Heart and Science | Page 8

back and be married

in Italy. And here I am in London again, after God knows how many
years. No matter. We will enjoy ourselves to-day; and when we go to
Madam Gallilee's to-morrow, we will tell a little lie, and say we only
arrived on the evening that has not yet come."
The duenna's sense of humour was so tickled by this prospective view
of the little lie, that she leaned back in her chair and laughed. Carmina's
rare smile showed itself faintly. The terrible first interview with the
unknown aunt still oppressed her. She took up a newspaper in despair.
"Oh, my old dear!" she said, "let us get out of this dreadful room, and
be reminded of Italy!" Teresa lifted her ugly hands in bewilderment.
"Reminded of Italy--in London?"
"Is there no Italian music in London?" Carmina asked suggestively.
The duenna's bright eyes answered this in their own language. She
snatched up the nearest newspaper.
It was then the height of the London concert season. Morning
performances of music were announced in rows. Reading the
advertised programmes, Carmina found them, in one remarkable
respect, all alike. They would have led an ignorant stranger to wonder
whether any such persons as Italian composers, French composers, and
English composers had ever existed. The music offered to the English
public was music of exclusively German (and for the most part modern
German) origin. Carmina held the opinion--in common with Mozart
and Rossini, as well as other people--that music without melody is not
music at all. She laid aside the newspaper.
The plan of going to a concert being thus abandoned, the idea occurred
to them of seeing pictures. Teresa, in search of information, tried her
luck at a great table in the middle of the room, on which useful books
were liberally displayed. She returned with a catalogue of the Royal
Academy Exhibition (which someone had left on the table), and with
the most universally well-informed book, on a small scale, that has ever
enlightened humanity--modestly described on the title-page as an
Almanac.

Carmina opened the catalogue at the first page, and discovered a list of
Royal Academicians. Were all these gentlemen celebrated painters?
Out of nearly forty names, three only had made themselves generally
known beyond the limits of England. She turned to the last page. The
works of art on show numbered more than fifteen hundred. Teresa,
looking over her shoulder, made the same discovery. "Our heads will
ache, and our feet will ache," she remarked, "before we get out of that
place." Carmina laid aside the catalogue.
Teresa opened the Almanac at hazard, and hit on the page devoted to
Amusements. Her next discovery led her to the section inscribed
"Museums." She scored an approving mark at that place with her
thumbnail--and read the list in fluent broken English.
The British Museum? Teresa's memory of that magnificent building
recalled it vividly in one respect. She shook her head. "More headache
and footache, there!" Bethnal Green; Indian Museum; College of
Surgeons; Practical Geology; South Kensington; Patent Museum--all
unknown to Teresa. "The saints preserve us! what headaches and
footaches in all these, if they are as big as that other one!" She went on
with the list--and astonished everybody in the room by suddenly
clapping her hands. Sir John Soane's Museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields.
"Ah, but I remember that! A nice little easy museum in a private house,
and all sorts of pretty things to see. My dear love, trust your old Teresa.
Come to Soane!"
In ten minutes more they were dressed, and on the steps of the hotel.
The bright sunlight, the pleasant air, invited them to walk. On the same
afternoon, when Ovid had set forth on foot for Lincoln's Inn Fields,
Carmina and Teresa set forth on foot for Lincoln's Inn Fields. Trivial
obstacles had kept the man away from the College. Would trivial
obstacles keep the women away from the Museum?
They crossed the Strand, and entered a street which led out of it
towards the North; Teresa's pride in her memory forbidding her thus far
to ask their way.
Their talk--dwelling at first on Italy, and on the memory of Carmina's

Italian mother--reverted to the formidable subject of Mrs. Gallilee.
Teresa's hopeful view of the future turned to the cousins, and drew the
picture of two charming little girls, eagerly waiting to give their
innocent hearts to their young relative from Italy. "Are there only two?"
she said. "Surely you told me there was a boy, besides the girls?"
Carmina set her right. "My cousin Ovid is a great doctor," she
continued with an air of importance. "Poor papa used to say that our
family would have reason to be proud of him." "Does he live at home?"
asked simple Teresa. "Oh, dear, no! He has