Two days passed. In spite of the warnings that he had received, Ovid remained in London.
The indisputable authority of Benjulia had no more effect on him than the unanswerable arguments of Mrs. Gallilee. “Recent circumstances” (as his mother expressed it) “had strengthened his infatuated resistance to reason.” The dreaded necessity for Teresa’s departure had been hastened by a telegram from Italy: Ovid felt for Carmina’s distress with sympathies which made her dearer to him than ever. On the second morning after the visit to the Zoological Gardens, her fortitude had been severely tried. She had found the telegram under her pillow, enclosed in a farewell letter. Teresa had gone.
“My Carmina,—I have kissed you, and cried over you, and I am writing good-bye as well as my poor eyes will let me. Oh, my heart’s darling, I cannot be cruel enough to wake you, and see you suffer! Forgive me for going away, with only this dumb farewell. I am so fond of you—that is my only excuse. While he still lives, my helpless old man has his claim on me. Write by every post, and trust me to write back—and remember what I said when I spoke of Ovid. Love the good man who loves you; and try to make the best of the others. They cannot surely be cruel to the poor angel who depends on their kindness. Oh, how hard life is—”
The paper was blotted, and the rest was illegible.
The miserable day of Teresa’s departure was passed by Carmina in the solitude of her room: gently and firmly, she refused to see anyone. This strange conduct added to Mrs. Gallilee’s anxieties. Already absorbed in considering Ovid’s obstinacy, and the means of overcoming it, she was now confronted by a resolute side in the character of her niece, which took her by surprise. There might be difficulties to come, in managing Carmina, which she had not foreseen. Meanwhile, she was left to act on her own unaided discretion in the serious matter of her son’s failing health. Benjulia had refused to help her; he was too closely occupied in his laboratory to pay or receive visits. “I have already given my advice” (the doctor wrote). “Send him away. When he has had a month’s change, let me see his letters; and then, if I have anything more to say, I will tell you what I think of your son.”
Left in this position, Mrs. Gallilee’s hard self-denial yielded to the one sound conclusion that lay before her. The only influence that could be now used over Ovid, with the smallest chance of success, was the influence of Carmina. Three days after Teresa’s departure, she invited her niece to take tea in her own boudoir. Carmina found her reading. “A charming book,” she said, as she laid it down, “on a most interesting subject, Geographical Botany. The author divides the earth into twenty-five botanical regions—but, I forget; you are not like Maria; you don’t care about these things.”
“I am so ignorant,” Carmina pleaded. “Perhaps, I may know better when I get older.” A book on the table attracted her by its beautiful binding. She took it up. Mrs. Gallilee looked at her with compassionate good humour.
“Science again, my dear,” she said facetiously, “inviting you in a pretty dress! You have taken up the ‘Curiosities of Coprolites.’ That book is one of my distinctions—a presentation copy from the author.”
“What are Coprolites?” Carmina asked, trying to inform herself on the subject of her aunt’s distinctions.
Still good-humoured, but with an effort that began to appear, Mrs. Gallilee lowered herself to the level of her niece.
“Coprolites,” she explained, “are the fossilised indigestions of extinct reptiles. The great philosopher who has written that book has discovered scales, bones, teeth, and shells—the undigested food of those interesting Saurians. What a man! what a field for investigation! Tell me about your own reading. What have you found in the library?”
“Very interesting books—at least to me,” Carmina answered. “I have found many volumes of poetry. Do you ever read poetry?”
Mrs. Gallilee laid herself back in her chair, and submitted patiently to her niece’s simplicity. “Poetry?” she repeated, in accents of resignation. “Oh, good heavens!”
Unlucky Carmina tried a more promising topic. “What beautiful flowers you have in the drawing-room!” she said.
“Nothing remarkable, my dear. Everybody has flowers in their drawing-rooms—they are part of the furniture.”
“Did you arrange them yourself, aunt?”
Mrs. Gallilee still endured it. “The florist’s man,” she said, “does all that. I sometimes dissect flowers, but I never trouble myself to arrange them. What would be the use of the man if I did?” This view of the question struck Carmina dumb. Mrs. Gallilee went on. “By-the-by, talking of flowers reminds one of other superfluities. Have you tried the piano in your room? Will it do?”
