’t tell her. If you have mentioned it to any of the other servants—it’s quite likely they may have asked you, isn’t it?” he said, falling into his old habit for a moment. “If you have mentioned it to the others,” he resumed, “they mustn’t tell her. That’s all, my good man; that’s all.”
To his own surprise, Joseph found himself regarding his master with a feeling of respect. Mr. Gallilee entered the library.
“How is she?” he asked, eager for news of Carmina.
“The worse for being moved,” Benjulia replied. “What about your wife?”
Answering that question, Mr. Gallilee mentioned the precautions that he had taken to keep the secret of Teresa’s address.
“You need be under no anxiety about that,” said Benjulia. “I have left orders that Mrs. Gallilee is not to be admitted. There is a serious necessity for keeping her out. In these cases of partial catalepsy, there is no saying when the change may come. When it does come, I won’t answer for her niece’s reason, if those two see each other again. Send for you own medical man. The girl is his patient, and he is the person on whom the responsibility rests. Let the servant take my card to him directly. We can meet in consultation at the house.”
He wrote a line on one of his visiting cards. It was at once sent to Mr. Null.
“There’s another matter to be settled before I go,” Benjulia proceeded. “Here are some papers, which I have received from your lawyer, Mr. Moot. They relate to a slander, which your wife unfortunately repeated—”
Mr. Gallilee got up from his chair. “Don’t take my mind back to that—pray don’t!” he pleaded earnestly. “I can’t bear it, Doctor Benjulia—I can’t bear it! Please to excuse my rudeness: it isn’t intentional—I don’t know myself what’s the matter with me. I’ve always led a quiet life, sir; I’m not fit for such things as these. Don’t suppose I speak selfishly. I’ll do what I can, if you will kindly spare me.”
He might as well have appealed to the sympathy of the table at which they were sitting. Benjulia was absolutely incapable of understanding the state of mind which those words revealed.
“Can you take these papers to your wife?” he asked. “I called here this evening—being the person to blame—to set the matter right. As it is, I leave her to make the discovery for herself. I desire to hold no more communication with your wife. Have you anything to say to me before I go?”
“Only one thing. Is there any harm in my calling at the house, to ask how poor Carmina goes on?”
“Ask as often as you like—provided Mrs. Gallilee doesn’t accompany you. If she’s obstinate, it may not be amiss to give your wife a word of warning. In my opinion, the old nurse is not likely to let her off, next time, with her life. I’ve had a little talk with that curious foreign savage. I said, ‘You have committed, what we consider in England, a murderous assault. If Mrs. Gallilee doesn’t mind the public exposure, you may find yourself in a prison.’ She snapped her fingers in my face. ‘Suppose I find myself with the hangman’s rope round my neck,’ she said, ‘what do I care, so long as Carmina is safe from her aunt?’ After that pretty answer, she sat down by her girl’s bedside, and burst out crying.”
Mr. Gallilee listened absently: his mind still dwelt on Carmina.
“I meant well,” he said, “when I asked you to take her out of this house. It’s no wonder if I was wrong. What I am too stupid to understand is—why you allowed her to be moved.”
Benjulia listened with a grim smile; Mr. Gallilee’s presumption amused him.
“I wonder whether there was any room left for memory, when nature furnished your narrow little head,” he answered pleasantly. “Didn’t I say that moving her was the least of two risks? And haven’t I just warned you of what might have happened, if we had left your wife and her niece together in the same house? When I do a thing at my time of life, Mr. Gallilee—don’t think me conceited—I know why I do it.”
While he was speaking of himself in these terms, he might have said something more. He might have added, that his dread of the loss of Carmina’s reason really meant his dread of a commonplace termination to an exceptionally interesting case. He might also have acknowledged, that he was not yielding obedience to the rules of professional etiquette, in confiding the patient to her regular medical attendant, but following the selfish suggestions of his own critical judgment.
