Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1208 page)

“My devotion to you might wear out,” he answered audaciously. “You may trust my feeling towards your niece to last — I never forget an injury. Is it indiscreet to inquire how you mean to keep Miss Carmina from joining her lover in Quebec? Does a guardian’s authority extend to locking her up in her room?”

Mrs. Gallilee felt the underlying familiarity in these questions — elabourately concealed as it was under an assumption of respect.

“My niece is no longer in my house,” she answered coldly.

“Gone!” cried Mr. Le Frank.

She corrected the expression. “Removed,” she said, and dropped the subject there.

Mr. Le Frank took the subject up again. “Removed, I presume, under the care of her nurse?” he rejoined.

The nurse? What did he know about the nurse? “May I ask — ?” Mrs. Gallilee began.

He smiled indulgently, and stopped her there. “You are not quite yourself to-night,” he said. “Permit me to remind you that your niece’s letter to Mr. Ovid Vere is explicit, and that I took the liberty of reading it before I left it at your house.”

Mrs. Gallilee listened in silence, conscious that she had committed another error. She had carefully excluded from her confidence a man who was already in possession of her secrets! Mr. Le Frank’s courteous sympathy forbade him to take advantage of the position of superiority which he now held.

“I will do myself the honour of calling again,” he said, “when you are better able to place the right estimate on my humble offers of service. I wouldn’t fatigue you, Mrs. Gallilee, for the world! At the same time, permit me to put one last question which ought not to be delayed. When Miss Carmina left you, did she take away her writing-desk and her keys?”

“No.”

“Allow me to suggest that she may send for them at any moment.”

Before it was possible to ask for an explanation, Joseph presented himself again. Mr. Null was waiting downstairs. Mrs. Gallilee arranged that he should be admitted when she rang her bell. Mr. Le Frank approached the sofa, when they were alone, and returned to his suggestion in a whisper.

“Surely, you see the importance of using your niece’s keys?” he resumed. “We don’t know what correspondence may have been going on, in which the nurse and the governess have been concerned. After we have already intercepted a letter, hesitation is absurd! You are not equal to the effort yourself. I know the room. Don’t be afraid of discovery; I have a naturally soft footfall — and my excuse is ready, if somebody else has a soft footfall too. Leave it to me.”

He lit a candle as he spoke. But for that allusion to the nurse, Mrs. Gallilee might have ordered him to blow it out again. Eager for any discovery which might, by the barest possibility, place Teresa at her mercy, she silently submitted to Mr. Le Frank. “I’ll call to-morrow,” he said — and slipped out of the room.

When Mr. Null was announced, Mrs. Gallilee pushed up the shade over the globe of the lamp. Her medical attendant’s face might be worth observing, under a clear light.

His timid look, his confused manner, when he made the conventional apologies, told her at once that Teresa had spoken, and that he knew what had happened. Even he had never before been so soothing and so attentive. But he forgot, or he was afraid, to consult appearances by asking what was the matter, before he felt the pulse, and took the temperature, and wrote his prescription. Not a word was uttered by Mrs. Gallilee, until the medical formalities came to an end. “Is there anything more that I can do?” he asked.

“You can tell me,” she said, “when I shall be well again.”

Mr. Null was polite; Mr. Null was sympathetic. Mrs. Gallilee might be herself again in a day or two — or Mrs. Gallilee might be unhappily confined to her room for some little time. He had hope in his prescription, and hope in perfect quiet and repose — he would suggest the propriety of going to bed at once, and would not fail to call early the next morning.

“Sit down again,” said Mrs. Gallilee.

Mr. Null turned pale. He foresaw what was coming.

“You have been in attendance on Miss Carmina. I wish to know what her illness is.”

Mr. Null began to prevaricate at the outset. “The case causes us serious anxiety. The complications are formidable. Doctor Benjulia himself — ”

“In plain words, Mr. Null, can she be moved?”

This produced a definite answer. “Quite impossible.”

She only ventured to put her next question after waiting a little to control herself.

“Is that foreign woman, the nurse — the only nurse — in attendance?”

“Don’t speak of her, Mrs. Gallilee! A dreadful woman; coarse, furious, a perfect savage. When I suggested a second nurse — ”

“I understand. You asked just now if you could do anything for me. You can do me a great service — you can recommend me a trustworthy lawyer.”

Mr. Null was surprised. As the old medical attendant of the family, he was not unacquainted with the legal adviser. He mentioned Mr. Mool’s name.

“Mr. Mool has forfeited my confidence,” Mrs. Gallilee announced. “Can you, or can you not, recommend a lawyer?”

“Oh, certainly! My own lawyer.”

“You will find writing materials on the table behind me. I won’t keep you more than five minutes. I want you to write from my dictation.”

“My dear lady, in your present condition — ”

“Do as I tell you! My head is quiet while I lie down. Even a woman in my condition can say what she means to do. I shall not close my eyes tonight, unless I can feel that I have put that wretch in her right place. Who are your lawyers?”

Mr. Null mentioned the names, and took up his pen.

“Introduce me in the customary form,” Mrs. Gallilee proceeded; “and then refer the lawyers to my brother’s Will. Is it done?”

In due time it was done.

