The lapse of a few hours exercised no deteriorating influence on Mrs.
Gallilee’s amiability.
On the next day, thanks to his mother’s interference, Ovid was left in
the undisturbed enjoyment of Carmina’s society. Not only Miss Minerva,
but even Mr. Gallilee and the children, were kept out of the way with a
delicately-exercised dexterity, which defied the readiest suspicion to
take offence. In one word, all that sympathy and indulgence could do to
invite Ovid’s confidence, was unobtrusively and modestly done. Never had
the mistress of domestic diplomacy reached her ends with finer art.
In the afternoon, a messenger delivered Benjulia’s reply to Mrs.
Gallilee’s announcement of her son’s contemplated journey--despatched by
the morning’s post. The doctor was confined to the house by an attack of
gout. If Ovid wanted information on the subject of Canada, Ovid must go
to him, and get it. That was all.
“Have you ever been to Doctor Benjulia’s house?” Carmina asked.
“Never.”
“Then all you have told me about him is mere report? Now you will find
out the truth! Of course you will go?”
Ovid felt no desire to make a voyage of exploration to Benjulia’s
house--and said so plainly. Carmina used all her powers of persuasion to
induce him to change his mind. Mrs. Gallilee (superior to the influence
of girlish curiosity) felt the importance of obtaining introductions
to Canadian society, and agreed with her niece. “I shall order the
carriage,” she said, assuming a playfully despotic tone; “and, if you
don’t go to the doctor--Carmina and I will pay him a visit in your
place.”
Threatened, if he remained obstinate, with such a result as this, Ovid
had no alternative but to submit.
The one order that could be given to the coachman was to drive to the
village of Hendon, on the north-western side of London, and to trust to
inquiries for the rest of the way. Between Hendon and Willesden, there
are pastoral solitudes within an hour’s drive of Oxford Street--wooded
lanes and wild-flowers, farms and cornfields, still unprofaned by the
devastating brickwork of the builder of modern times. Following winding
ways, under shadowing trees, the coachman made his last inquiry at a
roadside public-house. Hearing that Benjulia’s place of abode was now
within half a mile of him, Ovid set forth on foot; leaving the driver
and the horses to take their ease at their inn.
He arrived at an iron gate, opening out of a lonely lane.
There, in the middle of a barren little field, he saw Benjulia’s
house--a hideous square building of yellow brick, with a slate roof. A
low wall surrounded the place, having another iron gate at the entrance.
The enclosure within was as barren as the field without: not even an
attempt at flower-garden or kitchen-garden was visible. At a distance
of some two hundred yards from the house stood a second and smaller
building, with a skylight in the roof, which Ovid recognised (from
description) as the famous laboratory. Behind it was the hedge which
parted Benjulia’s morsel of land from the land of his neighbour.
Here, the trees rose again, and the fields beyond were cultivated. No
dwellings, and no living creatures appeared. So near to London--and yet,
in its loneliness, so far away--there was something unnatural in the
solitude of the place.
Led by a feeling of curiosity, which was fast degenerating into
suspicion, Ovid approached the laboratory, without showing himself in
front of the house. No watch-dog barked; no servant appeared on the
look-out for a visitor. He was ashamed of himself as he did it, but (so
strongly had he been impressed by Carmina’s observation of the doctor)
he even tried the locked door of the laboratory, and waited and
listened! It was a breezy summer-day; the leaves of the trees near him
rustled cheerfully. Was there another sound audible? Yes--low and faint,
there rose through the sweet woodland melody a moaning cry. It paused;
it was repeated; it stopped. He looked round him, not quite sure whether
the sound proceeded from the outside or the inside of the building. He
shook the door. Nothing happened. The suffering creature (if it was
a suffering creature) was silent or dead. Had chemical experiment
accidentally injured some living thing? Or--?
He recoiled from pursuing that second inquiry. The laboratory had,
by this time, become an object of horror to him. He returned to the
dwelling-house.
He put his hand on the latch of the gate, and looked back at the
laboratory. He hesitated.
That moaning cry, so piteous and so short-lived, haunted his ears. The
idea of approaching Benjulia became repellent to him. What he might
afterwards think of himself--what his mother and Carmina might think
of him--if he returned without having entered the doctors’ house, were
considerations which had no influence over his mind, in its present
mood. The impulse of the moment was the one power that swayed him. He
put the latch back in the socket. “I won’t go in,” he said to himself.
It was too late. As he turned from the house a manservant appeared
at the door--crossed the enclosure--and threw the gate open for Ovid,
without uttering a word.
They entered the passage. The speechless manservant opened a door on the
right, and made a bow, inviting the visitor to enter. Ovid found himself
in a room as barren as the field outside. There were the plastered
walls, there was the bare floor, left exactly as the builders had
left them when the house was finished. After a short absence, the man
appeared again. He might be depressed in spirits, or crabbed in temper:
the fact remained that, even now, he had nothing to say. He opened
a door on the opposite side of the passage--made another bow--and
vanished.
