William Shakespeare - "Much adoe about Nothing"

L. Frank Baum - "Sky Island"

Warren Harding - "State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding"

Samuel Butler - "Unconscious Memory"

The Woman Hater

C >> Charles Reade >> The Woman Hater




She courtesied with admirable dignity, modesty, and respectful gravity,
and the applause thundered, and people rose at her in clusters about the
house, and waved their hats and handkerchiefs at her, and a little
Italian recognized her, and cried out as loud as he could, "Viva la
Klosking! viva!" and she heard that, and it gave her a thrill; and Zoe
Vizard, being out of England, and, therefore, brave as a lioness, stood
boldly up at her full height, and, taking her bouquet in her right hand,
carried it swiftly to her left ear, and so flung it, with a free
back-handed sweep, more Oriental than English, into the air, and it
lighted beside the singer; and she saw the noble motion, and the bouquet
fly, and, when she made her last courtesy at the wing, she fixed her eyes
on Zoe, and then put her hand to her heart with a most touching gesture
that said, "Most of all I value your bouquet and your praise."

Then the house buzzed, and ranks were leveled; little people spoke to big
people, and big to little, in mutual congratulation; for at such rare
moments (except in Anglo-Saxony) instinct seems to tell men that true art
is a sunshine of the soul, and blesses the rich and the poor alike.

One person was affected in another way. Harrington Vizard sat rapt in
attention, and never took his eyes off her, yet said not a word.

Several Russian and Prussian grandees sought an introduction to the new
singer. But she pleaded fatigue.

The manager entreated her to sup with him, and meet the Grand Duke of
Hesse. She said she had a prior engagement.

She went quietly home, and supped with her faithful Ashmead, and very
heartily too; for nature was exhausted, and agitation had quite spoiled
her dinner.

Joseph Ashmead, in the pride of his heart, proposed a bottle of
champagne. The Queen of Song, with triumph flushed, looked rather blue at
that. "My friend," said she, in a meek, deprecating way, "we are
working-people: is not Bordeaux good enough for _us?"_

"Yes; but it is not good enough for the occasion," said Joseph, a little
testily. "Well, never mind;" and he muttered to himself, "that is the
worst of _good_ women: they are so terribly stingy."

The Queen of Song, with triumph flushed, did not catch these words, but
only a little growling. However, as supper proceeded, she got uneasy. So
she rang the bell, and ordered a _pint:_ of this she drank one spoonful.
The remainder, co-operating with triumph and claret, kept Ashmead in a
great flow of spirits. He traced her a brilliant career. To be
photographed tomorrow morning as Siebel, and in plain dress. Paragraphs
in _Era, Figaro, Galignani, Inde'pendance Belge,_ and the leading
dailies. Large wood-cuts before leaving Homburg for Paris, London,
Vienna, St. Petersburg, and New York."

"I'm in your hands," said she, and smiled languidly, to please him.

But by-and-by he looked at her, and found she was taking a little cry all
to herself.

"Dear me!" said he, "what is the matter?"

"My friend, forgive me. _He_ was not there to share my triumph."



CHAPTER IV.

AS the opera drew to an end, Zoe began to look round more and more for
Severne; but he did not come, and Lord Uxmoor offered his arm earnestly.
She took it; but hung back a moment on his very arm, to tell Harrington
Mr. Severne had been taken ill.

At the railway station the truant emerged suddenly, just as the train was
leaving; but Lord Uxmoor had secured three seats, and the defaulter had
to go with Harrington. On reaching the hotel, the ladies took their
bed-candles; but Uxmoor found time to propose an excursion next day,
Sunday, to a lovely little lake--open carriage, four horses. The young
ladies accepted, but Mr. Severne declined; he thanked Lord Uxmoor
politely, but he had arrears of correspondence.

Zoe cast a mortified and rather a haughty glance on him, and Fanny
shrugged her shoulders incredulously.

