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

Maria, in the language of the stage, made a capital exit. With a few hurried words of apology, Miss Minerva prepared to follow. Carmina stopped her at the door.

“Don’t be hard on Zo!” she said.

“I must do my duty,” Miss Minerva answered sternly.

“We were sometimes naughty ourselves when we were children,” Carmina pleaded. “And only the other day she had bread and water for tea. I am so fond of Zo! And besides—” she looked doubtfully at Miss Minerva—“I don’t think Mr. Le Frank is the sort of man to get on with children.”

After what had just passed between Mrs. Gallilee and herself, this expression of opinion excited the governess’s curiosity. “What makes you say that?” she asked.

“Well, my dear, for one thing Mr. Le Frank is so ugly. Don’t you agree with me?”

“I think you had better keep your opinion to yourself. If he heard of it—”

“Is he vain? My poor father used to say that all bad musicians were vain.”

“You don’t call Mr. Le Frank a bad musician?”

“Oh, but I do! I heard him at his concert. Mere execution of the most mechanical kind. A musical box is as good as that man’s playing. This is how he does it!”

Her girlish good spirits had revived in her friend’s company. She turned gaily to the piano, and amused herself by imitating Mr. Le Frank.

Another knock at the door—a single peremptory knock this time—stopped the performance.

Miss Minerva had left the door ajar, when Carmina had prevented her from quitting the room. She looked through the open space, and discovered—Mr. Le Frank.

His bald head trembled, his florid complexion was livid with suppressed rage. “That little devil has run away!” he said—and hurried down the stairs again, as if he dare not trust himself to utter a word more.

“Has he heard me?” Carmina asked in dismay.

“He may only have heard you playing.”

Offering this hopeful suggestion, Miss Minerva felt no doubt, in her own mind, that Mr. Le Frank was perfectly well acquainted with Carmina’s opinion of him. It was easy enough to understand that he should himself inform the governess of an incident, so entirely beyond the reach of his own interference as the flight of Zo. But it was impossible to assume that the furious anger which his face betrayed, could have been excited by a child who had run away from a lesson. No: the vainest of men and musicians had heard that he was ugly, and that his pianoforte-playing resembled the performance of a musical box.

They left the room together—Carmina, ill at ease, to attend on her aunt; Miss Minerva, pondering on what had happened, to find the fugitive Zo.

The footman had already spared her the trouble of searching the house. He had seen Zo running out bare-headed into the Square, and had immediately followed her. The young rebel was locked up. “I don’t care,” said Zo; “I hate Mr. Le Frank!” Miss Minerva’s mind was too seriously preoccupied to notice this aggravation of her pupil’s offence. One subject absorbed her attention—the interview then in progress between Carmina and her aunt.

How would Mrs. Gallilee’s scheme prosper now? Mr. Le Frank might, or might not, consent to be Carmina’s teacher. Another result, however, was certain. Miss Minerva thoroughly well knew the vindictive nature of the man. He neither forgave nor forgot—he was Carmina’s enemy for life.

The month of July was near its end.

On the morning of the twenty-eighth, Carmina was engaged in replying to a letter received from Teresa. Her answer contained a record of domestic events, during an interval of serious importance in her life under Mrs. Gallilee’s roof. Translated from the Italian, the letter was expressed in these terms:

“Are you vexed with me, dearest, for this late reply to your sad news from Italy? I have but one excuse to offer.

“Can I hear of your anxiety about your husband, and not feel the wish to help you to bear your burden by writing cheerfully of myself? Over and over again, I have thought of you and have opened my desk. My spirits have failed me, and I have shut it up again. Am I now in a happier frame of mind? Yes, my good old nurse, I am happier. I have had a letter from Ovid.

“He has arrived safely at Quebec, and he is beginning to feel better already, after the voyage. You cannot imagine how beautifully, how tenderly he writes! I am almost reconciled to his absence, when I read his letter. Will that give you some idea of the happiness and the consolation that I owe to this best and dearest of men?

“Ah, my old granny, I see you start, and make that favourite mark with your thumb-nail under the word ‘consolation’! I hear you say to yourself, ‘Is she unhappy in her English home? And is Aunt Gallilee to blame for it?’ Yes! it is even so. What I would not for the whole world write to Ovid, I may confess to you. Aunt Gallilee is indeed a hard, hard woman.

“Do you remember telling me, in your dear downright way, that Mr. Le Frank looked like a rogue? I don’t know whether he is a rogue—but I do know that it is through his conduct that my aunt is offended with me.

“It happened three weeks ago.

“She sent for me, and said that my education must be completed, and that my music in particular must be attended to. I was quite willing to obey her, and I said so with all needful readiness and respect. She answered that she had already chosen a music-master for me—and then, to my astonishment, she mentioned his name. Mr. Le Frank, who taught her children, was also to teach me! I have plenty of faults, but I really think vanity is not one of them. It is only due to my excellent master in Italy to say, that I am a better pianoforte player than Mr. Le Frank.

“I never breathed a word of this, mind, to my aunt. It would have been ungrateful and useless. She knows and cares nothing about music.

“So we parted good friends, and she wrote the same evening to engage my master. The next day she got his reply. Mr. Le Frank refused to be my professor of music—and this, after he had himself proposed to teach me, in a letter addressed to my aunt! Being asked for his reasons, he made an excuse. The spare time at his disposal, when he had written, had been since occupied by another pupil. The true reason for his conduct is, that he heard me speak of him—rashly enough, I don’t deny it—as an ugly man and a bad player. Miss Minerva sounded him on the subject, at my request, for the purpose of course of making my apologies. He affected not to understand what she meant—with what motive I am sure I don’t know. False and revengeful, you may say, and perhaps you may be right. But the serious part of it, so far as I am concerned, is my aunt’s behaviour to me. If I had thwarted her in the dearest wish of her life, she could hardly treat me with greater coldness and severity. She has not stirred again, in the matter of my education. We only meet at meal-times; and she receives me, when I sit down at table, as she might receive a perfect stranger. Her icy civility is unendurable. And this woman is my darling Ovid’s mother!

“Have I done with my troubles now? No, Teresa; not even yet. Oh, how I wish I was with you in Italy!

“Your letters persist in telling me that I am deluded in believing Miss Minerva to be truly my friend. Do pray remember—even if I am wrong—what a solitary position mine is, in Mrs. Gallilee’s house! I can play with dear little Zo; but whom can I talk to, whom can I confide in, if it turns out that Miss Minerva has been deceiving me?

“When I wrote to you, I refused to acknowledge that any such dreadful discovery as this could be possible; I resented the bare idea of it as a cruel insult to my friend. Since that time—my face burns with shame while I write it—I am a little, just a little, shaken in my own opinion.