Diogenes of London (collection)/Diogenes of London
DIOGENES OF LONDON
'NO,' said he, swinging his heels upon the gate and facing the distance meditatively, 'marriage matters nothing. This side of lusty youth love is an affair of arrangement—one down, t'other come on. There is no choice practicable between women. Nonage, I grant you, has delectable idols, but the currents of life sweep us clean of 'em, and when we are come to discrete and uncomplaining years we submit to the maturer laws of our destiny. Marriage,' said he sententiously, 'is of the remotest consequence.'
'I wonder,' said I, 'to find one of so nice a judgment as yourself professing this ungracious creed. You with your past of elegance'
'’Tis the past fathers the future,' he broke in: 'I am grown sensible because of this very past. Fop I have been, fop I may endure, but wisdom comes to fops no less than to country squires.'
He gave me a pretty smile as from one upon a superior pedestal; and somehow he forbade me by it to visit upon him my annoyance that giggling fortune had made him my better.
'This,' said I, 'is a new complexion on your character, and I cannot conceive you in earnest. Your nimble humours dance in my country eyes. You have ever had the repute of a fastidious affection, and this holiday whim consorts not with your town performances. Put your meaning in plain words and be done.'
He shrugged his elegant shoulders, and balanced his cane upon his toe.
'My country droll,' said he, 'it seems my reputation sticks in your throat; it should but prove to you the insignificance of love. These preterite passions would merely argue one of the sex to be as another. Man was the true creation—woman but an afterthought: a serviceable afterthought, I make no doubt,' he said, nodding; 'and her service is greatest in this, that being an appanage she is most economically interchangeable. That,' said he, looking round at me to clinch his argument, 'is the philosophy of the wise, and the earlier you come to it, my rural squire, the better for your comfort.'
'’Tis the most wonderful philosophy out of your mouth,' I cried.
He spun a crown in the air.
'Heads or tails!' he called; 'this one or that! Of what consequence? Pooh!' he said.
'This thing is not true,' said I soberly.
He smiled. 'Of what use were it to repeat the proof?' he said. 'You may go take haphazard from the women of the world, and each will make you a mate. It is the question of an hour or two, and, for rmy own part, to make any business of the choice were unneedfully distressing. This love is an elegant, fine-sounding trifle; but 'tis manufactured by the gross,' he said; '’tis manufactured by the gross,' and puffed away his smoke most airily.
'Now,' said I, smiling, 'I have you clearly. If this be your theory, and you will not be at the trouble of choice, it matters nothing whom you wed.'
'Nothing,' said he indifferently. 'For myself, I would engage to marry any of the sex.'
'I give you back your pooh,' said I.
'I am in the mood to convince you,' he replied, with negligence; 'we will put it to the test. I will woo the first comer in petticoats.'
'You will be no such fool,' I answered.
Complacently a smile stole up his face. 'Yonder!' said he, waving his cane.
Looking down the valley I discerned a speck come crawling up the lane. In a short time it had drawn near enough for recognition, and presently a halting dame of sixty hobbled by, her nose sniffling the ground. He wavered on his seat.
'At her age she should already be a wife,' said he hesitatingly.
'Or a widow,' said I, who had some knowledge of her. I put my tongue in my cheek. 'Let us consider her a wife,' I said.
He glanced at me distrustfully, and straightened himself with an insensible motion.
'But it shall be the next, I vow,' he said with confidence.
There was no long interval when over the stile before us from the shelving meadows below drew villagewards a youthful figure in a gown of print.
'She has a dainty action on the stile,' I observed with a grin.
He made no answer, but, flinging from the gate, went swaggering across the patch of green into the lane.
'Pray, reconsider,' I called to him. 'This is the rashest venture on important issues.'
'’Tis most immaterial,' he answered lightly. He was a man set in the pink of fashion, and employed his limbs with a delicate extravagance. Stepping into the road, he whipped off his hat and bowed as a true exquisite. The girl stared and lingered, as she brushed the burrs from her skirts. I knew her for the village beauty: one spoiled of whims and vanities, but of a rare spirit and possession.
'Madam,' said he, hat in hand. 'Have you the time of day?'
'The sun is my clock, sir,' she said shortly. 'Gentlefolk have wits as well as we.'
