The complimentary allusion to Ovid, which Benjulia had not been able to understand, was contained in a letter from Mr. Morphew, and was expressed in these words:—“Let me sincerely thank you for making us acquainted with Mr. Ovid Vere. Now that he has left us, we really feel as if we had said good-bye to an old friend. I don’t know when I have met with such a perfectly unselfish man—and I say this, speaking from experience of him. In my unavoidable absence, he volunteered to attend a serious case of illness, accompanied by shocking circumstances—and this at a time when, as you know, his own broken health forbids him to undertake any professional duty. While he could preserve the patient’s life—and he did wonders, in this way—he was every day at the bedside, taxing his strength in the service of a perfect stranger. I fancy I see you (with your impatience of letter-writing at any length) looking to the end. Don’t be alarmed. I am writing to your brother Lemuel by this mail, and I have little time to spare.”
Was this “serious case of illness”—described as being “accompanied by shocking circumstances”—a case of disease of the brain?
There was the question, proposed by Benjulia’s inveterate suspicion of Ovid! The bare doubt cost him the loss of a day’s work. He reviled poor Mr. Morphew as “a born idiot” for not having plainly stated what the patient’s malady was, instead of wasting paper on smooth sentences, encumbered by long words. If Ovid had alluded to his Canadian patient in his letters to his mother, his customary preciseness of language might be trusted to relieve Benjulia’s suspense. With that purpose in view, the doctor had written to Mrs. Gallilee.
Before he laid down his pen, he looked once more at Mr. Morphew’s letter, and paused thoughtfully over one line: “I am writing to your brother Lemuel by this mail.”
The information of which he was in search might be in that letter. If Mrs. Gallilee’s correspondence with her son failed to enlighten him, here was another chance of making the desired discovery. Surely the wise course to take would be to write to Lemuel as well.
His one motive for hesitating was dislike of his younger brother—dislike so inveterate that he even recoiled from communicating with Lemuel through the post.
There had never been any sympathy between them; but indifference had only matured into downright enmity, on the doctor’s part, a year since. Accident (the result of his own absence of mind, while he was perplexed by an unsuccessful experiment) had placed Lemuel in possession of his hideous secret. The one person in the world who knew how he was really occupied in the laboratory, was his brother.
Here was the true motive of the bitterly contemptuous tone in which Benjulia had spoken to Ovid of his nearest relation. Lemuel’s character was certainly deserving of severe judgment, in some of its aspects. In his hours of employment (as clerk in the office of a London publisher) he steadily and punctually performed the duties entrusted to him. In his hours of freedom, his sensual instincts got the better of him; and his jealous wife had her reasons for complaint. Among his friends, he was the subject of a wide diversity of opinion. Some of them agreed with his brother in thinking him little better than a fool. Others suspected him of possessing natural abilities, but of being too lazy, perhaps too cunning, to exert them. In the office he allowed himself to be called “a mere machine”—and escaped the overwork which fell to the share of quicker men. When his wife and her relations declared him to be a mere animal, he never contradicted them—and so gained the reputation of a person on whom reprimand was thrown away. Under the protection of this unenviable character, he sometimes said severe things with an air of perfect simplicity. When the furious doctor discovered him in the laboratory, and said, “I’ll be the death of you, if you tell any living creature what I am doing!”—Lemuel answered, with a stare of stupid astonishment, “Make your mind easy; I should be ashamed to mention it.”
Further reflection decided Benjulia on writing. Even when he had a favour to ask, he was unable to address Lemuel with common politeness.
“I hear that Morphew has written to you by the last mail. I want to see the letter.” So much he wrote, and no more. What was barely enough for the purpose, was enough for the doctor, when he addressed his brother.
Between one and two o’clock, the next afternoon, Benjulia (at work in his laboratory) heard the bell which announced the arrival of a visitor at the house. No matter what the circumstances might be, the servants were forbidden to disturb him at his studies in any other way.