His experience, brief as it had been, had satisfied him that stupid Mr. Null’s course of action could be trusted to let the instructive progress of the malady proceed. Mr. Null would treat the symptoms in perfect good faith—without a suspicion of the nervous hysteria which, in such a constitution as Carmina’s, threatened to establish itself, in course of time, as the hidden cause. These motives—not only excused, but even ennobled, by their scientific connection with the interests of Medical Research—he might have avowed, under more favourable circumstances. While his grand discovery was still barely within reach, Doctor Benjulia stood committed to a system of diplomatic reserve, which even included simple Mr. Gallilee.
He took his hat and stick, and walked out into the hall. “Can I be of further use?” he asked carelessly. “You will hear about the patient from Mr. Null.”
“You won’t desert Carmina?” said Mr. Gallilee. “You will see her yourself, from time to time—won’t you?”
“Don’t be afraid; I’ll look after her.” He spoke sincerely in saying this. Carmina’s case had already suggested new ideas. Even the civilised savage of modern physiology (where his own interests are concerned) is not absolutely insensible to a feeling of gratitude.
Mr. Gallilee opened the door for him.
“By the-bye,” he added, as he stepped out, “what’s become of Zo?”
“She’s upstairs, in the schoolroom.”
He made one of his dreary jokes. “Tell her, when she wants to be tickled again, to let me know. Good-evening!”
Mr. Gallilee returned to the upper part of the house, with the papers left by Benjulia in his hand. Arriving at the dressing-room door, he hesitated. The papers were enclosed in a sealed envelope, addressed to his wife. Secured in this way from inquisitive eyes, there was no necessity for personally presenting them. He went on to the schoolroom, and beckoned to the parlour-maid to come out, and speak to him.
Having instructed her to deliver the papers—telling her mistress that they had been left at the house by Doctor Benjulia—he dismissed the woman from duty. “You needn’t return,” he said; “I’ll look after the children myself.”
Maria was busy with her book; and even idle Zo was employed!
She was writing at her own inky desk; and she looked up in confusion, when her father appeared. Unsuspicious Mr. Gallilee took if for granted that his favourite daughter was employed on a writing lesson—following Maria’s industrious example for once. “Good children!” he said, looking affectionately from one to the other. “I won’t disturb you; go on.” He took a chair, satisfied—comforted, even—to be in the same room with the girls.
If he had placed himself nearer to the desk, he might have seen that Zo had been thinking of Carmina to some purpose.
What could she do to make her friend and playfellow well and happy again? There was the question which Zo asked herself, after having seen Carmina carried insensible out of the room.
Possessed of that wonderful capacity for minute observation of the elder persons about them, which is one among the many baffling mysteries presented by the minds of children, Zo had long since discovered that the member of the household, preferred to all others by Carmina, was the good brother who had gone away and left them. In his absence, she was always talking of him—and Zo had seen her kiss his photograph before she put it back in the case.
Dwelling on these recollections, the child’s slowly-working mental process arrived more easily than usual at the right conclusion. The way to make Carmina well and happy again, was to bring Ovid back. One of the two envelopes which he had directed for her still remained—waiting for the letter which might say to him, “Come home!”
Zo determined to write that letter—and to do it at once.
She might have confided this design to her father (the one person besides Carmina who neither scolded her nor laughed at her) if Mr. Gallilee had distinguished himself by his masterful position in the house. But she had seen him, as everybody else had seen him, “afraid of mamma.” The doubt whether he might not “tell mamma,” decided her on keeping her secret. As the event proved, the one person who informed Ovid of the terrible necessity that existed for his return, was the little sister whom it had been his last kind effort to console when he left England.
When Mr. Gallilee entered the room, Zo had just reached the end of her letter. Her system of composition excluded capitals and stops; and reduced all the words in the English language, by a simple process of abridgment, to words of one syllable.
“dear ov you come back car is ill she wants you be quick be quick don’t say I writ this miss min is gone I hate books I like you zo.”
