THE next morning Vizard carried Lord Uxmoor away to a magistrates' meeting, and left the road clear to Severne; but Zoe gave him no opportunity until just before luncheon, and then she put on her bonnet and came downstairs; but Fanny was with her.
Severne, who was seated patiently in his bedroom with the door ajar, came out to join them, feeling sure Fanny would openly side with him, or slip away and give him his opportunity.
But, as the young ladies stood on the broad flight of steps at the hall door, an antique figure drew nigh—an old lady, the shape of an egg, so short and stout was she. On her head she wore a black silk bonnet constructed many years ago, with a droll design, viz., to keep off sun, rain, and wind; it was like an iron coal scuttle, slightly shortened; yet have I seen some very pretty faces very prettily framed in such a bonnet. She had an old black silk gown that only reached to her ankle, and over it a scarlet cloak of superfine cloth, fine as any colonel or queen's outrider ever wore, and looking splendid, though she had used it forty years, at odd times. This dame had escaped the village ill, rheumatics, and could toddle along without a staff at a great, and indeed a fearful, pace; for, owing to her build, she yawed so from side to side at every step that, to them who knew her not, a capsize appeared inevitable.
“Mrs. Judge, I declare,” cried Zoe.
“Ay, Miss Hannah Judge it is. Your sarvant, ma'am;” and she dropped two courtesies, one for each lady.
Mrs. Judge was Harrington's old nurse. Zoe often paid a visit to her cottage, but she never came to Vizard Court except on Harrington's birthday, when the servants entertained all the old pensioners and retainers at supper. Her sudden appearance, therefore, and in gala costume, astonished Zoe. Probably her face betrayed this, for the old lady began, “You wonder to see me here, now, doan't ye?”
“Well, Mrs. Judge,” said Zoe, diplomatically, “nobody has a better right to come.”
“You be very good, miss. I don't doubt my welcome nohow.”
“But,” said Zoe, playfully, “you seldom do us the honor; so I am a little surprised. What can I do for you?”
“You does enough for me, miss, you and young squire. I bain't come to ask no favors. I ain't one o' that sort. I'll tell ye why I be come. 'Tis to warn you all up here.”
“This is alarming,” said Zoe to Fanny.
“That is as may be,” said Mrs. Judge; “forwarned, forearmed, the by-word sayeth. There is a young 'oman a-prowling about this here parish as don't belong to hus.”
“La,” said Fanny, “mustn't we visit your parish if we were not born there?”
“Don't you take me up before I be down, miss,” said the old nurse, a little severely. “'Tain't for the likes of you I speak, which you are a lady, and visits the Court by permission of squire; but what I objects to is—hinterlopers.” She paused to see the effect of so big a word, and then resumed, graciously, “You see, most of our hills comes from that there Hillstoke. If there's a poacher, or a thief, he is Hillstoke; they harbors the gypsies as ravage the whole country, mostly; and now they have let loose this here young 'oman on to us. She is a POLL PRY: goes about the town a-sarching: pries into their housen and their vittels, and their very beds. Old Marks have got a muck-heap at his door for his garden, ye know. Well, miss, she sticks her parasole into this here, and turns it about, as if she was agoing to spread it: says she, 'I must know the de-com-po-si-tion of this 'ere, as you keeps under the noses of your young folk.' Well, I seed her agoing her rounds, and the folk had told me her ways; so I did set me down to my knitting and wait for her, and when she came to me I offered her a seat; so she sat down, and says she 'This is the one clean house in the village,' says she: 'you might eat your dinner off the floor, let alone the chairs and tables.' 'You are very good, miss,' says I. Says she, 'I wonder whether upstairs is as nice as this?' 'Well,' says I, 'them as keep it downstairs keeps it hup; I don't drop cleanliness on the stairs, you may be sure.' 'I suppose not,' says she, 'but I should like to see.' That was what I was a-waiting for, you know, so I said to her, 'Curiosity do breed curiosity,' says I. 'Afore you sarches this here house from top to bottom I should like to see the warrant.' 'What warrant?' says she. 'I've no warrant. Don't take me for an enemy,' says she. 'I'm your best friend,' says she. 'I'm the new doctor.' I told her I had heard a whisper of that too; but we had got a parish doctor already, and one was enough. 'Not when he never comes anigh you,' says she, 'and lets you go half way to meet your diseases.' 'I don't know for that,' says I, and indeed I haan't a notion what she meant, for my part; but says I, 'I don't want no women folk to come here a-doctoring o' me, that's sartin.' So she said, 'But suppose you were very ill, and the he-doctor three miles off, and fifty others to visit afore you?' 'That is no odds,' says I; 'I would not be doctored by a woman.' Then she says to me, says she, 'Now you look me in the face.' 'I can do that,' says I; 'you, or anybody else. I'm an honest woman, I am;' so I up and looked her in the face as bold as brass. 'Then,' says she, 'am I to understand that, if you was to be ill to-morrow, you would rather die than be doctored by a woman?' She thought to daant me, you see, so I says, 'Well, I don't know as I oodn't.' You do laugh, miss. Well, that is what she did. 'All right,' says she. 'Make haste and die, my good soul,' says she, 'for, while you live, you'll be a hobelisk to reform.' So she went off, but I made to the door, and called after her I should die when God pleased, and I had seen a good many young folk laid out, that looked as like to make old bones as ever she does—chalk-faced—skinny—-to-a-d! And I called after her she was no lady. No more she ain't, to come into my own house and call a decent woman 'a hobelisk!' Oh! oh! Which I never was, not even in my giddy days, but did work hard in my youth, and am respect for my old age.”
“Yes, nurse, yes; who doubts it?”
“And nursed young squire, and, Lord bless your heart, a was a poor puny child when I took him to my breast, and in six months the finest, chubbiest boy in all the parish; and his dry-nurse for years arter, and always at his heels a-keeping him out of the stable and the ponds, and consorting with the village boys; and a proper resolute child he was, and hard to manage: and my own man that is gone, and my son 'that's not so clever as some,' * I always done justice by them both, and arter all to be called a hobelisk—oh! oh! oh!”
* Paraphrase for the noun substantive “idiot.” It is also a
specimen of the Greek figure “litotes.”
Then behold the gentle Zoe with her arm round nurse's neck, and her handkerchief to nurse's eyes, murmuring, “There—there—don't cry, nurse; everybody esteems you, and that lady did not mean to affront you; she did not say 'obelisk;' she said 'obstacle.' That only means that you stand in the way of her improvements; there was not much harm in that, you know. And, nurse, please give that lady her way, to oblige me; for it is by my brother's invitation she is here.”
“Ye doan't say so! What, does he hold with female she-doctoresses?”
“He wishes to try one. She has his authority.”
“Ye doan't say so!”
“Indeed I do.”
“Con—sarn the wench! why couldn't she says so, 'stead o' hargefying?”
“She is a stranger, and means well; so she did not think it necessary. You must take my word for it.”
“La, miss, I'll take your'n before hers, you may be sure,” said Mrs. Judge, with a decided remnant of hostility.
And now a proverbial incident happened. Miss Rhoda Gale came in sight, and walked rapidly into the group.
After greeting the ladies, and ignoring Severne, who took off his hat to her, with deep respect, in the background, she turned to Mrs. Judge. “Well, old lady,” said she cheerfully, “and how do you do?”
Mrs. Judge replied, in fawning accents, “Thank you, miss, I be well enough to get about. I was a-telling 'em about you—and, to be sure, it is uncommon good of a lady like you to trouble so much about poor folk.”
“Don't mention it; it is my duty and my inclination. You see, my good woman, it is not so easy to cure diseases as people think; therefore it is a part of medicine to prevent them: and to prevent them you must remove the predisposing causes, and to find out all those causes you must have eyes, and use them.”
