Mr. Mool was in attendance at Fairfield Gardens, when his old friend arrived from Scotland, to tell him what the cautiously expressed message in the telegram really meant.
But one idea seemed to be impressed on Mr. Gallilee’s mind—the idea of reconciliation. He insisted on seeing his wife. It was in vain to tell him that she was utterly incapable of reciprocating or even of understanding his wishes. Absolute resistance was the one alternative left—and it was followed by distressing results. The kind-hearted old man burst into a fit of crying, which even shook the resolution of the doctors. One of them went upstairs to warn the nurses. The other said, “Let him see her.”
The instant he showed himself in the room, Mrs. Gallilee recognised him with a shriek of fury. The nurses held her back—while Mr. Mool dragged him out again, and shut the door. The object of the doctors had been gained. His own eyes had convinced him of the terrible necessity of placing his wife under restraint. She was removed to a private asylum.
Maria and Zo had been left in Scotland—as perfectly happy as girls could be, in the society of their cousins, and under the affectionate care of their aunt. Mr. Gallilee remained in London; but he was not left alone in the deserted house. The good lawyer had a spare room at his disposal; and Mrs. Mool and her daughters received him with true sympathy. Coming events helped to steady his mind. He was comforted in the anticipation of Ovid’s return, and interested in hearing of the generous motive which had led Miss Minerva to meet his stepson.
“I never agreed with the others when they used to abuse our governess,” he said. “She might have been quick-tempered, and she might have been ugly—I suppose I saw her in some other light myself.” He had truly seen her under another light. In his simple affectionate nature, there had been instinctive recognition of that great heart.
He was allowed to see Carmina, in the hope that pleasant associations connected with him might have a favourable influence. She smiled faintly, and gave him her hand when she saw him at the bedside—but that was all.
Too deeply distressed to ask to see her again, he made his inquiries for the future at the door. Day after day, the answer was always the same.
Before she left London, Miss Minerva had taken it on herself to engage the vacant rooms, on the ground floor of the lodging-house, for Ovid. She knew his heart, as she knew her own heart. Once under the same roof with Carmina, he would leave it no more—until life gave her back to him, or death took her away. Hearing of what had been done, Mr. Gallilee removed to Ovid’s rooms the writing-desk and the books, the favourite music and the faded flowers, left by Carmina at Fairfield Gardens. “Anything that belongs to her,” he thought, “will surely be welcome to the poor fellow when he comes back.”
On one afternoon—never afterwards to be forgotten—he had only begun to make his daily inquiry, when the door on the ground floor was opened, and Miss Minerva beckoned to him.
Her face daunted Mr. Gallilee: he asked in a whisper, if Ovid had returned.
She pointed upwards, and answered, “He is with her now.”
“How did he bear it?”
“We don’t know; we were afraid to follow him into the room.”
She turned towards the window as she spoke. Teresa was sitting there—vacantly looking out. Mr. Gallilee spoke to her kindly: she made no answer; she never even moved. “Worn out!” Miss Minerva whispered to him. “When she thinks of Carmina now, she thinks without hope.”
He shuddered. The expression of his own fear was in those words—and he shrank from it. Miss Minerva took his hand, and led him to a chair. “Ovid will know best,” she reminded him; “let us wait for what Ovid will say.”
“Did you meet him on board the vessel?” Mr. Gallilee asked.
“Yes.”
“How did he look?”
“So well and so strong that you would hardly have known him again—till he asked about Carmina. Then he turned pale. I knew that I must tell him the truth—but I was afraid to take it entirely on myself. Something Mr. Null said to me, before I left London, suggested that I might help Ovid to understand me if I took the prescriptions to Queenstown. I had not noticed that they were signed by Doctor Benjulia, as well as by Mr. Null. Don’t ask me what effect the discovery had on him! I bore it at the time—I can’t speak of it now.”
“You good creature! you dear good creature! Forgive me if I have distressed you; I didn’t meant it.”
“You have not distressed me. Is there anything else I can tell you?”
Mr. Gallilee hesitated. “There is one thing more,” he said. “It isn’t about Carmina this time—”
He hesitated again. Miss Minerva understood. “Yes,” she answered; “I spoke to Ovid of his mother. In mercy to himself and to me, he would hear no details. ‘I know enough,’ he said, ‘if I know that she is the person to blame. I was prepared to hear it. My mother’s silence could only be accounted for in one way, when I had read Zo’s letter.’—Don’t you know, Mr. Gallilee, that the child wrote to Ovid?”