These two ladies brushed hair together in Zoe's room. That is a soothing
operation, my masters, and famous for stimulating females to friendly
gossip; but this time there was, for once, a guarded reserve. Zoe was
irritated, puzzled, mortified, and even grieved by Severne's conduct.
Fanny was gnawed by jealousy, and out of temper. She had forgiven Zoe Ned
Severne. But that young lady was insatiable; Lord Uxmoor, too, had fallen
openly in love with her--openly to a female eye. So, then, a blonde had
no chance, with a dark girl by: thus reasoned she, and it was
intolerable. It was some time before either spoke an atom of what was
uppermost in her mind. They each doled out a hundred sentences that
missed the mind and mingled readily with the atmosphere, being, in fact,
mere preliminary and idle air. So two deer, in duel, go about and about,
and even affect to look another way, till they are ripe for collision.
There be writers would give the reader all the preliminary puffs of
articulated wind, and everybody would say, "How clever! That is just the
way girls really talk." But I leave the glory of photographing nullities
to the geniuses of the age, and run to the first words which could,
without impiety, be called dialogue.

"Don't you think his conduct a little mysterious?" said Zoe, _mal 'a
propos_ of anything that had been said hitherto.

"Well, yes; rather," said Fanny, with marked carelessness.

"First, a sick friend; then a bleeding at the nose; and now he won't
drive to the lake with us. Arrears of correspondence? Pooh!"

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! you know I cannot possibly care
for him--an acquaintance of yesterday."

"But you know all about him--that he is an excellent _parti,"_ said
Fanny, with a provoking sneer.

This was not to be borne.

"Oh!" said Zoe, "I see; you want him for yourself. It is _you_ that are
not content with one. You forget how poor Harrington would miss your
attentions. He would _begin_ to appreciate them--when he had lost them."

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.

It seems a repartee may be conveyed in a scream; for Fanny now lost her
temper altogether. "Your conduct with those two men is abominable," said
she. "I won't speak to you any more."

"I beg you will _not,_ in your present temper," said Zoe, with unaffected
dignity, and rising like a Greek column.

Fanny flounced out of the room.

Zoe sat down and sighed, and her glorious eyes were dimmed.
Mystery--doubt--and now a quarrel. What a day! At her age, a little cloud
seems to darken the whole sky.





Next morning the little party met at breakfast. Lord Uxmoor, anticipating
a delightful day, was in high spirits, and he and Fanny kept up the ball.
She had resolved, in the silent watches of the night, to contest him with
Zoe, and make every possible use of Severne, in the conflict.

Zoe was silent and _distraite,_ and did not even try to compete with her
sparkling rival. But Lord Uxmoor's eyes often wandered from his sprightly
companion to Zoe, and it was plain he longed for a word from her mouth.

Fanny observed, bit her lip, and tacked internally, " 'bout ship," as the
sailors say. Her game now, conceived in a moment, and at once put in
execution, was to encourage Uxmoor's attentions to Zoe. She began by
openly courting Mr. Severne, to make Zoe talk to Uxmoor, and also make
him think that Severne and she were the lovers.

Her intentions were to utilize the coming excursion: she would attach
herself to Harrington, and so drive Zoe and Uxmoor together; and then
Lord Uxmoor, at his present rate of amorous advance, would probably lead
Zoe to a detached rock, and make her a serious declaration. This good,
artful girl felt sure such a declaration, made a few months hence in
Barfordshire, would be accepted, and herself left in the cold. Therefore
she resolved it should be made prematurely, and in Prussia, with Severne
at hand, and so in all probability come to nothing. She even glimpsed a
vista of consequences, and in that little avenue discerned the figure of
Fanny Dover playing the part of consoler, friend, and ultimately spouse
to a wealthy noble.



CHAPTER V.

THE letters were brought in; one was to Vizard, from Herries, announcing
a remittance; one to Lord Uxmoor. On reading it, he was surprised into an
exclamation, and his face expressed great concern.

"Oh!" said Zoe-- "Harrington!"

Harrington's attention being thus drawn, he said, "No bad news, I hope?"

"Yes," said Uxmoor, in a low voice, "very bad. My oldest, truest, dearest
friend has been seized with small-pox, and his life is in danger. He has
asked for me, poor fellow. This is from his sister. I must start by the
twelve o'clock train."

"Small-pox! Why, it is contagious," cried Fanny; "and so disfiguring!"

"I can't help that," said the honest fellow; and instantly rang the bell
for his servant, and gave the requisite orders.

Zoe, whose eye had never left him all the time, said, softly, "It is
brave and good of you. We poor, emotional, cowardly girls should sit down
and cry."

_"You_ would not, Miss Vizard," said he, firmly, looking full at her. "If
you think you would, you don't know yourself."

Zoe colored high, and was silent.

Then Lord Uxmoor showed the true English gentleman. "I do hope," said he,
earnestly, though in a somewhat broken voice, "that you will not let this
spoil the pleasure we had planned together. Harrington will be my
deputy."