“Tell them next, how my niece has been taken away from me, and where she has been taken to.”

To the best of his ability, Mr. Null complied.

“Now,” said Mrs. Gallilee, “write what I mean to do!”

The prospect of being revenged on Teresa revived her. For the moment, at least, she almost looked like herself again.

Mr. Null turned over to a new leaf, with a hand that trembled a little. The dictating voice pronounced these words:

“I forbid the woman Teresa to act in the capacity of nurse to Miss Carmina, and even to enter the room in which that young lady is now lying ill. I further warn this person, that my niece will be restored to my care, the moment her medical attendants allow her to be removed. And I desire my legal advisers to assert my authority, as guardian, to-morrow morning.”

Mr. Null finished his task in silent dismay. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

“Is there any very terrible effort required in saying those few words — even to a shattered creature like me?” Mrs. Gallilee asked bitterly. “Let me hear that the lawyers have got their instructions, when you come to-morrow; and give me the name and address of a nurse whom you can thoroughly recommend. Good-night!”

At last, Mr. Null got away. As he softly closed the dressing-room door, the serious question still dwelt on his mind: What would Teresa do?

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Even in the welcome retirement of the school-room, Mr. Gallilee’s mind was not at ease. He was troubled by a question entirely new to him — the question of himself, in the character of husband and father.

Accustomed through long years of conjugal association to look up to his wife as a superior creature, he was now conscious that her place in his estimation had been lost, beyond recovery. If he considered next what ought to be done with Maria and Zo, he only renewed his perplexity and distress. To leave them (as he had hitherto left them) absolutely submitted to their mother’s authority, was to resign his children to the influence of a woman, who had ceased to be the object of his confidence and respect. He pondered over it in the schoolroom; he pondered over it when he went to bed. On the next morning, he arrived at a conclusion in the nature of a compromise. He decided on applying to his good friend, Mr. Mool, for a word of advice.

His first proceeding was to call at Teresa’s lodgings, in the hope of hearing better news of Carmina.

The melancholy report of her was expressed in two words: No change. He was so distressed that he asked to see the landlady; and tried, in his own helpless kindhearted way, to get a little hopeful information by asking questions — useless questions, repeated over and over again in futile changes of words. The landlady was patient: she respected the undisguised grief of the gentle modest old man; but she held to the hard truth. The one possible answer was the answer which her servant had already given. When she followed him out, to open the door, Mr. Gallilee requested permission to wait a moment in the hall. “If you will allow me, ma’am, I’ll wipe my eyes before I go into the street.”

Arriving at the office without an appointment, he found the lawyer engaged. A clerk presented to him a slip of paper, with a line written by Mr. Mool: “Is it anything of importance?” Simple Mr. Gallilee wrote back: “Oh, dear, no; it’s only me! I’ll call again.” Besides his critical judgment in the matter of champagne, this excellent man possessed another accomplishment — a beautiful handwriting. Mr. Mool, discovering a crooked line and some ill-formed letters in the reply, drew his own conclusions. He sent word to his old friend to wait.

In ten minutes more they were together, and the lawyer was informed of the events that had followed the visit of Benjulia to Fairfield Gardens, on the previous day.

For a while, the two men sat silently meditating — daunted by the prospect before them. When the time came for speaking, they exercised an influence over each other, of which both were alike unconscious. Out of their common horror of Mrs. Gallilee’s conduct, and their common interest in Carmina, they innocently achieved between them the creation of one resolute man.

“My dear Gallilee, this is a very serious thing.”

“My dear Mool, I feel it so — or I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”

“Don’t talk of disturbing me! I see so many complications ahead of us, I hardly know where to begin.”

“Just my case! It’s a comfort to me that you feel it as I do.”

Mr. Mool rose and tried walking up and down his room, as a means of stimulating his ingenuity.

“There’s this poor young lady,” he resumed. “If she gets better — ”

“Don’t put it in that way!” Mr. Gallilee interposed. “It sounds as if you doubted her ever getting well — you see it yourself in that light, don’t you? Be a little more positive, Mool, in mercy to me.”

“By all means,” Mr. Mool agreed. “Let us say,
when
she gets better. But the difficulty meets us, all the same. If Mrs. Gallilee claims her right, what are we to do?”

Mr. Gallilee rose in his turn, and took a walk up and down the room. That well-meant experiment only left him feebler than ever.

“What possessed her brother to make her Carmina’s guardian?” he asked — with the nearest approach to irritability of which he was capable.

The lawyer was busy with his own thoughts. He only enlightened Mr. Gallilee after the question had been repeated.

“I had the sincerest regard for Mr. Robert Graywell,” he said. “A better husband and father — and don’t let me forget it, a more charming artist — never lived. But,” said Mr. Mool, with the air of one strong-minded man appealing to another: “weak, sadly weak. If you will allow me to say so, your wife’s self-asserting way — well, it was so unlike her brother’s way, that it had its effect on him! If Lady Northlake had been a little less quiet and retiring, the matter might have ended in a very different manner. As it was (I don’t wish to put the case offensively) Mrs. Gallilee imposed on him — and there she is, in authority, under the Will. Let that be. We must protect this poor girl. We must act!” cried Mr. Mool with a burst of energy.