Very unwillingly he obeyed the call, locking the door behind him. At that hour it was luncheon-time in well-regulated households, and it was in the last degree unlikely that Mrs. Gallilee could be the visitor. Getting within view of the front of the house, he saw a man standing on the doorstep. Advancing a little nearer, he recognised Lemuel.
“Hullo!” cried the elder brother.
“Hullo!” answered the younger, like an echo.
They stood looking at each other with the suspicious curiosity of two strange cats. Between Nathan Benjulia, the famous doctor, and Lemuel Benjulia, the publisher’s clerk, there was just family resemblance enough to suggest that they were relations. The younger brother was only a little over the ordinary height; he was rather fat than thin; he wore a moustache and whiskers; he dressed smartly—and his prevailing expression announced that he was thoroughly well satisfied with himself. But he inherited Benjulia’s gipsy complexion; and, in form and colour, he had Benjulia’s eyes.
“How-d’ye-do, Nathan?” he said.
“What the devil brings you here?” was the answer.
Lemuel passed over his brother’s rudeness without notice. His mouth curled up at the corners with a mischievous smile.
“I thought you wished to see my letter,” he said.
“Why couldn’t you send it by post?”
“My wife wished me to take the opportunity of calling on you.”
“That’s a lie,” said Benjulia quietly. “Try another excuse. Or do a new thing. For once, speak the truth.”
Without waiting to hear the truth, he led the way into the room in which he had received Ovid. Lemuel followed, still showing no outward appearance of resentment.
“How did you get away from your office?” Benjulia inquired.
“It’s easy to get a holiday at this time of year. Business is slack, old boy—”
“Stop! I don’t allow you to speak to me in that way.”
“No offence, brother Nathan!”
“Brother Lemuel, I never allow a fool to offend me. I put him in his place—that’s all.”
The distant barking of a dog became audible from the lane by which the house was approached. The sound seemed to annoy Benjulia. “What’s that?” he asked.
Lemuel saw his way to making some return for his brother’s reception of him.
“It’s my dog,” he said; “and it’s lucky for you that I have left him in the cab.”
“Why?”
“Well, he’s as sweet-tempered a dog as ever lived. But he has one fault. He doesn’t take kindly to scientific gentlemen in your line of business.” Lemuel paused, and pointed to his brother’s hands. “If he smelt that, he might try his teeth at vivisecting You.”
The spots of blood which Ovid had once seen on Benjulia’s stick, were on his hands now. With unruffled composure he looked at the horrid stains, silently telling their tale of torture.
“What’s the use of washing my hands,” he answered, “when I am going back to my work?”
He wiped his finger and thumb on the tail of his coat. “Now,” he resumed, “if you have got your letter with you, let me look at it.”
Lemuel produced the letter. “There are some bits in it,” he explained, “which you had better not see. If you want the truth—that’s the reason I brought it myself. Read the first page-and then I’ll tell you where to skip.”
So far, there was no allusion to Ovid. Benjulia turned to the second page—and Lemuel pointed to the middle of it. “Read as far as that,” he went on, “and then skip till you come to the last bit at the end.”
On the last page, Ovid’s name appeared. He was mentioned, as a “delightful person, introduced by your brother,”—and with that the letter ended. In the first bitterness of his disappointment, Benjulia conceived an angry suspicion of those portions of the letter which he had been requested to pass over unread.
“What has Morphew got to say to you that I mustn’t read?” he asked.
“Suppose you tell me first, what you want to find in the letter,” Lemuel rejoined. “Morphew is a doctor like you. Is it anything medical?”
Benjulia answered this in the easiest way—he nodded his head.
“Is it Vivisection?” Lemuel inquired slyly.
Benjulia at once handed the letter back, and pointed to the door. His momentary interest in the suppressed passages was at an end. “That will do,” he answered. “Take yourself and your letter away.”
“Ah,” said Lemuel, “I’m glad you don’t want to look at it again!” He put the letter away, and buttoned his coat, and tapped his pocket significantly. “You have got a nasty temper, Nathan—and there are things here that might try it.”
