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 assumed something of the
earnest tone of friendship. 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 acquaintanceships, especially with
the opposite sex; 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 constitutional
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 substitute 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
assorted 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 shins 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 shagreen 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 courtship 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 glassy
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 tortoiseshell, 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 sex, and is a Gynopophagite!