“You are right, miss,” said La Judge, obsequiously. “Prevention is better nor cure, and they say 'a stitch in time saves nine.'”
“That is capital good sense, Mrs. Judge; and pray tell the villagers that, and make them as full of 'the wisdom of nations' as you seem to be, and their houses as clean—if you can.”
“I'll do my best, miss,” said Mrs. Judge, obsequiously; “it is the least we can all do for a young lady like you that leaves the pomps and vanities, and gives her mind to bettering the condishing of poor folk.”
Having once taken this cue and entered upon a vein of flattery, she would have been extremely voluble—for villages can vie with cities in adulation as well as in detraction—but she was interrupted by a footman announcing luncheon.
Zoe handed Mrs. Judge over to the man with a request that he would be kind to her, and have her to dine with the servants.
Yellowplush saw the gentlefolks away, and then, parting his legs, and putting his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, delivered himself thus: “Well, old girl, am I to give you my harm round to the kitchen, or do you know the way by yourself?”
“Young chap,” said Mrs. Judge, and turned a glittering eye, “I did know the way afore you was born, and I should know it all one if so be you was to be hung, or sent to Botany Bay—to larn manners.”
Having delivered this shot, she rolled away in the direction of Roast Beef.
The little party had hardly settled at the table when they were joined by Vizard and Uxmoor: both gentlemen welcomed Miss Gale more heartily than the ladies had done, and before luncheon ended Vizard asked her if her report was ready. She said it was.
“Have you got it with you?”
“Yes.”
“Then please hand it to me.”
“Oh! it is in my head. I don't write much down; that weakens the memory. If you would give me half an hour after luncheon—” She hesitated a little.
Zoe jealoused a te'te-'a-te'te, and parried it skillfully. “Oh,” said she, “but we are all much interested: are not you, Lord Uxmoor?”
“Indeed I am,” said Uxmoor.
“So am I,” said Fanny, who didn't care a button.
“Yes, but,” said Rhoda, “truths are not always agreeable, and there are some that I don't like—” She hesitated again, and this time actually blushed a little.
The acute Mr. Severne, who had been watching her slyly, came to her assistance.
“Look here, old fellow,” said he to Vizard, “don't you see that Miss Gale has discovered some spots in your paradise? but, out of delicacy, does not want to publish them, but to confide them to your own ear. Then you can mend them or not.”
Miss Gale turned her eyes full on Severne. “You are very keen at reading people, sir,” said she, dryly.
“Of course he is,” said Vizard. “He has given great attention to your sex. Well, if that is all, Miss Gale, pray speak out and gratify their curiosity. You and I shall never quarrel over the truth.”
“I'm not so sure of that,” said Miss Gale. “However, I suppose I must risk it. I never do get my own way; that's a fact.”
After this little ebullition of spleen, she opened her budget. “First of all, I find that these villages all belong to one person; so does the soil. Nobody can build cottages on a better model, nor make any other improvement. You are an absolute monarch. This is a piece of Russia, not England. They are all serfs, and you are the czar.”
“It is true,” said Vizard, “and it sounds horrid, but it works benignly. Every snob who can grind the poor does grind them; but a gentleman never, and he hinders others. Now, for instance, an English farmer is generally a tyrant; but my power limits his tyranny. He may discharge his laborer, but he can't drive him out of the village, nor rob him of parish relief, for poor Hodge is my tenant, not a snob's. Nobody can build a beershop in Islip. That is true. But if they could, they would sell bad beer, give credit in the ardor of competition, poison the villagers, and demoralize them. Believe me, republican institutions are beautiful on paper; but they would not work well in Barfordshire villages. However, you profess to go by experience in everything. There are open villages within five miles. I'll give you a list. Visit them. You will find that liberty can be the father of tyranny. Petty tradesmen have come in and built cottages, and ground the poor down with rents unknown in Islip; farmers have built cottages, and turned their laborers into slaves. Drunkenness, dissipation, poverty, disaffection, and misery—that is what you will find in the open villages. Now, in Islip you have an omnipotent squire, and that is an abomination in theory, a mediaeval monster, a blot on modern civilization; but practically the poor monster is a softener of poverty, an incarnate buffer between the poor and tyranny, the poor and misery.”
“I'll inspect the open villages, and suspend my opinion till then,” said Miss Gale, heartily; “but, in the meantime, you must admit that where there is great power there is great responsibility.”
“Oh, of course.”
“Well, then, your little outlying province of Hillstoke is full of rheumatic adults and putty-faced children. The two phenomena arise from one cause—the water. No lime in it, and too many reptiles. It was the children gave me the clew. I suspected the cherry stones at first: but when I came to look into it, I found they eat just as many cherry stones in the valley, and are as rosy as apples; but, then, there is well water in the valleys. So I put this and that together, and I examined the water they drink at Hillstoke. Sir, it is full of animalcula. Some of these cannot withstand the heat of the human stomach; but others can, for I tried them in mud artificially heated. [A giggle from Fanny Dover.] Thanks to your microscope, I have made sketches of several amphibia who live in those boys' stomachs, and irritate their membranes, and share their scanty nourishment, besides other injuries.” Thereupon she produced some drawings.
They were handed round, and struck terror in gentle bosoms. “Oh, gracious!” cried Fanny, “one ought to drink nothing but champagne.” Uxmoor looked grave. Vizard affected to doubt their authenticity. He said, “You may not know it, but I am a zoologist, and these are antediluvian eccentricities that have long ceased to embellish the world we live in. Fie! Miss Gale. Down with anachronisms.”
Miss Gale smiled, and admitted that one or two of the prodigies resembled antediluvian monsters, but said oracularly that nature was fond of producing the same thing on a large scale and a small scale, and it was quite possible the small type of antediluvian monster might have survived the large.
“That is most ingenious,” said Vizard; “but it does not account for this fellow. He is not an antediluvian; he is a barefaced modern, for he is A STEAM ENGINE.”
This caused a laugh, for the creature had a perpendicular neck, like a funnel, that rose out of a body like a horizontal cylinder.
“At any rate,” said Miss Gale, “the little monster was in the world first; so he is not an imitation of man's work.”
“Well,” said Vizard, “after all, we have had enough of the monsters of the deep. Now we can vary the monotony, and say the monsters of the shallow. But I don't see how they can cause rheumatism.”
“I never said they did,” retorted Miss Gale, sharply: “but the water which contains them is soft water. There is no lime in it, and that is bad for the bones in every way. Only the children drink it as it is: the wives boil it, and so drink soft water and dead reptiles in their tea. The men instinctively avoid it and drink nothing but beer. Thus, for want of a pure diluent with lime in solution, an acid is created in the blood which produces gout in the rich, and rheumatism in the poor, thanks to their meager food and exposure to the weather.”
“Poor things!” said womanly Zoe. “What is to be done?”
“La!” said Fanny, “throw lime into the ponds. That will kill the monsters, and cure the old people's bones into the bargain.”
This compendious scheme struck the imagination, but did not satisfy the judgment of the assembly.
“Fanny!” said Zoe, reproachfully.
“That would be killing two birds with one stone,” suggested Uxmoor, satirically.
“The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel,” explained Vizard, composedly.
Zoe reiterated her question, What was to be done?
Miss Gale turned to her with a smile. “We have got nothing to do but to point out these abominations. The person to act is the Russian autocrat, the paternal dictator, the monarch of all he surveys, and advocate of monarchial institutions. He is the buffer between the poor and all their ills, especially poison: he must dig a well.”
Every eye being turned on Vizard to see how he took this, he said, a little satirically, “What! does Science bid me bore for water at the top of a hill?”
“She does so,” said the virago. “Now look here, good people.”
