Charles Reade

“ Oh, Fanny, you are very good!”
“Say indulgent, please. I'm not good, and never will be, if I can possibly help. I despise good people; they are as weak as water. But I do like you, Zoe Vizard, better than any other woman in the world. That is not saying very much; my taste is for men. I think them gods and devils compared with us; and I do admire gods and devils. No matter, dear. Kiss me, and say, 'Fanny, act for me,' and I'll do it.” ”

“ She also suffered by having to play to a Faust milked of his poetry, and self-smitten with a tremolo which, as I said before, is the voice of palsy, and is not, nor ever was, nor ever will be, the voice of passion. Bless your heart, passion is a manly thing, a womanly thing, a grand thing, not a feeble, quavering, palsied, anile, senile thing. Learn that, ye trembling, quavering idiots of song!
“They let me down,” whispered Ina Klosking to her faithful Ashmead. “I feel all out of tune. I shall never be able. And the audience so cold. It will be like singing in a sepulcher.” ”

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

“ Harrington took his sister through the drawing-rooms first; and she admired the unusual loftiness of the rooms, the blaze of white and gold, and of ce'ladon and gold, and the great Russian lusters, and the mighty mirrors. But when they got to the dining-room she was enchanted. That lofty and magnificent salon, with its daring mixture of red and black, and green and blue, all melted into harmony by the rivers of gold that ran boldly among them, went to her very heart. A Greek is half an Oriental; and Zoe had what may be called the courage of color. ”

“ Teaching was mentioned, I think; was it not, Harrington?”
Rhoda Gale sighed deeply.
“I am not surprised,” said she. “Most women of the world think with you. But oh, Miss Vizard, please take into account all that I have done and suffered for medicine! Is all that to go for nothing? Think what a bitter thing it must be to do, and then to undo; to labor and study, and then knock it all down—to cut a slice out of one's life, out of the very heart of it—and throw it clean away. I know it is hard for you to enter into the feelings of any one who loves science, and is told to desert it. ”

“ Klosking, had pierced Zoe through and through. Her mind grasped all that had happened, all that impended, and, wisely declining to try and account for, or reconcile, all the jarring details, she settled, with a woman's broad instinct, that, somehow or other, his going back to Homburg meant going back to Mademoiselle Klosking. Whether that lady would buy him or not, she did not know. But going back to her meant going a journey to see a rival, with consequences illimitable.
She had courage; she had pride; she had jealousy. She resolved to lose her lover, or have him all to herself. ”

“ Vizard sent Harris off in his own fly for a doctor, to save time. He called for ice. He cried out in agony to his servants, “Can none of you think of anything? There—that hat. Here, you women; tear me the nap off with your fingers. My God! what is to be done? She'll bleed to death!” And he held her to his breast, and almost moaned with pity over her, as he pressed the cold sponge to her wound—in vain; for still the red blood would flow.
Wheels ground the gravel. Servants flew to the door, crying, “The doctor! the doctor!” ”

“ Now, Fanny's suspicions were deeper than Zoe's; she had observed Severne keenly: but it was not her cue to speak. She yawned and said, “What does it matter?”
“Don't be unkind, Fanny. It matters to me.”
“Not it. You have another ready.”
“What other? There is no one that I—Fanny.”
“Oh, nonsense! The man is evidently smitten, and you keep encouraging him.”
“No, I don't; I am barely civil. And don't be ill-natured. What can I do?”
“Why, be content with one at a time.”
“It is very rude to talk so. Besides, I haven't got one, much less two. I begin to doubt him; and, Lord Uxmoor! ”

“ And if Vizard has turned woman-hater, as he pretends, how comes he to be at the head of a female party who are not all of them—” he hesitated.
“Go on, Mr. Severne; not all of them what?” said Zoe, prepared to stand up for her sex.
“Not perfect?”
“That is a very cautious statement, and—there—you are as slippery as an eel; there is no getting hold of you. Well, never mind, I will set you an example of communicativeness, and reveal this mystery hidden as yet from mankind.”
“Speak, dread queen; thy servant heareth.”
“Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Severne, you amuse me.” ”

