Heart and Science. Wilkie Collins

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СКАЧАТЬ (known to her father, by vulgar abbreviation, as “Zo”) took Mr. Gallilee’s stumpy red hand, and held hard by it as if that was the one way in which a dull child could rouse herself, with a prospect of success.

      “I’ve had so many of them,” she said; “I don’t know. Ask Maria.”

      Maria responded with the sweetest readiness. “Dear Zoe, you are so slow! Cheesecakes.”

      Mr. Gallilee patted Zoe’s head as encouragingly as if she had discovered the right answer by herself. “That’s right—ices and cheese-cakes,” he said. “We tried cream-ice, and then we tried water-ice. The children, Miss Minerva, preferred the cream-ice. And, do you know, I’m of their opinion. There’s something in a cream-ice—what do you think yourself of cream-ices, Mr. Le Frank?”

      It was one among the many weaknesses of Mr. Gallilee’s character to be incapable of opening his lips without, sooner or later, taking somebody into his confidence. In the merest trifles, he instinctively invited sympathy and agreement from any person within his reach—from a total stranger quite as readily as from an intimate friend. Mr. Le Frank, representing the present Court of Social Appeal, attempted to deliver judgment on the question of ices, and was interrupted without ceremony by Miss Minerva. She, too, had been waiting her opportunity to speak, and she now took it—not amiably.

      “With all possible respect, Mr. Gallilee, I venture to entreat that you will be a little more thoughtful, where the children are concerned. I beg your pardon, Mr. Le Frank, for interrupting you—but it is really a little too hard on Me. I am held responsible for the health of these girls; I am blamed over and over again, when it is not my fault, for irregularities in their diet—and there they are, at this moment, chilled with ices and cloyed with cakes! What will Mrs. Gallilee say?”

      “Don’t tell her,” Mr. Gallilee suggested.

      “The girls will be thirsty for the rest of the evening,” Miss Minerva persisted; “the girls will have no appetite for the last meal before bedtime. And their mother will ask Me what it means.”

      “My good creature,” cried Mr. Gallilee, “don’t be afraid of the girls’ appetites! Take off their hats, and give them something nice for supper. They inherit my stomach, Miss Minerva—and they’ll ‘tuck in,’ as we used to say at school. Did they say so in your time, Mr. Le Frank?”

      Mrs. Gallilee’s governess and vulgar expressions were anomalies never to be reconciled, under any circumstances. Miss Minerva took off the hats in stern silence. Even “Papa” might have seen the contempt in her face, if she had not managed to hide it in this way, by means of the girls.

      In the silence that ensued, Mr. Le Frank had his chance of speaking, and showed himself to be a gentleman with a happily balanced character—a musician, with an eye to business. Using gratitude to Mr. Gallilee as a means of persuasion, he gently pushed the interests of a friend who was giving a concert next week. “We poor artists have our faults, my dear sir; but we are all earnest in helping each other. My friend sang for nothing at my concert. Don’t suppose for a moment that he expects it of me! But I am going to play for nothing at his concert. May I appeal to your kind patronage to take two tickets?” The reply ended appropriately in musical sound—a golden tinkling, in Mr. Le Frank’s pocket.

      Having paid his tribute to art and artists, Mr. Gallilee looked furtively at Miss Minerva. On the wise principle of letting well alone, he perceived that the happy time had arrived for leaving the room. How was he to make his exit? He prided himself on his readiness of resource, in difficulties of this sort, and he was equal to the occasion as usual—he said he would go to his club.

      “We really have a capital smoking-room at that club,” he said. “I do like a good cigar; and—what do you think Mr. Le Frank?—isn’t a pint of champagne nice drinking, this hot weather? Just cooled with ice—I don’t know whether you feel the weather, Miss Minerva, as I do?—and poured, fizzing, into a silver mug. Lord, how delicious! Good-bye, girls. Give me a kiss before I go.”

      Maria led the way, as became the elder. She not only gave the kiss, but threw an appropriate sentiment into the bargain. “I do love you, dear papa!” said this perfect daughter—with a look in Miss Minerva’s direction, which might have been a malicious look in any eyes but Maria’s.

      Mr. Gallilee turned to his youngest child. “Well, Zo—what do you say?”

      Zo took her father’s hand once more, and rubbed her head against it like a cat. This new method of expressing filial affection seemed to interest Mr. Gallilee. “Does your head itch, my dear?” he asked. The idea was new to Zo. She brightened, and looked at her father with a sly smile. “Why do you do it?” Miss Minerva asked sharply. Zo clouded over again, and answered, “I don’t know.” Mr. Gallilee rewarded her with a kiss, and went away to champagne and the club.

      Mr. Le Frank left the schoolroom next. He paid the governess the compliment of reverting to her narrative of events at the concert.

      “I am greatly struck,” he said, “by what you told me about Mr. Ovid Vere. We may, perhaps, have misjudged him in thinking that he doesn’t like music. His coming to my concert suggests a more cheering view. Do you think there would be any impropriety in my calling to thank him? Perhaps it would be better if I wrote, and enclosed two tickets for my friend’s concert? To tell you the truth, I’ve pledged myself to dispose of a certain number of tickets. My friend is so much in request—it’s expecting too much to ask him to sing for nothing. I think I’ll write. Good-evening!”

      Left alone with her pupils, Miss Minerva looked at her watch. “Prepare your lessons for to-morrow,” she said.

      The girls produced their books. Maria’s library of knowledge was in perfect order. The pages over which Zo pondered in endless perplexity were crumpled by weary fingers, and stained by frequent tears. Oh, fatal knowledge! mercifully forbidden to the first two of our race, who shall count the crimes and stupidities committed in your name?

      Miss Minerva leaned back in her easy-chair. Her mind was occupied by the mysterious question of Ovid’s presence at the concert. She raised her keenly penetrating eyes to the ceiling, and listened for sounds from above.

      “I wonder,” she thought to herself, “what they are doing upstairs?”

      CHAPTER VI.

      Mrs. Gallilee was as complete a mistress of the practice of domestic virtue as of the theory of acoustics and fainting fits. At dressing with taste, and ordering dinners with invention; at heading her table gracefully, and making her guests comfortable; at managing refractory servants and detecting dishonest tradespeople, she was the equal of the least intellectual woman that ever lived. Her preparations for the reception of her niece were finished in advance, without an oversight in the smallest detail. Carmina’s inviting bedroom, in blue, opened into Carmina’s irresistible sitting-room, in brown. The ventilation was arranged, the light and shade were disposed, the flowers were attractively placed, under Mrs. Gallilee’s infallible superintendence. Before Carmina had recovered her senses she was provided with a second mother, who played the part to perfection.

      The four persons, now assembled in the pretty sitting-room upstairs, were in a position of insupportable embarrassment towards each other.

      Finding her son at a concert (after he had told her that he hated music) Mrs. Gallilee, had first discovered him hurrying to the assistance of a young lady in a swoon, with all the anxiety and alarm which he might have shown СКАЧАТЬ