“The tone is quite perfect!” Carmina answered with enthusiasm. “Did you choose it?” Mrs. Gallilee looked as if she was going to say “Good Heavens!” again, and perhaps to endure it no longer. Carmina was too simple to interpret these signs in the right way. Why should her aunt not choose a piano? “Don’t you like music?” she asked.
Mrs. Gallilee made a last effort. “When you see a little more of society, my child, you will know that one must like music. So again with pictures—one must go to the Royal Academy Exhibition. So again—”
Before she could mention any more social sacrifices, the servant came in with a letter, and stopped her.
Mrs. Gallilee looked at the address. The weary indifference of her manner changed to vivid interest, the moment she saw the handwriting. “From the Professor!” she exclaimed. “Excuse me, for one minute.” She read the letter, and closed it again with a sigh of relief. “I knew it!” she said to herself. “I have always maintained that the albuminoid substance of frog’s eggs is insufficient (viewed as nourishment) to transform a tadpole into a frog—and, at last, the Professor owns that I am right. I beg your pardon, Carmina; I am carried away by a subject that I have been working at in my stolen intervals for weeks past. Let me give you some tea. I have asked Miss Minerva to join us. What is keeping her, I wonder? She is usually so punctual. I suppose Zoe has been behaving badly again.”
In a few minutes more, the governess herself confirmed this maternal forewarning of the truth. Zo had declined to commit to memory “the political consequences of the granting of Magna Charta”—and now stood reserved for punishment, when her mother “had time to attend to it.” Mrs. Gallilee at once disposed of this little responsibility. “Bread and water for tea,” she said, and proceeded to the business of the evening.
“I wish to speak to you both,” she began, “on the subject of my son.”
The two persons addressed waited in silence to hear more. Carmina’s head drooped: she looked down. Miss Minerva attentively observed Mrs. Gallilee. “Why am I invited to hear what she has to say about her son?” was the question which occurred to the governess. “Is she afraid that Carmina might tell me about it, if I was not let into the family secrets?”
Admirably reasoned, and correctly guessed!
Mrs. Gallilee had latterly observed that the governess was insinuating herself into the confidence of her niece—that is to say, into the confidence of a young lady, whose father was generally reported to have died in possession of a handsome fortune. Personal influence, once obtained over an heiress, is not infrequently misused. To check the further growth of a friendship of this sort (without openly offending Miss Minerva) was an imperative duty. Mrs. Gallilee saw her way to the discreet accomplishment of that object. Her niece and her governess were interested—diversely interested—in Ovid. If she invited them both together, to consult with her on the delicate subject of her son, there would be every chance of exciting some difference of opinion, sufficiently irritating to begin the process of estrangement, by keeping them apart when they had left the tea-table.
“It is most important that there should be no misunderstanding among us,” Mrs. Gallilee proceeded. “Let me set the example of speaking without reserve. We all three know that Ovid persists in remaining in London—”
She paused, on the point of finishing the sentence. Although she had converted a Professor, Mrs. Gallilee was still only a woman. There did enter into her other calculations, the possibility of exciting some accidental betrayal of her governess’s passion for her son. On alluding to Ovid, she turned suddenly to Miss Minerva. “I am sure you will excuse my troubling you with family anxieties,” she said—“especially when they are connected with the health of my son.”
It was cleverly done, but it laboured under one disadvantage. Miss Minerva had no idea of what the needless apology meant, having no suspicion of the discovery of her secret by her employer. But to feel herself baffled in trying to penetrate Mrs. Gallilee’s motives was enough, of itself, to put Mrs. Gallilee’s governess on her guard for the rest of the evening.
“You honour me, madam, by admitting me to your confidence”—was what she said. “Trip me up, you cat, if you can!”—was what she thought.
Mrs. Gallilee resumed.
“We know that Ovid persists in remaining in London, when change of air and scene are absolutely necessary to the recovery of his health. And we know why. Carmina, my child, don’t think for a moment that I blame you! don’t even suppose that I blame my son. You are too charming a person not to excuse, nay even to justify, any man’s admiration. But let us (as we hard old people say) look the facts in the face. If Ovid had not seen you, he would be now on the health-giving sea, on his way to Spain and Italy. You are the innocent cause of his obstinate indifference, his most deplorable and dangerous disregard of the duty which he owes to himself. He refuses to listen to his mother, he sets the opinion of his skilled medical colleague at defiance. But one person has any influence over him now.” She paused again, and tried to trip up the governess once more. “Miss Minerva, let me appeal to You. I regard you as a member of our family; I have the sincerest admiration of your tact and good sense. Am I exceeding the limits of delicacy, if I say plainly to my niece, Persuade Ovid to go?”
