Mrs. Gallilee was on her way to the breakfast-room, when her son entered
the house. They met in the hall. “Is your packing done?” she asked.
He was in no humour to wait, and make his confession at that moment.
“Not yet,” was his only reply.
Mrs. Gallilee led the way into the room. “Ovid’s luggage is not ready
yet,” she announced; “I believe he will lose his train.”
They were all at the breakfast table, the children and the governess
included. Carmina’s worn face, telling its tale of a wakeful night,
brightened again, as it had brightened at the bedroom window, when she
saw Ovid. She took his hand frankly, and made light of her weary looks.
“No, my cousin,” she said, playfully; “I mean to be worthier of my
pretty bed to-night; I am not going to be your patient yet.” Mr.
Gallilee (with this mouth full at the moment) offered good advice. “Eat
and drink as I do, my dear,” he said to Carmina; “and you will sleep as
I do. Off I go when the light’s out--flat on my back, as Mrs. Gallilee
will tell you--and wake me if you can, till it’s time to get up. Have
some buttered eggs, Ovid. They’re good, ain’t they, Zo?” Zo looked
up from her plate, and agreed with her father, in one emphatic word,
“Jolly!” Miss Minerva, queen of governesses, instantly did her duty.
“Zoe! how often must I tell you not to talk slang? Do you ever hear
your sister say ‘Jolly?’” That highly-cultivated child, Maria, strong
in conscious virtue, added her authority in support of the protest.
“No young lady who respects herself, Zoe, will ever talk slang.” Mr.
Gallilee was unworthy of such a daughter. He muttered under his
breath, “Oh, bother!” Zo held out her plate for more. Mr. Gallilee was
delighted. “My child all over!” he exclaimed. “We are both of us good
feeders. Zo will grow up a fine woman.” He appealed to his stepson to
agree with him. “That’s your medical opinion, Ovid, isn’t it?”
Carmina’s pretty smile passed like rippling light over her eyes and
her lips. In her brief experience of England, Mr. Gallilee was the one
exhilarating element in family life.
Mrs. Gallilee’s mind still dwelt on her son’s luggage, and on the
rigorous punctuality of railway arrangements.
“What is your servant about?” she said to Ovid. “It’s his business to
see that you are ready in time.”
It was useless to allow the false impression that prevailed to continue
any longer. Ovid set them all right, in the plainest and fewest words.
“My servant is not to blame,” he said. “I have written an apology to my
friend--I am not going away.”
For the moment, this astounding announcement was received in silent
dismay--excepting the youngest member of the company. After her father,
Ovid was the one other person in the world who held a place in Zo’s odd
little heart. Her sentiments were now expressed without hesitation
and without reserve. She put down her spoon, and she cried, “Hooray!”
Another exhibition of vulgarity. But even Miss Minerva was too
completely preoccupied by the revelation which had burst on the family
to administer the necessary reproof. Her eager eyes were riveted on
Ovid. As for Mr. Gallilee, he held his bread and butter suspended
in mid-air, and stared open-mouthed at his stepson, in helpless
consternation.
Mrs. Gallilee always set the right example. Mrs. Gallilee was the first
to demand an explanation.
“What does this extraordinary proceeding mean?” she asked.
Ovid was impenetrable to the tone in which that question was put. He had
looked at his cousin, when he declared his change of plan--and he was
looking at her still. Whatever the feeling of the moment might be,
Carmina’s sensitive face expressed it vividly. Who could mistake the
faintly-rising colour in her cheeks, the sweet quickening of light in
her eyes, when she met Ovid’s look? Still hardly capable of estimating
the influence that she exercised over him, her sense of the interest
taken in her by Ovid was the proud sense that makes girls innocently
bold. Whatever the others might think of his broken engagement, her
artless eyes said plainly, “My feeling is happy surprise.”
Mrs. Gallilee summoned her son to attend her, in no friendly voice.
She, too, had looked at Carmina--and had registered the result of her
observation privately.
“Are we to hear your reasons?” she inquired.
Ovid had made the one discovery in the world, on which his whole heart
was set. He was so happy, that he kept his mother out of his secret,
with a masterly composure worthy of herself.
