Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1198 page)

The clock struck the hour. She rose and removed the handkerchief from her head. “Hush!” she said, “Do I hear the rustling of a dress on the landing below?” She snatched up a bottle of Mr. Null’s medicine — as a reason for being in the room. The sound of the rustling dress came nearer and nearer. Mrs. Gallilee (on her way to the schoolroom dinner) opened the door. She instantly understood the purpose which the bottle was intended to answer.

“It is my business to give Carmina her medicine,” she said. “Your business is at the schoolroom table.”

She took possession of the bottle, and advanced to Carmina. There were two looking-glasses in the room. One, in the usual position, over the fireplace; the other opposite, on the wall behind the sofa. Turning back, before she left the room, Miss Minerva saw Mrs. Gallilee’s face, when she and Carmina looked at each other, reflected in the glass.

The girls were waiting for their dinner. Maria received the unpunctual governess with her ready smile, and her appropriate speech. “Dear Miss Minerva, we were really almost getting alarmed about you. Pardon me for noticing it, you look — ” She caught the eye of the governess, and stopped confusedly.

“Well?” said Miss Minerva. “How do I look?”

Maria still hesitated. Zo spoke out as usual. “You look as if somebody had frightened you.”

CHAPTER XXXVII.

After two days of rain, the weather cleared again.

It was a calm, sunshiny Sunday morning. The flat country round Benjulia’s house wore its brightest aspect on that clear autumn day. Even the doctor’s gloomy domestic establishment reflected in some degree the change for the better. When he rose that morning, Benjulia presented himself to his household in a character which they were little accustomed to see — the character of a good-humoured master. He astonished his silent servant by attempting to whistle a tune. “If you ever looked cheerful in your life,” he said to the man, “look cheerful now. I’m going to take a holiday!”

After working incessantly — never leaving his labouratory; eating at his dreadful table; snatching an hour’s rest occasionally on the floor — he had completed a series of experiments, with results on which he could absolutely rely. He had advanced by one step nearer towards solving that occult problem in brain disease, which had thus far baffled the investigations of medical men throughout the civilised world. If his present rate of progress continued, the lapse of another month might add his name to the names that remain immortal among physicians, in the Annals of Discovery.

So completely had his labours absorbed his mind that he only remembered the letters which Mrs. Gallilee had left with him, when he finished his breakfast on Sunday morning. Upon examination, there appeared no allusion in Ovid’s correspondence to the mysterious case of illness which he had attended at Montreal. The one method now left, by which Benjulia could relieve the doubt that still troubled him, was to communicate directly with his friend in Canada. He decided to celebrate his holiday by taking a walk; his destination being the central telegraph office in London.

But, before he left the house, his domestic duties claimed attention. He issued his orders to the cook.

At three o’clock he would return to dinner. That day was to witness the celebration of his first regular meat for forty-eight hours past; and he expected the strictest punctuality. The cook — lately engaged — was a vigourous little woman, with fiery hair and a high colour. She, like the man-servant, felt the genial influence of her master’s amiability. He looked at her, for the first time since she had entered the house. A twinkling light showed itself furtively in his dreary gray eyes: he took a dusty old hand-screen from the sideboard, and made her a present of it! “There,” he said with his dry humour, “don’t spoil your complexion before the kitchen fire.” The cook possessed a sanguine temperament, and a taste to be honoured and encouraged — the taste for reading novels. She put her own romantic construction on the extraordinary compliment which the doctor’s jesting humour had paid to her. As he walked out, grimly smiling and thumping his big stick on the floor, a new idea illuminated her mind. Her master admired her; her master was no ordinary man — it might end in his marrying her.

On his way to the telegraph office, Benjulia left Ovid’s letters at Mrs. Gallilee’s house.

If he had personally returned them, he would have found the learned lady in no very gracious humour. On the previous day she had discovered Carmina and Miss Minerva engaged in a private conference — without having been able even to guess what the subject under discussion between them might be. They were again together that morning. Maria and Zo had gone to church with their father; Miss Minerva was kept at home by a headache. At that hour, and under those circumstances, there was no plausible pretence which would justify Mrs. Gallilee’s interference. She seriously contemplated the sacrifice of a month’s salary, and the dismissal of her governess without notice.

When the footman opened the door, Benjulia handed in the packet of letters. After his latest experience of Mrs. Gallilee, he had no intention of returning her visit. He walked away without uttering a word.

The cable took his message to Mr. Morphew in these terms: — ”Ovid’s patient at Montreal. Was the complaint brain disease? Yes or no.” Having made arrangements for the forwarding of the reply from his club, he set forth on the walk back to his house.

At five minutes to three, he was at home again. As the clock struck the hour, he rang the bell. The man-servant appeared, without the dinner. Benjulia’s astonishing amiability — on his holiday — was even equal to this demand on its resources.

“I ordered roast mutton at three,” he said, with terrifying tranquillity. “Where is it?”

“The dinner will be ready in ten minutes, sir.”

“Why is it not ready now?”

“The cook hopes you will excuse her, sir. She is a little behindhand to-day.”

“What has hindered her, if you please?”