If Carmina had possessed an elder sister, with a plain personal appearance and an easy conscience, not even that sister could have matched the perfect composure with which Miss Minerva replied.
“I don’t possess your happy faculty of expressing yourself, Mrs. Gallilee. But, if I had been in your place, I should have said to the best of my poor ability exactly what you have said now.” She bent her head with a graceful gesture of respect, and looked at Carmina with a gentle sisterly interest while she stirred her tea.
At the very opening of the skirmish, Mrs. Gallilee was defeated. She had failed to provoke the slightest sign of jealousy, or even of ill-temper. Unquestionably the most crafty and most cruel woman of the two—possessing the most dangerously deceitful manner, and the most mischievous readiness of language—she was, nevertheless, Miss Minerva’s inferior in the one supreme capacity of which they both stood in need, the capacity for self-restraint.
She showed this inferiority on expressing her thanks. The underlying malice broke through the smooth surface that was intended to hide it. “I am apt to doubt myself,” she said; “and such sound encouragement as yours always relieves me. Of course I don’t ask you for more than a word of advice. Of course I don’t expect you to persuade Ovid.”
“Of course not!” Miss Minerva agreed. “May I ask for a little more sugar in my tea?”
Mrs. Gallilee turned to Carmina.
“Well, my dear? I have spoken to you, as I might have spoken to one of my own daughters, if she had been of your age. Tell me frankly, in return, whether I may count on your help.”
Still pale and downcast, Carmina obeyed. “I will do my best, if you wish it. But—”
“Yes? Go on.”
She still hesitated. Mrs. Gallilee tried gentle remonstrance. “My child, surely you are not afraid of me?”
She was certainly afraid. But she controlled herself.
“You are Ovid’s mother, and I am only his cousin,” she resumed. “I don’t like to hear you say that my influence over him is greater than yours.”
It was far from the poor girl’s intention; but there was an implied rebuke in this. In her present state of irritation, Mrs. Gallilee felt it.
“Come! come!” she said. “Don’t affect to be ignorant, my dear, of what you know perfectly well.”
Carmina lifted her head. For the first time in the experience of the two elder women, this gentle creature showed that she could resent an insult. The fine spirit that was in her fired her eyes, and fixed them firmly on her aunt.
“Do you accuse me of deceit?” she asked.
“Let us call it false modesty,” Mrs. Gallilee retorted.
Carmina rose without another word—and walked out of the room.
In the extremity of her surprise, Mrs. Gallilee appealed to Miss Minerva. “Is she in a passion?”
“She didn’t bang the door,” the governess quietly remarked.
“I am not joking, Miss Minerva.”
“I am not joking either, madam.”
The tone of that answer implied an uncompromising assertion of equality. You are not to suppose (it said) that a lady drops below your level, because she receives a salary and teaches your children. Mrs. Gallilee was so angry, by this time, that she forgot the importance of preventing a conference between Miss Minerva and her niece. For once, she was the creature of impulse—the overpowering impulse to dismiss her insolent governess from her hospitable table.
“May I offer you another cup of tea?”
“Thank you—no more. May I return to my pupils?”
“By all means!”
Carmina had not been five minutes in her own room before she heard a knock at the door. Had Mrs. Gallilee followed her? “Who is there?” she asked. And a voice outside answered,
“Only Miss Minerva!”
“I am afraid I have startled you?” said the governess, carefully closing the door.
“I thought it was my aunt,” Carmina answered, as simply as a child.
“Have you been crying?”
“I couldn’t help it, Miss Minerva.”
“Mrs. Gallilee spoke cruelly to you—I don’t wonder at your feeling angry.”
Carmina gently shook her head. “I have been crying,” she explained, “because I am sorry and ashamed. How can I make it up with my aunt? Shall I go back at once and beg her pardon? I think you are my friend, Miss Minerva. Will you advise me?”
It was so prettily and innocently said that even the governess was touched—for a moment. “Shall I prove to you that I am your friend?” she proposed. “I advise you not to go back yet to your aunt—and I will tell you why. Mrs. Gallilee bears malice; she is a thoroughly unforgiving woman. And I should be the first to feel it, if she knew what I have just said to you.”
