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The Woman-Hater, a novel by Charles Reade |
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Chapter 20 |
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_ CHAPTER XX IT was piteous to see and hear. The blood would not stop; it spurted no longer, but it flowed alarmingly. 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!" As if he could have been fetched in five minutes from three miles off. Yet it was a doctor. Harris had met Miss Gale walking quietly down from Hillstoke. He had told her in a few hurried words, and brought her as fast as the horses could go. She glided in swiftly, keen, but self-possessed, and took it all in directly. Vizard saw her, and cried, "Ah! Help!--she is bleeding to death!" "She shall not," said Rhoda. Then to one footman, "Bring a footstool, you;" to another, "You bring me a cork;" to Vizard, "You hold her toward me so. Now sponge the wound." This done, she pinched the lips of the wound together with her neat, strong fingers. "See what I do," she said to Vizard. "You will have to do it, while I-- Ah, the stool! Now lay her head on that; the other side, man. Now, sir, compress the wound as I did, vigorously. Hold the cork, you, till I want it." She took out of her pocket some adhesive plaster, and flakes of some strong styptic, and a piece of elastic. "Now," said she to Vizard, "give me a little opening in the middle to plaster these strips across the wound." He did so. Then in a moment she passed the elastic under the sufferer's head, drew it over with the styptic between her finger and thumb, and crack! the styptic was tight on the compressed wound. She forced in more styptic, increasing the pressure, then she whipped out a sort of surgical housewife, and with some cutting instrument reduced the cork, then cut it convex, and fastened it on the styptic by another elastic. There was no flutter, yet it was all done in fifty seconds. "There," said she, "she will bleed no more, to speak of. Now seat her upright. Why! I have seen her before. This is--sir, you can send the men away."' "Yes; and, Harris, pack up Mr. Severne's things, and bring them down here this moment." The male servants retired, the women held aloof. Fanny Dover came forward, pale and trembling, and helped to place Ina Klosking in the hall porter's chair. She was insensible still, but moaned faintly. Her moans were echoed: all eyes turned. It was Zoe, seated apart, all bowed and broken--ghastly pale, and glaring straight before her. "Poor girl!" said Vizard. "We forgot her. It is her heart that bleeds. Where is the scoundrel, that I may kill him?" and he rushed out at the door to look for him. The man's life would not have been worth much if Squire Vizard could have found him then. But he soon came back to his wretched home, and eyed the dismal scene, and the havoc one man had made--the marble floor all stained with blood--Ina Klosking supported in a chair, white, and faintly moaning--Zoe still crushed and glaring at vacancy, and Fanny sobbing round her with pity and terror; for she knew there must be worse to come than this wild stupor. "Take her to her room, Fanny dear," said Vizard, in a hurried, faltering voice, "and don't leave her. 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. Here she received her wound; here all that you and I can do shall be done to save her. Ah, here's Harris, with the villain's things. Get the lady's boxes out, and put Mr. Severne's into the fly. Give the man two guineas, and let him leave them at the 'Swan,' in Taddington." He then beckoned down the women, and had Ina Klosking carried upstairs to the very room Severne had occupied. He then convened the servants, and placed them formally under Miss Gale's orders, and one female servant having made a remark, he turned her out of the house, neck and crop, directly with her month's wages. The others had to help her pack, only half an hour being allowed for her exit. The house seemed all changed. Could this be Vizard Court? Dead gloom--hurried whispers--and everybody walking softly, and scared--none knowing what might be the next calamity. Vizard felt sick at heart and helpless. He had done all he could, and was reduced to that condition women bear far better than men--he must wait, and hope, and fear. He walked up and down the carpeted landing, racked with anxiety. At last there came a single scream of agony from Ina Klosking's room. It made the strong man quake. He tapped softly at the door. Rhoda opened it. "What is it?" he faltered. She replied, gravely, "Only what must be. She is beginning to realize what has befallen her. Don't come here. You can do no good. I will run down to you whenever I dare. Give me a nurse to help, this first night." He went down and sent into the village for a woman who bore a great name for nursing. Then he wandered about disconsolate. The leaden hours passed. He went to dress, and discovered Ina Klosking's blood upon his clothes. It shocked him first, and then it melted him: he felt an inexpressible tenderness at sight of it. The blood that had flowed in her veins seemed sacred to him. He folded that suit, and tied it up in a silk handkerchief, and locked it away. In due course he sat down to dinner--we are all such creatures of habit. There was everything as usual, except the familiar faces. There was the glittering plate on the polished sideboard, the pyramid of flowers surrounded with fruits. There were even chairs at the table, for the servants did not know he was to be quite alone. But he was. One delicate dish after another was brought him, and sent away untasted. Soon after dinner Rhoda Gale came down and told him her patient was in a precarious condition, and she feared fever and delirium. She begged him to send one servant up to the farm for certain medicaments she had there, and another to the chemist at Taddington. These were dispatched on swift horses, and both were back in half an hour. By-and-by Fanny Dover came down to him, with red eyes, and brought him Zoe's love. "But," said she, "don't ask her to come down. She is ashamed to look anybody in the face, poor girl." "Why? what has she done?" "Oh, Harrington, she has made no secret of her affection; and now, at sight of that woman, he has abandoned her." "Tell her I love her more than I ever did, and respect her more. Where is her pride?" "Pride! she is full of it; and it will help her--by-and-by. But she has a bitter time to go through first. You don't know how she loves him." "What! love him still, after what he has done?" "Yes! She interprets it this way and that. She cannot bear to believe another woman has any real right to separate them." "Separate them! The scoundrel knocked her down for loving him still, and fled from them both. Was ever guilt more clear? If she doubts that he is a villain, tell her from me he is a forger, and has given me bills with false names on them. The bankers gave me notice to-day, and I was coming home to order him out of the house when this miserable business happened." "A forger! is it possible?" said Fanny. "But it is no use my telling her that sort of thing. If he had committed murder, and was true to her, she would cling to him. She never knew till now how she loved him, nor I neither. She put him in Coventry for telling a lie; but she was far more unhappy all the time than he was. There is nothing to do but to be kind to her, and let her hide her face. Don't hurry her." "Not I. God help her! If she has a wish, it shall be gratified. I am powerless. She is young. Surely time will cure her of a villain, now he is detected." Fanny said she hoped so. The truth is, Zoe had not opened her heart to Fanny. She clung to her, and writhed in her arms; but she spoke little, and one broken sentence contradicted the other. But mental agony, like bodily, finds its vent, not in speech, the brain's great interpreter, but in inarticulate cries, and moans, and sighs, that prove us animals even in the throes of mind. Zoe was in that cruel stage of suffering. So passed that miserable day. _ |
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