Уилки Коллинз - Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time

“No: my late uncle’s daughter.”

Benjulia suddenly came to a standstill. “What!” he cried, “has that misbegotten child grown up to be a woman?”’

Ovid started. Words of angry protest were on his lips, when he perceived Teresa and Zo on one side of him, and the keeper of the monkeys on the other. Benjulia dismissed the man, with the favourable answer which Zo had already reported. They walked on again. Ovid was at liberty to speak.

“Do you know what you said of my cousin, just now?” he began.

His tone seemed to surprise the doctor. “What did I say?” he asked.

“You used a very offensive word. You called Carmina a ‘misbegotten child.’ Are you repeating some vile slander on the memory of her mother?”

Benjulia came to another standstill. “Slander?” he repeated—and said no more.

Ovid’s anger broke out. “Yes!” he replied. “Or a lie, if you like, told of a woman as high above reproach as your mother or mine!”

“You are hot,” the doctor remarked, and walked on again. “When I was in Italy—” he paused to calculate, “when I was at Rome, fifteen years ago, your cousin was a wretched little rickety child. I said to Robert Graywell, ‘Don’t get too fond of that girl; she’ll never live to grow up.’ He said something about taking her away to the mountain air. I didn’t think, myself, the mountain air would be of any use. It seems I was wrong. Well! it’s a surprise to me to find her—” he waited, and calculated again, “to find her grown up to be seventeen years old.” To Ovid’s ears, there was an inhuman indifference in his tone as he said this, which it was impossible not to resent, by looks, if not in words. Benjulia noticed the impression that he had produced, without in the least understanding it. “Your nervous system’s in a nasty state,” he remarked; “you had better take care of yourself. I’ll go and look at the monkey.”

His face was like the face of the impenetrable sphinx; his deep bass voice droned placidly. Ovid’s anger had passed by him like the passing of the summer air. “Good-bye!” he said; “and take care of those nasty nerves. I tell you again—they mean mischief.”

Not altogether willingly, Ovid made his apologies. “If I have misunderstood you, I beg your pardon. At the same time, I don’t think I am to blame. Why did you mislead me by using that detestable word?”

“Wasn’t it the right word?”

“The right word—when you only wanted to speak of a poor sickly child! Considering that you took your degree at Oxford—”

“You could expect nothing better from the disadvantages of my education,” said the doctor, finishing the sentence with the grave composure that distinguished him. “When I said ‘misbegotten,’ perhaps I ought to have said ‘half-begotten’? Thank you for reminding me. I’ll look at the dictionary when I get home.”

Ovid’s mind was not set at ease yet. “There’s one other thing,” he persisted, “that seems unaccountable.” He started, and seized Benjulia by the arm. “Stop!” he cried, with a sudden outburst of alarm.

“Well?” asked the doctor, stopping directly. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” said Ovid, recoiling from a stain on the gravel walk, caused by the remains of an unlucky beetle, crushed under his friend’s heavy foot. “You trod on the beetle before I could stop you.”

Benjulia’s astonishment at finding an adult male human being (not in a lunatic asylum) anxious to spare the life of a beetle, literally struck him speechless. His medical instincts came to his assistance. “You had better leave London at once,” he suggested. “Get into pure air, and be out of doors all day long.” He turned over the remains of the beetle with the end of his stick. “The common beetle,” he said; “I haven’t damaged a Specimen.”

Ovid returned to the subject, which had suffered interruption through his abortive little act of mercy. “You knew my uncle in Italy. It seems strange, Benjulia, that I should never have heard of it before.”

“Yes; I knew your uncle; and,” he added with especial emphasis, “I knew his wife.”

“Well?”

“Well, I can’t say I felt any particular interest in either of them. Nothing happened afterwards to put me in mind of the acquaintance till you told me who the young lady was, just now.

“Surely my mother must have reminded you?”

“Not that I can remember. Women in her position don’t much fancy talking of a relative who has married”—he stopped to choose his next words. “I don’t want to be rude; suppose we say married beneath him?”

Reflection told Ovid that this was true. Even in conversation with himself (before the arrival in England of Robert’s Will), his mother rarely mentioned her brother—and still more rarely his family. There was another reason for Mrs. Gallilee’s silence, known only to herself. Robert was in the secret of her debts, and Robert had laid her under heavy pecuniary obligations. The very sound of his name was revolting to his amiable sister: it reminded her of that humiliating sense, known in society as a sense of gratitude.

Carmina was still waiting—and there was nothing further to be gained by returning to the subject of her mother with such a man as Benjulia. Ovid held out his hand to say good-bye.

Taking the offered hand readily enough, the doctor repeated his odd question—“I haven’t been rude, have I?”—with an unpleasant appearance of going through a form purely for form’s sake. Ovid’s natural generosity of feeling urged him to meet the advance, strangely as it had been made, with a friendly reception.

“I am afraid it is I who have been rude,” he said. “Will you go back with me, and be introduced to Carmina?”

Benjulia made his acknowledgments in his own remarkable way. “No, thank you,” he said, quietly, “I’d rather see the monkey.”

In the meantime, Zo had become the innocent cause of a difference of opinion between two no less dissimilar personages than Maria and the duenna.

Having her mind full of the sick monkey, the child felt a natural curiosity to see the other monkeys who were well. Amiable Miss Minerva consulted her young friend from Italy before she complied with Zo’s wishes. Would Miss Carmina like to visit the monkey-house? Ovid’s cousin, remembering Ovid’s promise, looked towards the end of the walk. He was not returning to her—he was not even in sight. Carmina resigned herself to circumstances, with a little air of pique which was duly registered in Miss Minerva’s memory.

Arriving at the monkey-house, Teresa appeared in a new character. She surprised her companions by showing an interest in natural history.

“Are they all monkeys in that big place?” she asked. “I don’t know much about foreign beasts. How do they like it, I wonder?”

This comprehensive inquiry was addressed to the governess, as the most learned person present. Miss Minerva referred to her elder pupil with an encouraging smile. “Maria will inform you,” she said. “Her studies in natural history have made her well acquainted with the habits of monkeys.”

Thus authorised to exhibit her learning, even the discreet Maria actually blushed with pleasure. It was that young lady’s most highly-prized reward to display her knowledge (in imitation of her governess’s method of instruction) for the benefit of unfortunate persons of the lower rank, whose education had been imperfectly carried out. The tone of amiable patronage with which she now imparted useful information to a woman old enough to be her grandmother, would have made the hands of the bygone generation burn to box her ears.

“The monkeys are kept in large and airy cages,” Maria began; “and the temperature is regulated with the utmost care. I shall be happy to point out to you the difference between the monkey and the ape. You are not perhaps aware that the members of the latter family are called ‘Simiadae,’ and are without tails and cheek-pouches?”