The surprise and delight of Zo’s fond old father, when he heard the story of the letter, forced a smile from Miss Minerva, even at that time of doubt and sorrow. He declared that he would have returned to his daughter by the mail train of that night, but for two considerations. He must see his stepson before he went back to Scotland; and he must search all the toy-shops in London for the most magnificent present that could be offered to a young person of ten years old. “Tell Ovid, with my love, I’ll call again to-morrow,” he said, looking at his watch. “I have just time to write to Zo by to-day’s post.” He went to his club, for the first time since he had returned to London. Miss Minerva thought of bygone days, and wondered if he would enjoy his champagne.
A little later Mr. Null called—anxious to know if Ovid had arrived.
Other women, in the position of Miss Minerva and Teresa, might have hesitated to keep the patient’s room closed to the doctor. These two were resolved. They refused to disturb Ovid, even by sending up a message. Mr. Null took offence. “Understand, both of you,” he said, “when I call to-morrow morning, I shall insist on going upstairs—and if I find this incivility repeated, I shall throw up the case.” He left the room, triumphing in his fool’s paradise of aggressive self-conceit.
They waited for some time longer—and still no message reached them from upstairs. “We may be wrong in staying here,” Miss Minerva suggested; “he may want to be alone when he leaves her—let us go.”
She rose to return to the house of her new employers. They respected her, and felt for her: while Carmina’s illness continued, she had the entire disposal of her time. The nurse accompanied her to the door; resigned to take refuge in the landlady’s room. “I’m afraid to be by myself,” Teresa said. “Even that woman’s chatter is better for me than my own thoughts.”
Before parting for the night they waited in the hall, looking towards the stairs, and listening anxiously. Not a sound disturbed the melancholy silence.
In the darkened room, her weary eyes could hardly have seen the betrayal of what he suffered—even if she had looked up in his face. She was content to rest her head on his breast, and to feel his arm round her. “I am glad, dear,” she said, “to have lived long enough for this.”
Those were her first words—after the first kiss. She had trembled and sighed, when he ran to her and bent over her: it was the one expression left of all her joy and all her love. But it passed away as other lesser agitations had passed away. One last reserve of energy obeyed the gentle persuasion of love. Silent towards all other friends, she was able to speak to Ovid.
“You used to breathe so lightly,” she said. “How is it that I hear you now. Oh, Ovid, don’t cry! I couldn’t bear that.”
He answered her quietly. “Don’t be afraid, darling; I won’t distress you.”
“And you will let me say, what I want to say?”
“Oh, yes!”
This satisfied her. “I may rest a little now,” she said.
He too was silent; held down by the heavy hand of despair.
The time had been, in the days of his failing health, when the solemn shadows of evening falling over the fields—the soaring song of the lark in the bright heights of the midday sky—the dear lost remembrances that the divine touch of music finds again—brought tears into his eyes. They were dry eyes now! Those once tremulous nerves had gathered steady strength, on the broad prairies and in the roving life. Could trembling sorrow, seeking its way to the sources of tears, overbear the robust vitality that rioted in his blood, whether she lived or whether she died? In those deep breathings that had alarmed her, she had indeed heard the struggle of grief, vainly urging its way to expression against the masterful health and strength that set moral weakness at defiance. Nature had remade this man—and Nature never pities.
It was an effort to her to collect her thoughts—but she did collect them. She was able to tell him what was in her mind.
“Do you think, Ovid, your mother will care much what becomes of me, when I die?”
He started at those dreadful words—so softly, so patiently spoken. “You will live,” he said. “My Carmina, what am I here for but to bring you back to life?”
She made no attempt to dispute with him. Quietly, persistently, she returned to the thought that was in her.
“Say that I forgive your mother, Ovid—and that I only ask one thing in return. I ask her to leave me to you, when the end has come. My dear, there is a feeling in me that I can’t get over. Don’t let me be buried in a great place all crowded with the dead! I once saw a picture—it was at home in Italy, I think—an English picture of a quiet little churchyard in the country. The shadows of the trees rested on the lonely graves. And some great poet had written—oh, such beautiful words about it. The red-breast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground. Promise, Ovid, you will take me to some place, far from crowds and noise—where children may gather the flowers on my grave.”