With the pen still in her hand, the wary writer looked round at her father. She had her directed envelope (sadly crumpled) in her pocket; but she was afraid to take it out. “Maria,” she thought, “would know what to do in my place. Horrid Maria!”
Fortune, using the affairs of the household as an instrument, befriended Zo. In a minute more her opportunity arrived. The parlour-maid unexpectedly returned. She addressed Mr. Gallilee with the air of mystery in which English servants, in possession of a message, especially delight. “If you please, sir, Joseph wishes to speak to you.”
“Where is he?”
“Outside, sir.”
“Tell him to come in.”
Thanks to the etiquette of the servants’ hall—which did not permit Joseph to present himself, voluntarily, in the regions above the drawing-room, without being first represented by an ambassadress—attention was now diverted from the children. Zo folded her letter, enclosed it in the envelope, and hid it in her pocket.
Joseph appeared. “I beg your pardon, sir, I don’t quite know whether I ought to disturb my mistress. Mr. Le Frank has called, and asked if he can see her.”
Mr. Gallilee consulted the parlour-maid. “Was your mistress asleep when I sent you to her?”
“No, sir. She told me to bring her a cup of tea.”
On those rare former occasions, when Mrs. Gallilee had been ill, her attentive husband never left it to the servants to consult her wishes. That time had gone by for ever.
“Tell your mistress, Joseph, that Mr. Le Frank is here.”
The slander on which Mrs. Gallilee had reckoned, as a means of separating Ovid and Carmina, was now a slander refuted by unanswerable proof. And the man whose exertions had achieved this result, was her own lawyer—the agent whom she had designed to employ, in asserting that claim of the guardian over the ward which Teresa had defied.
As a necessary consequence, the relations between Mr. Mool and herself were already at an end.
There she lay helpless—her authority set at naught; her person outraged by a brutal attack—there she lay, urged to action by every reason that a resolute woman could have for asserting her power, and avenging her wrong—without a creature to take her part, without an accomplice to serve her purpose.
She got on her feet, with the resolution of despair. Her heart sank—the room whirled round her—she dropped back on the sofa. In a recumbent position, the giddiness subsided. She could ring the hand-bell on the table at her side. “Send instantly for Mr. Null,” she said to the maid. “If he is out, let the messenger follow him, wherever he may be.”
The messenger came back with a note. Mr. Null would call on Mrs. Gallilee as soon as possible. He was then engaged in attendance on Miss Carmina.
At that discovery, Mrs. Gallilee’s last reserves of independent resolution gave way. The services of her own medical attendant were only at her disposal, when Carmina had done with him! At the top of his letter the address, which she had thus far tried vainly to discover, stared her in the face: the house was within five minutes’ walk—and she was not even able to cross the room! For the first time in her life, Mrs. Gallilee’s imperious spirit acknowledged defeat. For the first time in her life, she asked herself the despicable question: Who can I find to help me?
Someone knocked at the door.
“Who is it?” she cried.
Joseph’s voice answered her. “Mr. Le Frank has called, ma’am—and wishes to know if you can see him.”
She never stopped to think. She never even sent for the maid to see to her personal appearance. The horror of her own helplessness drove her on. Here was the man, whose timely betrayal of Carmina had stopped her on her way to Ovid, in the nick of time! Here was the self-devoted instrument, waiting to be employed.
“I’ll see Mr. Le Frank,” she said. “Show him up.”
The music-master looked round the obscurely lit room, and bowed to the recumbent figure on the sofa.
“I fear I disturb you, madam, at an inconvenient time.”
“I am suffering from illness, Mr. Le Frank; but I am able to receive you—as you see.”
She stopped there. Now, when she saw him, and heard him, some perverse hesitation in her began to doubt him. Now, when it was too late, she weakly tried to put herself on her guard. What a decay of energy (she felt it herself) in the ready and resolute woman, equal to any emergency at other times! “To what am I to attribute the favour of your visit?” she resumed.
Even her voice failed her: it faltered in spite of her efforts to steady it. Mr. Le Frank’s vanity drew its own encouraging conclusion from this one circumstance.