In the case of any other man, Benjulia would have seen that the one object of these prudent remarks was to irritate him. Misled by his profound conviction of his brother’s stupidity, he now thought it possible that the concealed portions of the letter might be worth notice. He stopped Lemuel at the door. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said; “I want to look at the letter again.”
“You had better not,” Lemuel persisted. “Morphew’s going to write a book against you—and he asks me to get it published at our place. I’m on his side, you know; I shall do my best to help him; I can lay my hand on literary fellows who will lick his style into shape—it will be an awful exposure!” Benjulia still held out his hand. With over-acted reluctance, Lemuel unbuttoned his coat. The distant dog barked again as he gave the letter back. “Please excuse my dear old dog,” he said with maudlin tenderness; “the poor dumb animal seems to know that I’m taking his side in the controversy. Bow-wow means, in his language, Fie upon the cruel hands that bore holes in our head and use saws on our backs. Ah, Nathan, if you have got any dogs in that horrid place of yours, pat them and give them their dinner! You never heard me talk like this before—did you? I’m a new man since I joined the Society for suppressing you. Oh, if I only had the gift of writing!”
The effect of this experiment on his brother’s temper, failed to fulfil Lemuel’s expectations. The doctor’s curiosity was roused on the doctor’s own subject of inquiry.
“You’re quite right about one thing,” said Benjulia gravely; “I never heard you talk in this way before. You suggest some interesting considerations, of the medical sort. Come to the light.” He led Lemuel to the window—looked at him with the closest attention—and carefully consulted his pulse. Lemuel smiled. “I’m not joking,” said Benjulia sternly. “Tell me this. Have you had headaches lately? Do you find your memory failing you?”
As he put those questions, he thought to himself—seriously thought—“Is this fellow’s brain softening? I wish I had him on my table!”
Lemuel persisted in presenting himself under a sentimental aspect. He had not forgiven his elder brother’s rudeness yet—and he knew, by experience, the one weakness in Benjulia’s character which, with his small resources, it was possible to attack.
“Thank you for your kind inquiries,” he replied. “Never mind my head, so long as my heart’s in the right place. I don’t pretend to be clever—but I’ve got my feelings; and I could put some awkward questions on what you call Medical Research, if I had Morphew to help me.”
“I’ll help you,” said Benjulia—interested in developing the state of his brother’s brain.
“I don’t believe you,” said Lemuel—interested in developing the state of his brother’s temper.
“Try me, Lemuel.”
“All right, Nathan.”
The two brothers returned to their chairs; reduced for once to the same moral level.
“Now,” said Benjulia, “what is it to be? The favourite public bugbear? Vivisection?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. What can I do for you?”
“Tell me first,” said Lemuel, “what is Law?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Well, then, what ought it to be?”
“Justice, I suppose.”
“Let me wait a bit, Nathan, and get that into my mind.”
Benjulia waited with exemplary patience.
“Now about yourself,” Lemuel continued. “You won’t be offended—will you? Should I be right, if I called you a dissector of living creatures?”
Benjulia was reminded of the day when he had discovered his brother in the laboratory. His dark complexion deepened in hue. His cold gray eyes seemed to promise a coming outbreak. Lemuel went on.
“Does the Law forbid you to make your experiments on a man?” he asked.
“Of course it does!”
“Why doesn’t the Law forbid you to make your experiments on a dog?”
Benjulia’s face cleared again. The one penetrable point in his ironclad nature had not been reached yet. That apparently childish question about the dog appeared, not only to have interested him, but to have taken him by surprise. His attention wandered away from his brother. His clear intellect put Lemuel’s objection in closer logical form, and asked if there was any answer to it, thus:
The Law which forbids you to dissect a living man, allows you to dissect a living dog. Why?
There was positively no answer to this.
Suppose he said, Because a dog is an animal? Could he, as a physiologist, deny that a man is an animal too?