"Well, I don't know," said Harrington, sympathizingly. Mr. Severne
remarked, "Such an occurrence puts pleasure out of one's head." This he
said, with his eyes on his plate, like one repeating a lesson. "Vizard, I
entreat you," said Uxmoor, almost vexed. "It will only make me more
unhappy if you don't."

"We will go," cried Zoe, earnestly; "we promise to go. What does it
matter? We shall think of you and your poor friend wherever we are. And I
shall pray for him. But, ah, I know how little prayers avail to avert
these cruel bereavements." She was young, but old enough to have prayed
hard for her sick mother's life, and, like the rest of us, prayed in
vain. At this remembrance the tears ran undisguised down her cheeks.

The open sympathy of one so young and beautiful, and withal rather
reserved, made Lord Uxmoor gulp, and, not to break down before them all,
he blurted out that he must go and pack: with this he hurried away.

He was unhappy. Besides the calamity he dreaded, it was grievous to be
torn away from a woman he loved at first sight, and just when she had
come out so worthy of his love: she was a high-minded creature; she had
been silent and reserved so long as the conversation was trivial; but,
when trouble came, she was the one to speak to him bravely and kindly.
Well, what must be, must. All this ran through his mind, and made him
sigh; but it never occurred to him to shirk--to telegraph instead of
going--nor yet to value himself on his self-denial.

They did not see him again till he was on the point of going, and then he
took leave of them all, Zoe last. When he came to her, he ignored the
others, except that he lowered his voice in speaking to her. "God bless
you for your kindness, Miss Vizard. It is a little hard upon a fellow to
have to run away from such an acquaintance, just when I have been so
fortunate as to make it."

"Oh, Lord Uxmoor," said Zoe, innocently, "never mind that. Why, we live
in the same county, and we are on the way home. All I think of is your
poor friend; and do please telegraph--to Harrington."

He promised he would, and went away disappointed somehow at her last
words.

When he was gone, Severne went out on the balcony to smoke, and
Harrington held a council with the young ladies. "Well, now," said he,
"about this trip to the lake."

"I shall not go, for one," said Zoe, resolutely.

"La!" said Fanny, looking carefully away from her to Harrington; "and she
was the one that insisted."

Zoe ignored the speaker and set her face stiffly toward Harrington. "She
only _said_ that to _him."_

_Fanny._ "But, unfortunately, ears are not confined to the noble."

_Zoe._ "Nor tongues to the discreet."

Both these remarks were addressed pointedly to Harrington.

"Halloo!" said he, looking from one flaming girl to the other; "am I to
be a shuttlecock, and your discreet tongues the battledoors? What is up?"

"We don't speak," said the frank Zoe; "that is up."

"Why, what is the row?"'

"No matter" (stiffly).

"No great matter, I'll be bound. 'Toll, toll the bell.' Here goes one
more immortal friendship--quenched in eternal silence."

Both ladies bridled. Neither spoke.

"And dead silence, as ladies understand it, consists in speaking _at_ one
another instead of _to."_

No reply.

"That is well-bred taciturnity."

No answer.

"The dignified reserve that distinguishes an estrangement from a
squabble."

No reply.

"Well, I admire permanent sentiments, good or bad; constant resolves,
etc. Your friendship has not proved immortal; so, now let us see how long
you can hold spite--SIEVES!" Then he affected to start. "What is this? I
spy a rational creature out on yonder balcony. I hasten to join him.
'Birds of a feather, you know;" and with that he went out to his
favorite, 'and never looked behind him.

The young ladies, indignant at the contempt the big man had presumed to
cast upon the constant soul of woman, turned two red faces and four
sparkling eyes to each other, with the instinctive sympathy of the
jointly injured; but remembering in time, turned sharply round again, and
presented napes, and so sat sullen.





By-and-by a chilling thought fell upon them both at the same moment of
time. The men were good friends as usual, safe, by sex, from tiffs, and
could do without them; and a dull day impended over the hostile fair.

Thereupon the ingenious Fanny resolved to make a splash of some sort and
disturb stagnation. She suddenly cried out, "La! and the man is gone
away: so what is the use?" This remark she was careful to level at bare
space.

Zoe, addressing the same person--space, to wit--inquired of him if
anybody in his parts knew to whom this young lady was addressing herself.

"To a girl that is too sensible not to see the folly of quarreling about
a man--_when he is gone,"_ said Fanny.