“I am anxious to know how I stand in your estimation,” he replied. “Early this evening, I left a few lines here, enclosing a letter—with my compliments. Have you received the letter?”
“Yes.”
“Have you read it?”
Mrs. Gallilee hesitated. Mr. Le Frank smiled.
“I won’t trouble you, madam, for any more direct reply,” he said; “I will speak plainly. Be so good as to tell me plainly, on your side, which I am—a man who has disgraced himself by stealing a letter? or a man who has distinguished himself by doing you a service?”
An unpleasant alternative, neatly defined! To disavow Mr. Le Frank or to use Mr. Le Frank—there was the case for Mrs. Gallilee’s consideration. She was incapable of pronouncing judgment; the mere effort of decision, after what she had suffered, fatigued and irritated her. “I can’t deny,” she said, with weary resignation, “that you have done me a service.”
He rose, and made a generous return for the confidence that had been placed in him—he repeated his magnificent bow, and sat down again.
“Our position towards each other seems too plain to be mistaken,” he proceeded. “Your niece’s letter—perfectly useless for the purpose with which I opened it—offers me a means of being even with Miss Carmina, and a chance of being useful to You. Shall I begin by keeping an eye on the young lady?”
“Is that said, Mr. Le Frank, out of devotion to me?”
“My devotion to you might wear out,” he answered audaciously. “You may trust my feeling towards your niece to last—I never forget an injury. Is it indiscreet to inquire how you mean to keep Miss Carmina from joining her lover in Quebec? Does a guardian’s authority extend to locking her up in her room?”
Mrs. Gallilee felt the underlying familiarity in these questions—elaborately concealed as it was under an assumption of respect.
“My niece is no longer in my house,” she answered coldly.
“Gone!” cried Mr. Le Frank.
She corrected the expression. “Removed,” she said, and dropped the subject there.
Mr. Le Frank took the subject up again. “Removed, I presume, under the care of her nurse?” he rejoined.
The nurse? What did he know about the nurse? “May I ask—?” Mrs. Gallilee began.
He smiled indulgently, and stopped her there. “You are not quite yourself to-night,” he said. “Permit me to remind you that your niece’s letter to Mr. Ovid Vere is explicit, and that I took the liberty of reading it before I left it at your house.”
Mrs. Gallilee listened in silence, conscious that she had committed another error. She had carefully excluded from her confidence a man who was already in possession of her secrets! Mr. Le Frank’s courteous sympathy forbade him to take advantage of the position of superiority which he now held.
“I will do myself the honour of calling again,” he said, “when you are better able to place the right estimate on my humble offers of service. I wouldn’t fatigue you, Mrs. Gallilee, for the world! At the same time, permit me to put one last question which ought not to be delayed. When Miss Carmina left you, did she take away her writing-desk and her keys?”
“No.”
“Allow me to suggest that she may send for them at any moment.”
Before it was possible to ask for an explanation, Joseph presented himself again. Mr. Null was waiting downstairs. Mrs. Gallilee arranged that he should be admitted when she rang her bell. Mr. Le Frank approached the sofa, when they were alone, and returned to his suggestion in a whisper.
“Surely, you see the importance of using your niece’s keys?” he resumed. “We don’t know what correspondence may have been going on, in which the nurse and the governess have been concerned. After we have already intercepted a letter, hesitation is absurd! You are not equal to the effort yourself. I know the room. Don’t be afraid of discovery; I have a naturally soft footfall—and my excuse is ready, if somebody else has a soft footfall too. Leave it to me.”
He lit a candle as he spoke. But for that allusion to the nurse, Mrs. Gallilee might have ordered him to blow it out again. Eager for any discovery which might, by the barest possibility, place Teresa at her mercy, she silently submitted to Mr. Le Frank. “I’ll call to-morrow,” he said—and slipped out of the room.