He promised—and she thanked him, and rested again.
“There was something else,” she said, when the interval had passed. “My head is so sleepy. I wonder whether I can think of it?”
After a while, she did think of it.
“I want to make you a little farewell present. Will you undo my gold chain? Don’t cry, Ovid! oh, don’t cry!”
He obeyed her. The gold chain held the two lockets—the treasured portraits of her father and her mother. “Wear them for my sake,” she murmured. “Lift me up; I want to put them round your neck myself.” She tried, vainly tried, to clasp the chain. Her head fell back on his breast. “Too sleepy,” she said; “always too sleepy now! Say you love me, Ovid.”
He said it.
“Kiss me, dear.”
He kissed her.
“Now lay me down on the pillow. I’m not eighteen yet—and I feel as old as eighty! Rest; all I want is rest.” Looking at him fondly, her eyes closed little by little—then softly opened again. “Don’t wait in this dull room, darling; I will send for you, if I wake.”
It was the only wish of hers that he disobeyed. From time to time, his fingers touched her pulse, and felt its feeble beat. From time to time, he stooped and let the faint coming and going of her breath flutter on his cheek. The twilight fell, and darkness began to gather over the room. Still, he kept his place by her, like a man entranced.
The first trivial sound that broke the spell, was the sound of a match struck in the next room.
He rose, and groped his way to the door. Teresa had ventured upstairs, and had kindled a light. Some momentary doubt of him kept the nurse silent when he looked at her. He stammered, and stared about him confusedly, when he spoke.
“Where—where—?” He seemed to have lost his hold on his thoughts—he gave it up, and tried again. “I want to be alone,” he said; recovering, for the moment, some power of expressing himself.
Teresa’s first fear of him vanished. She took him by the hand like a child, and led him downstairs to his rooms. He stood silently watching her, while she lit the candles.
“When Carmina sleeps now,” he asked, “does it last long?”
“Often for hours together,” the nurse answered.
He said no more; he seemed to have forgotten that there was another person in the room.
She found courage in her pity for him. “Try to pray,” she said, and left him.
He fell on his knees; but still the words failed him. He tried to quiet his mind by holy thoughts. No! The dumb agony in him was powerless to find relief. Only the shadows of thoughts crossed his mind; his eyes ached with a burning heat. He began to be afraid of himself. The active habits of the life that he had left, drove him out, with the instincts of an animal, into space and air. Neither knowing nor caring in what direction he turned his steps, he walked on at the top of his speed. On and on, till the crowded houses began to grow more rare—till there were gaps of open ground, on either side of him—till the moon rose behind a plantation of trees, and bathed in its melancholy light a lonely high road. He followed the road till he was tired of it, and turned aside into a winding lane. The lights and shadows, alternating with each other, soothed and pleased him. He had got the relief in exercise that had been denied him while he was in repose. He could think again; he could feel the resolution stirring in him to save that dear one, or to die with her. Now at last, he was man enough to face the terrible necessity that confronted him, and fight the battle of Art and Love against Death. He stopped, and looked round; eager to return, and be ready for her waking. In that solitary place, there was no hope of finding a person to direct him. He turned, to go back to the high road.
At that same moment, he became conscious of the odour of tobacco wafted towards him on the calm night air. Some one was smoking in the lane.
He retraced his steps, until he reached a gate—with a barren field behind it. There was the man, whose tobacco smoke he had smelt, leaning on the gate, with his pipe in his mouth.
The moonlight fell full on Ovid’s face, as he approached to ask his way. The man suddenly stood up—stared at him—and said, “Hullo! is it you or your ghost?”
His face was in shadow, but his voice answered for him. The man was Benjulia.
“Have you come to see me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Won’t you shake hands?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
Ovid waited to answer until he had steadied his temper.
“I have seen Carmina,” he said.
Benjulia went on with his smoking. “An interesting case, isn’t it?” he remarked.
“You were called into consultation by Mr. Null,” Ovid continued; “and you approved of his ignorant treatment—you, who knew better.”
“I should think I did!” Benjulia rejoined.
“You deliberately encouraged an incompetent man; you let that poor girl go on from bad to worse—for some vile end of your own.”
Benjulia good-naturedly corrected him. “No, no. For an excellent end—for knowledge.”