And although they were not all good people, yet they all did look there, she shone so with intelligence, being now quite on her mettle.
“Half-civilized man makes blunders that both the savage and the civilized avoid. The savage builds his hut by a running stream. The civilized man draws good water to his door, though he must lay down pipes from a highland lake to a lowland city. It is only half-civilized man that builds a village on a hill, and drinks worms, and snakes, and efts, and antediluvian monsters in limeless water. Then I say, if great but half civilized monarchs would consult Science before they built their serf huts, Science would say, 'Don't you go and put down human habitations far from pure water—the universal diluent, the only cheap diluent, and the only liquid which does not require digestion, and therefore must always assist, and never chemically resist, the digestion of solids.' But when the mischief is done, and the cottages are built on a hill three miles from water, then all that Science can do is to show the remedy, and the remedy is—boring.”
“Then the remedy is like the discussion,” said Fanny Dover, very pertly.
Zoe was amused, but shocked. Miss Gale turned her head on the offender as sharp as a bird. “Of course it is, to children,” said she; “and that is why I wished to confine it to mature minds. It is to you I speak, sir. Are your subjects to drink poison, or will you bore me a well?—Oh, please!”
“Do you hear that?” said Vizard, piteously, to Uxmoor. “Threatened and cajoled in one breath. Who can resist this fatal sex?—Miss Gale, I will bore a well on Hillstoke common. Any idea how deep we must go—to the antipodes, or only to the center?”
“Three hundred and thirty feet, or thereabouts.”
“No more? Any idea what it will cost?”
“Of course I have. The well, the double windlass, the iron chain, the two buckets, a cupola over the well, and twenty-three keys—one for every head of a house in the hamlet—will cost you about 315 pounds.”
“Why, this is Detail made woman. How do you know all this?”
“From Tom Wilder.”
“Who is he?”
“What, don't you know? He is the eldest son of the Islip blacksmith, and a man that will make his mark. He casts every Thursday night. He is the only village blacksmith in all the county who casts. You know that, I suppose.”
“No, I had not the honor.”
“Well, he is, then: and I thought you would consent, because you are so good: and so I thought there could be no harm in sounding Tom Wilder. He offers to take the whole contract, if squire's agreeable; bore the well; brick it fifty yards down: he says that ought to be done, if she is to have justice. 'She' is the well: and he will also construct the gear; he says there must be two iron chains and two buckets going together; so then the empty bucket descending will help the man or woman at the windlass to draw the full bucket up. 315 pounds: one week's income, your Majesty.”
“She has inspected our rent-roll, now,” said Vizard, pathetically: “and knows nothing about the matter.”
“Except that it is a mere flea-bite to you to bore through a hill for water. For all that, I hope you will leave me to battle it with Tom Wilder. Then you won't be cheated, for once. You always are, and it is abominable. It would have been five hundred if you had opened the business.”
“I am sure that is true,” said Zoe. She added this would please Mrs. Judge: she was full of the superiority of Islip to Hillstoke.
“Stop a bit,” said Vizard. “Miss Gale has not reported on Islip yet.”
“No, dear; but she has looked into everything, for Mrs. Judge told me. You have been into the cottages?”
“Yes.”
“Into Marks's?”
“Yes, I have been into Marks's.”
She did not seem inclined to be very communicative; so Fanny, out of mischief, said, pertly, “And what did you see there, with your Argus eye?”
“I saw—three generations.”
“Ha! ha! La! did you now? And what were they all doing?”
“They were all living together, night and day, in one room.”
This conveyed no very distinct idea to the ladies; but Vizard, for the first time, turned red at this revelation before Uxmoor, improver of cottage life. “Confound the brutes!” said he. “Why, I built them a new room; a larger one: didn't you see it?”
“Yes. They stack their potatoes in it.”
“Just like my people,” said Uxmoor. “That is the worst of it: they resist their own improvement.”
“Yes, but,” said the doctress, “with monarchial power we can trample on them for their good. Outside Marks's door at the back there is a muck-heap, as he calls it; all the refuse of the house is thrown there; it is a horrible melange of organic matter and decaying vegetables, a hot-bed of fever and malaria. Suffocated and poisoned with the breath of a dozen persons, they open the window for fresh air, and in rushes typhoid from the stronghold its victims have built. Two children were buried from that house last year. They were both killed by the domestic arrangements as certainly as if they had been shot with a double-barreled pistol. The outside roses you admire so are as delusive as flattery; their sweetness covers a foul, unwholesome den.”
“Marks's cottage! The show place of the village!” Zoe Vizard flushed with indignation at the bold hand of truth so rudely applied to a pleasant and cherished illusion.
Vizard, more candid and open to new truths, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “What can I do more than I have done?”
“Oh, it is not your fault,” said the doctress, graciously. “It is theirs. Only, as you are their superior in intelligence and power, you might do something to put down indecency, immorality, and disease.”
“May I ask what?”
“Well, you might build a granary for the poor people's potatoes. No room can keep them dry; but you build your granary upon four pillars: then that is like a room over a cellar.”
“Well, I'll build it so—if I build it at all,” said Vizard, dryly. “What next?”
“Then you could make them stack their potatoes in the granary, and use the spare room, and so divide their families, and give morality a chance. The muck-heap you should disperse at once with the strong hand of power.”
At this last proposal, Squire Vizard—the truth must be told—delivered a long, plowman's whistle at the head of his own table.
“Pheugh!” said he; “for a lady that is more than half republican, you seem to be taking very kindly to monarchial tyranny.”
“Well, now, I'll tell you the truth,” said she. “You have converted me. Ever since you promised me the well, I have discovered that the best form of government is a good-hearted tyrant.”
“With a female viceroy over him, eh?”
“Only in these little domestic matters,” said Rhoda, deprecatingly. “Women are good advisers in such things. The male physician relies on drugs. Medical women are wanted to moderate that delusion; to prevent disease by domestic vigilance, and cure it by selected esculents and pure air. These will cure fifty for one that medicine can; besides drugs kill ever so many: these never killed a creature. You will give me the granary, won't you? Oh, and there's a black pond in the center of the village. Your tenant Pickett, who is a fool—begging his pardon—lets all his liquid manure run out of his yard into the village till it accumulates in a pond right opposite the five cottages they call New Town, and its exhalations taint the air. There are as many fevers in Islip as in the back slums of a town. You might fill the pond up with chalk, and compel Pickett to sink a tank in his yard, and cover it; then an agricultural treasure would be preserved for its proper use, instead of being perverted into a source of infection.”
Vizard listened civilly, and, as she stopped, requested her to go on.
“I think we have had enough,” said Zoe, bitterly.
Rhoda, who was in love with Zoe, hung her head, and said, “Yes; I have been very bold.”
“Fiddlestick!” said Vizard. “Never mind those girls. You speak out like a man: a stranger's eye always discovers things that escape the natives. Proceed.”
“No; I won't proceed till I have explained to Miss Vizard.”
“You may spare yourself the trouble. Miss Vizard thought Islip was a paradise. You have dispelled the illusion, and she will never forgive you. Miss Dover will; because she is like Gallio—she careth for none of these things.”
“Not a pin,” said Fanny, with admirable frankness.
“Well, but,” said Rhoda, naively, “I can't bear Miss Vizard to be angry with me; I admire her so. Please let me explain. Islip is no paradise—quite the reverse; but the faults of Islip are not your faults. The children are ignorant; but you pay for a school. The people are poor from insufficient wages; but you are not paymaster. Your gardeners, your hinds, and all your outdoor people have enough. You give them houses. You let cottages and gardens to the rest at half their value; and very often they don't pay that, but make excuses; and you accept them, though they are all stories; for they can pay everybody but you, and their one good bargain is with you. Miss Vizard has carried a basket all her life with things from your table for the poor.”