“Oh, Miss Minerva! you don’t think that I would betray your confidence?”
“No, my dear, I don’t. I felt attracted towards you, when we first met. You didn’t return the feeling—you (very naturally) disliked me. I am ugly and ill-tempered: and, if there is anything good in me, it doesn’t show itself on the surface. Yes! yes! I believe you are beginning to understand me. If I can make your life here a little happier, as time goes on, I shall be only too glad to do it.” She put her long yellow hands on either side of Carmina’s head, and kissed her forehead.
The poor child threw her arms round Miss Minerva’s neck, and cried her heart out on the bosom of the woman who was deceiving her. “I have nobody left, now Teresa has gone,” she said. “Oh, do try to be kind to me—I feel so friendless and so lonely!”
Miss Minerva neither moved nor spoke. She waited, and let the girl cry.
Her heavy black eyebrows gathered into a frown; her sallow face deepened in colour. She was in a state of rebellion against herself. Through all the hardening influences of the woman’s life—through the fortifications against good which watchful evil builds in human hearts—that innocent outburst of trust and grief had broken its way; and had purified for a while the fetid inner darkness with divine light. She had entered the room, with her own base interests to serve. In her small sordid way she, like her employer, was persecuted by debts—miserable debts to sellers of expensive washes, which might render her ugly complexion more passable in Ovid’s eyes; to makers of costly gloves, which might show Ovid the shape of her hands, and hide their colour; to skilled workmen in fine leather, who could tempt Ovid to look at her high instep, and her fine ankle—the only beauties that she could reveal to the only man whom she cared to please. For the time, those importunate creditors ceased to threaten her. For the time, what she had heard in the conservatory, while they were reading the Will, lost its tempting influence. She remained in the room for half an hour more—and she left it without having borrowed a farthing.
“Are you easier now?”
“Yes, dear.”
Carmina dried her eyes, and looked shyly at Miss Minerva. “I have been treating you as if I had a sister,” she said; “you don’t think me too familiar, I hope?”
“I wish I was your sister, God knows!”
The words were hardly out of her mouth before she was startled by her own fervour. “Shall I tell you what to do with Mrs. Gallilee?” she said abruptly. “Write her a little note.”
“Yes! yes! and you will take it for me?”
Carmina’s eyes brightened through her tears, the suggestion was such a relief! In a minute the note was written: “My dear Aunt, I have behaved very badly, and I am very much ashamed of it. May I trust to your kind indulgence to forgive me? I will try to be worthier of your kindness for the future; and I sincerely beg your pardon.” She signed her name in breathless haste. “Please take it at once!” she said eagerly.
Miss Minerva smiled. “If I take it,” she said, “I shall do harm instead of good—I shall be accused of interfering. Give it to one of the servants. Not yet! When Mrs. Gallilee is angry, she doesn’t get over it so soon as you seem to think. Leave her to dabble in science first,” said the governess in tones of immeasurable contempt. “When she has half stifled herself with some filthy smell, or dissected some wretched insect or flower, she may be in a better humour. Wait.”
Carmina thought of the happy days at home in Italy, when her father used to laugh at her little outbreaks of temper, and good Teresa only shrugged her shoulders. What a change—oh, me, what a change for the worse! She drew from her bosom a locket, hung round her neck by a thin gold chain—and opened it, and kissed the glass over the miniature portraits inside. “Would you like to see them?” she said to Miss Minerva. “My mother’s likeness was painted for me by my father; and then he had his photograph taken to match it. I open my portraits and look at them, while I say my prayers. It’s almost like having them alive again, sometimes. Oh, if I only had my father to advise me now—!” Her heart swelled—but she kept back the tears: she was learning that self-restraint, poor soul, already! “Perhaps,” she went on, “I ought not to want advice. After that fainting-fit in the Gardens, if I can persuade Ovid to leave us, I ought to do it—and I will do it!”
Miss Minerva crossed the room, and looked out of window. Carmina had roused the dormant jealousy; Carmina had fatally weakened the good influences which she had herself produced. The sudden silence of her new friend perplexed her. She too went to the window. “Do you think it would be taking a liberty?” she asked.
“No.”