“ Vizard, you are a noble gentleman, and I am only what you see; but the humblest folk will have their likes and dislikes, and I have a great respect for you, sir. I can't tell you the mixture of things I feel when I see you in the same box every night. Of course, I am her agent, and the house would not be complete without you; but as a man I am sorry. Especially now that she has let him into her house. Take a humble friend's advice, sir, and cut it. Don't you come between any woman and her husband, especially a public lady. She will never be more to you than she is. ”

“ Now I am a lioness, and do not fear the future. Yes; I will tell you my story—and, if you think you are going to hear a love-story, you will be nicely caught—ha-ha! No, sir;” said she, with rising fervor and heightened color, “you will hear a story the public is deeply interested in and does not know it; ay, a story that will certainly be referred to with wonder and shame, whenever civilization shall become a reality, and law cease to be a tool of injustice and monopoly.” ”

“ Thereupon he proceeded to flatter her, and wonder how he had escaped a passionate attachment to so brilliant a creature. “What saved me,” said he, oracularly, “is, that I never could love two at once; and Zoe seized my love at sight. She left me nothing to lay at your feet but my admiration, the tenderest friendship man can feel for woman, and my lifelong gratitude for fighting my battle. Oh, Miss Dover, I must be quite serious a moment. What other lady but you would be so generous as to befriend a poor man with another lady, when there's wealth and title on the other side?” ”

“ The open struggle between Joseph's honesty and his awe of the Klosking tickled Vizard so that he leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily.
The Klosking smiled superior. “He means,” said she, “that the music is not operatic, and the boys do not clasp their hands, and shake their shoulders, and sing passionately, as women do in a theater. Heaven forbid they should! If this world is all passion, there is another which is all peace; and these boys' sweet, artless tones are the nearest thing we shall get in this world to the unimpassioned voices of the angels. ”

“ This stung, and Fanny turned white and red by turns. “I deserve this,” said she, “for wasting advice on a coquette.”
“That is not true. I'm no coquette; and here I am, asking your advice, and you only snub me. You are a jealous, cross, unreasonable thing.”
“Well, I'm not a hypocrite.”
“I never was called so before,” said Zoe, nobly and gently.
“Then you were not found out, that is all. You look so simple and ingenuous, and blush if a man says half a word to you; and all the time you are a greater flirt than I am.”
“Oh, Fanny!” screamed Zoe, with horror. ”

“ Well, Zoe, the long and the short is—you have a rival.”
Zoe turned rather pale, but was not so much shaken as Fanny expected.
She received the blow in silence. But after a while she said, with some firmness, “Mademoiselle Klosking?”
“Oh, you are not quite blind, then.”
“And pray which does he prefer?” asked Zoe, a little proudly.
“It is plain he likes you the best. But why does he fear her so? This is where you seem all in the dark. He flew out of the opera, lest she should see him.”
“Oh! Absurd!”
“He cut you and Vizard, rather than call upon her with you.” ”

“ Oh, Miss Gale, you don't know what it is to be madly in love; one has no principle, no right feeling, against a real passion: and I was madly in love with her. It was through fear of losing her I disowned my physician, my benefactress, who had saved my life. Miserable wretch! It was through fear of losing her that I behaved like a ruffian to my angel wife, and would have committed bigamy, and been a felon. ”

“ Well, sir, in one word, I was a natural philosopher—very small, but earnest; and, in due course, my studies brought me to the wonders of the human body. I studied the outlines of anatomy in books, and plates, and prepared figures; and from that, by degrees, I was led on to surgery and medicine—in books, you understand; and they are only half the battle. Medicine is a thing one can do. It is a noble science, a practical science, and a subtle science, where I thought my powers of study and observation might help me to be keen at reading symptoms, and do good to man, and be a famous woman ”

“ 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 sex. ”

