A Woman-Hater Part 17

This pertinacity looked like defiance. Vizard rose from his chair, bowed ironically, with the air of a man not disposed for a hot argument.

"In that case--with permission--I'll withdraw to my veranda and, in that [he struck a light] peaceful--[here he took a suck] shade--"

"You will meditate on the charms of Ina Klosking."

Vizard received this poisoned arrow in the small of the back, as he was sauntering out. He turned like a shot, as if a man had struck him, and, for a single moment, he looked downright terrible and wonderfully unlike the easy-going Harrington Vizard. But he soon recovered himself. "What!

you listen, do you?" said he; and turned contemptuously on his heel without another word.

There was an uneasy, chilling pause. Miss Maitland would have given something to withdraw her last shot. f.a.n.n.y was very uncomfortable and fixed her eyes on the table. Zoe, deeply shocked at Severne's deceit, was now amazed and puzzled about her brother. "Ina Klosking!" inquired she; "who is that?"

"Ask Mr. Severne," said Miss Maitland, st.u.r.dily.

Now Mr. Severne was sitting silent, but with restless eyes, meditating how he should get over that figment of his about the sick friend.

Zoe turned round on him, fixed her glorious eyes full upon his face, and said, rather imperiously, "Mr. Severne, who is Ina Klosking?"

Mr. Severne looked up blankly in her face, and said nothing.

She colored at not being answered, and repeated her question (all this time f.a.n.n.y's eyes were fixed on the young man even more keenly than Zoe's), "Who--and what--is Ina Klosking?"

"She is a public singer."

"Do you know her?"

"Yes; I heard her sing at Vienna."

"Yes, yes; but do you know her to speak to?"

He considered half a moment, and then said he had not that honor. "But,"

said he, rather hurriedly, "somebody or other told me she had come out at the opera here and made a hit."

"What in--Siebel?"

"I don't know. But I saw large bills out with her name. She made her _de'but_ in Gounod's 'Faust.'"

"It is _my_ Siebel!" cried Zoe, rapturously. "Why, aunt, no wonder Harrington admires her. For my part, I adore her."

_"You,_ child! That is quite a different matter."

"No, it is not. He is like me; he has only seen her once, as I have, and on the stage."

"Fiddle-dee-dee. I tell you he is in love with her, over head and ears.

He is wonderfully inflammable for a woman-hater. Ask Mr. Severne: he knows."

"Mr. Severne, is my brother in love with that lady?"

Severne's turn had come; that able young man saw his chance, and did as good a bit of acting as ever was extemporized even by an Italian mime.

"Miss Vizard," said he, fixing his hazel eyes on her for the first time, in a way that made her feel his power, "what pa.s.sed in confidence between two friends ought to be sacred. Don't--you--think so?" (The girl quivered, remembering the secret he had confessed to her.) "Miss Maitland has done your brother and me the honor to listen to our secrets. She shall repeat them, if she thinks it delicate; but I shall not, without Vizard's consent; and, more than that, the conversation seems to me to be taking the turn of casting blame and ridicule and I don't know what on the best-hearted, kindest-hearted, truest-hearted, n.o.blest, and manliest man I know. I decline to take any further share in it."

With these last words in his mouth, he stuck his hands defiantly into his pockets and stalked out into the veranda, looking every inch a man.

Zoe folded her arms and gazed after him with undisguised admiration. How well everything he did became him; his firing up--his _brusquerie--_the very movements of his body, all so piquant, charming, and unwomanly! As he vanished from her admiring eyes, she turned, with flaming cheeks, on Miss Maitland, and said, "Well, aunt, you have driven them both out at the window; now, say something pretty to f.a.n.n.y and me, and drive us out at the door."

Miss Maitland hung her head; she saw she had them all against her but f.a.n.n.y, and f.a.n.n.y was a trimmer. She said, sorrowfully, "No, Zoe. I feel how unattractive I have made the room. I have driven away the G.o.ds of your idolatry--they are only idols of clay; but that you can't believe. I will banish n.o.body else, except a cross-grained, but respectable old woman, who is too experienced, and too much soured by it, to please young people when things are going wrong."

With this she took her bed-candle, and retired.

Zoe had an inward struggle. As Miss Maitland opened her bedroom door, she called to her: "Aunt! one word. Was it you that ordered the fire in my bedroom?"

Now, if she had received the answer she expected, she meant to say, "Then please let me forget everything else you have said or done to-day." But Miss Maitland stared a little, and said, "Fire in your bedroom? no."

"Oh! Then I have nothing to thank you for this day," said Zoe, with all the hardness of youth; though, as a general rule, she had not her share of it.

The old lady winced visibly, but she made a creditable answer. "Then, my dear, you shall have my prayers this night; and it does not matter much whether you thank me for them or not."

As she disappeared, Zoe flung herself wearily on a couch, and very soon began to cry. f.a.n.n.y ran to her and nestled close to her, and the two had a rock together, Zoe crying, and f.a.n.n.y coaxing and comforting.

"Ah!" sighed Zoe, "this was the happiest day of my life; and see how it ends. Quarreling; and deceit! the one I hate, the other I despise. No, never again, until I have said my prayers, and am just going to sleep, will I cry 'O giorno felice!' as I did this afternoon, when the rain was pouring on me, but my heart was all in a glow."

These pretty little lamentations of youth were interrupted by Mr. Severne slipping away from his friend, to try and recover lost ground.

He was coolly received by Zoe; then he looked dismayed, but affected not to understand; then Zoe pinched f.a.n.n.y, which meant "I don't choose to put him on his defense; but I am dying to hear if he has anything to say."

Thereupon f.a.n.n.y obeyed that significant pinch, and said, "Mr. Severne, my cousin is not a woman of the world; she is a country girl, with old-fashioned romantic notions that a man should be above telling fibs. I have known her longer than you, and I see she can't understand your pa.s.sing off the gambling-table for a sick friend."

"Why, I never did," said he, as bold as bra.s.s.

"Mr. Severne!"

"Miss Dover, my sick friend was at 'The Golden Star.' That's a small hotel in a different direction from the Kursaal. I was there from seven o'clock till nine. You ask the waiter, if you don't believe me."

f.a.n.n.y giggled at this inadvertent speech; but Zoe's feelings were too deeply engaged to shoot fun flying. "f.a.n.n.y" cried she, eagerly, "I heard him tell the coachman to drive him to that very place, 'The Golden Star.'"

"Really?" said f.a.n.n.y, mystified.

"Indeed I did, dear. I remember 'The Golden Star' distinctly.

"Ladies, I was there till nine o'clock. Then I started for the theater.

Unfortunately the theater is attached to the Kursaal. I thought I would just look in for a few minutes. In fact, I don't think I was there half an hour. But Miss Maitland is quite right in one thing. I lost more than two hundred pounds, all through playing on a false system. Of course, I know I had no business to go there at all, when I might have been by your side."

"And heard La Klosking."

"It was devilish bad taste, and you may well be surprised and offended."

"No, no; not at that," said Zoe.

"But hang it all, don't make a fellow worse than he is! Why should I invent a sick friend? I suppose I have a right to go to the Kursaal if I choose. At any rate, I mean to go to-morrow afternoon, and win a pot of money. Hinder me who can."