“If I fail to remedy the mischief, which is your doing, and yours alone—”
Benjulia took his pipe out of his mouth. “How do you mean to cure her?” he eagerly interposed. “Have you got a new idea?”
“If I fail,” Ovid repeated, “her death lies at your door. You merciless villain—as certainly as that moon is now shining over us, your life shall answer for hers.”
Astonishment—immeasurable astonishment—sealed Benjulia’s lips. He looked down the lane when Ovid left him, completely stupefied. The one imaginable way of accounting for such language as he had heard—spoken by a competent member of his own profession!—presented the old familiar alternative. “Drunk or mad?” he wondered while he lit his pipe again. Walking back to the house, his old distrust of Ovid troubled him once more. He decided to call at Teresa’s lodgings in a day or two, and ascertain from the landlady (and the chemist) how Carmina was being cured.
Returning to the high road, Ovid was passed by a tradesman, driving his cart towards London. The man civilly offered to take him as far as the nearest outlying cabstand.
Neither the landlady nor Teresa had gone to their beds when he returned. Their account of Carmina, during his absence, contained nothing to alarm him. He bade them goodnight—eager to be left alone in his room.
In the house and out of the house, there was now the perfect silence that helps a man to think. His mind was clear; his memory answered, when he called on it to review that part of his own medical practice which might help him, by experience, in his present need. But he shrank—with Carmina’s life in his hands—from trusting wholly to himself. A higher authority than his was waiting to be consulted. He took from his portmanteau the manuscript presented to him by the poor wretch, whose last hours he had soothed in the garret at Montreal.
The work opened with a declaration which gave it a special value, in Ovid’s estimation.
“If this imperfect record of experience is ever read by other eyes than mine, I wish to make one plain statement at the outset. The information which is presented in these pages is wholly derived from the results of bedside practice; pursued under miserable obstacles and interruptions, and spread over a period of many years. Whatever faults and failings I may have been guilty of as a man, I am innocent, in my professional capacity, of ever having perpetrated the useless and detestable cruelties which go by the name of Vivisection. Without entering into any of the disputes on either side, which this practice has provoked, I declare my conviction that no asserted usefulness in the end, can justify deliberate cruelty in the means. The man who seriously maintains that any pursuit in which he can engage is independent of moral restraint, is a man in a state of revolt against God. I refuse to hear him in his own defense, on that ground.”
Ovid turned next to the section of the work which was entitled “Brain Disease.” The writer introduced his observations in these prefatory words:
“A celebrated physiologist, plainly avowing the ignorance of doctors in the matter of the brain and its diseases, and alluding to appearances presented by post-mortem examination, concludes his confession thus: ‘We cannot even be sure whether many of the changes discovered are the cause or the result of the disease, or whether the two are the conjoint results of a common cause.’
“So this man writes, after experience in Vivisection.
“Let my different experience be heard next. Not knowing into what hands this manuscript may fall, or what unexpected opportunities of usefulness it may encounter after my death, I purposely abstain from using technical language in the statement which I have now to make.
“In medical investigations, as in all other forms of human inquiry, the result in view is not infrequently obtained by indirect and unexpected means. What I have to say here on the subject of brain disease, was first suggested by experience of two cases, which seemed in the last degree unlikely to help me. They were both cases of young women; each one having been hysterically affected by a serious moral shock; terminating, after a longer or shorter interval, in simulated paralysis. One of these cases I treated successfully. While I was still in attendance on the other, (pursuing the same course of treatment which events had already proved to be right), a fatal accident terminated my patient’s life, and rendered a post-mortem examination necessary. From those starting points, I arrived—by devious ways which I am now to relate—at deductions and discoveries that threw a new light on the nature and treatment of brain disease.”
Hour by hour, Ovid studied the pages that followed, until his mind and the mind of the writer were one. He then returned to certain preliminary allusions to the medical treatment of the two girls—inexpressibly precious to him, in Carmina’s present interests. The dawn of day found him prepared at all points, and only waiting until the lapse of the next few hours placed the means of action in his hands.
But there was one anxiety still to be relieved, before he lay down to rest.
He took off his shoes, and stole upstairs to Carmina’s door. The faithful Teresa was astir, earnestly persuading her to take some nourishment. The little that he could hear of her voice, as she answered, made his heart ache—it was so faint and so low. Still she could speak; and still there was the old saying to remember, which has comforted so many and deceived so many: While there’s life, there’s hope.