Suppose he said, Because a dog is the inferior creature in intellect? The obvious answer to this would be, But the lower order of savage, or the lower order of lunatic, compared with the dog, is the inferior creature in intellect; and, in these cases, the dog has, on your own showing, the better right to protection of the two.
Suppose he said, Because a man is a creature with a soul, and a dog is a creature without a soul? This would be simply inviting another unanswerable question: How do you know?
Honestly accepting the dilemma which thus presented itself, the conclusion that followed seemed to be beyond dispute.
If the Law, in the matter of Vivisection, asserts the principle of interference, the Law has barred its right to place arbitrary limits on its own action. If it protects any living creatures, it is bound, in reason and in justice, to protect all.
“Well,” said Lemuel, “am I to have an answer?”
“I’m not a lawyer.”
With this convenient reply, Benjulia opened Mr. Morphew’s letter, and read the forbidden part of it which began on the second page. There he found the very questions with which his brother had puzzled him—followed by the conclusion at which he had himself arrived!
“You interpreted the language of your dog just now,” he said quietly to Lemuel; “and I naturally supposed your brain might be softening. Such as it is, I perceive that your memory is in working order. Accept my excuses for feeling your pulse. You have ceased to be an object of interest to me.”
He returned to his reading. Lemuel watched him—still confidently waiting for results.
The letter proceeded in these terms:
“Your employer may perhaps be inclined to publish my work, if I can satisfy him that it will address itself to the general reader.
“We all know what are the false pretences, under which English physiologists practice their cruelties. I want to expose those false pretences in the simplest and plainest way, by appealing to my own experience as an ordinary working member of the medical profession.
“Take the pretence of increasing our knowledge of the curative action of poisons, by trying them on animals. The very poisons, the action of which dogs and cats have been needlessly tortured to demonstrate, I have successfully used on my human patients in the practice of a lifetime.
“I should also like to ask what proof there is that the effect of a poison on an animal may be trusted to inform us, with certainty, of the effect of the same poison on a man. To quote two instances only which justify doubt—and to take birds this time, by way of a change—a pigeon will swallow opium enough to kill a man, and will not be in the least affected by it; and parsley, which is an innocent herb in the stomach of a human being, is deadly poison to a parrot.
“I should deal in the same way, with the other pretence, of improving our practice of surgery by experiment on living animals.
“Not long since, I saw the diseased leg of a dog cut off at the hip joint. When the limb was removed, not a single vessel bled. Try the same operation on a man—and twelve or fifteen vessels must be tied as a matter of absolute necessity.
“Again. We are told by a great authority that the baking of dogs in ovens has led to new discoveries in treating fever. I have always supposed that the heat, in fever, is not a cause of disease, but a consequence. However, let that be, and let us still stick to experience. Has this infernal cruelty produced results which help us to cure scarlet fever? Our bedside practice tells us that scarlet fever runs it course as it always did. I can multiply such examples as these by hundreds when I write my book.
“Briefly stated, you now have the method by which I propose to drag the scientific English Savage from his shelter behind the medical interests of humanity, and to show him in his true character,—as plainly as the scientific Foreign Savage shows himself of his own accord. He doesn’t shrink behind false pretences. He doesn’t add cant to cruelty. He boldly proclaims the truth:—I do it, because I like it!”
Benjulia rose, and threw the letter on the floor.
“I proclaim the truth,” he said; “I do it because I like it. There are some few Englishmen who treat ignorant public opinion with the contempt that it deserves—and I am one of them.” He pointed scornfully to the letter. “That wordy old fool is right about the false pretences. Publish his book, and I’ll buy a copy of it.”
“That’s odd,” said Lemuel.
“What’s odd?”
“Well, Nathan, I’m only a fool—but if you talk in that way of false pretences and public opinion, why do you tell everybody that your horrid cutting and carving is harmless chemistry? And why were you in such a rage when I got into your workshop, and found you out? Answer me that!”