When Mr. Null was announced, Mrs. Gallilee pushed up the shade over the globe of the lamp. Her medical attendant’s face might be worth observing, under a clear light.
His timid look, his confused manner, when he made the conventional apologies, told her at once that Teresa had spoken, and that he knew what had happened. Even he had never before been so soothing and so attentive. But he forgot, or he was afraid, to consult appearances by asking what was the matter, before he felt the pulse, and took the temperature, and wrote his prescription. Not a word was uttered by Mrs. Gallilee, until the medical formalities came to an end. “Is there anything more that I can do?” he asked.
“You can tell me,” she said, “when I shall be well again.”
Mr. Null was polite; Mr. Null was sympathetic. Mrs. Gallilee might be herself again in a day or two—or Mrs. Gallilee might be unhappily confined to her room for some little time. He had hope in his prescription, and hope in perfect quiet and repose—he would suggest the propriety of going to bed at once, and would not fail to call early the next morning.
“Sit down again,” said Mrs. Gallilee.
Mr. Null turned pale. He foresaw what was coming.
“You have been in attendance on Miss Carmina. I wish to know what her illness is.”
Mr. Null began to prevaricate at the outset. “The case causes us serious anxiety. The complications are formidable. Doctor Benjulia himself—”
“In plain words, Mr. Null, can she be moved?”
This produced a definite answer. “Quite impossible.”
She only ventured to put her next question after waiting a little to control herself.
“Is that foreign woman, the nurse—the only nurse—in attendance?”
“Don’t speak of her, Mrs. Gallilee! A dreadful woman; coarse, furious, a perfect savage. When I suggested a second nurse—”
“I understand. You asked just now if you could do anything for me. You can do me a great service—you can recommend me a trustworthy lawyer.”
Mr. Null was surprised. As the old medical attendant of the family, he was not unacquainted with the legal adviser. He mentioned Mr. Mool’s name.
“Mr. Mool has forfeited my confidence,” Mrs. Gallilee announced. “Can you, or can you not, recommend a lawyer?”
“Oh, certainly! My own lawyer.”
“You will find writing materials on the table behind me. I won’t keep you more than five minutes. I want you to write from my dictation.”
“My dear lady, in your present condition—”
“Do as I tell you! My head is quiet while I lie down. Even a woman in my condition can say what she means to do. I shall not close my eyes tonight, unless I can feel that I have put that wretch in her right place. Who are your lawyers?”
Mr. Null mentioned the names, and took up his pen.
“Introduce me in the customary form,” Mrs. Gallilee proceeded; “and then refer the lawyers to my brother’s Will. Is it done?”
In due time it was done.
“Tell them next, how my niece has been taken away from me, and where she has been taken to.”
To the best of his ability, Mr. Null complied.
“Now,” said Mrs. Gallilee, “write what I mean to do!”
The prospect of being revenged on Teresa revived her. For the moment, at least, she almost looked like herself again.
Mr. Null turned over to a new leaf, with a hand that trembled a little. The dictating voice pronounced these words:
“I forbid the woman Teresa to act in the capacity of nurse to Miss Carmina, and even to enter the room in which that young lady is now lying ill. I further warn this person, that my niece will be restored to my care, the moment her medical attendants allow her to be removed. And I desire my legal advisers to assert my authority, as guardian, to-morrow morning.”
Mr. Null finished his task in silent dismay. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
“Is there any very terrible effort required in saying those few words—even to a shattered creature like me?” Mrs. Gallilee asked bitterly. “Let me hear that the lawyers have got their instructions, when you come to-morrow; and give me the name and address of a nurse whom you can thoroughly recommend. Good-night!”
At last, Mr. Null got away. As he softly closed the dressing-room door, the serious question still dwelt on his mind: What would Teresa do?
Even in the welcome retirement of the school-room, Mr. Gallilee’s mind was not at ease. He was troubled by a question entirely new to him—the question of himself, in the character of husband and father.
