“I WAS prostrated, stupefied. I don't know what I did, or how long I sat there. But Cornelia came to congratulate me, and found me there like stone, with the letter in my hand. She packed up my clothes, and took me home with her. I made no resistance. I seemed all broken and limp, soul and body, and not a tear that day.
“Oh, sir, how small everything seems beside bereavement! My troubles, my insults, were nothing now; my triumph nothing; for I had no father left to be proud of it with me.
“I wept with anguish a hundred times a day. Why had I left New York? Why had I not foreseen this every-day calamity, and passed every precious hour by his side I was to lose?
“Terror seized me. My mother would go next. No life of any value was safe a day. Death did not wait for disease. It killed because it chose, and to show its contempt of hearts.
“But just as I was preparing to go to Havre, they brought me a telegram. I screamed at it, and put up my hands. I said 'No, no;' I would not read it, to be told my mother was dead. I would have her a few minutes longer. Cornelia read it, and said it was from her. I fell on it, and kissed it. The blessed telegram told she was coming home. I was to go to London and wait for her.
“I started. Cornelia paid my fees, and put my diploma in my box. I cared for nothing now but my own flesh and blood—what was left of it—my mother.
“I reached London, and telegraphed my address to my mother, and begged her to come at once and ease my fears. I told her my funds were exhausted; but, of course, that was not the thing I poured out my heart about; so I dare say she hardly realized my deplorable condition—listless and bereaved, alone in a great city, with no money.
“In her next letter she begged me to be patient. She had trouble with her husband's executors; she would send me a draft as soon as she could; but she would not leave, and let her child be robbed.
“By-and-by the landlady pressed me for money. I gave her my gowns and shawls to sell for me.”
“Goose!”
“And just now I was a fox.”
“You are both. But so is every woman.”
“She handed me a few shillings, by way of balance. I lived on them till they went. Then I starved a little.”
“With a ring on your finger you could have pawned for ten guineas!”
“Pawn my ring! My father gave it me.” She kissed it tenderly, yet, to Vizard, half defiantly.
“Pawning is not selling, goose!” said he, getting angry.
“But I must have parted with it.”
“And you preferred to starve?”
“I preferred to starve,” said she, steadily.
He looked at her. Her eyes faced his. He muttered something, and walked away, three steps to hide unreasonable sympathy. He came back with a grand display of cheerfulness. “Your mother will be here next month,” said he, “with money in both pockets. Meantime I wish you would let me have a finger in the pie—or, rather my sister. She is warm-hearted and enthusiastic; she shall call on you, if you will permit it.”
“Is she like you?”
“Not a bit. We are by different mothers. Hers was a Greek, and she is a beautiful, dark girl.”
“I admire beauty; but is she like you—in—in—disposition?”
“Lord! no; very superior. Not abominably clever like you, but absurdly good. You shall judge for yourself. Oblige me with your address.”
The doctress wrote her address with a resigned air, as one who had found somebody she had to obey; and, as soon as he had got it, Vizard gave her a sort of nervous shake of the hand, and seemed almost in a hurry to get away from her. But this was his way.
She would have been amazed if she had seen his change of manner the moment he got among his own people.
He burst in on them, crying, “There—the prayers of this congregation are requested for Harrington Vizard, saddled with a virago.”
“Saddled with a virago!” screamed Fanny.
“Saddled with a—!” sighed Zoe, faintly.
“Saddled with a virago FOR LIFE!” shouted Vizard, with a loud defiance that seemed needless, since nobody was objecting violently to his being saddled.
“Look here!” said he, descending all of a sudden to a meek, injured air, which, however, did not last very long, “I was in the garden of Leicester Square, and a young lady turned faint. I observed it, and, instead of taking the hint and cutting, I offered assistance—off my guard, as usual. She declined. I persisted; proposed a glass of wine, or spirit. She declined, but at last let out she was starving.”
“Oh!” cried Zoe.
“Yes, Zoe—starving. A woman more learned, more scientific, more eloquent, more offensive to a fellow's vanity, than I ever saw, or even read of—a woman of genius, starving, like a genius and a ninny, with a ring on her finger worth thirty guineas. But my learned goose would not raise money on that, because it was her father's, and he is dead.”
“Poor thing!” said Zoe, and her eyes glistened directly.
“It is hard, Zoe, isn't it? She is a physician—an able physician; has studied at Zurich and at Edinburgh, and in France, and has a French diploma; but must not practice in England, because we are behind the Continent in laws and civilization—so she says, confound her impudence, and my folly for becoming a woman's echo! But if I were to tell you her whole story, your blood would boil at the trickery, and dishonesty, and oppression of the trades-union which has driven this gifted creature to a foreign school for education; and, now that a foreign nation admits her ability and crowns her with honor, still she must not practice in this country, because she is a woman, and we are a nation of half-civilized men. That is her chat, you understand, not mine. We are not obliged to swallow all that; but, turn it how you will, here are learning, genius, and virtue starving. We must get her to accept a little money; that means, in her case, a little fire and food. Zoe, shall that woman go to bed hungry to-night?”