“Let me congratulate you first,” said Benjulia. “It isn’t every fool who knows that he is a fool. Now you shall have your answer. Before the end of the year, all the world will be welcome to come into my workshop, and see me at the employment of my life. Brother Lemuel, when you stole your way through my unlocked door, you found me travelling on the road to the grandest medical discovery of this century. You stupid ass, do you think I cared about what you could find out? I am in such perpetual terror of being forestalled by my colleagues, that I am not master of myself, even when such eyes as yours look at my work. In a month or two more—perhaps in a week or two—I shall have solved the grand problem. I labour at it all day. I think of it, I dream of it, all night. It will kill me. Strong as I am, it will kill me. What do you say? Am I working myself into my grave, in the medical interests of humanity? That for humanity! I am working for my own satisfaction—for my own pride—for my own unutterable pleasure in beating other men—for the fame that will keep my name living hundreds of years hence. Humanity! I say with my foreign brethren—Knowledge for its own sake, is the one god I worship. Knowledge is its own justification and its own reward. The roaring mob follows us with its cry of Cruelty. We pity their ignorance. Knowledge sanctifies cruelty. The old anatomist stole dead bodies for Knowledge. In that sacred cause, if I could steal a living man without being found out, I would tie him on my table, and grasp my grand discovery in days, instead of months. Where are you going? What? You’re afraid to be in the same room with me? A man who can talk as I do, is a man who would stick at nothing? Is that the light in which you lower order of creatures look at us? Look a little higher—and you will see that a man who talks as I do is a man set above you by Knowledge. Exert yourself, and try to understand me. Have I no virtues, even from your point of view? Am I not a good citizen? Don’t I pay my debts? Don’t I serve my friends? You miserable creature, you have had my money when you wanted it! Look at that letter on the floor. The man mentioned in it is one of those colleagues whom I distrust. I did my duty by him for all that. I gave him the information he wanted; I introduced him to a friend in a land of strangers. Have I no feeling, as you call it? My last experiments on a monkey horrified me. His cries of suffering, his gestures of entreaty, were like the cries and gestures of a child. I would have given the world to put him out of his misery. But I went on. In the glorious cause I went on. My hands turned cold—my heart ached—I thought of a child I sometimes play with—I suffered—I resisted—I went on. All for Knowledge! all for Knowledge!”
His brother’s presence was forgotten. His dark face turned livid; his gigantic frame shuddered; his breath came and went in deep sobbing gasps—it was terrible to see him and hear him.
Lemuel slunk out of the room. The jackal had roused the lion; the mean spirit of mischief in him had not bargained for this. “I begin to believe in the devil,” he said to himself when he got to the house door.
As he descended the steps, a carriage appeared in the lane. A footman opened the gate of the enclosure. The carriage approached the house, with a lady in it.
Lemuel ran back to his brother. “Here’s a lady coming!” he said. “You’re in a nice state to see her! Pull yourself together, Nathan—and, damn it, wash your hands!”
He took Benjulia’s arm, and led him upstairs.
When Lemuel returned to the hall, Mrs. Gallilee was ascending the house-steps. He bowed profoundly, in homage to the well-preserved remains of a fine woman. “My brother will be with you directly, ma’am. Pray allow me to give you a chair.”
His hat was in his hand. Mrs. Gallilee’s knowledge of the world easily set him down at his true value. She got rid of him with her best grace. “Pray don’t let me detain you, sir; I will wait with pleasure.”
If she had been twenty years younger the hint might have been thrown away. As it was, Lemuel retired.
An unusually long day’s work at the office had fatigued good Mr. Mool. He pushed aside his papers, and let his weary eyes rest on a glass vase full of flowers on the table—a present from a grateful client. As a man, he enjoyed the lovely colours of the nosegay. As a botanist, he lamented the act which had cut the flowers from their parent stems, and doomed them to a premature death. “I should not have had the heart to do it myself,” he thought; “but tastes differ.”
The office boy came into the room, with a visiting card in his hand.
“I’m going home to dinner,” said Mr. Mool. “The person must call to-morrow.”