After a brief interview with his step-son, Mr. Gallilee returned to his daughters in Scotland.
Touched by his fatherly interest in Carmina, Ovid engaged to keep him informed of her progress towards recovery. If the anticipation of saving her proved to be the sad delusion of love and hope, silence would signify what no words could say.
In ten days’ time, there was a happy end to suspense. The slow process of recovery might extend perhaps to the end of the year. But, if no accident happened, Ovid had the best reasons for believing that Carmina’s life was safe.
Freed from the terrible anxieties that had oppressed him, he was able to write again, a few days later, in a cheerful tone, and to occupy his pen at Mr. Gallilee’s express request, with such an apparently trifling subject as the conduct of Mr. Null.
“Your old medical adviser was quite right in informing you that I had relieved him from any further attendance on Carmina. But his lively imagination (or perhaps I ought to say, his sense of his own consequence) has misled you when he also declares that I purposely insulted him. I took the greatest pains not to wound his self-esteem. He left me in anger, nevertheless.
“A day or two afterwards, I received a note from him; addressing me as ‘Sir,’ and asking ironically if I had any objection to his looking at the copies of my prescriptions in the chemist’s book. Though he was old enough to be my father (he remarked) it seemed that experience counted for nothing; he had still something to learn from his junior, in the treatment of disease—and so on.
“At that miserable time of doubt and anxiety, I could only send a verbal reply, leaving him to do what he liked. Before I tell you of the use that he made of his liberty of action, I must confess something relating to the prescriptions themselves. Don’t be afraid of long and learned words, and don’t suppose that I am occupying your attention in this way, without a serious reason for it which you will presently understand.
“A note in the manuscript—to my study of which, I owe, under God, the preservation of Carmina’s life—warned me that chemists, in the writer’s country, had either refused to make up certain prescriptions given in the work, or had taken the liberty of altering the new quantities and combinations of some of the drugs prescribed.
“Precisely the same thing happened here, in the case of the first chemist to whom I sent. He refused to make up the medicine, unless I provided him with a signed statement taking the whole responsibility on myself.
“Having ascertained the exact nature of his objection, I dismissed him without his guarantee, and employed another chemist; taking care (in the interests of my time and my temper) to write my more important prescriptions under reserve. That is to say, I followed the conventional rules, as to quantities and combinations, and made the necessary additions or changes from my own private stores when the medicine was sent home.
“Poor foolish Mr. Null, finding nothing to astonish him in my course of medicine—as represented by the chemist—appears by his own confession, to have copied the prescriptions with a malicious object in view. ‘I have sent them, (he informs me, in a second letter) to Doctor Benjulia; in order that he too may learn something in his profession from the master who has dispensed with our services.’ This new effort of irony means that I stand self-condemned of vanity, in presuming to rely on my own commonplace resources—represented by the deceitful evidence of the chemist’s book!
“But I am grateful to Mr. Null, notwithstanding: he has done me a service, in meaning to do me an injury.
“My imperfect prescriptions have quieted the mind of the man to whom he sent them. This wretch’s distrust has long since falsely suspected me of some professional rivalry pursued in secret; the feeling showed itself again, when I met with him by accident on the night of my return to London. Since Mr. Null has communicated with him, the landlady is no longer insulted by his visits, and offended by his questions—all relating to the course of treatment which I was pursuing upstairs.
“You now understand why I have ventured to trouble you on a purely professional topic. To turn to matters of more interest—our dear Carmina is well enough to remember you, and to send her love to you and the girls. But even this little effort is followed by fatigue.
“I don’t mean only fatigue of body: that is now a question of time and care. I mean fatigue of mind—expressing itself by defect of memory.
“On the morning when the first positive change for the better appeared, I was at her bedside when she woke. She looked at me in amazement. ‘Why didn’t you warn me of your sudden return?’ she asked, ‘I have only written to you to-day—to your bankers at Quebec! What does it mean?’
“I did my best to soothe her, and succeeded. There is a complete lapse in her memory—I am only too sure of it! She has no recollection of anything that has happened since she wrote her last letter to me—a letter which must have been lost (perhaps intercepted?), or I should have received it before I left Quebec. This forgetfulness of the dreadful trials through which my poor darling has passed, is, in itself, a circumstance which we must all rejoice over for her sake. But I am discouraged by it, at the same time; fearing it may indicate some more serious injury than I have yet discovered.