Miss Vizard blushed crimson at this sudden revelation.
“If a man or a woman has served your house long, there's a pension for life. You are easy, kind, and charitable. It is the faults of others I ask you to cure, because you have such power. Now, for instance, if the boys at Hillstoke are putty-faced, the boys at Islip have no calves to their legs. That is a sure sign of deteriorating species. The lower type of savage has next to no calf. The calf is a sign of civilization and due nourishment. This single phenomenon was my clew, and led me to others; and I have examined the mothers and the people of all ages, and I tell you it is a village of starvelings. Here a child begins life a starveling, and ends as he began. The nursing mother has not food enough for one, far less for two. The man's wages are insufficient, and the diet is not only insufficient, but injudicious. The race has declined. There are only five really big, strong men—Josh Grace, Will Hudson, David Wilder, Absalom Green, and Jack Greenaway; and they are all over fifty—men of another generation. I have questioned these men how they were bred, and they all say milk was common when they were boys. Many poor people kept a cow; squire doled it; the farmers gave it or sold it cheap; but nowadays it is scarcely to be had. Now, that is not your fault, but you are the man who can mend it. New milk is meat and drink especially to young and growing people. You have a large meadow at the back of the village. If you could be persuaded to start four or five cows, and let somebody sell the new milk to the poor at cost price—say, five farthings the quart. You must not give it, or they will water their muckheaps with it. With those cows alone you will get rid, in the next generation, of the half-grown, slouching men, the hollow-eyed, narrow-chested, round-backed women, and the calfless boys one sees all over Islip, and restore the stalwart race that filled the little village under your sires and have left proofs of their wholesome food on the tombstones: for I have read every inscription, and far more people reached eighty-five between 1750 and 1800 than between 1820 and 1870. Ah, how I envy you to be able to do such great things so easily! Water to poisoned Hillstoke with one hand; milk to starved Islip with the other. This is to be indeed a king!”
The enthusiast rose from the table in her excitement, and her face was transfigured; she looked beautiful for the moment.
“I'll do it,” shouted Vizard; “and you are a trump.”
Miss Gale sat down, and the color left her cheek entirely.
Fanny Dover, who had a very quick eye for passing events, cried out, “Oh dear! she is going to faint now.” The tone implied, what a plague she is!
Thereupon Severne rushed to her, and was going to sprinkle her face; but she faltered, “No! no! a glass of wine.” He gave her one with all the hurry and empressement in the world. She fixed him with a strange look as she took it from him: she sipped it; one tear ran into it. She said she had excited herself; but she was all right now. Elastic Rhoda!
“I am very glad of it,” said Vizard. “You are quite strong enough without fainting. For Heaven's sake, don't add woman's weakness to your artillery, or you will be irresistible; and I shall have to divide Vizard Court among the villagers. At present I get off cheap, and Science on the Rampage: let me see—only a granary, a well, and six cows.”
“They'll give as much milk as twelve cows without the well,” said Fanny. It was her day for wit.
This time she was rewarded with a general laugh.
It subsided, as such things will, and then Vizard said, solemnly, “New ideas are suggested to me by this charming interview; and permit me to give them a form, which will doubtless be new to these accomplished ladies:
“'Gin there's a hole in a' your coats, I rede ye tent it; A chiel's amang ye takin' notes, And, faith, he'll prent it.'”
Zoe looked puzzled, and Fanny inquired what language that was.
“Very good language.”
“Then perhaps you will translate it into language one can understand.”
“The English of the day, eh?”
“Yes.”
“You think that would improve it, do you? Well, then:
'If there is a defect in any one of your habilimeats, Let me earnestly impress on you the expediency of repairing it; An individual is among you with singular powers of observation, Which will infallibly result in printing and publication.'
Zoe, you are an affectionate sister; take this too observant lady into the garden, poison her with raw fruit, and bury her under a pear tree.”
Zoe said she would carry out part of the programme, if Miss Gale would come.
Then the ladies rose and rustled away, and the rivals would have followed, but Vizard detained them on the pretense of consulting them about the well; but, when the ladies had gone, he owned he had done it out of his hatred to the sex. He said he was sure both girls disliked his virago in their hearts, so he had compelled them to spend an hour together, without any man to soften their asperity.
This malicious experiment was tolerably successful. The three ladies strolled together, dismal as souls in purgatory. One or two little attempts at conversation were made, but died out for want of sympathy. Then Fanny tried personalities, the natural topic of the sex in general.
“Miss Gale, which do you admire most, Lord Uxmoor or Mr. Severne?”
“For their looks?”
“Oh, of course.”
“Mr. Severne.”
“You don't admire beards, then?”
“That depends. Where the mouth is well shaped and expressive, the beard spoils it. Where it is commonplace, the beard hides its defect, and gives a manly character. As a general rule, I think the male bird looks well with his crest and feathers.”
“And so do I,” said Fanny, warmly; “and yet I should not like Mr. Severne to have a beard. Don't you think he is very handsome?”
“He is something more,” said Rhoda. “He is beautiful. If he was dressed as a woman, the gentlemen would all run after him. I think his is the most perfect oval face I ever saw.”
“But you must not fall in love with him,” said Fanny.
“I do not mean to,” said Rhoda. “Falling in love is not my business: and if it was, I should not select Mr. Severne.”
“Why not, pray?” inquired Zoe haughtily. Her manner was so menacing that Rhoda did not like to say too much just then. She felt her way. “I am a physiognomist,” said she, “and I don't think he can be very truthful. He is old of his age, and there are premature marks under his eyes that reveal craft, and perhaps dissipation. These are hardly visible in the room, but they are in the open air, when you get the full light of day. To be sure, just now his face is marked with care and anxiety; that young man has a good deal on his mind.”
Here the observer discovered that even this was a great deal too much. Zoe was displeased, and felt affronted by her remarks, though she did not condescend to notice them; so Rhoda broke off and said, “It is not fair of you, Miss Dover, to set me giving my opinion of people you must know better than I do. Oh, what a garden!” And she was off directly on a tour of inspection. “Come along,” said she, “and I will tell you their names and properties.”
They could hardly keep up with her, she was so eager. The fruits did not interest her, but only the simples. She was downright learned in these, and found a surprising number. But the fact is, Mr. Lucas had a respect for his predecessors. What they had planted, he seldom uprooted—at least, he always left a specimen. Miss Gale approved his system highly, until she came to a row of green leaves like small horseradish, which was planted by the side of another row that really was horseradish.
“This is too bad, even for Islip,” said Miss Gale. “Here is one of our deadliest poisons planted by the very side of an esculent herb, which it resembles. You don't happen to have hired the devil for gardener at any time, do you? Just fancy! any cook might come out here for horseradish, and gather this plant, and lay you all dead at your own table. It is the Aconitum of medicine, the Monk's-hood or Wolf's-bane' of our ancestors. Call the gardener, please, and have every bit of it pulled up by the roots. None of your lives are safe while poisons and esculents are planted together like this.”
And she would not budge till Zoe directed a gardener to dig up all the Aconite. A couple of them went to work and soon uprooted it. The gardeners then asked if they should burn it.
“Not for all the world,” said Miss Gale. “Make a bundle of it for me to take home. It is only poison in the hands of ignoramuses. It is most sovereign medicine. I shall make tinctures, and check many a sharp ill with it. Given in time, it cuts down fever wonderfully; and when you check the fever, you check the disease.”
Soon after this Miss Gale said she had not come to stop; she was on her way to Taddington to buy lint and German styptics, and many things useful in domestic surgery. “For,” said she, “the people at Hillstoke are relenting; at least, they run to me with their cut fingers and black eyes, though they won't trust me with their sacred rheumatics. I must also supply myself with vermifuges till the well is dug, and so mitigate puerile puttiness and internal torments.”