The boy laid the card on the table. The person was Mrs. Gallilee.
Mrs. Gallilee, at seven o’clock in the evening! Mrs. Gallilee, without a previous appointment by letter! Mr. Mool trembled under the apprehension of some serious family emergency, in imminent need of legal interference. He submitted as a matter of course. “Show the lady in.”
Before a word had passed between them, the lawyer’s mind was relieved. Mrs. Gallilee shone on him with her sweetest smiles; pressed his hand with her friendliest warmth; admired the nosegay with her readiest enthusiasm. “Quite perfect,” she said—“especially the Pansy. The round flat edge, Mr. Mool; the upper petals perfectly uniform—there is a flower that defies criticism! I long to dissect it.”
Mr. Mool politely resigned the Pansy to dissection (murderous mutilation, he would have called it, in the case of one of his own flowers), and waited to hear what his learned client might have to say to him.
“I am going to surprise you,” Mrs. Gallilee announced. “No—to shock you. No—even that is not strong enough. Let me say, to horrify you.”
Mr. Mool’s anxieties returned, complicated by confusion. The behaviour of Mrs. Gallilee exhibited the most unaccountable contrast to her language. She showed no sign of those strong emotions to which she had alluded. “How am I to put it?” she went on, with a transparent affectation of embarrassment. “Shall I call it a disgrace to our family?” Mr. Mool started. Mrs. Gallilee entreated him to compose himself; she approached the inevitable disclosure by degrees. “I think,” she said, “you have met Doctor Benjulia at my house?”
“I have had that honour, Mrs. Gallilee. Not a very sociable person—if I may venture to say so.”
“Downright rude, Mr. Mool, on some occasions. But that doesn’t matter now. I have just been visiting the doctor.”
Was this visit connected with the “disgrace to the family?” Mr. Mool ventured to put a question.
“Doctor Benjulia is not related to you, ma’am—is he?”
“Not the least in the world. Please don’t interrupt me again. I am, so to speak, laying a train of circumstances before you; and I might leave one of them out. When Doctor Benjulia was a young man—I am returning to my train of circumstances, Mr. Mool—he was at Rome, pursuing his professional studies. I have all this, mind, straight from the doctor himself. At Rome, he became acquainted with my late brother, after the period of his unfortunate marriage. Stop! I have failed to put it strongly enough again. I ought to have said, his disgraceful marriage.”
“Really, Mrs. Gallilee—”
“Mr. Mool!”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am.”
“Don’t mention it. The next circumstance is ready in my mind. One of the doctor’s fellow-students (described as being personally an irresistible man) was possessed of abilities which even attracted our unsociable Benjulia. They became friends. At the time of which I am now speaking, my brother’s disgusting wife—oh, but I repeat it, Mr. Mool! I say again, his disgusting wife—was the mother of a female child.”
“Your niece, Mrs. Gallilee.”
“No!”
“Not Miss Carmina?”
“Miss Carmina is no more my niece than she is your niece. Carry your mind back to what I have just said. I mentioned a medical student who was an irresistible man. Miss Carmina’s father was that man.”
Mr. Mool’s astonishment and indignation would have instantly expressed themselves, if he had not been a lawyer. As it was, his professional experience warned him of the imprudence of speaking too soon.
Mrs. Galilee’s exultation forced its way outwards. Her eyes glittered; her voice rose. “The law, Mr. Mool! what does the law say?” she broke out. “Is my brother’s Will no better than waste-paper? Is the money divided among his only near relations? Tell me! tell me!”
Mr. Mool suddenly plunged his face into his vase of flowers. Did he feel that the air of the office wanted purifying? or was he conscious that his face might betray him unless he hid it? Mrs. Galilee was at no loss to set her own clever interpretation on her lawyer’s extraordinary proceeding.
“Take your time,” she said with the most patronising kindness. “I know your sensitive nature; I know what I felt myself when this dreadful discovery burst upon me. If you remember, I said I should horrify you. Take your time, my dear sir—pray take your time.”