Accustomed through long years of conjugal association to look up to his wife as a superior creature, he was now conscious that her place in his estimation had been lost, beyond recovery. If he considered next what ought to be done with Maria and Zo, he only renewed his perplexity and distress. To leave them (as he had hitherto left them) absolutely submitted to their mother’s authority, was to resign his children to the influence of a woman, who had ceased to be the object of his confidence and respect. He pondered over it in the schoolroom; he pondered over it when he went to bed. On the next morning, he arrived at a conclusion in the nature of a compromise. He decided on applying to his good friend, Mr. Mool, for a word of advice.
His first proceeding was to call at Teresa’s lodgings, in the hope of hearing better news of Carmina.
The melancholy report of her was expressed in two words: No change. He was so distressed that he asked to see the landlady; and tried, in his own helpless kindhearted way, to get a little hopeful information by asking questions—useless questions, repeated over and over again in futile changes of words. The landlady was patient: she respected the undisguised grief of the gentle modest old man; but she held to the hard truth. The one possible answer was the answer which her servant had already given. When she followed him out, to open the door, Mr. Gallilee requested permission to wait a moment in the hall. “If you will allow me, ma’am, I’ll wipe my eyes before I go into the street.”
Arriving at the office without an appointment, he found the lawyer engaged. A clerk presented to him a slip of paper, with a line written by Mr. Mool: “Is it anything of importance?” Simple Mr. Gallilee wrote back: “Oh, dear, no; it’s only me! I’ll call again.” Besides his critical judgment in the matter of champagne, this excellent man possessed another accomplishment—a beautiful handwriting. Mr. Mool, discovering a crooked line and some ill-formed letters in the reply, drew his own conclusions. He sent word to his old friend to wait.
In ten minutes more they were together, and the lawyer was informed of the events that had followed the visit of Benjulia to Fairfield Gardens, on the previous day.
For a while, the two men sat silently meditating—daunted by the prospect before them. When the time came for speaking, they exercised an influence over each other, of which both were alike unconscious. Out of their common horror of Mrs. Gallilee’s conduct, and their common interest in Carmina, they innocently achieved between them the creation of one resolute man.
“My dear Gallilee, this is a very serious thing.”
“My dear Mool, I feel it so—or I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”
“Don’t talk of disturbing me! I see so many complications ahead of us, I hardly know where to begin.”
“Just my case! It’s a comfort to me that you feel it as I do.”
Mr. Mool rose and tried walking up and down his room, as a means of stimulating his ingenuity.
“There’s this poor young lady,” he resumed. “If she gets better—”
“Don’t put it in that way!” Mr. Gallilee interposed. “It sounds as if you doubted her ever getting well—you see it yourself in that light, don’t you? Be a little more positive, Mool, in mercy to me.”
“By all means,” Mr. Mool agreed. “Let us say, when she gets better. But the difficulty meets us, all the same. If Mrs. Gallilee claims her right, what are we to do?”
Mr. Gallilee rose in his turn, and took a walk up and down the room. That well-meant experiment only left him feebler than ever.
“What possessed her brother to make her Carmina’s guardian?” he asked—with the nearest approach to irritability of which he was capable.
The lawyer was busy with his own thoughts. He only enlightened Mr. Gallilee after the question had been repeated.
“I had the sincerest regard for Mr. Robert Graywell,” he said. “A better husband and father—and don’t let me forget it, a more charming artist—never lived. But,” said Mr. Mool, with the air of one strong-minded man appealing to another: “weak, sadly weak. If you will allow me to say so, your wife’s self-asserting way—well, it was so unlike her brother’s way, that it had its effect on him! If Lady Northlake had been a little less quiet and retiring, the matter might have ended in a very different manner. As it was (I don’t wish to put the case offensively) Mrs. Gallilee imposed on him—and there she is, in authority, under the Will. Let that be. We must protect this poor girl. We must act!” cried Mr. Mool with a burst of energy.
“We must act!” Mr. Gallilee repeated—and feebly clenched his fist, and softly struck the table.