A short answer—and still looking out of window! Carmina tried again. “Besides, there are my aunt’s wishes to consider. After my bad behaviour—”
Miss Minerva turned round from the window sharply. “Of course! There can’t be a doubt of it.” Her tone softened a little. “You are young, Carmina—I suppose I may call you by your name—you are young and simple. Do those innocent eyes of yours ever see below the surface?”
“I don’t quite understand you.”
“Do you think your aunt’s only motive in wishing Mr. Ovid Vere to leave London is anxiety about his health? Do you feel no suspicion that she wants to keep him away from You?”
Carmina toyed with her locket, in an embarrassment which she was quite unable to disguise. “Are you afraid to trust me?” Miss Minerva asked. That reproach opened the girl’s lips instantly.
“I am afraid to tell you how foolish I am,” she answered. “Perhaps, I still feel a little strangeness between us? It seems to be so formal to call you Miss Minerva. I don’t know what your Christian name is. Will you tell me?”
Miss Minerva replied rather unwillingly. “My name is Frances. Don’t call me Fanny!”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too absurd to be endured! What does the mere sound of Fanny suggest? A flirting, dancing creature—plump and fair, and playful and pretty!” She went to the looking-glass, and pointed disdainfully to the reflection of herself. “Sickening to think of,” she said, “when you look at that. Call me Frances—a man’s name, with only the difference between an i and an e. No sentiment in it; hard, like me. Well, what was it you didn’t like to say of yourself?”
Carmina dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s no use asking me what I do see, or don’t see, in my aunt,” she answered. “I am afraid we shall never be—what we ought to be to each other. When she came to that concert, and sat by me and looked at me—” She stopped, and shuddered over the recollection of it.
Miss Minerva urged her to go on—first, by a gesture; then by a suggestion: “They said you fainted under the heat.”
“I didn’t feel the heat. I felt a horrid creeping all over me. Before I looked at her, mind!—when I only knew that somebody was sitting next to me. And then, I did look round. Her eyes and my eyes flashed into each other. In that one moment, I lost all sense of myself as if I was dead. I can only tell you of it in that way. It was a dreadful surprise to me to remember it—and a dreadful pain—when they brought me to myself again. Though I do look so little and so weak, I am stronger than people think; I never fainted before. My aunt is—how can I say it properly?—hard to get on with since that time. Is there something wicked in my nature? I do believe she feels in the same way towards me. Yes; I dare say it’s imagination, but it’s as bad as reality for all that. Oh, I am sure you are right—she does want to keep Ovid out of my way!”
“Because she doesn’t like you?” said Miss Minerva. “Is that the only reason you can think of?”
“What other reason can there be?”
The governess summoned her utmost power of self-restraint. She needed it, even to speak of the bare possibility of Carmina’s marriage to Ovid, as if it was only a matter of speculative interest to herself.
“Some people object to marriages between cousins,” she said. “You are cousins. Some people object to marriages between Catholics and Protestants. You are a Catholic—” No! She could not trust herself to refer to him directly; she went on to the next sentence. “And there might be some other reason,” she resumed.
“Do you know what that is?” Carmina asked.
“No more than you do—thus far.”
She spoke the plain truth. Thanks to the dog’s interruption, and to the necessity of saving herself from discovery, the last clauses of the Will had been read in her absence.
“Can’t you even guess what it is?” Carmina persisted.
“Mrs. Gallilee is very ambitious,” the governess replied: “and her son has a fortune of his own. She may wish him to marry a lady of high rank. But—no—she is always in need of money. In some way, money may be concerned in it.”
“In what way?” Carmina asked.
“I have already told you,” Miss Minerva answered, “that I don’t know.”
Before the conversation could proceed, they were interrupted by the appearance of Mrs. Gallilee’s maid, with a message from the schoolroom. Miss Maria wanted a little help in her Latin lesson. Noticing Carmina’s letter, as she advanced to the door, it struck Miss Minerva that the woman might deliver it. “Is Mrs. Gallilee at home?” she asked. Mrs. Gallilee had just gone out. “One of her scientific lectures, I suppose,” said Miss Minerva to Carmina. “Your note must wait till she comes back.”
The door closed on the governess—and the lady’s-maid took a liberty. She remained in the room; and produced a morsel of folded paper, hitherto concealed from view. Smirking and smiling, she handed the paper to Carmina.
“From Mr. Ovid, Miss.”