To be encouraged in this way—as if he was the emotional client, and Mrs. Gallilee the impassive lawyer—was more than even Mr. Mool could endure. Shy men are, in the innermost depths of their nature, proud men: the lawyer had his professional pride. He came out of his flowery retreat, with a steady countenance. For the first time in his life, he was not afraid of Mrs. Galilee.
“Before we enter on the legal aspect of the case—” he began.
“The shocking case,” Mrs. Gallilee interposed, in the interests of Virtue.
Under any other circumstances Mr. Mool would have accepted the correction. He actually took no notice of it now! “There is one point,” he proceeded, “on which I must beg you to enlighten me.”
“By all means! I am ready to go into any details, no matter how disgusting they may be.”
Mr. Mool thought of certain “ladies” (objects of perfectly needless respect among men) who, being requested to leave the Court, at unmentionable Trials, persist in keeping their places. It was a relief to him to feel—if his next questions did nothing else—that they would disappoint Mrs. Galilee.
“Am I right in supposing that you believe what you have told me?” he resumed.
“Most assuredly!”
“Is Doctor Benjulia the only person who has spoken to you on the subject?”
“The only person.”
“His information being derived from his friend—the fellow-student whom you mentioned just now?”
“In other words,” Mrs. Gallilee answered viciously, “the father of the wretched girl who has been foisted on my care.”
If Mr. Mool’s courage had been in danger of failing him, he would have found it again now His regard for Carmina, his respect for the memory of her mother, had been wounded to the quick. Strong on his own legal ground, he proceeded as if he was examining a witness in a police court.
“I suppose the doctor had some reason for believing what his friend told him?”
“Ample reason! Vice and poverty generally go together—this man was poor. He showed Doctor Benjulia money received from his mistress—her husband’s money, it is needless to say.”
“Her motive might be innocent, Mrs. Gallilee. Had the man any letters of hers to show?”
“Letters? From a woman in her position? It’s notorious, Mr. Mool, that Italian models don’t know how to read or write.”
“May I ask if there are any further proofs?”
“You have had proofs enough.”
“With all possible respect, ma’am, I deny that.”
Mrs. Gallilee had not been asked to enter into disgusting details. Mrs. Gallilee had been contradicted by her obedient humble servant of other days. She thought it high time to bring the examination to an end.
“If you are determined to believe in the woman’s innocence,” she said, “without knowing any of the circumstances—”
Mr. Mool went on from bad to worse: he interrupted her now.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Gallilee, I think you have forgotten that one of my autumn holidays, many years since, was spent in Italy. I was in Rome, like Doctor Benjulia, after your brother’s marriage. His wife was, to my certain knowledge, received in society. Her reputation was unblemished; and her husband was devoted to her.”
“In plain English,” said Mrs. Gallilee, “my brother was a poor weak creature—and his wife, when you knew her, had not been found out.”
“That is just the difficulty I feel,” Mr. Mool rejoined. “How is it that she is only found out now? Years have passed since she died. More years have passed since this attack on her character reached Doctor Benjulia’s knowledge. He is an old friend of yours. Why has he only told you of it to-day? I hope I don’t offend you by asking these questions?”
“Oh, dear, no! your questions are so easily answered. I never encouraged the doctor to speak of my brother and his wife. The subject was too distasteful to me—and I don’t doubt that Doctor Benjulia felt about it as I did.”
“Until to-day,” the lawyer remarked; “Doctor Benjulia appears to have been quite ready to mention the subject to-day.”
“Under special circumstances, Mr. Mool. Perhaps, you will not allow that special circumstances make any difference?”
On the contrary, Mr. Mool made every allowance. At the same time, he waited to hear what the circumstances might be.
