A Woman-Hater Part 93

Ina turned toward him. "You asked my hand at a time when you thought me--I don't know what you thought--that is a thing no woman could forget.

And now you have come all this way for me. I am yours, if you can wait for me."

He caught her in his arms. She disengaged herself, gently, and her hand rested an unnecessary moment on his shoulder. "Is that how you understand 'waiting?'" said she, with a blush, but an indulgent smile.

"What is the use waiting?"

"It is a matter of propriety."

"How long are we to wait?"

"Only a few months. My friend, it is like a boy to be too impatient.

Alas! would you marry me in my widow's cap?"

"Of course I would. Now, Ina, love, a widow who has been two years separated from her husband!"

"Certainly, that makes a difference--in one's own mind. But one must respect the opinion of the world. Dear friend, it is of you I think, though I speak of myself."

"You are an angel. Take your own time. After all, what does it matter? I don't leave Zutzig without you."

Ina's pink tint and sparkling eyes betrayed anything but horror at that insane resolution. However, she felt it her duty to say that it was unfortunate she should always be the person to distract him from his home duties.

"Oh, never mind them," said this single-hearted lover. "I have appointed Miss Gale viceroy."

However, one day he had a letter from Zoe, telling him that Lord Uxmoor was now urging her to name the day; but she had declined to do that, not knowing when it might suit him to be at Vizard Court. "But, dearest,"

said she, "mind, you are not to hurry home for me. I am very happy as I am, and I hope you will soon be as happy, love. She is a n.o.ble woman."

The latter part of this letter tempted Vizard to show it to Ina. He soon found his mistake. She kissed it, and ordered him off. He remonstrated.

She put on, for the first time in Denmark, her marble look, and said, "You will lessen my esteem, if you are cruel to your sister. Let her name the wedding-day at once; and you must be there to give her away, and bless her union, with a brother's love."

He submitted, but a little sullenly, and said it was very hard.

He wrote to his sister, accordingly, and she named the day, and Vizard settled to start for home, and be in time.

As to the proprieties, he had instructed Miss Maitland and f.a.n.n.y Dover, and given them and La Gale _carte blanche._ It was to be a magnificent wedding.

This being excitement, f.a.n.n.y Dover was in paradise. Moreover, a rosy-cheeked curate had taken the place of the venerable vicar, and Miss Dover's threat to flirt out the stigma of a nun was executed with prompt.i.tude, zeal, pertinacity, and the dexterity that comes of practice.

When the day came for his leaving Zutzig, Vizard was dejected. "Who knows when we may meet again?" said he.

Ina consoled him. "Do not be sad, dear friend. You are doing your duty; and as you do it partly to please me, I ought to try and reward you; ought I not?" And she gave him a strange look.

"I advise you not to press that question," said he.

At the very hour of parting, Ina's eyes were moist with tenderness, but there was a smile on her face very expressive; yet he could not make out what it meant. She did not cry. He thought that hard. It was his opinion that women could always cry. She might have done the usual thing just to gratify him.

He reached home in good time: and played the _grand seigneur_--n.o.body could do it better when driven to it--to do honor to his sister. She was a peerless bride: she stood superior with ebon locks and coal black eyes, encircled by six bridemaids--all picked blondes. The bevy, with that glorious figure in the middle, seemed one glorious and rare flower.

After the wedding, the breakfast; and then the traveling carriage; the four liveried postilions bedecked with favors.

But the bride wept on Vizard's neck; and a light seemed to leave the house when she was gone. The carriages kept driving away one after another till four o'clock: and then Vizard sat disconsolate in his study, and felt very lonely.

Yet a thing no bigger than a leaf sufficed to drive away this somber mood, a piece of amber-colored paper scribbled on with a pencil: a telegram from Ashmead: "Good news: lost sheep turned up. Is now with her mother at Claridge's Hotel."

Then Vizard was in raptures. Now he understood Ina's composure, and the half sly look she had given him, and her dry eyes at parting, and other things. He tore up to London directly, with a telegram flying ahead: burst in upon her, and had her in his arms in a moment, before her mother: she fenced no longer, but owned he had gained her love, as he had deserved it in every way.

She consented to be married that week in London: only she asked for a Continental tour before entering Vizard Court as his wife; but she did not stipulate even for that--she only asked it submissively, as one whose duty it now was to obey, not dictate.

They were married in St. George's Church very quietly, by special license. Then they saw her mother off, and crossed to Calais. They spent two happy months together on the Continent, and returned to London.

But Vizard was too old-fashioned, and too proud of his wife, to sneak into Vizard Court with her. He did not make it a county matter; but he gave the village such a _fete_ as had not been seen for many a day. The preparations were intrusted to Mr. Ashmead, at Ina's request. "He will be sure to make it theatrical," she said; "but perhaps the simple villagers will admire that, and it will amuse you and me, love: and the poor dear old Thing will be in his glory--I hope he will not drink too much."

Ashmead was indeed in his glory. Nothing had been seen in a play that he did not electrify Islip with, and the surrounding villages. He pasted large posters on walls and barn doors, and his small bills curled round the patriarchs of the forest and the roadside trees, and blistered the gate posts.