“I think I have an idea,” the lawyer proceeded; “suggested by something said to me by Miss Carmina herself. May I ask if you are in her confidence?”
Mr. Gallilee’s face brightened at this. “Certainly,” he answered. “I always kiss her when we say good-night, and kiss her again when we say good-morning.”
This proof of his friend’s claims as Carmina’s chosen adviser, seemed rather to surprise Mr. Mool. “Did she ever hint at an idea of hastening her marriage?” he inquired.
Plainly as the question was put, it thoroughly puzzled Mr. Gallilee. His honest face answered for him—he was not in Carmina’s confidence. Mr. Mool returned to his idea.
“The one thing we can do,” he said, “is to hasten Mr. Ovid’s return. There is the only course to take—as I see it.”
“Let’s do it at once!” cried Mr. Gallilee.
“But tell me,” Mr. Mool insisted, greedy for encouragement—“does my suggestion relieve your mind?”
“It’s the first happy moment I’ve had to-day!” Mr. Gallilee’s weak voice piped high: he was getting firmer and firmer with every word he uttered.
One of them produced a telegraph-form; the other seized a pen. “Shall we send the message in your name?” Mr. Mool asked.
If Mr. Gallilee had possessed a hundred names he would have sent them (and paid for them) all. “John Gallilee, 14 Fairfield Gardens, London, To—” There the pen stopped. Ovid was still in the wilds of Canada. The one way of communicating with him was through the medium of the bankers at Quebec, To the bankers, accordingly, the message was sent. “Please telegraph Mr. Ovid Vere’s address, the moment you know it.”
When the telegram had been sent to the office, an interval of inaction followed. Mr. Gallilee’s fortitude suffered a relapse. “It’s a long time to wait,” he said.
His friend agreed with him. Morally speaking, Mr. Mool’s strength lay in points of law. No point of law appeared to be involved in the present conference: he shared Mr. Gallilee’s depression of spirits. “We are quite helpless,” he remarked, “till Mr. Ovid comes back. In the interval, I see no choice for Miss Carmina but to submit to her guardian; unless—” He looked hard at Mr. Gallilee, before he finished his sentence. “Unless,” he resumed, “you can get over your present feeling about your wife.”
“Get over it?” Mr. Gallilee repeated.
“It seems quite impossible now, I dare say,” the worthy lawyer admitted. “A very painful impression has been produced on you. Naturally! naturally! But the force of habit—a married life of many years—your own kind feeling—”
“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Gallilee, bewildered, impatient, almost angry.
“A little persuasion on your part, my good friend—at the interesting moment of reconciliation—might be followed by excellent results. Mrs. Gallilee might not object to waive her claims, until time has softened existing asperities. Surely, a compromise is possible, if you could only prevail on yourself to forgive your wife.”
“Forgive her? I should be only too glad to forgive her!” cried Mr. Gallilee, bursting into violent agitation. “How am I to do it? Good God! Mool, how am I to do it? You didn’t hear those infamous words. You didn’t see that dreadful death-struck look of the poor girl. I declare to you I turn cold when I think of my wife! I can’t go to her when I ought to go—I send the servants into her room. My children, too—my dear good children—it’s enough to break one’s heart—think of their being brought up by a mother who could say what she said, and do—What will they see, I ask you what will they see, if she gets Carmina back in the house, and treats that sweet young creature as she will treat her? There were times last night, when I thought of going away for ever—Lord knows where—and taking the girls with me. What am I talking about? I had something to say, and I don’t know what it is; I don’t know my own self! There, there; I’ll keep quiet. It’s my poor stupid head, I suppose—hot, Mool, burning hot. Let’s be reasonable. Yes, yes, yes; let’s be reasonable. You’re a lawyer. I said to myself, when I came here, ‘I want Mool’s advice.’ Be a dear good fellow—set my mind at ease. Oh, my friend, my old friend, what can I do for my children?”