The other ladies were not sorry to get rid of an irrelevant zealot, who talked neither love, nor dress, nor anything that reaches the soul.
So Zoe said, “What, going already?” and having paid that tax to politeness, returned to the house with alacrity.
But the doctress would not go without her Wolf's-bane, Aconite ycleped.
The irrelevant zealot being gone, the true business of the mind was resumed; and that is love-making, or novelists give us false pictures of life, and that is impossible.
As the doctress drove from the front door, Lord Uxmoor emerged from the library—a coincidence that made both girls smile; he hoped Miss Vizard was not too tired to take another turn.
“Oh no!” said Zoe: “are you, Fanny?”
At the first step they took, Severne came round an angle of the building and joined them. He had watched from the balcony of his bedroom.
Both men looked black at each other, and made up to Zoe. She felt uncomfortable, and hardly knew what to do. However, she would not seem to observe, and was polite, but a little stiff, to both.
However, at last, Severne, having asserted his rights, as he thought, gave way, but not without a sufficient motive, as may be gathered from his first word to Fanny.
“My dear friend, for Heaven's sake, what is the matter? She is angry with me about something. What is it? has she told you?”
“Not a word. But I see she is in a fury with you; and really it is too ridiculous. You told a fib; that is the mighty matter, I do believe. No, it isn't; for you have told her a hundred, no doubt, and she liked you all the better; but this time you have been naughty enough to be found out, and she is romantic, and thinks her lover ought to be the soul of truth.”
“Well, and so he ought,” said Ned.
“He isn't, then;” and Fanny burst out laughing so loud that Zoe turned round and enveloped them both in one haughty glance, as the exaggerating Gaul would say.
“La! there was a look for you!” said Fanny, pertly: “as if I cared for her black brows.”
“I do, though: pray remember that.”
“Then tell no more fibs. Such a fuss about nothing! What is a fib?” and she turned up her little nose very contemptuously at all such trivial souls as minded a little mendacity.
Indeed, she disclaimed the importance of veracity so imperiously that Severne was betrayed into saying, “Well, not much, between you and me; and I'll be bound I can explain it.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
“Well, but I don't know—”
“Which of your fibs it was.”
Another silver burst of laughter. But Zoe only vouchsafed a slightly contemptuous movement of her shoulders.
“Well, no,” said Severne, half laughing himself at the sprightly jade's smartness.
“Well, then, that friend of yours that called at luncheon.”
Severne turned grave directly. “Yes,” said he.
“You said he was your lawyer, and came about a lease.”
“So he did.”
“And his name was Jackson.
“So it was.”
“This won't do. You mustn't fib to me! It was Poikilus, a Secret Inquiry; and they all know it; now tell me, without a fib—if you can—what ever did you want with Poikilus?”
Severne looked aghast. He faltered out, “Why, how could they know?”
“Why, he advertises, stupid! and Lord Uxmoor and Harrington had seen it. Gentlemen read advertisements. That is one of their peculiarities.”
“Of course he advertises: that is not what I mean. I did not drop his card, did I? No; I am sure I pocketed it directly. What mischief-making villain told them it was Poikilus?”
Fanny colored a little, but said, hastily, “Ah, that I could not tell you.”
“The footman, perhaps?”
“I should not wonder.” (What is a fib?)
“Curse him!”
“Oh, don't swear at the servants; that is bad taste.”
“Not when he has ruined me?”
“Ruined you?—nonsense! Make up some other fib, and excuse the first.”
“I can't. I don't know what to do; and before my rival, too! This accounts for the air of triumph he has worn ever since, and her glances of scorn and pity. She is an angel, and I have lost her.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Fanny Dover. “Be a man, and tell me the truth.”
“Well, I will,” said he; “for I am in despair. It is all that cursed money at Homburg. I could not clear my estate without it. I dare not go for it. She forbade me; and indeed I can't bear to leave her for anything; so I employed Poikilus to try and learn whether that lady has the money still, and whether she means to rob me of it or not.”
Fanny Dover reflected a moment, then delivered herself thus: “You were wrong to tell a fib about it. What you must do now—brazen it out. Tell her you love her, but have got your pride and will not come into her family a pauper. Defy her, to be sure; we like to be defied now and then, when we are fond of the fellow.”
“I will do it,” said he; “but she shuns me. I can't get a word with her.”
Fanny said she would try and manage that for him; and as the rest of their talk might not interest the reader, and certainly would not edify him, I pass on to the fact that she did, that very afternoon, go into Zoe's room, and tell her Severne was very unhappy: he had told a fib; but it was not intended to deceive her, and he wished to explain the whole thing.
“Did he explain it to you?” asked Zoe, rather sharply.
“No; but he said enough to make me think you are using him very hardly. To be sure, you have another string to your bow.”
“Oh, that is the interpretation you put.”
“It is the true one. Do you think you can make me believe you would have shied him so long if Lord Uxmoor had not been in the house?”
Zoe bridled, but made no reply, and Fanny went to her own room, laughing.
Zoe was much disturbed. She secretly longed to hear Severne justify himself. She could not forgive a lie, nor esteem a liar. She was one of those who could pardon certain things in a woman she would not forgive in a man. Under a calm exterior, she had suffered a noble distress; but her pride would not let her show it. Yet now that he had appealed to her for a hearing, and Fanny knew he had appealed, she began to falter.
Still Fanny was not altogether wrong: the presence of a man incapable of a falsehood, and that man devoted to her, was a little damaging to Severne, though not so much as Miss Artful thought.
However, this very afternoon Lord Uxmoor had told her he must leave Vizard Court to-morrow morning.
So Zoe said to herself, “I need not make opportunities; after to-morrow he will find plenty.”
She had an instinctive fear he would tell more falsehoods to cover those he had told; and then she should despise him, and they would both be miserable; for she felt for a moment a horrible dread that she might both love and despise the same person, if it was Edward Severne.
There were several people to dinner, and, as hostess, she managed not to think too much of either of her admirers.
However, a stolen glance showed her they were both out of spirits.
She felt sorry. Her nature was very pitiful. She asked herself was it her fault, and did not quite acquit herself. Perhaps she ought to have been more open and declared her sentiments. Yet would that have been modest in a lady who was not formally engaged? She was puzzled. She had no experience to guide her: only her high breeding and her virginal instincts.
She was glad when the night ended.
She caught herself wishing the next day was gone too.
When she retired Uxmoor was already gone, and Severne opened the door to her. He fixed his eyes on her so imploringly, it made her heart melt; but she only blushed high, and went away sad and silent.
As her maid was undressing her she caught sight of a letter on her table. “What is that?” said she.
“It is a letter,” said Rosa, very demurely.
Zoe divined that the girl had been asked to put it there.
Her bosom heaved, but she would not encourage such proceedings, nor let Rosa see how eager she was to hear those very excuses she had evaded.
But, for all that, Rosa knew she was going to read it, for she only had her gown taken off and a peignoir substituted, and her hair let down and brushed a little. Then she dismissed Rosa, locked the door, and pounced on the letter. It lay on her table with the seal uppermost. She turned it round. It was not from him: it was from Lord Uxmoor.
She sat down and read it.
“DEAR MISS VIZARD—I have had no opportunities of telling you all I feel for you, without attracting an attention that might have been unpleasant to you; but I am sure you must have seen that I admired you at first sight. That was admiration of your beauty and grace, though even then you showed me a gentle heart and a sympathy that made me grateful. But, now I have had the privilege of being under the same roof with you, it is admiration no longer—it is deep and ardent love; and I see that my happiness depends on you. Will you confide your happiness to me? I don't know that I could make you as proud and happy as I should be myself; but I should try very hard, out of gratitude as well as love. We have also certain sentiments in common. That would be one bond more.