“Miss Minerva—what should I do without the help and sympathy of that best of true women?—Miss Minerva has cautiously tested her memory in other directions, with encouraging results, so far. But I shall not feel easy until I have tried further experiments, by means of some person who does not exercise a powerful influence over her, and whose memory is naturally occupied with what we older people call trifles.
“When you all leave Scotland next month, bring Zo here with you. My dear little correspondent is just the sort of quaint child I want for the purpose. Kiss her for me till she is out of breath—and say that is what I mean to do when we meet.”
The return to London took place in the last week in October.
Lord and Lady Northlake went to their town residence, taking Maria and Zo with them. There were associations connected with Fairfield Gardens, which made the prospect of living there—without even the society of his children—unendurable to Mr. Gallilee. Ovid’s house, still waiting the return of its master, was open to his step-father. The poor man was only too glad (in his own simple language) “to keep the nest warm for his son.”
The latest inquiries made at the asylum were hopefully answered. Thus far, the measures taken to restore Mrs. Gallilee to herself had succeeded beyond expectation. But one unfavourable symptom remained. She was habitually silent. When she did speak, her mind seemed to be occupied with scientific subjects: she never mentioned her husband, or any other member of the family. Time and attention would remove this drawback. In two or three months more perhaps, if all went well, she might return to her family and her friends, as sane a woman as ever.
Calling at Fairfield Gardens for any letters that might be waiting there, Mr. Gallilee received a circular in lithographed writing; accompanied by a roll of thick white paper. The signature revealed the familiar name of Mr. Le Frank.
The circular set forth that the writer had won renown and a moderate income, as pianist and teacher of music. “A terrible accident, ladies and gentlemen, has injured my right hand, and has rendered amputation of two of my fingers necessary. Deprived for life of my professional resources, I have but one means of subsistence left—viz:—-collecting subscriptions for a song of my own composition. N.B.—The mutilated musician leaves the question of terms in the hands of the art-loving public, and will do himself the honour of calling to-morrow.”
Good-natured Mr. Gallilee left a sovereign to be given to the victim of circumstances—and then set forth for Lord Northlake’s house. He and Ovid had arranged that Zo was to be taken to see Carmina that day.
On his way through the streets, he was met by Mr. Mool. The lawyer looked at the song under his friend’s arm. “What’s that you’re taking such care of?” he asked. “It looks like music. A new piece for the young ladies—eh?”
Mr. Gallilee explained. Mr. Mool struck his stick on the pavement, as the nearest available means of expressing indignation.
“Never let another farthing of your money get into that rascal’s pocket! It’s no merit of his that the poor old Italian nurse has not made her appearance in the police reports.”
With this preface, Mr. Mool related the circumstances under which Mr. Le Frank had met with his accident. “His first proceeding when they discharged him from the hospital,” continued the lawyer, “was to summon Teresa before a magistrate. Fortunately she showed the summons to me. I appeared for her, provided with a plan of the rooms which spoke for itself; and I put two questions to the complainant. What business had he in another person’s room? and why was his hand in that other person’s cupboard? The reporter kindly left the case unrecorded; and when the fellow ended by threatening the poor woman outside the court, we bound him over to keep the peace. I have my eye on him—and I’ll catch him yet, under the Vagrant Act!”
Aided by time, care, and skill, Carmina had gained strength enough to pass some hours of the day in the sitting-room; reclining in an invalid-chair invented for her by Ovid. The welcome sight of Zo—brightened and developed by happy autumn days passed in Scotland—brought a deep flush to her face, and quickened the pulse which Ovid was touching, under pretence of holding her hand. These signs of excessive nervous sensibility warned him to limit the child’s visit to a short space of time. Neither Miss Minerva nor Teresa were in the room: Carmina could have Zo all to herself.
“Now, my dear,” she said, in a kiss, “tell me about Scotland.”
“Scotland,” Zo answered with dignity, “belongs to uncle Northlake. He pays for everything; and I’m Missus.”
“It’s true,” said Mr. Gallilee, bursting with pride. “My lord says it’s no use having a will of your own where Zo is. When he introduces her to anybody on the estate, he says, ‘Here’s the Missus.’”