“ Mademoiselle Klosking thought a little, and then taking Fanny Dover's hand, said to her, very sweetly, “I beg you to honor me with your confidence, and tell me something. Believe me, it is for no selfish motive I ask you; but I think Miss Vizard is in danger. She is too far from her brother, and too far from me. Mr. Vizard says she is safe. Now, can you tell me what he means? How can she be safe? Is her heart turned to stone, like mine?”
“No, indeed,” said Fanny. “Yes, I will be frank with you; for I believe you are wiser than any one of us. Zoe is not safe, left to herself. ”

“ Not nations only, but varieties of the animal kingdom were represented. Here were the white hands of fair women, and the red paws of obese shop-keepers, and the yellow, bird-like claws of old withered gamesters, all stretched out, side by side, in strange contrast, to place the stakes or scratch in the winnings; and often the winners put their palms or paws on their heap of gold, just as a dog does on a bone when other dogs are nigh.
But what Zoe's eye rested on longest were the costume and deportment of the ladies. ”

“ Uxmoor did not reply.
She had made her selection. Love beckoned forward. It was useless to look back.
Love was omnipotent. They both began to recover their good looks as if by magic; and as Severne's passion, though wicked, was earnest, no poor bird was ever more completely entangled by bird-lime than Zoe was caught by Edward Severne.
Their usual place of meeting was the shrubbery attached to Somerville Villa. The trees, being young, made all the closer shade, and the gravel-walk meandered, and shut them out from view. ”

“ And he began to open the piano.
“What! do you accompany yourself?”
“Yes, after a fashion; by that means I don't get run over.”
Then this accomplished person fixed his eyes on Fanny Dover, and sung her an Italian love song in the artificial passionate style of that nation; and the English girl received it pointblank with complacent composure. But Zoe started and thrilled at the first note, and crept up to the piano as if drawn by an irresistible cord. She gazed on the singer with amazement and admiration. His voice was a low tenor, round, and sweet as honey. ”

“ I think a man born to wealth ought to doubt his moral title to it, and ought to set to work to prove it—ought to set himself to repair the injustice of fortune by which he profits. Yes, such a man should be a sort of human sunshine, and diffuse blessings all round him. The poor man that encounters him ought to bless the accident. But there, I am not eloquent. You know how much more I mean than I can say.”
“Indeed I do,” said Zoe, “and I honor you.”
“Ah, Miss Vizard,” said Uxmoor, “that is more than I can ever deserve.” ”

“ Reckless of this protest, the waves of play rolled on, and ere long sucked all our characters but Vizard into the vortex. Zoe hazarded a sovereign on red, and won; then two on black, and won; then four on red, and won. She was launched, and Fanny too. They got excited, and bet higher; the croupiers pelted them with golden coins, and they began to pant and flush, and their eyes to gleam. The old gamblers' eyes seem to have lost this power—they have grown fishy; but the eyes of these female novices were a sight. Fanny's, being light gray, gleamed like a panther's whose prey is within leap. ”

“ Ina buried her face for hours on his bed, and kissed his cold features and hand. She had told him before he died she would recall all her resolutions, if he would live. But he was gone. Death buries a man's many faults, and his few virtues rise again. She mourned him sincerely, and would not be comforted; she purchased a burying place forever, and laid him in it; then she took her aching heart far away, and was lost to the public and to all her English friends.
The faithful Rhoda accompanied her half way to London; then returned to her own duties in Barfordshire. ”

“ Miss Maitland hung her head; she saw she had them all against her but Fanny, and Fanny was a trimmer. She said, sorrowfully, “No, Zoe. I feel how unattractive I have made the room. I have driven away the gods of your idolatry—they are only idols of clay; but that you can't believe. I will banish nobody else, except a cross-grained, but respectable old woman, who is too experienced, and too much soured by it, to please young people when things are going wrong.” ”

“ Beauty so positive as hers is indomitable. The petty accidents that are the terrors of homely charms seem to enhance Queen Beauty. Disheveled hair adorns it: close bound hair adorns it. Simplicity adorns it. Diamonds adorn it. Everything seems to adorn it, because, the truth is, it adorns everything. And so Zoe, drenched with rain, and her dress a bathing-gown, was only a Greek goddess tinted blue, her bust and shoulders and her molded figure covered, yet revealed. What was she to an artist's eye? Just the Townly Venus with her sculptor's cunning draperies, and Juno's gait. ”