“I don’t think a sea-voyage is the right thing for me,” he answered.
“Rather a sudden change of opinion,” Mrs. Gallilee remarked.
Ovid coolly agreed with her. It _was_ rather sudden, he said.
The governess still looked at him, wondering whether he would provoke an
outbreak.
After a little pause, Mrs. Gallilee accepted her son’s short
answer--with a sudden submission which had a meaning of its own. She
offered Ovid another cup of tea; and, more remarkable yet, she turned
to her eldest daughter, and deliberately changed the subject. “What are
your lessons, my dear, to-day?” she asked, with bland maternal interest.
By this time, bewildered Mr. Gallilee had finished his bread and
butter. “Ovid knows best, my dear,” he said cheerfully to his wife. Mrs.
Gallilee’s sudden recovery of her temper did not include her husband.
If a look could have annihilated that worthy man, his corporal presence
must have vanished into air, when he had delivered himself of his
opinion. As it was, he only helped Zo to another spoonful of jam. “When
Ovid first thought of that voyage,” he went on, “I said, Suppose he’s
sick? A dreadful sensation isn’t it, Miss Minerva? First you seem to
sink into your shoes, and then it all comes up--eh? You’re _not_ sick
at sea? I congratulate you! I most sincerely congratulate you! My dear
Ovid, come and dine with me to-night at the club.” He looked doubtfully
at his wife, as he made that proposal. “Got the headache, my dear? I’ll
take you out with pleasure for a walk. What’s the matter with her, Miss
Minerva? Oh, I see! Hush! Maria’s going to say grace.--Amen! Amen!”
They all rose from the table.
Mr. Gallilee was the first to open the door. The smoking-room at
Fairfield Gardens was over the kitchen; he preferred enjoying his cigar
in the garden of the Square. He looked at Carmina and Ovid, as if he
wanted one of them to accompany him. They were both at the aviary,
admiring the birds, and absorbed in their own talk. Mr. Gallilee
resigned himself to his fate; appealing, on his way out, to somebody to
agree with him as usual. “Well!” he said with a little sigh, “a cigar
keeps one company.” Miss Minerva (absorbed in her own thoughts) passed
near him, on her way to the school-room with her pupils. “You would find
it so yourself, Miss Minerva--that is to say, if you smoked, which of
course you don’t. Be a good girl, Zo; attend to your lessons.”
Zo’s perversity in the matter of lessons put its own crooked
construction on this excellent advice. She answered in a whisper, “Give
us a holiday.”
The passing aspirations of idle minds, being subject to the law of
chances, are sometimes fulfilled, and so exhibit poor human wishes in a
consolatory light. Thanks to the conversation between Carmina and Ovid,
Zo got her holiday after all.
Mrs. Gallilee, still as amiable as ever, had joined her son and her
niece at the aviary. Ovid said to his mother, “Carmina is fond of birds.
I have been telling her she may see all the races of birds assembled in
the Zoological Gardens. It’s a perfect day. Why shouldn’t we go!”
The stupidest woman living would have understood what this proposal
really meant. Mrs. Gallilee sanctioned it as composedly as if Ovid and
Carmina had been brother and sister. “I wish I could go with you,” she
said, “but my household affairs fill my morning. And there is a lecture
this afternoon, which I cannot possibly lose. I don’t know, Carmina,
whether you are interested in these things. We are to have the
apparatus, which illustrates the conversion of radiant energy into
sonorous vibrations. Have you ever heard, my dear, of the Diathermancy
of Ebonite? Not in your way, perhaps?”
Carmina looked as unintelligent as Zo herself. Mrs. Gallilee’s
science seemed to frighten her. The Diathermancy of Ebonite, by some
incomprehensible process, drove her bewildered mind back on her old
companion. “I want to give Teresa a little pleasure before we part,” she
said timidly; “may she go with us?”
“Of course!” cried Mrs. Gallilee. “And, now I think of it, why shouldn’t
the children have a little pleasure too? I will give them a holiday.
Don’t be alarmed, Ovid; Miss Minerva will look after them. In the
meantime, Carmina, tell your good old friend to get ready.”