“But indeed I feel I cannot make my love a good bargain to you, for you are peerless, and deserve a much better lot in every way than I can offer. I can only kneel to you and say, 'Zoe Vizard, if your heart is your own to give, pray be my lover, my queen, my wife.'
“Your faithful servant and devoted admirer,
“Poor fellow!” said Zoe, and her eyes filled. She sat quite quiet, with the letter open in her hand. She looked at it, and murmured, “A pearl is offered me here: wealth, title, all that some women sigh for, and—what I value above all—a noble nature, a true heart, and a soul above all meanness. No; Uxmoor will never tell a falsehood. He could not.”
She sighed deeply, and closed her eyes. All was still. The light was faint; yet she closed her eyes, like a true woman, to see the future clearer.
Then, in the sober and deep calm, there seemed to be faint peeps of coming things: It appeared a troubled sea, and Uxmoor's strong hand stretched out to rescue her. If she married him, she knew the worst—an honest man she esteemed, and had almost an affection for, but no love.
As some have an impulse to fling themselves from a height, she had one to give herself to Uxmoor, quietly, irrevocably, by three written words dispatched that night.
But it was only an impulse. If she had written it, she would have torn it up.
Presently a light thrill passed through her: she wore a sort of half-furtive, guilty look, and opened the window.
Ay, there he stood in the moonlight, waiting to be heard.
She did not start nor utter any exclamation. Somehow or other she almost knew he was there before she opened the window.
“Well?” said she, with a world of meaning.
“You grant me a hearing at last.”
“I do. But it is no use. You cannot explain away a falsehood.”
“Of course not. I am here to confess that I told a falsehood. But it was not you I wished to deceive. I was going to explain the whole thing to you, and tell you all; but there is no getting a word with you since that lord came.”
“He had nothing to do with it. I should have been just as much shocked.”
“But it would only have been for five minutes. Zoe!”
“Well?”
“Just put yourself in my place. A detective, who ought to have written to me in reply to my note, surprises me with a call. I was ashamed that such a visitor should enter your brother's house to see me. There sat my rival—an aristocrat. I was surprised into disowning the unwelcomed visitor, and calling him my solicitor.”
Now if Zoe had been an Old Bailey counsel, she would have kept him to the point, reminded him that his visitor was unseen, and fixed a voluntary falsehood on him; but she was not an experienced cross-examiner, and perhaps she was at heart as indignant at the detective as at the falsehood: so she missed her advantage, and said, indignantly, “And what business had you with a detective? You having one at all, and then calling him your solicitor, makes one think all manner of things.”
“I should have told you all about it that afternoon, only our intercourse is broken off to please a rival. Suppose I gave you a rival, and used you for her sake as you use me for his, what would you say? That would be a worse infidelity than sending for a detective, would it not?”
Zoe replied, haughtily, “You have no right to say you have a rival; how dare you? Besides,” said she, a little ruefully, “it is you who are on your defense, not me.”
“True; I forgot that. Recrimination is not convenient, is it?”
“I can escape it by shutting the window,” said Zoe, coldly.
“Oh, don't do that. Let me have the bliss of seeing you, and I will submit to a good deal of injustice without a murmur.”
“The detective?” said Zoe, sternly.
“I sent for him, and gave him his instructions, and he is gone for me to Homburg.”
“Ah! I thought so. What for?”
“About my money. To try and find out whether they mean to keep it.”
“Would you really take it if they would give it you?”
“Of course I would.”
“Yet you know my mind about it.”
“I know you forbade me to go for it in person: and I obeyed you, did I not?”
“Yes, you did—at the time.”
“I do now. You object to my going in person to Homburg. You know I was once acquainted with that lady, and you feel about her a little of what I feel about Lord Uxmoor; about a tenth part of what I feel, I suppose, and with not one-tenth so much reason. Well, I know what the pangs of jealousy are: I will never inflict them on you, as you have on me. But I will have my money, whether you like or not.”
Zoe looked amazed at being defied. It was new to her. She drew up, but said nothing.
Severne went on: “And I will tell you why: because without money I cannot have you. My circumstances have lately improved; with my money that lies in Homburg I can now clear my family estate of all incumbrance, and come to your brother for your hand. Oh, I shall be a very bad match even then, but I shall not be a pauper, nor a man in debt. I shall be one of your own class, as I was born—a small landed gentleman with an unencumbered estate.”
“That is not the way to my affection. I do not care for money.”
“But other people do. Dear Zoe, you have plenty of pride yourself; you must let me have a little. Deeply as I love you, I could not come to your brother and say, 'Give me your sister, and maintain us both.' No, Zoe, I cannot ask your hand till I have cleared my estate; and I cannot clear it without that money. For once I must resist you, and take my chance. There is wealth and a title offered you. I won't ask you to dismiss them and take a pauper. If you don't like me to try for my own money, give your hand to Lord Uxmoor; then I shall recall my detective, and let all go; for poverty or wealth will matter nothing to me: I shall have lost the angel I love: and she once loved me.”
He faltered, and the sad cadence of his voice melted her. She began to cry. He turned his head away and cried too.
There was a silence. Zoe broke it first.
“Edward,” said she, softly.
“Zoe!”
“You need not defy me. I would not humiliate you for all the world. Will it comfort you to know that I have been very unhappy ever since you lowered yourself so? I will try and accept your explanation.”
He clasped his hands with gratitude.
“Edward, will you grant me a favor?”
“Can you ask?”
“It is to have a little more confidence in one who—Now you must obey me implicitly, and perhaps we may both be happier to-morrow night than we are to-night. Directly after breakfast take your hat and walk to Hillstoke. You can call on Miss Gale, if you like, and say something civil.”
“What! go and leave you alone with Lord Uxmoor?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, Zoe, you know your power. Have a little mercy.”
“Perhaps I may have a great deal—if you obey me.”
“I will obey you.”
“Then go to bed this minute.”
She gave him a heavenly smile, and closed the window.
Next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Ned Severne said, “Any messages for Hillstoke? I am going to walk up there this morning.”
“Embrace my virago for me,” said Vizard.
Severne begged to be excused.
He hurried off, and Lord Uxmoor felt a certain relief.
The Master of Arts asked himself what he could do to propitiate the female M. D. He went to the gardener and got him to cut a huge bouquet, choice and fragrant, and he carried it all the way to Hillstoke. Miss Gale was at home. As he was introduced rather suddenly, she started and changed color, and said, sharply, “What do you want?” Never asked him to sit down, rude Thing!
He stood hanging his head like a culprit, and said, with well-feigned timidity, that he came, by desire of Miss Vizard, to inquire how she was getting on, and to hope the people were beginning to appreciate her.
“Oh! that alters the case; any messenger from Miss Vizard is welcome. Did she send me those flowers, too? They are beautiful.”
“No. I gathered them myself. I have always understood ladies loved flowers.”
“It is only by report you know that, eh? Let me add something to your information: a good deal depends on the giver; and you may fling these out of the window.” She tossed them to him.
The Master of Arts gave a humble, patient sigh, and threw the flowers out of the window, which was open. He then sunk into a chair and hid his face in his hands.
Miss Gale colored, and bit her lip. She did not think he would have done that, and it vexed her economical soul. She cast a piercing glance at him, then resumed her studies, and ignored his presence.
But his patience exhausted hers. He sat there twenty minutes, at least, in a state of collapse that bid fair to last forever.
So presently she looked up and affected to start. “What! are you there still?” said she.
“Yes,” said be; “you did not dismiss me; only my poor flowers.”
“Well,” said she, apologetically, “the truth is, I'm not strong enough to dismiss you by the same road.”
“It is not necessary. You have only to say, 'Go.'”
