Heart and Science by Wilkie Collins (read with me TXT) 📕
The conditions under which the old doctor was willing to assume the character of a prophet never occurred. Ovid remembered that he was go
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Hearing this, Carmina appealed again to Ovid.
“When I am asked riddles,” she said, “I am never easy till the answer is guessed for me. And when I hear of mysteries, I am dying to have them revealed. You are a doctor yourself. Do tell me something more!”
Ovid might have evaded her entreaties by means of an excuse. But her eyes were irresistible: they looked him into submission in an instant.
“Doctor Benjulia is what we call a Specialist,” he said. “I mean that he only professes to treat certain diseases. Brains and nerves are Benjulia’s diseases. Without quite discontinuing his medical practice, he limits himself to serious cases—when other doctors are puzzled, you know, and want him to help them. With this exception, he has certainly sacrificed his professional interests to his mania for experiments in chemistry. What those experiments are, nobody knows but himself. He keeps the key of his laboratory about him by day and by night. When the place wants cleaning, he does the cleaning with his own hands.”
Carmina listened with great interest: “Has nobody peeped in at the windows?” she asked.
“There are no windows—only a skylight in the roof.”
“Can’t somebody get up on the roof, and look in through the skylight?”
Ovid laughed. “One of his men-servants is said to have tried that experiment,” he replied.
“And what did the servant see?”
“A large white blind, drawn under the skylight, and hiding the whole room from view. Somehow, the doctor discovered him—and the man was instantly dismissed. Of course there are reports which explain the mystery of the doctor and his laboratory. One report says that he is trying to find a way of turning common metals into gold. Another declares that he is inventing some explosive compound, so horribly destructive that it will put an end to war. All I can tell you is, that his mind (when I happen to meet him) seems to be as completely absorbed as ever in brains and nerves. But, what they can have to do with chemical experiments, secretly pursued in a lonely field, is a riddle to which I have thus far found no answer.
“Is he married?” Carmina inquired.
The question seemed to amuse Ovid. “If Doctor Benjulia had a wife, you think we might get at his secrets? There is no such chance for us—he manages his domestic affairs for himself.”
“Hasn’t he even got a housekeeper?”
“Not even a housekeeper!”
While he was making that reply, he saw the doctor slowly advancing towards them. “Excuse me for one minute,” he resumed; “I will just speak to him, and come back to you.”
Carmina turned to Miss Minerva in surprise.
“Ovid seems to have some reason for keeping the tall man away from us,” she said. “Does he dislike Doctor Benjulia?”
But for restraining motives, the governess might have gratified her hatred of Carmina by a sharp reply. She had her reasons—not only after what she had overheard in the conservatory, but after what she had seen in the Gardens—for winning Carmina’s confidence, and exercising over her the influence of a trusted friend. Miss Minerva made instant use of her first opportunity.
“I can tell you what I have noticed myself,” she said confidentially. “When Mrs. Gallilee gives parties, I am allowed to be present—to see the famous professors of science. On one of these occasions they were talking of instinct and reason. Your cousin, Mr. Ovid Vere, said it was no easy matter to decide where instinct ended and reason began. In his own experience, he had sometimes found people of feeble minds, who judged by instinct, arrive at sounder conclusions than their superiors in intelligence, who judged by reason. The talk took another turn—and, soon after, Doctor Benjulia joined the guests. I don’t know whether you have observed that Mr. Gallilee is very fond of his stepson?”
Oh, yes! Carmina had noticed that. “I like Mr. Gallilee,” she said warmly; “he is such a nice, kind-hearted, natural old man.”
Miss Minerva concealed a sneer under a smile. Fond of Mr. Gallilee? what simplicity! “Well,” she resumed, “the doctor paid his respects to the master of the house, and then he shook hands with Mr. Ovid; and then the scientific gentlemen all got round him, and had learned talk. Mr. Gallilee came up to his stepson, looking a little discomposed. He spoke in a whisper—you know his way?—‘Ovid, do you like Doctor Benjulia? Don’t mention it; I hate him.’ Strong language for Mr. Gallilee, wasn’t it? Mr. Ovid said, ‘Why do you hate him?’ And poor Mr. Gallilee answered like a child, ‘Because I do.’ Some ladies came in, and the old gentleman left us to speak to them. I ventured to say to Mr. Ovid, ‘Is that instinct or reason?’ He took it quite seriously. ‘Instinct,’ he said—‘and it troubles me.’ I leave you, Miss Carmina, to draw your own conclusion.”
They both looked up. Ovid and the doctor were walking slowly away from them, and were just passing Teresa and the child. At the same moment, one of the keepers of the animals approached Benjulia. After they had talked together for a while, the man withdrew. Zo (who had heard it all, and had understood a part of it) ran up to Carmina, charged with news.
“There’s a sick monkey in the gardens, in a room all by himself!” the child cried. “And, I say, look there!” She pointed excitedly to Benjulia and Ovid, walking on again slowly in the direction of the aviaries. “There’s the big doctor who tickles me! He says he’ll see the poor monkey, as soon as he’s done with Ovid. And what do you think he said besides? He said perhaps he’d take the monkey home with him.”
“I wonder what’s the matter with the poor creature?” Carmina asked.