In those two lines, Ovid’s note began and ended. Mrs. Gallilee’s maid—deeply interested in an appointment which was not without precedent in her own experience—ventured on an expression of sympathy, before she returned to the servants’ hall. “Please to excuse me, Miss; I hope Mr. Ovid isn’t ill? He looked sadly pale, I thought. Allow me to give you your hat.” Carmina thanked her, and hurried downstairs.
Ovid was waiting at the gate of the Square—and he did indeed look wretchedly ill.
It was useless to make inquiries; they only seemed to irritate him. “I am better already, now you have come to me.” He said that, and led the way to a sheltered seat among the trees. In the later evening-time the Square was almost empty. Two middle-aged ladies, walking up and down (who considerately remembered their own youth, and kept out of the way), and a boy rigging a model yacht (who was too closely occupied to notice them), were the only persons in the enclosure besides themselves.
“Does my mother know that you have come here?” Ovid asked.
“Mrs. Gallilee has gone out. I didn’t stop to think of it, when I got your letter. Am I doing wrong?”
Ovid took her hand. “Is it doing wrong to relieve me of anxieties that I have no courage to endure? When we meet in the house either my mother or her obedient servant, Miss Minerva, is sure to interrupt us. At last, my darling, I have got you to myself! You know that I love you. Why can’t I look into your heart, and see what secrets it is keeping from me? I try to hope; but I want some little encouragement. Carmina! shall I ever hear you say that you love me?”
She trembled, and turned away her head. Her own words to the governess were in her mind; her own conviction of the want of all sympathy between his mother and herself made her shrink from answering him.
“I understand your silence.” With those words he dropped her hand, and looked at her no more.
It was sadly, not bitterly spoken. She attempted to find excuses; she showed but too plainly how she pitied him. “If I only had myself to think of—” Her voice failed her. A new life came into his eyes, the colour rose in his haggard face: even those few faltering words had encouraged him!
She tried again to make him understand her. “I am so afraid of distressing you, Ovid; and I am so anxious not to make mischief between you and your mother—”
“What has my mother to do with it?”
She went on, without noticing the interruption. “You won’t think me ungrateful? We had better speak of something else. Only this evening, your mother sent for me, and—don’t be angry!—I am afraid she might be vexed if she knew what you have been saying to me. Perhaps I am wrong? Perhaps she only thinks I am too young. Oh, Ovid, how you look at me! Your mother hasn’t said in so many words—”
“What has she said?”
In that question she saw the chance of speaking to him of other interests than the interests of love.
“You must go away to another climate,” she said; “and your mother tells me I must persuade you to do it. I obey her with a heavy heart. Dear Ovid, you know how I shall miss you; you know what a loss it will be to me, when you say good-bye—but there is only one way to get well again. I entreat you to take that way! Your mother thinks I have some influence over you. Have I any influence?”
“Judge for yourself,” he answered. “You wish me to leave you?”
“For your own sake. Only for your own sake.”
“Do you wish me to come back again?”
“It’s cruel to ask the question!”
“It rests with you, Carmina. Send me away when you like, and where you like. But, before I go, give me my one reason for making the sacrifice. No change will do anything for me, no climate will restore my health—unless you give me your love. I am old enough to know myself; I have thought of it by day and by night. Am I cruel to press you in this way? I will only say one word more. It doesn’t matter what becomes of me—if you refuse to be my wife.”
Without experience, without advice—with her own heart protesting against her silence—the restraint that she had laid on herself grew harder and harder to endure. The tears rose in her eyes. He saw them; they embittered his mind against his mother. With a darkening face he rose, and walked up and down before her, struggling with himself.
“This is my mother’s doing,” he said.
His tone terrified her. The dread, present to her mind all through the interview, of making herself a cause of estrangement between mother and son, so completely overcame her that she even made an attempt to defend Mrs. Gallilee! At the first words, he sat down by her again. For a moment, he scrutinised her face without mercy—and then repented of his own severity.
“My poor child,” he said, “you are afraid to tell me what has happened. I won’t press you to speak against your own inclinations. It would be cruel and needless—I have got at the truth at last. In the one hope of my life, my mother is my enemy. She is bent on separating us; she shall not succeed. I won’t leave you.”
Carmina looked at him. His eyes dropped before her, in confusion and shame.
“Are you angry with me?” she asked.