“Oh, that would be rude. Could not you go without being told right out?”
“No, I could not. Miss Gale, I can't account for it, but there is some strange attraction. You hate me, and I fear you, yet I could follow you about like a dog. Let me sit here a little longer and see you work.”
Miss Gale leaned her head upon her hand, and contemplated him at great length. Finally she adopted a cat-like course. “No,” said she, at last; “I am going my rounds: you can come with me, if I am so attractive.”
He said he should be proud, and she put on her hat in thirty seconds.
They walked together in silence. He felt as if he were promenading a tiger cat, that might stop any moment to fall upon him.
She walked him into a cottage: there was a little dead wood burning on that portion of the brick floor called the hearth. A pale old man sat close to the fire, in a wooden armchair. She felt his pulse, and wrote him a prescription.
“To Mr. Vizard's housekeeper, Vizard Court:
“Please give the bearer two pounds of good roast beef or mutton, not salted, and one pint port wine,
“Here, Jenny,” she said to a sharp little girl, the man's grandniece, “take this down to Vizard Court, and if the housekeeper objects, go to the front-door and demand in my name to see the squire or Miss Vizard, and give them the paper. Don't you give it up without the meat. Take this basket on your arm.”
Then she walked out of the cottage, and Severne followed her: he ventured to say that was a novel prescription.
She explained. “Physicians are obliged to send the rich to the chemist, or else the fools would think they were slighted. But we need not be so nice with the poor; we can prescribe to do them good. When you inflicted your company on me, I was sketching out a treatise, to be entitled, 'Cure of Disorders by Esculents.' That old man is nearly exsanguis. There is not a drug in creation that could do him an atom of good. Nourishing food may. If not, why, he is booked for the long journey. Well, he has had his innings. He is fourscore. Do you think you will ever see fourscore—you and your vices?”
“Oh, no. But I think you will; and I hope so; for you go about doing good.”
“And some people one could name go about doing mischief?”
Severne made no reply.
Soon after they discovered a little group, principally women and children. These were inspecting something on the ground, and chattering excitedly. The words of dire import, “She have possessed him with a devil,” struck their ear. But soon they caught sight of Miss Gale, and were dead silent. She said, “What is the matter? Oh, I see, the vermifuge has acted.”
It was so: a putty-faced boy had been unable to eat his breakfast; had suffered malaise for hours afterward, and at last had been seized with a sort of dry retching, and had restored to the world they so adorn a number of amphibia, which now wriggled in a heap, and no doubt bitterly regretted the reckless impatience with which they had fled from an unpleasant medicine to a cold-hearted world.
“Well, good people,” said Miss Gale, “what are you making a fuss about? Are they better in the boy or out of him?”
The women could not find their candor at a moment's notice, but old Giles replied heartily, “Why, hout! better an empty house than a bad tenant.”
“That is true,” said half a dozen voices at once. They could resist common sense in its liquid form, but not when solidified into a proverb.
“Catch me the boy,” said Miss Gale, severely.
Habitual culpability destroys self-confidence; so the boy suspected himself of crime, and instantly took to flight. His companions loved hunting; so three swifter boys followed him with a cheerful yell, secured him, and brought him up for sentence.
“Don't be frightened, Jacob,” said the doctress. “I only want to know whether you feel better or worse.”
His mother put in her word: “He was ever so bad all the morning.”
“Hold your jaw,” said old Giles, “and let the boy tell his own tale.”
“Well, then,” said Jacob, “I was mortal bad, but now do I feel like a feather; wust on't is, I be so blessed hungry now. Dall'd if I couldn't eat the devil—stuffed with thunder and lightning.”
“I'll prescribe accordingly,” said Miss Gale, and wrote in pencil an order on a beefsteak pie they had sent her from the Court.
The boy's companions put their heads together over this order, and offered their services to escort him.
“No, thank you,” said the doctress. “He will go alone, you young monkeys. Your turn will come.”
Then she proceeded on her rounds, with Mr. Severne at her heels, until it was past one o'clock.
Then she turned round and faced him. “We will part here,” said she, “and I will explain my conduct to you, as you seem in the dark. I have been co-operating with Miss Vizard all this time. I reckon she sent you out of the way to give Lord Uxmoor his opportunity, so I have detained you. While you have been studying medicine, he has been popping the question, of course. Good-by, Mr. Villain.”
Her words went through the man like cold steel. It was one woman reading another. He turned very white, and put his hand to his heart. But he recovered himself, and said, “If she prefers another to me, I must submit. It is not my absence for a few hours that will make the difference. You cannot make me regret the hours I have passed in your company. Good-by,” and he seemed to leave her very reluctantly.
“One word,” said she, softening a little. “I'm not proof against your charm. Unless I see Zoe Vizard in danger, you have nothing to fear from me. But I love her, you understand.”
He returned to her directly, and said, in most earnest, supplicating tones, “But will you ever forgive me?”
“I will try.”
And so they parted.
He went home at a great rate; for Miss Gale's insinuations had raised some fear in his breast.
Meantime this is what had really passed between Zoe and Lord Uxmoor. Vizard went to his study, and Fanny retired at a signal from Zoe. She rose, but did not go; she walked slowly toward the window; Uxmoor joined her: for he saw he was to have his answer from her mouth.
Her bosom heaved a little, and her cheeks flushed. “Lord Uxmoor,” she said, “you have done me the greatest honor any man can pay a woman, and from you it is indeed an honor. I could not write such an answer as I could wish; and, besides, I wish to spare you all the mortification I can.”
“Ah!” said Uxmoor, piteously.
“You are worthy of any lady's love; but I have only my esteem to give you, and that was given long ago.”
Uxmoor, who had been gradually turning very white, faltered, “I had my fears. Good-by.”
She gave him her hand. He put it respectfully to his lips: then turned and left her, sick at heart, but too brave to let it be seen. He preferred her esteem to her pity.
By this means he got both. She put her handkerchief to her eyes without disguise. But he only turned at the door to say, in a pretty firm voice, “God bless you!”
In less than an hour he drove his team from the door, sitting heartbroken and desolate, but firm and unflinching as a rock.
So then, on his return from Hillstoke, Severne found them all at luncheon except Uxmoor. He detailed his visit to Miss Gale, and, while he talked, observed. Zoe was beaming with love and kindness. He felt sure she had not deceived him. He learned, by merely listening, that Lord Uxmoor was gone, and he exulted inwardly.
After luncheon, Elysium. He walked with the two girls, and Fanny lagged behind; and Zoe proved herself no coquette. A coquette would have been a little cross and shown him she had made a sacrifice. Not so Zoe Vizard. She never told him, nor even Fanny, she had refused Lord Uxmoor. She esteemed the great sacrifice she had made for him as a little one, and so loved him a little more that he had cost her an earl's coronet and a large fortune.
The party resumed their habits that Uxmoor had interrupted, and no warning voice was raised.
The boring commenced at Hillstoke, and Doctress Gale hovered over the work. The various strata and their fossil deposits were an endless study, and kept her microscope employed. With this, and her treatise on “Cure by Esculents” she was so employed that she did not visit the Court for some days: then came an invitation from Lord Uxmoor to stay a week with him, and inspect his village. She accepted it, and drove herself in the bailiff's gig, all alone. She found her host attending to his duties, but dejected; so then she suspected, and turned the conversation to Zoe Vizard, and soon satisfied herself he had no hopes in that quarter. Yet he spoke of her with undisguised and tender admiration. Then she said to herself, “This is a man, and he shall have her.”
She sat down and wrote a letter to Vizard, telling him all she knew, and what she thought, viz., that another woman, and a respectable one, had a claim on Mr. Severne, which ought to be closely inquired into, and the lady's version heard. “Think of it,” said she. “He disowned the woman who had saved his life, he was so afraid I should tell Miss Vizard under what circumstances I first saw him.”
