A Woman-Hater Part 42

"Yes, sir."

"Good news?"

"No. My mother writes me that I must not expect her. She has to fight with a dishonest executor. Oh, money, money!"

At that moment Zoe entered the room, but Severne paced the landing. He did not care to face Miss Gale; and even in that short interval of time he had persuaded Zoe to protect her brother against this formidable young lady, and shorten the interview if she could.

So Zoe entered the room bristling with defense of her brother. At sight of her, Miss Gale rose, and her features literally shone with pleasure.

This was rather disarming to one so amiable as Zoe, and she was surprised into smiling sweetly in return; but still her quick, defensive eye drank Miss Gale on the spot, and saw, with alarm, the improvement in her appearance. She was very healthy, as indeed she deserved to be; for she was singularly temperate, drank nothing but water and weak tea without sugar, and never eat nor drank except at honest meals. Her youth and pure const.i.tution had shaken off all that pallor, and the pleasure of seeing Zoe lent her a lovely color. Zoe microscoped her in one moment: not one beautiful feature in her whole face; eyes full of intellect, but not in the least love-darting; nose, an aquiline steadily reversed; mouth, vastly expressive, but large; teeth, even and white, but ivory, not pearl; chin, ordinary; head symmetrical, and set on with grace. I may add, to complete the picture, that she had a way of turning this head, clean, swift, and birdlike, without turning her body. That familiar action of hers was fine--so full of fire and intelligence.

Zoe settled in one moment that she was downright plain, but might probably be that mysterious and incomprehensible and dangerous creature, "a gentleman's beauty," which, to women, means no beauty at all, but a witch-like creature, that goes and hits foul, and eclipses real beauty--dolls, to wit--by some mysterious magic.

"Pray sit down," said Zoe, formally. Rhoda sat down, and hesitated a moment. She felt a frost.

Vizard helped her, "Miss Gale has heard from her mother."

"Yes, Miss Vizard," said Rhoda, timidly; "and very bad news. She cannot come at present; and I am so distressed at what I have done in borrowing that money of you; and see, I have spent nearly three pounds of it in dress; but I have brought the rest back."

Zoe looked at her brother, perplexed.

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Vizard. "You will not take it, Zoe."

"Oh, yes; if you please, do," said Rhoda still to Zoe. "When I borrowed it, I felt sure I could repay it; but it is not so now. My mother says it may be months before she can come, and she forbids me positively to go to her. Oh! but for that, I'd put on boy's clothes, and go as a common sailor to get to her."

Vizard fidgeted on his chair.

"I suppose I mustn't go in a pa.s.sion," said he, dryly.

"Who cares?" said Miss Gale, turning her head sharply on him in the way I have tried to describe.

"I care," said Vizard. "I find wrath interfere with my digestion. Please go on, and tell us what your mother says. She has more common sense than somebody else I won't name--politeness forbids."

"Well, who doubts that?" said the lady, with frank good humor. "Of course she has more sense than any of us. Well, my mother says--oh, Miss Vizard!"

"No, she doesn't now. She never heard the name of Vizard."

Miss Gale was in no humor for feeble jokes. She turned half angrily away from him to Zoe. "She says I have been well educated, and know languages; and we are both under a cloud, and I had better give up all thought of medicine, and take to teaching."

"Well, Miss Gale," said Zoe, "if you ask _me,_ I must say I think it is good advice. With all your gifts, how can you fight the world? We are all interested in you here; and it is a curious thing, but do you know we agreed the other day you would have to give up medicine, and fall into some occupation in which there are many ladies already to keep you in countenance. Teaching was mentioned, I think; was it not, Harrington?"

Rhoda Gale sighed deeply.

"I am not surprised," said she. "Most women of the world think with you.

But oh, Miss Vizard, please take into account all that I have done and suffered for medicine! Is all that to go for _nothing?_ Think what a bitter thing it must be to do, and then to undo; to labor and study, and then knock it all down--to cut a slice out of one's life, out of the very heart of it--and throw it clean away. I know it is hard for you to enter into the feelings of any one who loves science, and is told to desert it.