No reproaches could have touched his heart as that question touched it. “Angry with you? Oh, my darling, if you only knew how angry I am with myself! It cuts me to the heart to see how I have distressed you. I am a miserable selfish wretch; I don’t deserve your love. Forgive me, and forget me. I will make the best atonement I can, Carmina. I will go away to-morrow.”
Under hard trial, she had preserved her self-control. She had resisted him; she had resisted herself. His sudden submission disarmed her in an instant. With a low cry of love and fear she threw her arms round his neck, and laid her burning cheek against his face. “I can’t help it,” she whispered; “oh, Ovid, don’t despise me!” His arms closed round her; his lips were pressed to hers. “Kiss me,” he said. She kissed him, trembling in his embrace. That innocent self-abandonment did not plead with him in vain. He released her—and only held her hand. There was silence between them; long, happy silence.
He was the first to speak again. “How can I go away now?” he said.
She only smiled at that reckless forgetfulness of the promise, by which he had bound himself a few minutes since. “What did you tell me,” she asked playfully, “when you called yourself by hard names, and said you didn’t deserve my love?” Her smile vanished softly, and left only a look of tender entreaty in its place. “Set me an example of firmness, Ovid—don’t leave it all to me! Remember what you have made me say. Remember”—she only hesitated for a moment—“remember what an interest I have in you now. I love you, Ovid. Say you will go.”
He said it gratefully. “My life is yours; my will is yours. Decide for me, and I will begin my journey.”
She was so impressed by her sense of this new responsibility, that she answered him as gravely as if she had been his wife. “I must give you time to pack up,” she said.
“Say time to be with You!”
She fell into thought. He asked if she was still considering when to send him away. “No,” she said; “it isn’t that. I was wondering at myself. What is it that makes a great man like you so fond of me?”
His arm stole round her waist. He could just see her in the darkening twilight under the trees; the murmuring of the leaves was the only sound near them—his kisses lingered on her face. She sighed softly. “Don’t make it too hard for me to send you away!” she whispered. He raised her, and put her arm in his. “Come,” he said, “we will walk a little in the cool air.”
They returned to the subject of his departure. It was still early in the week. She inquired if Saturday would be too soon to begin his journey. No: he felt it, too—the longer they delayed, the harder the parting would be.
“Have you thought yet where you will go?” she asked.
“I must begin with a sea-voyage,” he replied. “Long railway journeys, in my present state, will only do me harm. The difficulty is where to go to. I have been to America; India is too hot; Australia is too far. Benjulia has suggested Canada.”
As he mentioned the doctor’s name, her hand mechanically pressed his arm.
“That strange man!” she said. “Even his name startles one; I hardly know what to think of him. He seemed to have more feeling for the monkey than for you or me. It was certainly kind of him to take the poor creature home, and try what he could do with it. Are you sure he is a great chemist?”
Ovid stopped. Such a question, from Carmina, sounded strange to him. “What makes you doubt it?” he said.
“You won’t laugh at me, Ovid?”
“You know I won’t!”
“Now you shall hear. We knew a famous Italian chemist at Rome—such a nice old man! He and my father used to play piquet; and I looked at them, and tried to learn—and I was too stupid. But I had plenty of opportunities of noticing our old friend’s hands. They were covered with stains; and he caught me looking at them. He was not in the least offended; he told me his experiments had spotted his skin in that way, and nothing would clean off the stains. I saw Doctor Benjulia’s great big hands, while he was giving you the brandy—and I remembered afterwards that there were no stains on them. I seem to surprise you.”
“You do indeed surprise me. After knowing Benjulia for years, I have never noticed, what you have discovered on first seeing him.”
“Perhaps he has some way of cleaning the stains off his hands.”
Ovid agreed to this, as the readiest means of dismissing the subject. Carmina had really startled him. Some irrational connection between the great chemist’s attention to the monkey, and the perplexing purity of his hands, persisted in vaguely asserting itself in Ovid’s mind. His unacknowledged doubts of Benjulia troubled him as they had never troubled him yet. He turned to Carmina for relief.
“Still thinking, my love?”
“Thinking of you,” she answered. “I want you to promise me something—and I am afraid to ask it.”
“Afraid? You don’t love me, after all!”
“Then I will say it at once! How long do you expect to be away?”
“For two or three months, perhaps.”
“Promise to wait till you return, before you tell your mother—”
“That we are engaged?”
“Yes.”
“You have my promise, Carmina; but you make me uneasy.”