Mr. Gallilee’s youngest daughter listened critically to the parental testimony. “You see he knows,” she said to Ovid. “There’s nothing to laugh at.”
Carmina tried another question. “Did you think of me, dear, when you were far away?”
“Think of you?” Zo repeated. “You’re to sleep in my bedroom when we go back to Scotland—and I’m to be out of bed, and one of ‘em, when you eat your first Scotch dinner. Shall I tell you what you’ll see on the table? You’ll see a big brown steaming bag in a dish—and you’ll see me slit it with a knife—and the bag’s fat inside will tumble out, all smoking hot and stinking. That’s a Scotch dinner. Oh!” she cried, losing her dignity in the sudden interest of a new idea, “oh, Carmina, do you remember the Italian boy, and his song?”
Here was one of those tests of her memory for trifles, applied with a child’s happy abruptness, for which Ovid had been waiting. He listened eagerly. To his unutterable relief, Carmina laughed.
“Of course I remember it!” she said. “Who could forget the boy who sings and grins and says Gimmeehaypenny?”
“That’s it!” cried Zo. “The boy’s song was a good one in its way. I’ve learnt a better in Scotland. You’ve heard of Donald, haven’t you?”
“No.”
Zo turned indignantly to her father. “Why didn’t you tell her of Donald?”
Mr. Gallilee humbly admitted that he was in fault. Carmina asked who Donald was, and what he was like. Zo unconsciously tested her memory for the second time.
“You know that day,” she said, “when Joseph had an errand at the grocer’s and I went along with him, and Miss Minerva said I was a vulgar child?”
Carmina’s memory recalled this new trifle, without an effort. “I know,” she answered; “you told me Joseph and the grocer weighed you in the great scales.”
Zo delighted Ovid by trying her again. “When they put me into the scales, Carmina, what did I weigh?”
“Nearly four stone, dear.”
“Quite four stone. Donald weighs fourteen.’ What do you think of that?”
Mr. Gallilee once more offered his testimony. “The biggest Piper on my lord’s estate,” he began, “comes of a Highland family, and was removed to the Lowlands by my lord’s father. A great player—”
“And my friend,” Zo explained, stopping her father in full career. “He takes snuff out of a cow’s horn. He shovels it up his fat nose with a spoon, like this. His nose wags. He says, ‘Try my sneeshin.’ Sneeshin’s Scotch for snuff. He boos till he’s nearly double when uncle Northlake speaks to him. Boos is Scotch for bows. He skirls on the pipes—skirls means screeches. When you first hear him, he’ll make your stomach ache. You’ll get used to that—and you’ll find you like him. He wears a purse and a petticoat; he never had a pair of trousers on in his life; there’s no pride about him. Say you’re my friend and he’ll let you smack his legs—”
Here, Ovid was obliged to bring the biography of Donald to a close. Carmina’s enjoyment of Zo was becoming too keen for her strength; her bursts of laughter grew louder and louder—the wholesome limit of excitement was being rapidly passed. “Tell us about your cousins,” he said, by way of effecting a diversion.
“The big ones?” Zo asked.
“No; the little ones, like you.”
“Nice girls—they play at everything I tell ‘em. Jolly boys—when they knock a girl down, they pick her up again, and clean her.”
Carmina was once more in danger of passing the limit. Ovid made another attempt to effect a diversion. Singing would be comparatively harmless in its effect—as he rashly supposed. “What’s that song you learnt in Scotland?” he asked.
“It’s Donald’s song,” Zo replied. “He taught me.”
At the sound of Donald’s dreadful name, Ovid looked at his watch, and said there was no time for the song. Mr. Gallilee suddenly and seriously sided with his step-son. “How she got among the men after dinner,” he said, “nobody knows. Lady Northlake has forbidden Donald to teach her any more songs; and I have requested him, as a favour to me, not to let her smack his legs. Come, my dear, it’s time we were home again.”
Well intended by both gentlemen—but too late. Zo was ready for the performance; her hat was cocked on one side; her plump little arms were set akimbo; her round eyes opened and closed facetiously in winks worthy of a low comedian. “I’m Donald,” she announced: and burst out with the song: “We’re gayly yet, we’re gayly yet; We’re not very fou, but we’re gayly yet: Then sit ye awhile, and tipple a bit; For we’re not very fou, but we’re gayly yet.” She snatched up Carmina’s medicine glass, and waved it over her head with a Bacchanalian screech. “Fill a brimmer, Tammie! Here’s to Redshanks!”
