第59章

_Solem e mundo tollunt, qui tollunt amicitiam."_"Halloo!" cried Vizard. "What! you know Latin too?""Why, of course--a smattering; or how could I read Pliny, and Celsus, and ever so much more rubbish that custom chucks down before the gates of knowledge, and says, 'There-- before you go the right road, you ought to go the wrong; _it is usual._ Study now, with the reverence they don't deserve, the non-observers of antiquity.'""Spare me the ancients, Miss Gale," said Vizard, "and reveal me the girl of the period. When I was so ill-bred as to interrupt you, you had left France, crowned with laurels, and were just invading Britain.

Something in his words or his tone discouraged the subtle observer, and she said, coldly, "Excuse me: I have hardly the courage. My British history is a tale of injustice, suffering, insult, and, worst of all, defeat. I cannot promise to relate it with that composure whoever pretends to science ought: the wound still bleeds."Then Vizard was vexed with himself, and looked grave and concerned. He said, gently, "Miss Gale, I am sorry to give you pain; but what you have told me is so new and interesting, I shall be disappointed if you withhold the rest: besides, you know it gives no lasting pain to relate our griefs. Come, come--be brave, and tell me.""Well, I will," said she. "Indeed, some instinct moves me. Good may come of my telling it you. I think--somehow-- you are--a--just--man."In the act of saying this, she fixed her gray eyes steadily and searchingly upon Vizard's face, so that he could scarcely meet them, they were so powerful; then, suddenly, the observation seemed to die out of them, and reflection to take its place: those darting eyes were turned inward. It was a marked variety of power. There was something wizard-like in the vividness with which two distinct mental processes were presented by the varied action of a single organ; and Vizard then began to suspect that a creature stood before him with a power of discerning and digesting truth, such as he had not yet encountered either in man or woman. She entered on her British adventures in her clear silvery voice. It was not, like Ina Klosking's, rich, and deep, and tender; yet it had a certain gentle beauty to those who love truth, because it was dispassionate, yet expressive, and cool, yet not cold. One might call it truth's silver trumpet.

On the brink of an extraordinary passage, I pause to make no fewer than three remarks in my own person: 1st. Let no reader of mine allow himself to fancy Rhoda Gale and her antecedents are a mere excrescence of my story. She was rooted to it even before the first scene of it--the meeting of Ashmead and the Klosking-- and this will soon appear. 2d. She is now going into a controverted matter; and, though she is sincere and truthful, she is of necessity a _partisan._ Do not take her for a judge.

You be the judge. 3d. But, as a judge never shuts his mind to either side, do not refuse her a fair hearing. Above all, do not underrate the question. Let not the balance of your understanding be so upset by ephemeral childishness as to fancy that it matters much whether you break an egg top or bottom, because Gulliver's two nations went to war about it; or that it matters much whether your queen is called queen of India or empress, because two parties made a noise about it, and the country has wasted ten thousand square miles of good paper on the subject, trivial as the dust on a butterfly's wing. Fight against these illusions of petty and ephemeral minds. It does not matter the millionth of a straw to _mankind_ whether any one woman is called queen, or empress, of India;and it matters greatly to mankind whether the whole race of women are to be allowed to study medicine and practice it, if they can rival the male, or are to be debarred from testing their scientific ability, and so outlawed, _though taxed_ in defiance of British liberty, and all justice, human and divine, by eleven hundred lawgivers--most of 'em fools.