“LAME!”
Vizard burst out laughing. “La fourbe!” said he. “Miss Maitland, accept my compliments; you possess the key to a sex no fellow can unlock. And, now I have found an interpreter, I begin to be interested in this little comedy. The first act is just over. There will be half an hour's wait till the simulatrix of infirmity comes running back with the pilgrims of the Rhine. Are they 'the pilgrims of the Rhine' or 'the pilgrims of Love?' Time will show. Play to recommence with a verbal encounter; you will be one against three; for all that, I don't envy the greater number.”
“Three to one? No. Surely you will be on the right side for once.
“Well, you see, I am the audience. We can't be all dramatis personae, and no spectator. During the wait, I wonder whether the audience, having nothing better to do, may be permitted to smoke a cigar.”
“So long a lucid interval is irksome, of course. Well, the balcony is your smoking-room. You will see them coming; please tap at my door the moment you do.”
Half an hour elapsed, an hour, and the personages required to continue the comedy did not return.
Vizard, having nothing better to do, fell to thinking of Ina Klosking, and that was not good for him. Solitude and ennui fed his mania, and at last it took the form of action. He rang, and ordered up his man Harris, a close, discreet personage, and directed him to go over to Homburg, and bring back all the information he could about the new singer; her address in Homburg, married or single, prude or coquette. Should information be withheld, Harris was to fee the porter at the opera-house, the waiter at her hotel, and all the human commodities that knew anything about her. Having dismissed Harris, he lighted his seventh cigar, and said to himself, “It is all Ned Severne's fault. I wanted to leave for England to-day.”
The day had been overcast for some time and now a few big drops fell, by way of warning. Then it turned cool: then came a light drizzling rain, and, in the middle of this, Fanny Dover appeared, almost flying home.
Vizard went and tapped at Miss Maitland's door. She came out.
“Here's Miss Dover coming, but she is alone.”
The next moment Fanny bounced into the room, and started a little at the picture of the pair ready to receive her. She did not wait to be taken to task, but proceeded to avert censure by volubility and self-praise. “Aunt, I went down to the river, where I left them, and looked all along it, and they were not in sight. Then I went to the cathedral, because that seemed the next likeliest place. Oh, I have had such a race!”
“Why did you come back before you had found them?”
“Aunt, it was going to rain; and it is raining now, hard.”
“She does not mind that.”
“Zoe? Oh, she has got nothing on!”
“Bless me!” cried Vizard. “Godiva rediviva.”
“Now, Harrington, don't! Of course, I mean nothing to spoil; only her purple alpaca, and that is two years old. But my blue silk, I can't afford to ruin it. Nobody would give me another, I know.”
“What a heartless world!” said Vizard dryly.
“It is past a jest, the whole thing,” objected Miss Maitland; “and, now we are together, please tell me, if you can, either of you, who is this man? What are his means? I know 'The Peerage,' 'The Baronetage,' and 'The Landed Gentry,' but not Severne. That is a river, not a family.”
“Oh,” said Vizard, “family names taken from rivers are never parvenues. But we can't all be down in Burke. Ned is of a good stock, the old English yeoman, the country's pride.”
“Yeoman!” said the Maitland, with sovereign contempt.
Vizard resisted. “Is this the place to sneer at an English yeoman, where you see an unprincely prince living by a gambling-table? What says the old stave?
“'A German prince, a marquis of France, And a laird o' the North Countrie; A yeoman o' Kent, with his yearly rent, Would ding 'em out, all three.”'
“Then,” said Misander, with a good deal of malicious, intent, “you are quite sure your yeoman is not a—pauper—an adventurer—”
“Positive.”
“And a gambler.”
“No; I am not at all sure of that. But nobody is all-wise. I am not, for one. He is a fine fellow; as good as gold; as true as steel. Always polite, always genial; and never speaks ill of any of you behind your backs.”
Miss Maitland bridled at that. “What I have said is not out of dislike to the young man. I am warning a brother to take a little more care of his sister, that is all. However, after your sneer, I shall say no more behind Mr. Severne's back, but to his face—that is, if we ever see his face again, or Zoe's either.”
“Oh, aunt!” said Fanny, reproachfully. “It is only the rain. La! poor things, they will be wet to the skin. Just see how it is pouring!”
“That it is: and let me tell you there is nothing so dangerous as a te'te-'a-te'te in the rain.”
“A thunder-storm is worse, aunt,” said Fanny, eagerly; “because then she is frightened to death, and clings to him—if he is nice.”
Having galloped into this revelation, through speaking first and thinking afterward, Fanny pulled up short the moment the words were out, and turned red, and looked askant, under her pale lashes at Vizard. Observing several twinkles in his eyes, she got up hastily and said she really must go and dry her gown.
“Yes,” said Miss Maitland; “come into my room, dear.”