“After what Mr. Ovid has told us, I think I know,” Miss Minerva answered. “Doctor Benjulia wouldn’t be interested in the monkey unless it had a disease of the brain.”
CHAPTER XIII.
Ovid had promised to return to Carmina in a minute. The minutes passed, and still Doctor Benjulia held him in talk.
Now that he was no longer seeking amusement, in his own dreary way, by mystifying Zo, the lines seemed to harden in the doctor’s fleshless face. A scrupulously polite man, he was always cold in his politeness. He waited to have his hand shaken, and waited to be spoken to. And yet, on this occasion, he had something to say. When Ovid opened the conversation, he changed the subject directly.
“Benjulia! what brings You to the Zoological Gardens?”
“One of the monkeys has got brain disease; and they fancy I might like to see the beast before they kill him. Have you been thinking lately of that patient we lost?”
Not at the moment remembering the patient, Ovid made no immediate reply. The doctor seemed to distrust his silence.
“You don’t mean to say you have forgotten the case?” he resumed. “We called it hysteria, not knowing what else it was. I don’t forgive the girl for slipping through our fingers; I hate to be beaten by Death, in that way. Have you made up your mind what to do, on the next occasion? Perhaps you think you could have saved her life if you had been sent for, now?”
“No, indeed, I am just as ignorant—”
“Give ignorance time,” Benjulia interposed, “and ignorance will become knowledge—if a man is in earnest. The proper treatment might occur to you to-morrow.”
He held to his idea with such obstinacy that Ovid set him right, rather impatiently. “The proper treatment has as much chance of occurring to the greatest ass in the profession,” he answered, “as it has of occurring to me. I can put my mind to no good medical use; my work has been too much for me. I am obliged to give up practice, and rest—for a time.”
Not even a formal expression of sympathy escaped Doctor Benjulia. Having been a distrustful friend so far, he became an inquisitive friend now. “You’re going away, of course,” he said. “Where to? On the Continent? Not to Italy—if you really want to recover your health!”
“What is the objection to Italy?”
The doctor put his great hand solemnly on his young friend’s shoulder. “The medical schools in that country are recovering their past reputation,” he said. “They are becoming active centres of physiological inquiry. You will be dragged into it, to a dead certainty. They’re sure to try what they can strike out by collision with a man like you. What will become of that overworked mind of yours, when a lot of professors are searching it without mercy? Have you ever been to Canada?”
“No. Have you?”
“I have been everywhere. Canada is just the place for you, in this summer season. Bracing air; and steady-going doctors who leave the fools in Europe to pry into the secrets of Nature. Thousands of miles of land, if you like riding. Thousands of miles of water, if you like sailing. Pack up, and go to Canada.”
What did all this mean? Was he afraid that his colleague might stumble on some discovery which he was in search of himself? And did the discovery relate to his own special subject of brains and nerves? Ovid made an attempt to understand him.
“Tell me something about yourself, Benjulia,” he said. “Are you returning to your regular professional work?”
Benjulia struck his bamboo stick emphatically on the gravel-walk. “Never! Unless I know more than I know now.”
This surely meant that he was as much devoted to his chemical experiments as ever? In that case, how could Ovid (who knew nothing of chemical experiments) be an obstacle in the doctor’s way? Baffled thus far, he made another attempt at inducing Benjulia to explain himself.
“When is the world to hear of your discoveries?” he asked.
The doctor’s massive forehead gathered ominously into a frown, “Damn the world!” That was his only reply.
Ovid was not disposed to allow himself to be kept in the dark in this way. “I suppose you are going on with your experiments?” he said.
The gloom of Benjulia’s grave eyes deepened: they stared with a stern fixedness into vacancy. His great head bent slowly over his broad breast. The whole man seemed to be shut up in himself. “I go on a way of my own,” he growled. “Let nobody cross it.”
After that reply, to persist in making inquiries would only have ended in needlessly provoking an irritable man. Ovid looked back towards Carmina. “I must return to my friends,” he said.
The doctor lifted his head, like a man awakened. “Have I been rude?” he asked. “Don’t talk to me about my experiments. That’s my raw place, and you hit me on it. What did you say just now? Friends? who are your friends?” He rubbed his hand savagely over his forehead—it was a way he had of clearing his mind. “I know,” he went on. “I saw your friends just now. Who’s the young lady?” His most intimate companions had never heard him laugh: they had sometimes seen his thin-lipped mouth widen drearily into a smile. It widened now. “Whoever she is,” he proceeded, “Zo wonders why you don’t kiss her.”
This specimen of Benjulia’s attempts at pleasantry was not exactly to Ovid’s taste. He shifted the topic to his little sister. “You were always fond of Zo,” he said.
Benjulia looked thoroughly puzzled. Fondness for anybody was, to all appearance, one of the few subjects on which he had not qualified himself to offer an opinion. He gave his head another savage rub, and returned to the subject of the young lady. “Who is she?” he asked again.
“My cousin,” Ovid replied as shortly as possible.
“Your cousin? A girl of Lady Northlake’s?”
“No: my late uncle’s daughter.”
Benjulia suddenly came to a standstill. “What!” he cried, “has that misbegotten child grown up to be a woman?”’
Ovid started. Words of angry protest were on his lips, when he perceived Teresa and Zo on one side of him, and the keeper of the monkeys on the other. Benjulia dismissed the
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