But Mrs. Galilee had her reasons for keeping silence. It was impossible to mention Benjulia’s reception of her without inflicting a wound on her self-esteem. To begin with, he had kept the door of the room open, and had remained standing. “Have you got Ovid’s letters? Leave them here; I’m not fit to look at them now.” Those were his first words. There was nothing in the letters which a friend might not read: she accordingly consented to leave them. The doctor had expressed his sense of obligation by bidding her get into her carriage again, and go. “I have been put in a passion; I have made a fool of myself; I haven’t a nerve in my body that isn’t quivering with rage. Go! go! go!” There was his explanation. Impenetrably obstinate, Mrs. Galilee faced him—standing between the doctor and the door—without shrinking. She had not driven all the way to Benjulia’s house to be sent back again without gaining her object: she had her questions to put to him, and she persisted in pressing them as only a woman can. He was left—with the education of a gentleman against him—between the two vulgar alternatives of turning her out by main force, or of yielding, and getting rid of her decently in that way. At any other time, he would have flatly refused to lower himself to the level of a scandal-mongering woman, by entering on the subject. In his present mood, if pacifying Mrs. Galilee, and ridding himself of Mrs. Gallilee, meant one and the same thing, he was ready, recklessly ready, to let her have her own way. She heard the infamous story, which she had repeated to her lawyer; and she had Lemuel Benjulia’s visit, and Mr. Morphew’s contemplated attack on Vivisection, to thank for getting her information.
Mr. Mool waited, and waited in vain. He reminded his client of what she had just said.
“You mentioned certain circumstances. May I know what they are?” he asked.
Mrs. Gallilee rose, before she replied.
“Your time is valuable, and my time is valuable,” she said. “We shall not convince each other by prolonging our conversation. I came here, Mr. Mool, to ask you a question about the law. Permit me to remind you that I have not had my answer yet. My own impression is that the girl now in my house, not being my brother’s child, has no claim on my brother’s property? Tell me in two words, if you please—am I right or wrong?”
“I can do it in one word, Mrs. Gallilee. Wrong.”
“What!”
Mr. Mool entered on the necessary explanation, triumphing in the reply that he had just made. “It’s the smartest thing,” he thought, “I ever said in my life.”
“While husbands and wives live together,” he continued, “the Law holds that all children, born in wedlock, are the husband’s children. Even if Miss Carmina’s mother had not been as good and innocent a woman as ever drew the breath of life—”
“That will do, Mr. Mool. You really mean to say that this girl’s interest in my brother’s Will—”
“Remains quite unaffected, ma’am, by all that you have told me.”
“And I am still obliged to keep her under my care?”
“Or,” Mr. Mool answered, “to resign the office of guardian, in favour of Lady Northlake—appointed to act, in your place.”
“I won’t trouble you any further, sir. Good-evening!”
She turned to leave the office. Mr. Mool actually tried to stop her.
“One word more, Mrs. Galilee.”
“No; we have said enough already.”
Mr. Mool’s audacity arrived at its climax. He put his hand on the lock of the office door, and held it shut.
“The young lady, Mrs. Gallilee! I am sure you will never breathe a word of this to the pretty gentle, young lady? Even if it was true; and, as God is my witness, I am sure it’s false—”
“Good-evening, Mr. Mool!”
He opened the door, and let her go; her looks and tones told him that remonstrance was worse than useless. From year’s end to year’s end, this modest and amiable man had never been heard to swear. He swore now. “Damn Doctor Benjulia!” he burst out, in the solitude of his office. His dinner was waiting for him at home. Instead of putting on his hat, he went back to his writing-table. His thoughts projected themselves into the future—and discovered possibilities from which they recoiled. He took up his pen, and began a letter. “To John Gallilee, Esquire: Dear Sir,—Circumstances have occurred, which I am not at liberty to mention, but which make it necessary for me, in justice to my own views and feelings, to withdraw from the position of legal adviser to yourself and family.” He paused and considered with himself. “No,” he decided; “I may be of some use to that poor child, while I am the family lawyer.” He tore up his unfinished letter.
When Mr. Mool got home that night, it was noticed that he had a poor appetite for his dinner. On the other hand, he drank more wine than usual.