“Don’t come near me!” cried Benjulia, the moment Ovid showed himself.
The doctor was seated in an inner corner of the room; robed in a long
black dressing-gown, buttoned round his throat, which hid every part
of him below his fleshless face, except his big hands, and his tortured
gouty foot. Rage and pain glared in his gloomy gray eyes, and shook
his clenched fists, resting on the arms of an easy chair. “Ten thousand
red-hot devils are boring ten thousand holes through my foot,” he said.
“If you touch the pillow on my stool, I shall fly at your throat.” He
poured some cooling lotion from a bottle into a small watering-pot, and
irrigated his foot as if it had been a bed of flowers. By way of further
relief to the pain, he swore ferociously; addressing his oaths to
himself, in thunderous undertones which made the glasses ring on the
sideboard.
Relieved, in his present frame of mind, to have escaped the necessity
of shaking hands, Ovid took a chair, and looked about him. Even here
he discovered but little furniture, and that little of the heavy
old-fashioned sort. Besides the sideboard, he perceived a dining-table,
six chairs, and a dingy brown carpet. There were no curtains on the
window, and no pictures or prints on the drab-coloured walls. The empty
grate showed its bleak black cavity undisguised; and the mantelpiece had
nothing on it but the doctor’s dirty and strong-smelling pipe. Benjulia
set down his watering-pot, as a sign that the paroxysm of pain had
passed away. “A dull place to live in, isn’t it?” In those words he
welcomed the visitor to his house.
Irritated by the accident which had forced him into the repellent
presence of Benjulia, Ovid answered in a tone which matched the doctor
on his own hard ground.
“It’s your own fault if the place is dull. Why haven’t you planted
trees, and laid out a garden?”
“I dare say I shall surprise you,” Benjulia quietly rejoined; “but I
have a habit of speaking my mind. I don’t object to a dull place; and I
don’t care about trees and gardens.”
“You don’t seem to care about furniture either,” said Ovid.
Now that he was out of pain for awhile, the doctor’s innate
insensibility to what other people might think of him, or might say to
him, resumed its customary torpor in its own strangely unconscious way.
He seemed only to understand that Ovid’s curiosity was in search of
information about trifles. Well, there would be less trouble in giving
him his information, than in investigating his motives. So Benjulia
talked of his furniture.
“I dare say you’re right,” he said. “My sister-in-law--did you know
I had a relation of that sort?--my sister-in-law got the tables and
chairs, and beds and basins. Buying things at shops doesn’t interest me.
I gave her a cheque; and I told her to furnish a room for me to eat in,
and a room for me to sleep in--and not to forget the kitchen and the
garrets for the servants. What more do I want?”
His intolerable composure only added to his guest’s irritability.
“A selfish way of putting it,” Ovid broke out. “Have you nobody to think
of but yourself?”
“Nobody--I am happy to say.”
“That’s downright cynicism, Benjulia!”
The doctor reflected. “Is it?” he said. “Perhaps you may be right again.
I think it’s only indifference, myself. Curiously enough my brother
looks at it from your point of view--he even used the same word that
you used just now. I suppose he found my cynicism beyond the reach of
reform. At any rate, he left off coming here. I got rid of _him_ on easy
terms. What do you say? That inhuman way of talking is unworthy of
me? Really I don’t think so. I’m not a downright savage. It’s only
indifference.”
“Does your brother return your indifference? You must be a nice pair, if
he does!”
Benjulia seemed to find a certain dreary amusement in considering the
question that Ovid had proposed. He decided on doing justice to his
absent relative.
“My brother’s intelligence is perhaps equal to such a small effort as
you suggest,” he said. “He has just brains enough to keep himself out of
an asylum for idiots. Shall I tell you what he is in two words? A stupid
sensualist--that’s what he is. I let his wife come here sometimes, and
cry. It doesn’t trouble _me;_ and it seems to relieve _her._ More of my
indifference--eh? Well, I don’t know. I gave her the change out of
the furniture-cheque, to buy a new bonnet with. You might call that
indifference, and you might be right once more. I don’t care about
money. Will you have a drink? You see I can’t move. Please ring for the
man.”
Ovid refused the drink, and changed the subject. “Your servant is a
remarkably silent person,” he said.
“That’s his merit,” Benjulia answered; “the women-servants have
quarrelled with every other man I’ve had. They can’t quarrel with
this man. I have raised his wages in grateful acknowledgment of his
usefulness to me. I hate noise.”
“Is that the reason why you don’t keep a watch-dog?”
“I don’t like dogs. They bark.”
He had apparently some other disagreeable association with dogs, which
he was not disposed to communicate. His hollow eyes stared gloomily into
vacancy. Ovid’s presence in the room seemed to have become, for the time
being, an impression erased from his mind. He recovered himself, with
the customary vehement rubbing of his head, and turned the talk to the
object of Ovid’s visit.
“So you have taken my advice,” he said. “You’re going to Canada, and you
want to get at what I can tell you before you start. Here’s my journal.
It will jog my memory, and help us both.”