"If it is me you mean," said Zoe stiffly, _"really_ I am _surprised._ You
forget we are at daggers drawn."

"No, I don't, dear; and parted forever."

Zoe smiled at that against her will.

"Zoe!" (penitentially).

"Frances!" (archly).

"Come cuddle me quick!"

Zoe was all round her neck in a moment, like a lace scarf, and there was
violent kissing, with a tear or two.

Then they put an arm round each other's waist, and went all about the
premises intertwined like snakes; and Zoe gave Fanny her cameo brooch,
the one with the pearls round it.





The person to whom Vizard fled from the tongue of beauty was a delightful
talker: he read two or three newspapers every day, and recollected the
best things. Now, it is not everybody can remember a thousand
disconnected facts and recall them apropos. He was various, fluent, and,
above all, superficial; and such are your best conversers. They have
something good and strictly ephemeral to say on everything, and don't
know enough of anything to impale their hearers. In my youth there talked
in Pall Mall a gentleman known as "Conversation Sharpe." He eclipsed
everybody. Even Macaulay paled. Sharpe talked all the blessed afternoon,
and grave men listened, enchanted; and, of all he said, nothing stuck.
Where be now your Sharpiana? The learned may be compared to mines. These
desultory charmers are more like the ornamental cottage near Staines,
forty or fifty rooms, and the whole structure one story high. The mine
teems with solid wealth; but you must grope and trouble to come to it: it
is easier and pleasanter to run about the cottage with a lot of rooms.
all on the ground-floor.

The mind and body both get into habits--sometimes apart, sometimes in
conjunction. Nowadays we seat the body to work the intellect, even in its
lower form of mechanical labor: it is your clod that toddles about
laboring. The Peripatetics did not endure: their method was not suited to
man's microcosm. Bodily movements fritter mental attention. We _sit_ at
the feet of Gamaliel, or, as some call him, Tyndal; and we sit to Bacon
and Adam Smith. But, when we are standing or walking, we love to take
brains easy. If this delightful chatterbox had been taken down shorthand
and printed, and Vizard had been set down to Severni Opuscula, ten
volumes-- and, mind you, Severne had talked all ten by this time--the
Barfordshire squire and old Oxonian would have cried out for "more matter
with less art," and perhaps have even fled for relief to some shorter
treatise--Bacon's "Essays," Browne's "Religio Medici," or Buckle's
"Civilization." But lounging in a balcony, and lazily breathing a cloud,
he could have listened all day to his desultory, delightful friend,
overflowing with little questions, little answers, little queries, little
epigrams, little maxims _'a la Rochefoucauld,_ little histories, little
anecdotes, little gossip, and little snapshots at every feather flying.

"Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, Gaudia, discursus,
nostri farrago Severni."

But, alas! after an hour of touch-and-go, of superficiality and soft
delight, the desultory charmer fell on a subject he had studied. So then
he bored his companion for the first time in all the tour.

But, to tell the honest truth, Mr. Severne had hitherto been pleasing his
friend with a cold-blooded purpose. His preliminary gossip, that made the
time fly so agreeably, was intended to oil the way to lubricate the
passage of a premeditated pill. As soon as he had got Vizard into perfect
good humor, he said, apropos of nothing that had passed, "By-the-by, old
fellow, that five hundred pounds you promised to lend me!"

Vizard was startled by this sudden turn of a conversation, hitherto
agreeable.

"Why, you have had three hundred and lost it," said he. "Now, take my
advice, and don't lose any more."

"I don't mean to. But I am determined to win back the three hundred, and
a great deal more, before I leave this. I have discovered a system, an
infallible one."

"I am sorry to hear it," said Harrington, gravely. "That is the second
step on the road to ruin; the gambler with a system is the confirmed
maniac."

"What! because _other_ systems have been tried, and proved to be false?
Mine is untried, and it is mere prejudice to condemn it unheard."

"Propound it, then," said Vizard. "Only please observe the bank has got
its system; you forget that: and the bank's system is to take a positive
advantage, which must win in the long run; therefore, all counter-systems
must lose in the long run."

"But the bank is tied to a long run, the individual player is not."

This reply checked Vizard for a moment and the other followed up his
advantage. "Now, Vizard, be reasonable. What would the trifling advantage
the bank derives from an incident, which occurs only once in twenty-eight
deals, avail against a player who could foresee at any given deal whether
the card that was going to come up the nearest thirty would be on the red
or black?"