The day came. A soapy pole, with a leg of mutton on high for the successful climber. Races in sacks. Short blindfold races with wheelbarrows. Pig with a greasy tail, to be won by him who could catch him and shoulder him, without touching any other part of him; bowls of treacle for the boys to duck heads in and fish out coins; skittles, nine pins, Aunt Sally, etc., etc., etc.

But what astonished the villagers most was a May-pole, with long ribbons, about which ballet girls, undisguised as Highlanders, danced, and wound and unwound the party-colored streamers, to the merry fiddle, and then danced reels upon a platform, then returned to their little tent: but out again and danced hornpipes undisguised as Jacky Tars.

Beer flowed from a st.u.r.dy regiment of barrels. "The Court" kitchen and the village bakehouse kept pouring forth meats, baked, boiled, and roast; there was a pile of loaves like a haystack; and they roasted an ox whole on the Green; and, when they found they were burning him raw, they fetched the butcher, like sensible fellows, and dismembered the giant, and so roasted him reasonably.

In the midst of the reveling and feasting, Vizard and Mrs. Vizard were driven into Islip village in the family coach, with four horses streaming with ribbons.

They drove round the Green, bowing and smiling in answer to the acclamations and blessings of the poor, and then to Vizard Court. The great doors flew open. The servants, male and female, lined the hall on both sides, and received her bowing and courtesying low, on the very spot where she had nearly met her death; her husband took her hand and conducted her in state to her own apartment.

It was open house to all that joyful day, and at night magnificent fireworks on the sweep, seen from the drawing-room by Mrs. Vizard, Miss Maitland, Miss Gale, Miss Dover, and the rosy-cheeked curate, whom she had tied to her ap.r.o.n-strings.

At two in the morning, Mr. Harris showed Mr. Ashmead to his couch. Both gentlemen went upstairs a little graver than any of our modern judges, and firm as a rock; but their firmness resembled that of a roof rather than a wall; for these dignities as they went made one inverted V--so, A.

It is time the "Woman-hater" drew to a close, for the woman-hater is spoiled. He begins sarcastic speeches, from force of habit, but stops short in the middle. He is a very happy man, and owes it to a woman, and knows it. He adores her; and to love well is to be happy. But, besides that, she watches over his happiness and his good with that un.o.btrusive but minute vigilance which belongs to her s.e.x, and is often misapplied, but not so very often as cynics say. Even the honest friendship between him and the remarkable woman he calls his "viragos" gives him many a pleasant hour. He is still a humorist, though cured of his fling at the fair s.e.x. His last tolerable hit was at the monosyllabic names of the immortal composers his wife had disinterred in his library. Says he to parson Denison, hot from Oxford, "They remind me of the Oxford poets in the last century:

"Alma novem celebres genuit Rhedyeina poetas. Bubb, Stubb, Grubb, Crabbe, Trappe. Brome, Carey, Tickell, Evans."

As for Ina Vizard, La Klosking no longer, she has stepped into her new place with her native dignity, seemliness and composure. At first, a few county ladies put their little heads together, and prepared to give themselves airs; but the beauty, dignity, and enchanting grace of Mrs.

Vizard swept this little faction away like small dust. Her perfect courtesy, her mild but deep dislike of all feminine back-biting, her dead silence about the absent, except when she can speak kindly--these rare traits have forced, by degrees, the esteem and confidence of her own s.e.x.

As for the men, they accepted her at once with enthusiasm. She and Lady Uxmoor are the acknowledged belles of the county. Lady Uxmoor's face is the most admired; but Mrs. Vizard comes next, and her satin shoulders, statuesque bust and arms, and exquisite hand, turn the scale with some.

But when she speaks, she charms; and when she sings, all compet.i.tion dies.

She is faithful to music, and especially to sacred music. She is not very fond of singing at parties, and sometimes gives offense by declining.

Music sets fools talking, because it excites them, and then their folly comes out by the road nature has provided. But when Mrs. Vizard has to sing in one key, and people talk in five other keys, that gives this artist such physical pain that she often declines, merely to escape it.

It does not much mortify her vanity, she has so little.

She always sings in church, and sings out, too, when she is there; and plays the harmonium. She trains the villagers--girls, boys and adults--with untiring good humor and patience.

Among her pupils are two fine voices--Tom Wilder, a grand ba.s.s, and the rosy-cheeked curate, a greater rarity still, a genuine counter-tenor.

These two can both read music tolerably; but the curate used to sing everything, however full of joy, with a pathetic whine, for which Vizard chaffed him in vain; but Mrs. Vizard persuaded him out of it, where argument and satire failed.

People come far and near to hear the hymns at Islip Church, sung in full harmony--trebles, tenors, counter-tenor, and ba.s.s.

A trait--she allows nothing to be sung in church unrehea.r.s.ed. The rehearsals are on Sat.u.r.day night, and never shirked, such is the respect for "Our Dame." To be sure, "Our Dame" fills the stomachs and wets the whistles of her faithful choir on Sat.u.r.day nights.