“Why?”
“In my absence, you will be under my mother’s care. And you don’t like my mother.”
Few words and plain words—and they sorely troubled her.
If she owned that he was right, what would the consequence be? He might refuse to leave her. Even assuming that he controlled himself, he would take his departure harassed by anxieties, which might exercise the worst possible influence over the good effect of the journey. To prevaricate with herself or with him was out of the question. That very evening she had quarrelled with his mother; and she had yet to discover whether Mrs. Gallilee had forgiven her. In her heart of hearts she hated deceit—and in her heart of hearts she longed to set his mind at ease. In that embarrassing position, which was the right way out? Satan persuaded Eve; and Love persuaded Carmina. Love asked if she was cruel enough to make her heart’s darling miserable when he was so fond of her? Before she could realise it, she had begun to deceive him. Poor humanity! poor Carmina!
“You are almost as hard on me as if you were Doctor Benjulia himself!” she said. “I feel your mother’s superiority—and you tell me I don’t like her. Haven’t you seen how good she has been to me?”
She thought this way of putting it irresistible. Ovid resisted, nevertheless. Carmina plunged into lower depths of deceit immediately.
“Haven’t you seen my pretty rooms—my piano—my pictures—my china—my flowers? I should be the most insensible creature living if I didn’t feel grateful to your mother.”
“And yet, you are afraid of her.”
She shook his arm impatiently. “I say, No!”
He was as obstinate as ever. “I say, Yes! If you’re not afraid, why do you wish to keep our engagement from my mother’s knowledge?”
His reasoning was unanswerable. But where is the woman to be found who is not supple enough to slip through the stiff fingers of Reason? She sheltered herself from his logic behind his language.
“Must I remind you again of the time when you were angry?” she rejoined. “You said your mother was bent on separating us. If I don’t want her to know of our engagement just yet—isn’t that a good reason?” She rested her head caressingly on his shoulder. “Tell me,” she went on, thinking of one of Miss Minerva’s suggestions, “doesn’t my aunt look to a higher marriage for you than a marriage with me?”
It was impossible to deny that Mrs. Gallilee’s views might justify that inquiry. Had she not more than once advised him to wait a few years—in other words, to wait until he had won the highest honours of his profession—before he thought of marrying at all? But Carmina was too precious to him to be humiliated by comparisons with other women, no matter what their rank might be. He paid her a compliment, instead of giving her an answer.
“My mother can’t look higher than you,” he said. “I wish I could feel sure, Carmina—in leaving you with her—that I am leaving you with a friend whom you trust and love.”
There was a sadness in his tone that grieved her. “Wait till you come back,” she replied, speaking as gaily as she could. “You will be ashamed to remember your own misgivings. And don’t forget, dear, that I have another friend besides your mother—the best and kindest of friends—to take care of me.”
Ovid heard this with some surprise. “A friend in my mother’s house?” he asked.
“Certainly!”
“Who is it?”
“Miss Minerva.”
“What!” His tone expressed such immeasurable amazement, that Carmina’s sense of justice was roused in defence of her new friend.
“If I began by wronging Miss Minerva, I had the excuse of being a stranger,” she said, warmly. “You have known her for years, and you ought to have found out her good qualities long since! Are all men alike, I wonder? Even my kind dear father used to call ugly women the inexcusable mistakes of Nature. Poor Miss Minerva says herself she is ugly, and expects everybody to misjudge her accordingly. I don’t misjudge her, for one. Teresa has left me; and you are going away next. A miserable prospect, Ovid, but not quite without hope. Frances—yes, I call her by her Christian name, and she calls me by mine!—Frances will console me, and make my life as happy as it can be till you come back.”
Excepting bad temper, and merciless cultivation of the minds of children, Ovid knew of nothing that justified his prejudice against the governess. Still, Carmina’s sudden conversion inspired him with something like alarm. “I suppose you have good reasons for what you tell me,” he said.
“The best reasons,” she replied, in the most positive manner.
He considered for a moment how he could most delicately inquire what those reasons might be. But valuable opportunities may be lost, even in a moment. “Will you help me to do justice to Miss Minerva?” he cautiously began.
“Hush!” Carmina interposed. “Surely, I heard somebody calling to me?”
They paused, and listened. A voice hailed them from the outer side of the garden. They started guiltily. It was the voice of Mrs. Gallilee.