The silent servant — on all other occasions the most impenetrable of human beings — began to tremble. The doctor had, literally, kicked a man out of the house who had tried to look through the labouratory skylight. He had turned away a female servant at half an hour’s notice, for forgetting to shut the door, a second time in one day. But what were these highhanded proceedings, compared with the awful composure which, being kept waiting for dinner, only asked what had hindered the cook, and put the question politely, by saying, “if you please”?

“Perhaps you were making love to her?” the doctor suggested, as gently as ever.

This outrageous insinuation stung the silent servant into speech. “I’m incapable of the action, sir!” he answered indignantly; “the woman was reading a story.”

Benjulia bent his head, as if in acknowledgment of a highly satisfactory explanation. “Oh? reading a story? People who read stories are said to have excitable brains. Should you call the cook excitable?”

“I should, sir! Most cooks are excitable. They say it’s the kitchen fire.”

“Do they? You can go now. Don’t hurry the cook — I’ll wait.”

He waited, apparently following some new train of thought which highly diverted him. Ten minutes passed — then a quarter of an hour then another five minutes. When the servant returned with the dinner, the master’s private reflections continued to amuse him: his thin lips were still widening grimly, distended by his formidable smile.

On being carved, the mutton proved to be underdone. At other times, this was an unpardonable crime in Benjulia’s domestic code of laws. All he said now was, “Take it away.” He dined on potatoes, and bread and cheese. When he had done, he was rather more amiable than ever. He said, “Ask the cook to come and see me!”

The cook presented herself, with one hand on her palpitating heart, and the other holding her handkerchief to her eyes.

“What are you crying about?” Benjulia inquired; “I haven’t scolded you, have I?” The cook began an apology; the doctor pointed to a chair. “Sit down, and recover yourself.” The cook sat down, faintly smiling through her tears. This otherwise incomprehensible reception of a person who had kept the dinner waiting twenty minutes, and who had not done the mutton properly even then (taken in connection with the master’s complimentary inquiries, reported downstairs by the footman), could bear but one interpretation. It wasn’t every woman who had her beautiful hair, and her rosy complexion. Why had she not thought of going upstairs first, just to see whether she looked her best in the glass? Would he begin by making a confession? or would he begin by kissing her?

He began by lighting his pipe. For a while he smoked placidly with his eye on the cook. “I hear you have been reading a story,” he resumed. “What is the name of it?”

“‘Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded,’ sir.”

Benjulia went on with his smoking. The cook, thus far demure and downcast, lifted her eyes experimentally. He was still looking at her. Did he want encouragement? The cook cautiously offered a little literary information,

“The author’s name is on the book, sir. Name of Richardson.”

The information was graciously received, “Yes; I’ve heard of the name, and heard of the book. Is it interesting?”

“Oh, sir, it’s a beautiful story! My only excuse for being late with the dinner — ”

“Who’s Pamela?”

“A young person in service, sir. I’m sure I wish I was more like her! I felt quite broken-hearted when you sent the mutton down again; and you so kind as to overlook the error in the roasting — ”

Benjulia stopped the apology once more. He pursued his own ends with a penitent cook, just as he pursued his own ends with a vivisected animal. Nothing moved him out of his appointed course, in the one or in the other. He returned to Pamela.

“And what becomes of her at the end of the story?” he asked.

The cook simpered. “It’s Pamela who is the virtuous young person, sir. And so the story comes true — Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded.”

“Who rewards her?”

Was there ever anything so lucky as this? Pamela’s situation was fast becoming the cook’s situation. The bosom of the vigourous little woman began to show signs of tender agitation — distributed over a large surface. She rolled her eyes amorously. Benjulia puffed out another mouthful of smoke. “Well,” he repeated, “who rewards Pamela?”

“Her master, sir.”

“What does he do?”

The cook’s eyes sank modestly to her lap. The cook’s complexion became brighter than ever.

“Her master marries her, sir.”

“Oh?”

That was all he said. He was not astonished, or confused, or encouraged — he simply intimated that he now knew how Pamela’s master had rewarded Pamela. And, more dispiriting still, he took the opportunity of knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and filled it, and lit it again. If the cook had been one of the few miserable wretches who never read novels, she might have felt her fondly founded hopes already sinking from under her. As it was, Richardson sustained her faith in herself; Richardson reminded her that Pamela’s master had hesitated, and that Pamela’s Virtue had not earned its reward on easy terms. She stole another look at the doctor. The eloquence of women’s eyes, so widely and justly celebrated in poetry and prose, now spoke in the cook’s eyes. They said, “Marry me, dear sir, and you shall never have underdone mutton again.” The hearts of other savages have been known to soften under sufficient influences — why should the scientific savage, under similar pressure, not melt a little too? The doctor took up the talk again: he made a kind allusion to the cook’s family circumstances.

“When you first came here, I think you told me you had no relations?”

“I am an orphan, sir.”

“And you had been some time out of a situation, when I engaged you?”

“Yes, sir; my poor little savings were nearly at an end!” Could he resist that pathetic picture of the orphan’s little savings — framed, as it were, in a delicately-designed reference to her fellow-servant in the story? “I was as poor as Pamela,” she suggested softly.

“And as virtuous,” Benjulia added.