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

He quietly repeated the question. Zo answered this time—as she had formerly answered Teresa in the Gardens. “I don’t know.”

He turned again to Carmina, in a slow, puzzled way. “I don’t know either,” he said.

Hearing the big man own that he was no wiser than herself, Zo returned to him—without, however, getting on his knee again. She clasped her chubby hands under the inspiration of a new idea. “Let’s play at something,” she said to Benjulia. “Do you know any games?”

He shook his head.

“Didn’t you know any games, when you were only as big as me?”

“I have forgotten them.”

“Haven’t you got children?”

“No.”

“Haven’t you got a wife?”

“No.”

“Haven’t you got a friend?”

“No.”

“Well, you are a miserable chap!”

Thanks to Zo, Carmina’s sense of nervous oppression burst its way into relief. She laughed loudly and wildly—she was on the verge of hysterics, when Benjulia’s eyes, silently questioning her again, controlled her at the critical moment. Her laughter died away. But the exciting influence still possessed her; still forced her into the other alternative of saying something—she neither knew nor cared what.

“I couldn’t live such a lonely life as yours,” she said to him—so loudly and so confidently that even Zo noticed it.

“I couldn’t live such a life either,” he admitted, “but for one thing.”

“And what is that?”

“Why are you so loud?” Zo interposed. “Do you think he’s deaf?”

Benjulia made a sign, commanding the child to be silent—without turning towards her. He answered Carmina as if there had been no interruption.

“My medical studies,” he said, “reconcile me to my life.”

“Suppose you got tired of your studies?” she asked.

“I should never get tired of them.”

“Suppose you couldn’t study any more?”

“In that case I shouldn’t live any more.”

“Do you mean that it would kill you to leave off?”

“No.”

“Then what do you mean?”

He laid his great soft fingers on her pulse. She shrank from his touch; he deliberately held her by the arm. “You’re getting excited,” he said. “Never mind what I mean.”

Zo, left unnoticed and not liking it, saw a chance of asserting herself. “I know why Carmina’s excited,” she said. “The old woman’s coming at six o’clock.”

He paid no attention to the child; he persisted in keeping watch on Carmina. “Who is the woman?” he asked.

“The most lovable woman in the world,” she cried; “my dear old nurse!” She started up from the sofa, and pointed with theatrical exaggeration of gesture to the clock on the mantelpiece. “Look! it’s only ten minutes to six. In ten minutes, I shall have my arms round Teresa’s neck. Don’t look at me in that way! It’s your fault if I’m excited. It’s your dreadful eyes that do it. Come here, Zo! I want to give you a kiss.” She seized on Zo with a roughness that startled the child, and looked wildly at Benjulia. “Ha! you don’t understand loving and kissing, do you? What’s the use of speaking to you about my old nurse?”

He pointed imperatively to the sofa. “Sit down again.”

She obeyed him—but he had not quite composed her yet. Her eyes sparkled; she went on talking. “Ah, you’re a hard man! a miserable man! a man that will end badly! You never loved anybody. You don’t know what love is.”

“What is it?”

That icy question cooled her in an instant: her head sank on her bosom: she suddenly became indifferent to persons and things about her. “When will Teresa come?” she whispered to herself. “Oh, when will Teresa come!”

Any other man, whether he really felt for her or not, would, as a mere matter of instinct, have said a kind word to her at that moment. Not the vestige of a change appeared in Benjulia’s impenetrable composure. She might have been a man—or a baby—or the picture of a girl instead of the girl herself, so far as he was concerned. He quietly returned to his question.

“Well,” he resumed—“and what is love?”

Not a word, not a movement escaped her.

“I want to know,” he persisted, waiting for what might happen.

Nothing happened. He was not perplexed by the sudden change. “This is the reaction,” he thought. “We shall see what comes of it.” He looked about him. A bottle of water stood on one of the tables. “Likely to be useful,” he concluded, “in case she feels faint.”

Zo had been listening; Zo saw her way to getting noticed again. Not quite sure of herself this time, she appealed to Carmina. “Didn’t he say, just now, he wanted to know?”

Carmina neither heard nor heeded her. Zo tried Benjulia next. “Shall I tell you what we do in the schoolroom, when we want to know?” His attention, like Carmina’s attention, seemed to be far away from her. Zo impatiently reminded him of her presence—she laid her hand on his knee.

It was only the hand of a child—an idle, quaint, perverse child—but it touched, ignorantly touched, the one tender place in his nature, unprofaned by the infernal cruelties which made his life acceptable to him; the one tender place, hidden so deep from the man himself, that even his far-reaching intellect groped in vain to find it out. There, nevertheless, was the feeling which drew him to Zo, contending successfully with his medical interest in a case of nervous derangement. That unintelligible sympathy with a child looked dimly out of his eyes, spoke faintly in his voice, when he replied to her. “Well,” he said, “what do you do in the schoolroom?”

“We look in the dictionary,” Zo answered. “Carmina’s got a dictionary. I’ll get it.”

She climbed on a chair, and found the book, and laid it on Benjulia’s lap. “I don’t so much mind trying to spell a word,” she explained. “What I hate is being asked what it means. Miss Minerva won’t let me off. She says, Look. I won’t let you off. I’m Miss Minerva and you’re Zo. Look!”

He humoured her silently and mechanically—just as he had humoured her in the matter of the stick, and in the matter of the tickling. Having opened the dictionary, he looked again at Carmina. She had not moved; she seemed to be weary enough to fall asleep. The reaction—nothing but the reaction. It might last for hours, or it might be at an end in another minute. An interesting temperament, whichever way it ended. He opened the dictionary.

“Love?” he muttered grimly to himself. “It seems I’m an object of compassion, because I know nothing about love. Well, what does the book say about it?”

He found the word, and ran his finger down the paragraphs of explanation which followed. “Seven meanings to Love,” he remarked. “First: An affection of the mind excited by beauty and worth of any kind, or by the qualities of an object which communicate pleasure. Second: Courtship. Third: Patriotism, as the love of country. Fourth: Benevolence. Fifth: The object beloved. Sixth: A word of endearment. Seventh: Cupid, the god of love.”

He paused, and reflected a little. Zo, hearing nothing to amuse her, strayed away to the window, and looked out. He glanced at Carmina.

“Which of those meanings makes the pleasure of her life?” he wondered. “Which of them might have made the pleasure of mine?” He closed the dictionary in contempt. “The very man whose business is to explain it, tries seven different ways, and doesn’t explain it after all. And yet, there is such a thing.” He reached that conclusion unwillingly and angrily. For the first time, a doubt about himself forced its way into his mind. Might he have looked higher than his torture-table and his knife? Had he gained from his life all that his life might have given to him?