“Carmina! are you in the Square?”
“Leave it to me,” Ovid whispered. “We will come to you directly,” he
called back.
Mrs. Gallilee was waiting for them at the gate. Ovid spoke, the moment
they were within sight of each other. “You will have no more cause to
complain of me,” he said cheerfully; “I am going away at the end of the
week.”
Mrs. Gallilee’s answer was addressed to Carmina instead of to her son.
“Thank you, my dear,” she said, and pressed her niece’s hand.
It was too dark to see more of faces than their shadowy outline. The
learned lady’s tone was the perfection of amiability. She sent Ovid
across the road to knock at the house-door, and took Carmina’s arm
confidentially. “You little goose!” she whispered, “how could you
suppose I was angry with you? I can’t even regret your mistake, you have
written such a charming note.”
Ovid was waiting for them in the hall. They went into the library. Mrs.
Gallilee enfolded her son in a fervent motherly embrace.
“This completes the enjoyment of a most delightful evening,” she said.
“First a perfect lecture--and then the relief of overpowering anxiety
about my son. I suppose your professional studies, Ovid, have never
taken you as high as the Interspacial Regions? We were an immense
audience to-night, to hear the Professor on that subject, and I really
haven’t recovered it yet. Fifty miles above us--only fifty miles--there
is an atmosphere of cold that would freeze the whole human family to
death in a second of time. Moist matter, in that terrific emptiness,
would explode, and become stone; and--listen to this, Carmina--the
explosion itself would be frozen, and produce no sound. Think of serious
people looking up in that dreadful direction, and talking of going to
Heaven. Oh, the insignificance of man, except--I am going to make a
joke, Ovid--except when he pleases his old mother by going away for the
benefit of his health! And where are you going? Has sensible Carmina
advised you? I agree with her beforehand, whatever she has said.”
Ovid informed his mother of Benjulia’s suggestion, and asked her what
she thought of it.
Mrs. Gallilee’s overflowing geniality instantly flooded the absent
doctor. He was rude, he was ugly; but what an inestimable friend! what
admirable advice! In Ovid’s state of health he must not write letters;
his mother would write and thank the doctor, and ask for introductions
to local grandees who occupied a position in colonial society. She
seized the newspaper: a steamer for Canada sailed from Liverpool on
Saturday. Ovid could secure his cabin the next morning (“amidships, my
dear, if you can possibly get it”), and could leave London by Friday’s
train. In her eagerness to facilitate his departure, she proposed to
superintend the shutting up of his house, in his absence, and to arrange
the disposal of the servants, if he considered it worth while to keep
them. She even thought of the cat. The easiest way to provide for
the creature would be of course to have her poisoned; but Ovid was so
eccentric in some things, that practical suggestions were thrown away on
him. “Sixpence a week for cat’s meat isn’t much,” cried Mrs. Gallilee in
an outburst of generosity. “We will receive the cat!”
Ovid made his acknowledgments resignedly. Carmina could see that Mrs.
Gallilee’s overpowering vitality was beginning to oppress her son.
“I needn’t trouble you, mother,” he said. “My domestic affairs were all
settled when I first felt the necessity of getting rest. My manservant
travels with me. My housemaid and kitchenmaid will go to their friends
in the country; the cook will look after the house; and her nephew, the
little page, is almost as fond of the cat as I am. If you will send for
a cab, I think I will go home. Like other people in my wretched state, I
feel fatigued towards night-time.”
His lips just touched Carmina’s delicate little ear, while his mother
turned away to ring the bell. “Expect me to-morrow,” he whispered. “I
love you!--love you!--love you!” He seemed to find the perfection of
luxury in the reiteration of those words.
When Ovid had left them, Carmina expected to hear something of her
aunt’s discovery in the Square.
Mrs. Gallilee’s innocence was impenetrable. Not finding her niece in the
house, she had thought of the Square. What could be more natural than
that the cousins should take an evening walk, in one of the prettiest
enclosures in London? Her anticipation of Ovid’s recovery, and her
admiration of Carmina’s powers of persuasion appeared, for the time, to
be the only active ideas in that comprehensive mind. When the servant
brought in the tray, with the claret and soda-water, she sent for Miss
Minerva to join them, and hear the good news; completely ignoring the
interruption of their friendly relations, earlier in the evening. She
became festive and facetious at the sight of the soda-water. “Let us
imitate the men, Miss Minerva, and drink a toast before we go to bed.
Be cheerful, Carmina, and share half a bottle of soda-water with me. A
pleasant journey to Ovid, and a safe return!” Cheered by the influences
of conviviality, the friend of Professors, the tender nurse of
half-developed tadpoles, lapsed into learning again. Mrs. Gallilee
improvised an appropriate little lecture on Canada--on the botany of the
Dominion; on the geology of the Dominion; on the number of gallons of
water wasted every hour by the falls of Niagara. “Science will set it
all right, my dears; we shall make that idle water work for us, one of
these days. Good-night, Miss Minerva! Dear Carmina, pleasant dreams!”
Safe in the solitude of her bedroom, the governess ominously knitted her
heavy eyebrows.
“In all my experience,” she thought, “I never saw Mrs. Gallilee in such
spirits before. What mischief is she meditating, when she has got rid of
her son?”