But suppose you had loved a _man_ you were proud of--loved him for five years--and then they came to you and said, 'There are difficulties in the way; he is as worthy as ever, and he will never desert _you;_ but you must give _him_ up, and try and get a taste for human rubbish: it will only be five years of wasted life, wasted youth, wasted seed-time, wasted affection, and then a long vegetable life of unavailing regrets.' I love science as other women love men. If I am to give up science, why not die?

Then I shall not feel my loss; and I know how to die without pain. Oh, the world is cruel! Ah! I am too unfortunate! Everybody else is rewarded for patience, prudence, temperance, industry, and a life with high and almost holy aims; but I am punished, afflicted, crushed under the injustice of the day. Do not make me a nurse-maid. I _won't_ be a governess; and I must not die, because that would grieve my mother. Have pity on me! have pity!"

She trembled all over, and stretched out her hands to Zoe with truly touching supplication.

Zoe forgot her part, or lost the power to play it well. She turned her head away and would not a.s.sent; but two large tears rolled out of her beautiful eyes. Miss Gale, who had risen in the ardor of her appeal, saw that, and it set her off. She leaned her brow against the mantel-piece, not like a woman, but a brave boy, that does not want to be seen crying, and she faltered out, "In France I am a learned physician; and here to be a house-maid! For I won't live on borrowed money. I am very unfortunate."

Severne, who had lost patience, came swiftly in, and found them in this position, and Vizard walking impatiently about the room in a state of emotion which he was pleased to call anger.

Zoe, in a tearful voice, said, "I am unable to advise you. It is very hard that any one so deserving should be degraded."

Vizard burst out, "It is harder the world should be so full of conventional sneaks; and that I was near making one of them. The last thing we ever think of, in this paltry world, is justice, and it ought to be the first. Well, for once I've got the power to be just, and just I'll be, by G.o.d! Come, leave off sniveling, you two, and take a lesson in justice--from a beginner: converts are always the hottest, you know. Miss Gale, you shall not be driven out of science, and your life and labor wasted. You shall doctor Barfordshire, and teach it English, too, if any woman can. This is the programme. I farm two hundred acres--_vicariously,_ of course. n.o.body in England has brains to do anything _himself._ That weakness is confined to your late father's country, and they suffer for it by outfighting, outlying, outmaneuvering, outbullying, and outwitting us whenever we encounter them. Well, the farmhouse is large. The bailiff has no children. There is a wing furnished, and not occupied. You shall live there, with the right of cutting vegetables, roasting chickens, sucking eggs, and riding a couple of horses off their legs."

"But what am I to do for all that?"

"Oh, only the work of two men. You must keep my house in perfect health.

The servants have a trick of eating till they burst. You will have to sew them up again. There are only seven hundred people in the village. You must cure them all; and, if you do, I promise you their lasting ingrat.i.tude. Outside the village, you must make them pay--_if you can._ We will find you patients of every degree. But whether you will ever get any fees out of them, this deponent sayeth not. However, I can answer for the _ladies_ of our county, that they will all cheat you--if they can."

Miss Gale's color came and went, and her eyes sparkled. "Oh, how good you are! Is there a hospital?"

"County hospital, and infirmary, within three miles. Fine country for disease. Intoxication prevalent, leading to a bountiful return of accidents. I promise you wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores, and everything to make you comfortable."

"Oh, don't laugh at me. I am so afraid I shall--no, I hope I shall not disgrace you. And, then, it is against the law; but I don't mind that."

"Of course not. What is the law to ladies with elevated views? By-the-by, what is the penalty--six months?"

"Oh, no. Twenty pounds. Oh, dear! another twenty pounds!"

"Make your mind easy. Unjust laws are a dead letter on a soil so primitive as ours. I shall talk to Uxmoor and a few more, and no magistrate will ever summons you, nor jury convict you, in Barfordshire.

You will be as safe there as in Upper Canada. Now then--attend. We leave for Barfordshire to-morrow. You will go down on the first of next month.

By that time all will be ready: start for Taddington, eleven o'clock. You will be met at the Taddington Station, and taken to your farmhouse. You will find a fire ten days old, and, for once in your life, young lady, you will find an aired bed; because my man Harris will be house-maid, and not let one of your homicidal s.e.x set foot in the crib."

Miss Gale looked from Vizard to his sister, like a person in a dream. She was glowing with happiness; but it did not spoil her. She said, humbly and timidly, "I hope I may prove worthy."

