Part 28 (1/2)
”Yes; a kind, English domestic family. Did you see much of Miss Hazeldean?”
”Not so much as of the Lady.”
”Is she liked in the village, think you?”
”Miss Jemima? Yes. She never did harm. Her little dog bit me once,--she did not ask me to beg its pardon, she asked mine! She's a very nice young lady; the girls say she is very affable; and,” added Lenny, with a smile, ”there are always more weddings going on when she is down at the Hall.”
”Oh!” said Riccabocca. Then, after a long whiff, ”Did you ever see her play with the little children? Is she fond of children, do you think?”
”Lord, sir, you guess everything! She's never so pleased as when she's playing with the babies.”
”Humph!” grunted Riccabocca. ”Babies! well, that's woman-like. I don't mean exactly babies, but when they're older,--little girls?”
”Indeed, Sir, I dare say; but,” said Lenny, primly, ”I never as yet kept company with the little girls.”
”Quite right, Lenny; be equally discreet all your life. Mrs. Dale is very intimate with Miss Hazeldean,--more than with the squire's lady.
Why is that, think you?”
”Well, sir,” said Leonard, shrewdly, ”Mrs. Dale has her little tempers, though she's a very good lady; and Madame Hazeldean is rather high, and has a spirit. But Miss Jemima is so soft: any one could live with Miss Jemima, as Joe and the servants say at the Hall.”
”Indeed! get my hat out of the parlour, and--just bring a clothes-brush, Lenny. A fine sunny day for a walk.”
After this most mean and dishonourable inquisition into the character and popular repute of Miss Hazeldean, Signor Riccabocca seemed as much cheered up and elated as if he had committed some very n.o.ble action; and he walked forth in the direction of the Hall with a far lighter and livelier step than that with which he had paced the terrace.
”Monsignore San Giacomo, by thy help and the pipe's, the padrone shall have his child!” muttered the servant, looking up from the garden.
CHAPTER XXII.
Yet Dr. Riccabocca was not rash. The man who wants his wedding-garment to fit him must allow plenty of time for the measure. But from that day, the Italian notably changed his manner towards Miss Hazeldean. He ceased that profusion of compliment in which he had hitherto carried off in safety all serious meaning. For indeed the doctor considered that compliments to a single gentleman were what the inky liquid it dispenses is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring the water sails away from its enemy. Neither did he, as before, avoid prolonged conversations with the young lady, and contrive to escape from all solitary rambles by her side. On the contrary, he now sought every occasion to be in her society; and entirely dropping the language of gallantry, he a.s.sumed something of the earnest tone of friends.h.i.+p. He bent down his intellect to examine and plumb her own. To use a very homely simile, he blew away that froth which there is on the surface of mere acquaintances.h.i.+ps, especially with the opposite s.e.x; and which, while it lasts, scarce allows you to distinguish between small beer and double X. Apparently Dr. Riccabocca was satisfied with his scrutiny,--at all events under that froth there was no taste of bitter. The Italian might not find any great strength of intellect in Miss Jemima, but he found that, disentangled from many little whims and foibles,--which he had himself the sense to perceive were harmless enough if they lasted, and not so absolutely const.i.tutional but what they might be removed by a tender hand,--Miss Hazeldean had quite enough sense to comprehend the plain duties of married life; and if the sense could fail, it found a subst.i.tute in good old homely English principles, and the instincts of amiable, kindly feelings.
I know not how it is, but your very clever man never seems to care so much as your less gifted mortals for cleverness in his helpmate. Your scholars and poets and ministers of state are more often than not found a.s.sorted with exceedingly humdrum, good sort of women, and apparently like them all the better for their deficiencies. Just see how happily Racine lived with his wife, and what an angel he thought her, and yet she had never read his plays. Certainly Goethe never troubled the lady who called him ”Mr. Privy Councillor” with whims about ”monads,” and speculations on colour, nor those stiff metaphysical problems on which one breaks one's s.h.i.+ns in the Second Past of the ”Faust.” Probably it may be that such great geniuses--knowing that, as compared with themselves, there is little difference between your clever woman and your humdrum woman--merge at once all minor distinctions, relinquish all attempts at sympathy in hard intellectual pursuits, and are quite satisfied to establish that tie which, after all, best resists wear and tear,--namely, the tough household bond between one human heart and another.
At all events, this, I suspect, was the reasoning of Dr. Riccabocca, when one morning, after a long walk with Miss Hazeldean, he muttered to himself,--
”Duro con duro Non fete mai buon muro,”--
which may bear the paraphrase, ”Bricks without mortar would make a very bad wall.” There was quite enough in Miss Jemima's disposition to make excellent mortar: the doctor took the bricks to himself.
When his examination was concluded, our philosopher symbolically evinced the result he had arrived at by a very simple proceeding on his part, which would have puzzled you greatly if you had not paused, and meditated thereon, till you saw all that it implied. Dr. Riccabocca, took of his spectacles! He wiped them carefully, put them into their s.h.a.green case, and locked them in his bureau,--that is to say, he left off wearing his spectacles.
You will observe that there was a wonderful depth of meaning in that critical symptom, whether it be regarded as a sign outward, positive, and explicit, or a sign metaphysical, mystical, and esoteric. For, as to the last, it denoted that the task of the spectacles was over; that, when a philosopher has made up his mind to marry, it is better henceforth to be shortsighted--nay, even somewhat purblind--than to be always scrutinizing the domestic felicity, to which he is about to resign himself, through a pair of cold, unillusory barnacles. As for the things beyond the hearth, if he cannot see without spectacles, is he not about to ally to his own defective vision a good sharp pair of eyes, never at fault where his interests are concerned? On the other hand, regarded positively, categorically, and explicitly, Dr. Roccabocca, by laying aside those spectacles, signified that he was about to commence that happy initiation of courts.h.i.+p when every man, be he ever so much a philosopher, wishes to look as young and as handsome as time and nature will allow. Vain task to speed the soft language of the eyes through the medium of those gla.s.sy interpreters! I remember, for my own part, that once, on a visit to the town of Adelaide, I--Pisistratus Caxton--was in great danger of falling in love,--with a young lady, too, who would have brought me a very good fortune,--when she suddenly produced from her reticule a very neat pair of No. 4, set in tortoisesh.e.l.l, and fixing upon me their Gorgon gaze, froze the astonished Cupid into stone! And I hold it a great proof of the wisdom of Riccabocca, and of his vast experience in mankind, that he was not above the consideration of what your pseudo-sages would have regarded as foppish and ridiculous trifles.
It argued all the better for that happiness which is our being's end and aim that in condescending to play the lover, he put those unbecoming petrifiers under lock and key.
And certainly, now the spectacles were abandoned, it was impossible to deny that the Italian had remarkably handsome eyes. Even through the spectacles, or lifted a little above them, they were always bright and expressive; but without those adjuncts, the blaze was softer and more tempered: they had that look which the French call veloute, or velvety; and he appeared altogether ten years younger. If our Ulysses, thus rejuvenated by his Minerva, has not fully made up his mind to make a Penelope of Miss Jemima, all I can say is, that he is worse than Polyphemus, who was only an Anthropophagos,--
He preys upon the weaker s.e.x, and is a Gynopophagite!