She folded and addressed the letter.
But having relieved her mind in some degree by this, she asked herself whether it would not be kinder to all parties to try and save Zoe without an exposure. Probably Severne benefited by his grace and his disarming qualities; for her ultimate resolution was to give him a chance, offer him an alternative: he must either quietly retire, or be openly exposed.
So then she put the letter in her desk, made out her visit, of which no further particulars can be given at present, returned home, and walked down to the Court next morning to have it out with Edward Severne.
But, unfortunately, from the very day she offered him terms up at Hillstoke, the tide began to run in Severne's favor with great rapidity.
A letter came from the detective. Severne received it at breakfast, and laid it before Zoe, which had a favorable effect on her mind to begin.
Poikilus reported that the money was in good hands. He had seen the lady. She made no secret of the thing—the sum was 4,900 pounds, and she said half belonged to her and half to a gentleman. She did not know him, but her agent, Ashmead, did. Poikilus added that he had asked her would she honor that gentleman's draft? She had replied she should be afraid to do that; but Mr. Ashmead should hand it to him on demand. Poikilus summed up that the lady was evidently respectable, and the whole thing square.
Severne posted this letter to his cousin, under cover, to show him he was really going to clear his estate, but begged him to return it immediately and lend him 50 pounds. The accommodating cousin sent him 50 pounds, to aid him in wooing his heiress. He bought her a hoop ring, apologized for its small value, and expressed his regret that all he could offer her was on as small a scale, except his love.
She blushed, and smiled on him, like heaven opening. “Small and great, I take them,” said she; and her lovely head rested on his shoulder.
They were engaged.
From that hour he could command a te'te-'a-te'te with her whenever he chose, and his infernal passion began to suggest all manner of wild, wicked and unreasonable hopes.
Meantime there was no stopping. He soon found he must speak seriously to Vizard. He went into his study and began to open the subject. Vizard stopped him. “Fetch the other culprit,” said he; and when Zoe came, blushing, he said, “Now I am going to make shorter work of this than you have done. Zoe has ten thousand pounds. What have you got?”
“Only a small estate, worth eight thousand pounds, that I hope to clear of all incumbrances, if I can get my money.”
“Fond of each other? Well, don't strike me dead with your eyes. I have watched you, and I own a prettier pair of turtledoves I never saw. Well, you have got love and I have got money. I'll take care of you both. But you must live with me. I promise never to marry.”
This brought Zoe round his neck, with tears and kisses of pure affection. He returned them, and parted her hair paternally.
“This is a beautiful world, isn't it?” said he, with more tenderness than cynicism this time.
“Ah, that it is!” cried Zoe, earnestly. “But I can't have you say you will never be as happy as I am. There are true hearts in this heavenly world; for I have found one.”
“I have not, and don't mean to try again. I am going in for the paternal now. You two are my children. I have a talisman to keep me from marrying. I'll show it you.” He drew a photograph from his drawer, set round with gold and pearls. He showed it them suddenly. They both started. A fine photograph of Ina Klosking. She was dressed as plainly as at the gambling-table, but without a bonnet, and only one rose in her hair. Her noble forehead was shown, and her face, a model of intelligence, womanliness, and serene dignity.
He gazed at it, and they at him and it.
He kissed it. “Here is my Fate,” said he. “Now mark the ingenuity of a parent. I keep out of my Fate's way. But I use her to keep off any other little Fates that may be about. No other humbug can ever catch me while I have such a noble humbug as this to contemplate. Ah! and here she is as Siebel. What a goddess! Just look at her. Adorable! There, this shall stand upon my table, and the other shall be hung in my bedroom. Then, my dear Zoe, you will be safe from a stepmother. For I am your father now. Please understand that.”
This brought poor Zoe round his neck again with such an effusion that at last he handed her to Severne, and he led her from the room, quite overcome, and, to avoid all conversation about what had just passed, gave her over to Fanny, while he retired to compose himself.
By dinner-time he was as happy as a prince again and relieved of all compunction.
He heard afterward from Fanny that Zoe and she had discussed the incident and Vizard's infatuation, Fanny being specially wroth at Vizard's abuse of pearls; but she told him she had advised Zoe not to mention that lady's name, but let her die out.
And, in point of fact, Zoe did avoid the subject.
There came an eventful day. Vizard got a letter, at breakfast, from his bankers, that made him stare, and then knit his brows. It was about Edward Severne' s acceptances. He said nothing, but ordered his horse and rode into Taddington.
The day was keen but sunny, and, seeing him afoot so early, Zoe said she should like a drive before luncheon. She would show Severne and Fanny some ruins on Pagnell Hill. They could leave the trap at the village inn and walk up the hill. Fanny begged off, and Severne was very glad. The prospect of a long walk up a hill with Zoe, and then a day spent in utter seclusion with her, fired his imagination and made his heart beat. Here was one of the opportunities he had long sighed for of making passionate love to innocence and inexperience.
Zoe herself was eager for the drive, and came down, followed by Rosa with some wraps, and waited in the morning-room for the dog-cart. It was behind time for once, because the careful coachman had insisted on the axle being oiled. At last the sound of wheels was heard. A carriage drew up at the door.
“Tell Mr. Severne,” said Zoe. “He is in the dining-room, I think.”
But it was not the dog-cart.
A vigilant footman came hastily out and opened the hall door. A lady was on the steps, and spoke to him, but, in speaking, she caught sight of Zoe in the hall. She instantly slipped pass the man and stood within the great door.
“Miss Vizard?” said she.
Zoe took a step toward her and said, with astonishment, “Mademoiselle Klosking!”
The ladies looked at each other, and Zoe saw something strange was coming; for the Klosking was very pale, yet firm, and fixed her eyes upon her as if there was nothing else in sight.
“You have a visitor—Mr. Severne?”
“Yes,” said Zoe, drawing up.
“Can I speak with him?”
“He will answer for himself. EDWARD!”
At her call Severne came out hastily behind Ina Klosking.
She turned, and they faced each other.
“Ah!” she cried; and in spite of all, there was more of joy than any other passion in the exclamation.
Not so he. He uttered a scream of dismay, and staggered, white as a ghost, but still glared at Ina Klosking.
Zoe's voice fell on him like a clap of thunder: “What!—Edward!—Mr. Severne!—Has this lady still any right—”
“No, none whatever!” he cried; “it is all past and gone.”
“What is past?” said Ina Klosking, grandly. “Are you out of your senses?”
Then she was close to him in a moment, by one grand movement, and took him by both lapels of his coat, and held him firmly. “Speak before this lady,” she cried. “Have—I—no—rights—over you?” and her voice was majestic, and her Danish eyes gleamed lightning.
The wretch's knees gave way a moment and he shook in her hands. Then, suddenly, he turned wild. “Fiend! you have ruined me!” he yelled; and then, with his natural strength, which was great, and the superhuman power of mad excitement, he whirled her right round and flung her from him, and dashed out of the door, uttering cries of rage and despair.
The unfortunate lady, thus taken by surprise, fell heavily, and, by cruel ill luck, struck her temple, in falling, against the sharp corner of a marble table. It gashed her forehead fearfully, and she lay senseless, with the blood spurting in jets from her white temple.
Zoe screamed violently, and the hall and the hall staircase seemed to fill by magic.
In the terror and confusion, Harrington Vizard strode into the hall, from Taddington. “What is the matter?” he cried. “A woman killed?”
Some one cried out she had fallen.
“Water, fools—a sponge—don't stand gaping!” and he flung himself on his knees, and raised the woman's head from the floor. One eager look into her white face—one wild cry—“Great God! it is—” He had recognized her.
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