“No, never!” said Zoe, warmly. “'Let me think. Offer her a loan.”
“Well done; that is a good idea. Will you undertake it? She will be far more likely to accept. She is a bit of a prude and all, is my virago.”
“Yes, dear, she will. Order the carriage. She shall not go to bed hungry—nobody shall that you are interested in.”
“Oh, after dinner will do.”
Dinner was ordered immediately, and the brougham an hour after.
At dinner, Vizard gave them all the outline of the Edinburgh struggle, and the pros and cons; during which narrative his female hearers might have been observed to get cooler and cooler, till they reached the zero of perfect apathy. They listened in dead silence; but when Harrington had done, Fanny said aside to Zoe, “It is all her own fault. What business have women to set up for doctors?”
“Of course not,” said Zoe; “only we must not say so. He indulges us in our whims.”
Warm partisan of immortal justice, when it was lucky enough to be backed by her affections, Miss Vizard rose directly after dinner, and, with a fine imitation of ardor, said she could lose no more time—she must go and put on her bonnet. “You will come with me, Fanny?”
When I was a girl, or a boy—I forget which, it is so long ago—a young lady thus invited by an affectionate friend used to do one of two things; nine times out of ten she sacrificed her inclination, and went; the tenth, she would make sweet, engaging excuses, and beg off. But the girls of this day have invented “silent volition.” When you ask them to do anything they don't quite like, they look you in the face, bland but full, and neither speak nor move. Miss Dover was a proficient in this graceful form of refusal by dead silence, and resistance by placid inertia. She just looked like the full moon in Zoe's face, and never budged. Zoe, being also a girl of the day, needed no interpretation. “Oh, very well,” said she, “disobliging thing!”—with perfect good humor, mind you.
Vizard, however, was not pleased.
“You go with her, Ned,” said he. “Miss Dover prefers to stay and smoke a cigar with me.”
Miss Dover's face reddened, but she never budged. And it ended in Zoe taking Severne with her to call on Rhoda Gale.
Rhoda Gale stayed in the garden till sunset, and then went to her lodgings slowly, for they had no attraction—a dark room; no supper; a hard landlady, half disposed to turn her out.
Dr. Rhoda Gale never reflected much in the streets; they were to her a field of minute observation; but, when she got home she sat down and thought over what she had been saying and doing, and puzzled over the character of the man who had relieved her hunger and elicited her autobiography. She passed him in review; settled in her mind that he was a strong character; a manly man, who did not waste words; wondered a little at the way he had made her do whatever he pleased; blushed a little at the thought of having been so communicative; yet admired the man for having drawn her out so; and wondered whether she should see him again. She hoped she should. But she did not feel sure.
She sat half an hour thus—with one knee raised a little, and her hands interlaced—by a fire-place with a burned-out coal in it; and by-and-by she felt hungry again. But she had no food, and no money.
She looked hard at her ring, and profited a little by contact with the sturdy good sense of Vizard.
She said to herself, “Men understand one another. I believe father would be angry with me for not.”
Then she looked tenderly and wistfully at the ring, and kissed it, and murmured, “Not to-night.” You see she hoped she might have a letter in the morning, and so respite her ring.
Then she made light of it, and said to herself, “No matter; 'qui dort, dine.'”
But as it was early for bed, and she could not be long idle, sipping no knowledge, she took up the last good German work that she had bought when she had money, and proceeded to read. She had no candle, but she had a lucifer-match or two, and an old newspaper. With this she made long spills, and lighted one, and read two pages by that paper torch, and lighted another before it was out, and then another, and so on in succession, fighting for knowledge against poverty, as she had fought for it against perfidy.
While she was thus absorbed, a carriage drew up at the door. She took no notice of that; but presently there was a rustling of silk on the stairs, and two voices, and then a tap at the door. “Come in,” said she; and Zoe entered just as the last spill burned out.
Rhoda Gale rose in a dark room; but a gas-light over the way just showed her figure. “Miss Gale?” said Zoe, timidly.
“I am Miss Gale,” said Rhoda, quietly, but firmly.
“I am Miss Vizard—the gentleman's sister that you met in Leicester Square to-day;” and she took a cautious step toward her.
Rhoda's cheeks burned.
“Miss Vizard,” she said, “excuse my receiving you so; but you may have heard I am very poor. My last candle is gone. But perhaps the landlady would lend me one. I don't know. She is very disobliging, and very cruel.”
“Then she shall not have the honor of lending you a candle,” said Zoe, with one of her gushes. “Now, to tell the truth,” said she, altering to the cheerful, “I'm rather glad. I would rather talk to you in the dark for a little, just at first. May I?” By this time she had gradually crept up to Rhoda.
“I am afraid you must,” said Rhoda. “But at least I can offer you a seat.”
Zoe sat down, and there was an awkward silence.
“Oh, dear,” said Zoe; “I don't know how to begin. I wish you would give me your hand, as I can't see your face.”
“With all my heart: there.”
(Almost in a whisper) “He has told me.”