Amazed and distressed—utterly at a loss how to interfere to any good purpose—Mr. Mool recovered his presence of mind, the moment Mr. Gallilee appealed to him in his legal capacity. “Don’t distress yourself about your children,” he said kindly. “Thank God, we stand on firm ground, there.”
“Do you mean it, Mool?”
“I mean it. Where your daughters are concerned, the authority is yours. Be firm, Gallilee! be firm!”
“I will! You set me the example—don’t you? You’re firm—eh?”
“Firm as a rock. I agree with you. For the present at least, the children must be removed.”
“At once, Mool!”
“At once!” the lawyer repeated.
They had wrought each other up to the right pitch of resolution, by this time. They were almost loud enough for the clerks to hear them in the office.
“No matter what my wife may say!” Mr. Gallilee stipulated.
“No matter what she may say,” Mr. Mool rejoined, “the father is master.”
“And you know the law.”
“And I know the law. You have only to assert yourself.”
“And you have only to back me.”
“For your children’s sake, Gallilee!”
“Under my lawyer’s advice, Mool!”
The one resolute Man was produced at last—without a flaw in him anywhere. They were both exhausted by the effort. Mr. Mool suggested a glass of wine.
Mr. Gallilee ventured on a hint. “You don’t happen to have a drop of champagne handy?” he said.
The lawyer rang for his housekeeper. In five minutes, they were pledging each other in foaming tumblers. In five minutes more, they plunged back into business. The question of the best place to which the children could be removed, was easily settled. Mr. Mool offered his own house; acknowledging modestly that it had perhaps one drawback—it was within easy reach of Mrs. Gallilee. The statement of this objection stimulated his friend’s memory. Lady Northlake was in Scotland. Lady Northlake had invited Maria and Zo, over and over again, to pass the autumn with their cousins; but Mrs. Gallilee’s jealousy had always contrived to find some plausible reason for refusal. “Write at once,” Mr. Mool advised. “You may do it in two lines. Your wife is ill; Miss Carmina is ill; you are not able to leave London—and the children are pining for fresh air.” In this sense, Mr. Gallilee wrote. He insisted on having the letter sent to the post immediately. “I know it’s long before post-time,” he explained. “But I want to compose my mind.”
The lawyer paused, with his glass of wine at his lips. “I say! You’re not hesitating already?”
“No more than you are,” Mr. Gallilee answered.
“You will really send the girls away?”
“The girls shall go, on the day when Lady Northlake invites them.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” said Mr. Mool.
He made the note; and they rose to say good-bye. Faithful Mr. Gallilee still thought of Carmina. “Do consider it again!” he said at parting. “Are you sure the law won’t help her?”
“I might look at her father’s Will,” Mr. Mool replied.
Mr. Gallilee saw the hopeful side of this suggestion, in the brightest colours. “Why didn’t you think of it before?” he asked.
Mr. Mool gently remonstrated. “Don’t forget how many things I have on my mind,” he said. “It only occurs to me now that the Will may give us a remedy—if there is any open opposition to the ward’s marriage engagement, on the guardian’s part.”
There he stopped; knowing Mrs. Gallilee’s methods of opposition too well to reckon hopefully on such a result as this. But he was a merciful man—and he kept his misgivings to himself.
On the way home, Mr. Gallilee encountered his wife’s maid. Marceline was dropping a letter into the pillar-post-box at the corner of the Square; she changed colour, on seeing her master. “Corresponding with her sweetheart,” Mr. Gallilee concluded.
Entering the house with an unfinished cigar in his mouth, he made straight for the smoking-room—and passed his youngest daughter, below him, waiting out of sight on the kitchen stairs.
“Have you done it?” Zo whispered, when Marceline returned by the servants’ entrance.
“It’s safe in the post, dear. Now tell me what you saw yesterday, when you were hidden in Miss Carmina’s bedroom.”
The tone in which she spoke implied a confidential agreement. With honourable promptitude Zo, perched on her friend’s knee, exerted her memory, and rewarded Marceline for posting her letter to Ovid.