“And pray who is Redshanks?” asked a lady, standing in the doorway. Zo turned round—and instantly collapsed. A terrible figure, associated with lessons and punishments, stood before her. The convivial friend of Donald, the established Missus of Lord Northlake, disappeared—and a polite pupil took their place. “If you please, Miss Minerva, Redshanks is nickname for a Highlander.” Who would have recognised the singer of “We’re gayly yet,” in the subdued young person who made that reply?
The door opened again. Another disastrous intrusion? Yes, another! Teresa appeared this time—caught Zo up in her arms—and gave the child a kiss that was heard all over the room. “Ah, mia Giocosa!” cried the old nurse—too happy to speak in any language but her own. “What does that mean?” Zo asked, settling her ruffled petticoats. “It means,” said Teresa, who prided herself on her English, “Ah, my Jolly.” This to a young lady who could slit a haggis! This to the only person in Scotland, privileged to smack Donald’s legs! Zo turned to her father, and recovered her dignity. Maria herself could hardly have spoken with more severe propriety. “I wish to go home,” said Zo.
Ovid had only to look at Carmina, and to see the necessity of immediate compliance with his little sister’s wishes. No more laughing, no more excitement, for that day. He led Zo out himself, and resigned her to her father at the door of his rooms on the ground floor.
Cheered already by having got away from Miss Minerva and the nurse, Zo desired to know who lived downstairs; and, hearing that these were Ovid’s rooms, insisted on seeing them. The three went in together.
Ovid drew Mr. Gallilee into a corner. “I’m easier about Carmina now,” he said. “The failure of her memory doesn’t extend backwards. It begins with the shock to her brain, on the day when Teresa removed her to this house—and it will end, I feel confident, with the end of her illness.”
Mr. Gallilee’s attention suddenly wandered. “Zo!” he called out, “don’t touch your brother’s papers.”
The one object that had excited the child’s curiosity was the writing-table. Dozens of sheets of paper were scattered over it, covered with writing, blotted and interlined. Some of these leaves had overflowed the table, and found a resting-place on the floor. Zo was amusing herself by picking them up. “Well!” she said, handing them obediently to Ovid, “I’ve had many a rap on the knuckles for writing not half as bad as yours.”
Hearing his daughter’s remark, Mr. Gallilee became interested in looking at the fragments of manuscript. “What an awful mess!” he exclaimed. “May I try if I can read a bit?” Ovid smiled. “Try by all means; you will make one useful discovery at least—you will see that the most patient men on the face of the civilised earth are Printers!”
Mr. Gallilee tried a page—and gave it up before he turned giddy. “Is it fair to ask what this is?”
“Something easy to feel, and hard to express,” Ovid answered. “These ill-written lines are my offering of gratitude to the memory of an unknown and unhappy man.”
“The man you told me of, who died at Montreal?”
“Yes.”
“You never mentioned his name.”
“His last wishes forbade me to mention it to any living creature. God knows there were pitiable, most pitiable, reasons for his dying unknown! The stone over his grave only bears his initials, and the date of his death. But,” said Ovid, kindling with enthusiasm, as he laid his hand on his manuscript, “the discoveries of this great physician shall benefit humanity! And my debt to him shall be acknowledged, with the admiration and the devotion that I truly feel!”
“In a book?” asked Mr. Gallilee.
“In a book that is now being printed. You will see it before the New Year.”
Finding nothing to amuse her in the sitting-room, Zo had tried the bedroom next. She now returned to Ovid, dragging after her a long white staff that looked like an Alpen-stock. “What’s this?” she asked. “A broomstick?”
“A specimen of rare Canadian wood, my dear. Would you like to have it?”
Zo took the offer quite seriously. She looked with longing eyes at the specimen, three times as tall as herself—and shook her head. “I’m not big enough for it, yet,” she said. “Look at it, papa! Benjulia’s stick is nothing to this.”
That name—on the child’s lips—had a sound revolting to Ovid. “Don’t speak of him!” he said irritably.
“Mustn’t I speak of him,” Zo asked, “when I want him to tickle me?” Ovid beckoned to her father. “Take her away now,” he whispered—“and never let her see that man again.”
The warning was needless. The man’s destiny had decreed that he and Zo were never more to meet.