Fanny complied, with rather a rueful face, not doubting that the public “dear” was to get it rather hot in private.
Her uneasiness was not lessened when the old maid said to her, grimly, “Now, sit you down there, and never mind your dress.”
However, it came rather mildly, after all. “Fanny, you are not a bad girl, and you have shown you were sorry; so I am not going to be hard on you: only you must be a good girl now, and help me to undo the mischief, and then I will forgive you.”
“Aunt,” said Fanny, piteously, “I am older than she is, and I know I have done rather wrong, and I won't do it any more; but pray, pray, don't ask me to be unkind to her to-day; it is brooch-day.”
Miss Maitland only stared at this obscure announcement: so Fanny had to explain that Zoe and she had tiffed, and made it up, and Zoe had given her a brooch. Hereupon she went for it, and both ladies forgot the topic they were on, and every other, to examine the brooch.
“Aunt,” says Fanny, handling the brooch, and eyeing it, “you were a poor girl, like me, before grandpapa left you the money, and you know it is just as well to have a tiff now and then with a rich one, because, when you kiss and make it up, you always get some reconciliation-thing or other.”
Miss Maitland dived into the past and nodded approval.
Thus encouraged, Fanny proceeded to more modern rules. She let Miss Maitland know it was always understood at her school that on these occasions of tiff, reconciliation, and present, the girl who received the present was to side in everything with the girl who gave it, for that one day. “That is the real reason I put on my tight boots—to earn my brooch. Isn't it a duck?”
“Are they tight, then?”
“Awfully. See—new on to-day.”
“But you could shake off your lameness in a moment.”
“La, aunt, you know one can fight with that sort of thing, or fight against it. It is like colds, and headaches, and fevers, and all that. You are in bed, too ill to see anybody you don't much care for. Night comes, and then you jump up and dress, and go to a ball, and leave your cold and your fever behind you, because the ball won't wait till you are well, and the bores will. So don't ask me to be unkind to Zoe, brooch-day,” said Fanny, skipping back to her first position with singular pertinacity.
“Now, Fanny,” said Miss Maitland, “who wants you to be unkind to her? But you must and shall promise me not to lend her any more downright encouragement, and to watch the man well.”
“I promise that faithfully,” said Fanny—an adroit concession, since she had been watching him like a cat a mouse for many days.
“Then you are a good girl; and, to reward you, I will tell you in confidence all the strange stories I have discovered today.”
“Oh, do, aunt!” cried Fanny; and now her eyes began to sparkle with curiosity.
Miss Maitland then bid her observe that the bedroom window was not a French casement, but a double-sash window—closed at present because of the rain; but it had been wide open at the top all the time.
“Those two were smoking, and talking secrets; and, child,” said the old lady, very impressively, “if you—want—to—know—what gentlemen really are, you must be out of sight, and listen to them, smoking. When I was a girl, the gentlemen came out in their true colors over their wine. Now they are as close as wax, drinking; and even when they are tipsy they keep their secrets. But once let them get by themselves and smoke, the very air is soon filled with scandalous secrets none of the ladies in the house ever dreamed of. Their real characters, their true histories, and their genuine sentiments, are locked up like that genius in 'The Arabian Nights,' and come out in smoke as he did.” The old lady chuckled at her own wit, and the young one laughed to humor her. “Well, my dear, those two smoked, and revealed themselves—their real selves; and I listened and heard every word on the top of those drawers.”
Fanny looked at the drawers. They were high.
“La, aunt! how ever did you get up there?”
“By a chair.”
“Oh, fancy you perched up there, listening, at your age!”
“You need not keep throwing my age in my teeth. I am not so very old. Only I don't paint and whiten and wear false hair. There are plenty of coquettes about, ever so much older than I am. I have a great mind not to tell you; and then much you will ever know about either of these men!”
“Oh, aunt, don't be cruel! I am dying to hear it.”
As aunt was equally dying to tell it, she passed over the skit upon her age, though she did not forget nor forgive it; and repeated the whole conversation of Vizard and Severne with rare fidelity; but as I abhor what the evangelist calls “battology,” and Shakespeare “damnable iteration,” I must draw upon the intelligence of the reader (if any), and he must be pleased to imagine the whole dialogue of those two unguarded smokers repeated to Fanny, and interrupted, commented on at every salient point, scrutinized, sifted, dissected, and taken to pieces by two keen women, sharp by nature, and sharper now by collision of their heads. No candor, no tolerance, no allowance for human weakness, blunted the scalpel in their dexterous hands.
Oh, Gossip! delight of ordinary souls, and more delightful still when you furnish food for detraction!
To Fanny, in particular, it was exciting, ravishing, and the time flew by so unheeded that presently there came a sharp knock and an impatient voice cried, “Chatter! chatter! chatter! How long are we to be kept waiting for dinner, all of us?”