"No avail at all. God Almighty could break the bank every afternoon.
_Apre's?_ as we say in France. Do you pretend to omniscience?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, but prescience of isolated events, preceded by no _indicia,_
belongs only to omniscience. Did they not teach you that much at Oxford?"

"They taught me very little at Oxford."

"Fault of the place, eh? You taught _them_ something, though; and the
present conversation reminds me of it. In your second term, when every
other man is still quizzed and kept down as a freshman, you, were already
a leader; a chief of misrule. You founded a whist-club in Trinity, the
primmest college of all. The Dons rooted you out in college; but you did
not succumb; you fulfilled the saying of Sydney Smith, that 'Cribbage
should be played in caverns, and sixpenny-whist in the howling
wilderness.' Ha! ha! how well I remember riding across Bullington Green
one fine afternoon, and finding four Oxford hacks haltered in a row, and
the four undergraduates that had hired them on long tick, sitting
cross-legged under the hedge like Turks or tailors, round a rude table
with the legs sawed down to stumps. You had two packs, and a portable
inkstand, and were so hard at it that I put my mare's nose right over the
quartet before you saw either her or me. That hedge was like a drift of
odoriferous snow the hawthorn bloom, and primroses sparkled on its bank
like topazes. The birds chirruped, the sky smiled, the sun burned
perfumes; and there sat my lord and his fellow-maniacs,
snick-snack--pit-pat--cutting, dealing, playing, revoking, scoring, and
exchanging I. O. U. 's not worth the paper."

"All true, but the revoking," said Severne, merrily. "Monster! by the
memory of those youthful days, I demand a fair hearing." Then, gravely,
"Hang it all, Vizard, I am not a fellow that is always intruding his
affairs and his theories upon other men."

"No, no, no," said Vizard, hastily, and half apologetically; "go on."

"Well, then, of course I don't pretend to foreknowledge; but I do to
experience, and you know experience teaches the wise."

"Not to fling five hundred after three. There--I beg pardon. Proceed,
instructor of youth."

"Do listen, then: experience teaches us that luck has its laws; and I
build my system on one of them. If two opposite accidents are sure to
happen equally often in a total of fifty times, people, who have not
observed, expect them to happen turn about, and bet accordingly. But they
don't happen turn about; they make short runs, and sometimes long ones.
They positively avoid alternation. Have you not observed this at _trente
et quarante?"_

"No."

"Then you have not watched the cards."

"Not much. The faces of the gamblers were always my study. They are
instructive."

"Well, then, I'll give you an example outside--for the principle runs
through all equal chances--take the university boat-race: you have kept
your eye on that?"

"Rather. Never missed one yet. Come all the way from Barfordshire to see
it."

"Well, there's an example."

"Of chance? No, thank you. That goes by strength, skill, wind, endurance,
chaste living, self-denial, and judicious training. Every winning boat is
manned by virtues." His eye flashed, and he was as earnest all in a
moment as he had been listless. A continental cynic had dubbed this
insular cynic mad.

The professor of chances smiled superior. "Those things decide each
individual race, and the best men win, because it happens to be the only
race that is never sold. But go further back, and you find it is chance.
It is pure chance that sends the best men up to Cambridge two or three
years running, and then to Oxford. With this key, take the facts my
system rests on. There are two. The first is that in thirty and odd races
and matches, the university luck has come out equal on the river and at
Lord's: the second is, the luck has seldom alternated. I don't say,
never. But look at the list of events; it is published every March. You
may see there the great truth that even chances shun direct alternation.
In this, properly worked, lies a fortune at Homburg, where the play is
square. Red gains once; you back red next time, and stop. You are on
black, and win; you double. This is the game, if you have only a few
pounds. But with five hundred pounds you can double more courageously,
and work the short run hard; and that is how losses are averted and gains
secured. Once at Wiesbaden I caught a croupier, out on a holiday. It was
Good-Friday, you know. I gave him a stunning dinner. He was close as wax,
at first--that might be the salt fish; but after the _rognons 'a la
brochette,_ and a bottle of champagne, he let out. I remember one thing
he said: Monsieur, ce que fait la fortune de la banque ce n'est pas le
petit avantage qu'elle tire du refait--quoique cela y est pour
quelquechose--c'est la te'me'rite' de ceux qui perdent, et la timidite'
de ceux qui gagnent.'"

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.