His writing materials were placed on a movable table, screwed to his
chair. Near them lay a shabby-looking book, guarded by a lock. Ten
minutes after he had opened his journal, and had looked here and there
through the pages, his hard intellect had grasped all that it required.
Steadily and copiously his mind emptied its information into Ovid’s
mind; without a single digression from beginning to end, and with the
most mercilessly direct reference to the traveller’s practical wants.
Not a word escaped him, relating to national character or to the
beauties of Nature. Mrs. Gallilee had criticized the Falls of Niagara
as a reservoir of wasted power. Doctor Benjulia’s scientific superiority
over the woman asserted itself with magnificent ease. Niagara being
nothing but useless water, he never mentioned Niagara at all.
“Have I served your purpose as a guide?” he asked. “Never mind thanking
me. Yes or no will do. Very good. I have got a line of writing to give
you next.” He mended his quill pen, and made an observation. “Have you
ever noticed that women have one pleasure which lasts to the end of
their lives?” he said. “Young and old, they have the same inexhaustible
enjoyment of society; and, young and old, they are all alike incapable
of understanding a man, when he says he doesn’t care to go to a party.
Even your clever mother thinks you want to go to parties in Canada.” He
tried his pen, and found it would do--and began his letter.
Seeing his hands at work, Ovid was again reminded of Carmina’s
discovery. His eyes wandered a little aside, towards the corner formed
by the pillar of the chimney-piece and the wall of the room. The
big bamboo-stick rested there. A handle was attached to it, made of
light-coloured horn, and on that handle there were some stains. Ovid
looked at them with a surgeon’s practised eye. They were dry stains of
blood. (Had he washed his hands on the last occasion when he used his
stick? And had he forgotten that the handle wanted washing too?)
Benjulia finished his letter, and wrote the address. He took up the
envelope, to give it to Ovid--and stopped, as if some doubt tempted him
to change his mind. The hesitation was only momentary. He persisted in
his first intention, and gave Ovid the letter. It was addressed to a
doctor at Montreal.
“That man won’t introduce you to society,” Benjulia announced, “and
won’t worry your brains with medical talk. Keep off one subject on your
side. A mad bull is nothing to my friend if you speak of Vivisection.”
Ovid looked at him steadily, when he uttered the last word. Benjulia
looked back, just as steadily at Ovid.
At the moment of that reciprocal scrutiny, did the two men suspect each
other? Ovid, on his side, determined not to leave the house without
putting his suspicions to the test.
“I thank you for the letter,” he began; “and I will not forget the
warning.”
The doctor’s capacity for the exercise of the social virtues had its
limits. His reserves of hospitality were by this time near their end.
“Is there anything more I can do for you?” he interposed.
“You can answer a simple question,” Ovid replied. “My cousin Carmina--”
Benjulia interrupted him again: “Don’t you think we said enough about
your cousin in the Gardens?” he suggested.
Ovid acknowledged the hint with a neatness of retort almost worthy
of his mother. “You have your own merciful disposition to blame, if
I return to the subject,” he replied. “My cousin cannot forget your
kindness to the monkey.”
“The sooner she forgets my kindness the better. The monkey is dead.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“Why?”
“I thought the creature was living in pain.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I heard a moaning--”
“Where?”
“In the building behind your house.”
“You heard the wind in the trees.”
“Nothing of the sort. Are your chemical experiments ever made on
animals?”
The doctor parried that direct attack, without giving ground by so much
as a hair’s breadth.
“What did I say when I gave you your letter of introduction?” he asked.
“I said, A mad bull is nothing to my friend, if you speak to him
of Vivisection. Now I have something more to tell you. I am like my
friend.” He waited a little. “Will that do?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Ovid; “that will do.”
They were as near to an open quarrel as two men could be: Ovid took up
his hat to go. Even at that critical moment, Benjulia’s strange jealousy
of his young colleague--as a possible rival in some field of discovery
which he claimed as his own--showed itself once more. There was no
change in his tone; he still spoke like a judicious friend.
“A last word of advice,” he said. “You are travelling for your health;
don’t let inquisitive strangers lead you into talk. Some of them might
be physiologists.”
“And might suggest new ideas,” Ovid rejoined, determined to make him
speak out this time.
Benjulia nodded, in perfect agreement with his guest’s view.
“Are you afraid of new ideas?” Ovid went on.
“Perhaps I am--in _your_ head.” He made that admission, without
hesitation or embarrassment. “Good-bye!” he resumed. “My sensitive foot
feels noises: don’t bang the door.”
Getting out into the lane again, Ovid looked at his letter to the doctor
at Montreal. His first impulse was to destroy it.
As Benjulia had hesitated before giving him the letter, so he now
hesitated before tearing it up.
Contrary to the usual practice in such cases, the envelope was closed.
Under those circumstances, Ovid’s pride decided him on using the
introduction. Time was still to pass, before events opened his eyes to
the importance of his decision. To the end of his life he remembered
that Benjulia had been near to keeping back the letter, and that he had
been near to tearing it up.