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

He said it gratefully. “My life is yours; my will is yours. Decide for me, and I will begin my journey.”

She was so impressed by her sense of this new responsibility, that she answered him as gravely as if she had been his wife. “I must give you time to pack up,” she said.

“Say time to be with You!”

She fell into thought. He asked if she was still considering when to send him away. “No,” she said; “it isn’t that. I was wondering at myself. What is it that makes a great man like you so fond of me?”

His arm stole round her waist. He could just see her in the darkening twilight under the trees; the murmuring of the leaves was the only sound near them—his kisses lingered on her face. She sighed softly. “Don’t make it too hard for me to send you away!” she whispered. He raised her, and put her arm in his. “Come,” he said, “we will walk a little in the cool air.”

They returned to the subject of his departure. It was still early in the week. She inquired if Saturday would be too soon to begin his journey. No: he felt it, too—the longer they delayed, the harder the parting would be.

“Have you thought yet where you will go?” she asked.

“I must begin with a sea-voyage,” he replied. “Long railway journeys, in my present state, will only do me harm. The difficulty is where to go to. I have been to America; India is too hot; Australia is too far. Benjulia has suggested Canada.”

As he mentioned the doctor’s name, her hand mechanically pressed his arm.

“That strange man!” she said. “Even his name startles one; I hardly know what to think of him. He seemed to have more feeling for the monkey than for you or me. It was certainly kind of him to take the poor creature home, and try what he could do with it. Are you sure he is a great chemist?”

Ovid stopped. Such a question, from Carmina, sounded strange to him. “What makes you doubt it?” he said.

“You won’t laugh at me, Ovid?”

“You know I won’t!”

“Now you shall hear. We knew a famous Italian chemist at Rome—such a nice old man! He and my father used to play piquet; and I looked at them, and tried to learn—and I was too stupid. But I had plenty of opportunities of noticing our old friend’s hands. They were covered with stains; and he caught me looking at them. He was not in the least offended; he told me his experiments had spotted his skin in that way, and nothing would clean off the stains. I saw Doctor Benjulia’s great big hands, while he was giving you the brandy—and I remembered afterwards that there were no stains on them. I seem to surprise you.”

“You do indeed surprise me. After knowing Benjulia for years, I have never noticed, what you have discovered on first seeing him.”

“Perhaps he has some way of cleaning the stains off his hands.”

Ovid agreed to this, as the readiest means of dismissing the subject. Carmina had really startled him. Some irrational connection between the great chemist’s attention to the monkey, and the perplexing purity of his hands, persisted in vaguely asserting itself in Ovid’s mind. His unacknowledged doubts of Benjulia troubled him as they had never troubled him yet. He turned to Carmina for relief.

“Still thinking, my love?”

“Thinking of you,” she answered. “I want you to promise me something—and I am afraid to ask it.”

“Afraid? You don’t love me, after all!”

“Then I will say it at once! How long do you expect to be away?”

“For two or three months, perhaps.”

“Promise to wait till you return, before you tell your mother—”

“That we are engaged?”

“Yes.”

“You have my promise, Carmina; but you make me uneasy.”

“Why?”

“In my absence, you will be under my mother’s care. And you don’t like my mother.”

Few words and plain words—and they sorely troubled her.

If she owned that he was right, what would the consequence be? He might refuse to leave her. Even assuming that he controlled himself, he would take his departure harassed by anxieties, which might exercise the worst possible influence over the good effect of the journey. To prevaricate with herself or with him was out of the question. That very evening she had quarrelled with his mother; and she had yet to discover whether Mrs. Gallilee had forgiven her. In her heart of hearts she hated deceit—and in her heart of hearts she longed to set his mind at ease. In that embarrassing position, which was the right way out? Satan persuaded Eve; and Love persuaded Carmina. Love asked if she was cruel enough to make her heart’s darling miserable when he was so fond of her? Before she could realise it, she had begun to deceive him. Poor humanity! poor Carmina!

“You are almost as hard on me as if you were Doctor Benjulia himself!” she said. “I feel your mother’s superiority—and you tell me I don’t like her. Haven’t you seen how good she has been to me?”

She thought this way of putting it irresistible. Ovid resisted, nevertheless. Carmina plunged into lower depths of deceit immediately.

“Haven’t you seen my pretty rooms—my piano—my pictures—my china—my flowers? I should be the most insensible creature living if I didn’t feel grateful to your mother.”

“And yet, you are afraid of her.”

She shook his arm impatiently. “I say, No!”

He was as obstinate as ever. “I say, Yes! If you’re not afraid, why do you wish to keep our engagement from my mother’s knowledge?”

His reasoning was unanswerable. But where is the woman to be found who is not supple enough to slip through the stiff fingers of Reason? She sheltered herself from his logic behind his language.

“Must I remind you again of the time when you were angry?” she rejoined. “You said your mother was bent on separating us. If I don’t want her to know of our engagement just yet—isn’t that a good reason?” She rested her head caressingly on his shoulder. “Tell me,” she went on, thinking of one of Miss Minerva’s suggestions, “doesn’t my aunt look to a higher marriage for you than a marriage with me?”

It was impossible to deny that Mrs. Gallilee’s views might justify that inquiry. Had she not more than once advised him to wait a few years—in other words, to wait until he had won the highest honours of his profession—before he thought of marrying at all? But Carmina was too precious to him to be humiliated by comparisons with other women, no matter what their rank might be. He paid her a compliment, instead of giving her an answer.

“My mother can’t look higher than you,” he said. “I wish I could feel sure, Carmina—in leaving you with her—that I am leaving you with a friend whom you trust and love.”

There was a sadness in his tone that grieved her. “Wait till you come back,” she replied, speaking as gaily as she could. “You will be ashamed to remember your own misgivings. And don’t forget, dear, that I have another friend besides your mother—the best and kindest of friends—to take care of me.”

Ovid heard this with some surprise. “A friend in my mother’s house?” he asked.

“Certainly!”

“Who is it?”

“Miss Minerva.”

“What!” His tone expressed such immeasurable amazement, that Carmina’s sense of justice was roused in defence of her new friend.

“If I began by wronging Miss Minerva, I had the excuse of being a stranger,” she said, warmly. “You have known her for years, and you ought to have found out her good qualities long since! Are all men alike, I wonder? Even my kind dear father used to call ugly women the inexcusable mistakes of Nature. Poor Miss Minerva says herself she is ugly, and expects everybody to misjudge her accordingly. I don’t misjudge her, for one. Teresa has left me; and you are going away next. A miserable prospect, Ovid, but not quite without hope. Frances—yes, I call her by her Christian name, and she calls me by mine!—Frances will console me, and make my life as happy as it can be till you come back.”