"That is _your_ business," said Vizard, with supreme indifference; "mine is to be just. Have a cup of tea?"

"Oh, no, thank you; and it will be a part of my duty to object to afternoon tea. But I am afraid none of you will mind me."

After a few more words, in which Severne, seeing Vizard was in one of his iron moods, and immovable as him of Rhodes, affected now to be a partisan of the new arrangement, Miss Gale rose to retire. Severne ran before her to the door, and opened it, as to a queen. She bowed formally to him as she went out. When she was on the other side the door, she turned her head in her sharp, fiery way, and pointed with her finger to the emerald ring on his little finger, a very fine one. "Changed hands," said she: "it was on the third finger of your left hand when we met last;" and she pa.s.sed down the stairs with a face half turned to him, and a cruel smile.

Severne stood fixed, looking after her; cold crept among his bones: he was roused by a voice above him saying, very inquisitively, "What does she say?" He looked up, and it was f.a.n.n.y Dover leaning over the bal.u.s.ters of the next landing. She had evidently seen all, and heard some. Severne had no means of knowing how much. His heart beat rapidly. Yet he told her, boldly, that the doctress had admired his emerald ring: as if to give greater force to this explanation, he took it off, and showed it her, very amicably. He calculated that she could hardly, at that distance, have heard every syllable, and, at the same time, he was sure she had seen Miss Gale point at the ring.

"Hum!" said f.a.n.n.y; and that was all she said.

Severne went to his own room to think. He was almost dizzy. He dreaded this Rhoda Gale. She was incomprehensible, and held a sword over his head. Tongues go fast in the country. At the idea of this keen girl and Zoe Vizard sitting under a tree for two hours, with nothing to do but talk, his blood ran cold. Surely Miss Gale must hate him. She would not always spare him. For once he could not see his way clear. Should he tell her half the truth, and throw himself on her mercy? Should he make love to her? Or what should he do? One thing he saw clear enough: he must not quit the field. Sooner or later, all would depend on his presence, his tact, and his ready wit.

He felt like a man who could not swim, and wades in deepening water. He must send somebody to Homburg, or abandon all thought of his money. Why abandon it? Why not return to Ina Klosking? His judgment, alarmed at the acc.u.mulating difficulties, began to intrude its voice. What was he turning his back on? A woman, lovely, loving, and celebrated, who was very likely pining for him, and would share, not only her winnings at play with him, but the large income she would make by her talent. What was he following? A woman divinely lovely and good, but whom he could not possess, or, if he did, could not hold her long, and whose love must end in horror.

But nature is not so unfair to honest men as to give wisdom to the cunning. Rarely does reason prevail against pa.s.sion in such a mind as Severne's. It ended, as might have been expected, in his going down to Vizard Court with Zoe.

An express train soon whirled them down to Taddington, in Barfordshire.

There was Harris, with three servants, waiting for them, one with a light cart for their luggage, and two with an open carriage and two spanking bays, whose coats shone like satin. The servants, liveried, and top-booted, and buckskin-gloved, and spruce as if just out of a bandbox, were all smartness and respectful zeal. They got the luggage out in a trice, with Harris's a.s.sistance. Mr. Harris then drove away like the wind in his dog-cart; the traveling party were soon in the barouche. It glided away, and they rolled on easy springs at the rate of twelve miles an hour till they came to the lodge-gate. It was opened at their approach, and they drove full half a mile over a broad gravel path, with rich gra.s.s on each side, and grand old patriarchs, oak and beech, standing here and there, and dappled deer, grazing or lying, in mottled groups, till they came to a n.o.ble avenue of lofty lime-trees, with stems of rare size and smoothness, and towering piles on piles of translucent leaves, that glowed in the sun like flakes of gold.

At the end of this avenue was seen an old mansion, built of that beautiful clean red brick--which seems to have died out--and white-stone facings and mullions, with gables and oriel windows by the dozen; but between the avenue and the house was a large oval plot of turf, with a broad gravel road running round it; and attached to the house, but thrown a little back, were the stables, which formed three sides of a good-sized quadrangle, with an enormous clock in the center. The lawn, kitchen-garden, ice-houses, pineries, green houses, revealed themselves only in peeps as the carriage swept round the s.p.a.cious plot and drew up at the hall door.