Rhoda put the other hand to her face, though it was so dark.
“Oh, Miss Gale, how could you? Only think! Suppose you had killed yourself, or made yourself very ill. Your mother would have come directly and found you so; and only think how unhappy you would have made her.”
“Can I have forgotten my mother?” asked Rhoda of herself, but aloud.
“Not willfully, I am sure. But you know geniuses are not always wise in these little things. They want some good humdrum soul to advise them in the common affairs of life. That want is supplied you now; for I am here—ha-ha!”
“You are no more commonplace than I am; much less now, I'll be bound.”
“We will put that to the test,” said Zoe, adroitly enough. “My view of all this is—that here is a young lady in want of money for a time, as everybody is now and then, and that the sensible course is to borrow some till your mother comes over with her apronful of dollars. Now, I have twenty pounds to lend, and, if you are so mighty sensible as you say, you won't refuse to borrow it.”
“Oh, Miss Vizard, you are very good; but I am afraid and ashamed to borrow. I never did such a thing.”
“Time you began, then. I have—often. But it is no use arguing. You must—or you will get poor me finely scolded. Perhaps he was on his good behavior with you, being a stranger; but at home they expect to be obeyed. He will be sure to say it was my stupidity, and that he would have made you directly.”
“Do tell!” cried Rhoda, surprised into an idiom; “as if I'd have taken money from him!”
“Why, of course not; but between us it is nothing at all. There:” and she put the money into Rhoda's hand, and then held both hand and money rather tightly imprisoned in her larger palm, and began to chatter, so as to leave the other no opening. “Oh, blessed darkness! how easy it makes things! does it not? I am glad there was no candle; we should have been fencing and blushing ever so long, and made such a fuss about nothing—and—”
This prattle was interrupted by Rhoda Gale putting her right wrist round Zoe's neck, and laying her forehead on her shoulder with a little sob. So then they both distilled the inevitable dew-drops.
But as Rhoda was not much given that way, she started up, and said, “Darkness? No; I must see the face that has come here to help me, and not humiliate me. That is the first use I'll make of the money. I am afraid you are rather plain, or you couldn't be so good as all this.”
“No,” said Zoe. “I'm not reckoned plain; only as black as a coal.”
“All the more to my taste,” said Rhoda, and flew out of the room, and nearly stumbled over a figure seated on a step of the staircase. “Who are you?” said she, sharply.
“My name is Severne.”
“And what are you doing there?”
“Waiting for Miss Vizard.”
“Come in, then.”
“She told me not.”
“Then I tell you to. The idea! Miss Vizard!”
“Yes!”
“Please have Mr. Severne in. Here he is sitting—like Grief—on the steps. I will soon be back.”
She flew to the landlady. “Mrs. Grip, I want a candle.”
“Well, the shops are open,” said the woman, rudely.
“Oh, I have no time. Here is a sovereign. Please give me two candles directly, candlesticks and all.”
The woman's manner changed directly.
“You shall have them this moment, miss, and my own candlesticks, which they are plated.”
She brought them, and advised her only to light one. “They don't carry well, miss,” said she. “They are wax—or summat.”
“Then they are summat,” said Miss Gale, after a single glance at their composition.
“I'll make you a nice hot supper, miss, in half an hour,” said the woman, maternally, as if she were going to give it her.
“No, thank you. Bring me a two-penny loaf, and a scuttle of coals.”
“La, miss, no more than that—out of a sov'?”
“Yes—THE CHANGE.”
Having shown Mrs. Grip her father was a Yankee, she darted upstairs, with her candles. Zoe came to meet her, and literally dazzled her.
Rhoda stared at her with amazement and growing rapture. “Oh, you beauty!” she cried, and drank her in from head to foot.
“Well,” said she, drawing a long breath, “Nature, you have turned out a com-plete article this time, I reckon.” Then, as Severne laughed merrily at this, she turned her candle and her eyes full on him very briskly. She looked at him for a moment, with a gratified eye at his comeliness; then she started. “Oh!” she cried.
He received the inspection merrily, till she uttered that ejaculation, then he started a little, and stared at her.
“We have met before,” said she, almost tenderly.
“Have we?” said he, putting on a mystified air.
She fixed him, and looked him through and through. “You—don't—remember—me?” asked she. Then, after giving him plenty of time to answer, “Well, then, I must be mistaken;” and her words seemed to freeze themselves and her as they fell.
She turned her back on him, and said to Zoe, with a good deal of sweetness and weight, “I have lived to see goodness and beauty united. I will never despair of human nature.”
This was too pointblank for Zoe; she blushed crimson, and said archly, “I think it is time for me to run. Oh, but I forgot; here is my card. We are all at that hotel. If I am so very attractive, you will come and see me—we leave town very soon—will you?”
“I will,” said Rhoda.
“And since you took me for an old acquaintance, I hope you will treat me as one,” said Severne, with consummate grace and assurance.
“I will, sir,” said she, icily, and with a marvelous curl of the lip that did not escape him.
She lighted them down the stairs, gazed after Zoe, and ignored Severne altogether.
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