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The Woman Hater

C >> Charles Reade >> The Woman Hater




"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.

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