“ Bright monument of British funkyism and imbecility, there stands the clause setting that reverend and irrelevant doctor-maker above the law, which sets his grace's female relations below the law, and, in practice, outlaws the whole female population, starving those who desire to practice medicine learnedly, and oppressing those who, out of modesty, not yet quite smothered by custom and monopoly, desire to consult a learned female physician, instead of being driven, like sheep, by iron tyranny—in a country that babbles Liberty—to a male physician or a female quack. ”

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

“ This skillful inertia baffled the fair, in a man; in a woman, they might have expected it; and, after a few hours, Zoe's patience began to wear out.
The train stopped for twenty minutes, and, even while they were snatching a little refreshment, the dark locks and the blonde came very close together; and Zoe, exasperated by her own wounded pride and the sullen torpor of her lover, gave Fanny fresh instructions, which nobody was better qualified to carry out than that young lady, as nobody was better able to baffle female strategy than the gentleman. ”

“ A CRUEL mental stroke, like a heavy blow upon the body, sometimes benumbs and sickens at first, but does not torture; yet that is to follow.
It was so with Ina Klosking. The day she just missed Edward Severne, and he seemed to melt away from her very grasp into the wide world again, she could drag herself to the theater and sing angelically, with a dull and aching heart. But next day her heart entered on sharper suffering. She was irritated, exasperated; chained to the theater, to Homburg, yet wild to follow Severne to England without delay. She told Ashmead she must and would go. ”

“ Rosa, help Miss Dover. Do not leave her alone, night nor day.” Then to Miss Gale, “She will live? Tell me she will live.”
“I hope so,” said Rhoda Gale. “Oh, the blow will not kill her, nor yet the loss of blood. But I fear there will be distress of mind added to the bodily shock. And such a noble face! My own heart bleeds for her. Oh, sir, do not send her away to strangers! Let me take her up to the farm. It is nursing she will need, and tact, when she comes to herself.”
“Send here away to strangers!” cried Vizard. “Never! No. Not even to the farm. ”

“ I was unhappy for a time; but I had my pride to support me, and the wound was healed long before I knew what it was to love, really to love.”
There was nothing here that Zoe could contradict. She kept silence, and was mystified.
Then she attacked him on another quarter. “Have you written to her since you behaved like a ruffian to her?”
“No. And I never will, come what may. It is wicked of me; but I hate her. I am compelled to esteem her. But I hate her.”
Zoe could quite understand that; but in spite of that she said, “Of course you do. Men always hate those they have used ill. ”

“ She turned her head away, and Severne, watching her, saw her eyes fill.
“How is it,” said she thoughtfully, and looking away from him, “that men leave out their sisters when they sum up womankind? Are not we women too? My poor brother quite forgets he has one woman who will never, never desert nor deceive him; dear, darling fellow!” and with these three last words she rose and kissed the tips of her fingers, and waved the kiss to Vizard with that free magnitude of gesture which belonged to antiquity: it struck the Anglo-Saxon flirt at her feet with amazement. ”

“ Any moment she will turn wild, and rush out reckless. She is in a dangerous state, you mark my words; she is broken-hearted, and yet she is bitter against everybody, except that young villain, and he is the only enemy she has in the world. I don't believe Mademoiselle Klosking ever wronged her, nor ever will. Appearances are against her; but she is a good woman, or I am a fool. Take my advice, Harrington, and be on your guard. If he had written a penitent letter to Mademoiselle Klosking, that would be a different thing; but he ignores her, and that frightens me for Zoe. ”

“ She met Ashmead, as she came off, and said, “All is well, my friend, so far. They are sitting in judgment on me, like sensible people, and not in a hurry. I rather like that.”
“Your own fault,” said Joseph. “You should have been announced. Prejudice is a surer card than judgment. The public is an ass.”
“It must come to the same thing in the end,” said the Klosking firmly. “One can sing, or one cannot.”
Her next song was encored, and she came off flushed with art and gratified pride. ”

“ 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. ”