Carmina hastened away, and so helped Mrs. Gallilee to the immediate
object which she had in view--a private interview with her son.
Ovid anticipated a searching inquiry into the motives which had led
him to give up the sea voyage. His mother was far too clever a woman to
waste her time in that way. Her first words told him that his motive was
as plainly revealed to her as the sunlight shining in at the window.
“That’s a charming girl,” she said, when Carmina closed the door behind
her. “Modest and natural--quite the sort of girl, Ovid, to attract a
clever man like you.”
Ovid was completely taken by surprise, and owned it by his silence. Mrs.
Gallilee went on in a tone of innocent maternal pleasantry.
“You know you began young,” she said; “your first love was that poor
little wizen girl of Lady Northlake’s who died. Child’s play, you will
tell me, and nothing more. But, my dear, I am afraid I shall require
some persuasion, before I quite sympathize with this new--what shall I
call it?--infatuation is too hard a word, and ‘fancy’ means nothing. We
will leave it a blank. Marriages of cousins are debatable marriages,
to say the least of them; and Protestant fathers and Papist mothers do
occasionally involve difficulties with children. Not that I say, No. Far
from it. But if this is to go on, I do hesitate.”
Something in his mother’s tone grated on Ovid’s sensibilities. “I don’t
at all follow you,” he said, rather sharply; “you are looking a little
too far into the future.”
“Then we will return to the present,” Mrs. Gallilee replied--still with
the readiest submission to the humour of her son.
On recent occasions, she had expressed the opinion that Ovid would do
wisely--at his age, and with his professional prospects--to wait a few
years before he thought of marrying. Having said enough in praise of her
niece to satisfy him for the time being (without appearing to be meanly
influenced, in modifying her opinion, by the question of money), her
next object was to induce him to leave England immediately, for the
recovery of his health. With Ovid absent, and with Carmina under her
sole superintendence, Mrs. Gallilee could see her way to her own private
ends.
“Really,” she resumed, “you ought to think seriously of change of air
and scene. You know you would not allow a patient, in your present state
of health, to trifle with himself as your are trifling now. If you don’t
like the sea, try the Continent. Get away somewhere, my dear, for your
own sake.”
It was only possible to answer this, in one way. Ovid owned that his
mother was right and asked for time to think. To his infinite relief,
he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Miss Minerva entered the
room--not in a very amiable temper, judging by appearances.
“I am afraid I disturb you,” she began.
Ovid seized the opportunity of retreat. He had some letters to write--he
hurried away to the library.
“Is there any mistake?” the governess asked, when she and Mrs. Gallilee
were alone.
“In what respect, Miss Minerva?”
“I met your niece, ma’am, on the stairs. She says you wish the children
to have a holiday.”
“Yes, to go with my son and Miss Carmina to the Zoological Gardens.”
“Miss Carmina said I was to go too.”
“Miss Carmina was perfectly right.”
The governess fixed her searching eyes on Mrs. Gallilee. “You really
wish me to go with them?” she said.
“I do.”
“I know why.”
In the course of their experience, Mrs. Gallilee and Miss Minerva had
once quarrelled fiercely--and Mrs. Gallilee had got the worst of it.
She learnt her lesson. For the future she knew how to deal with her
governess. When one said, “I know why,” the other only answered, “Do
you?”
“Let’s have it out plainly, ma’am,” Miss Minerva proceeded. “I am not
to let Mr. Ovid” (she laid a bitterly strong emphasis on the name, and
flushed angrily)--“I am not to let Mr. Ovid and Miss Carmina be alone
together.”
“You are a good guesser,” Mrs. Gallilee remarked quietly.
“No,” said Miss Minerva more quietly still; “I have only seen what you
have seen.”
“Did I tell you what I have seen?”
“Quite needless, ma’am. Your son is in love with his cousin. When am I
to be ready?”
The bland mistress mentioned the hour. The rude governess left the room.
Mrs. Gallilee looked at the closing door with a curious smile. She had
already suspected Miss Minerva of being crossed in love. The suspicion
was now confirmed, and the man was discovered.
“Soured by a hopeless passion,” she said to herself. “And the object
is--my son.”