'Nay, only in the singular,' he answered, 'and certainly neither when you are by.'
She flushed, lingering still with the comely gentleman.
'In this vale of tears we have an arduous journey,' he said. 'It has been my fortune to come so far solitary. May I have your company henceforth?'
'I am a poor hand at riddles, sir,' said she, and whirled away bewildered.
Following, he caught her at the turning, and faced her with a solemn countenance.
'You wrong me,' he declared. 'I put no riddle, but a weighty question, to your prettiness. Madam, will you wed me, and prove with me to the world and my obstinate squire that marriage is of the slightest consequence?'
'You are not sober, sir. Sirs, this is a sorry joke,' said she,
'My life, it is most serious,' he vowed. 'Doubtless you would have some information as to my degree. 'Tis a thought worthy of your providence, an exemplar to my sentimentalist behind. These clothes, madam, are of the newest fashion, of a quality becoming to a man of taste and fortune; and though I am of ordinary clay, I may yet claim to be of fair accomplishments, of an excellent temper, and of a most amusing acquaintance. For my person I say nothing, as 'tis before you at this moment in the correctest of bows,' wherewith he ducked most magnificently to the earth.
Her gaze recurred to me wonderingly.
'You are a friend of the squire's?' she asked.
'On my soul, madam, I am,' said he, waving at me. 'But I protest when we are married you will come to find him a most tedious companion. Even now he gapes at us.'
Her bosom heaved, and her eyes ran fire.
'I will take your offer, sir,' she said.
He seized her hand. 'Sweetheart,' he cried, 'we will sanctify the bargain,' and at this she thrust two pretty lips at him.
'’Tis somewhat in the open,' he declared, 'but only my decent blockhead witnesses. What! must you go? Well, then, 'tis all sealed and settled, and we shall meet anon.'
Slipping from his arm, she tripped down the lane with face all flushed and sparkling eyes, fleeting round the corner precipitantly.
'Go thy ways,' he cried, 'thou dainty bit of rusticity. Faith, I have touched less delicate lips and felt a grosser waist.'
Then he swaggered back to me across the green. 'It is a pretty lass,' I said with a chuckle; 'you were most fortunate in your selection.'
He was humming a tune, and stopped suddenly: 'I call you to witness,' he said quickly, 'that I took the chances.'
I puffed at my pipe, astounded to regard this finished piece of impudent humanity. 'This madness,' I said presently, 'is but of a midsummer noon. It ends here, doubtless.'
'Gad,' said he, swelling with the humour and pleased with my serious wonder, 'it ends not here, nor elsewhere than in the church. Marriage has been unduly inflated. I have set out to prick the bubble.' And, lighting his pipe, he fell to smoking easily.
'Twas on the morrow that I took him most gravely to task for his folly; but by this he was captive to his own fancy, and would hear no remonstrance.
'You put me in mind of my duty,' he said, 'I had forgot the proper ceremonies of this love. Faith, I must pay my respects to my sweetheart. She will look for these usual courtesies.'
When he had returned he reverted to the topic with the keenest amusement, protesting that she was an elegant creature.
'’Fore Gad,' he said, 'she hath a wit as ostentatious as her beauty, and a manner to match.'
A little later I met him walking with her in the long avenue, and to be sure his judgment had not been at fault. I had noticed her but little in my village wanderings, but it was true she was rarely handsome: misplaced, one would say, among such rural hinds. He gave me a grand recognition and passed on, whispering in her ear; and, turning, I watched him swaggering into the distance.
That night my lord of the neighbouring castle came down from London—a fellow of no pretensions to philosophy, a rude hot-blood of no particular distinction, but seised of many acres and a bountiful rent-roll. Him the mad coxcomb must fill with tales of his troth and rustic lady-love, both laughing over the wine till my lord grew purple between drinking and chuckling, and swore he must inspect the charmer. And it was evident he had carried out his intention; for they came back next day from a joint excursion, my lord roaring with merriment, and vowing he was ravished by the beauty. For my own part, I could not but think it indifferent usage of the girl, and reflected that my exquisite had in this departed from his wonted taste. The joke promised at this point to endure too clamantly and become the stock subject of our converse; but somehow it suddenly ceased, and I heard no more of it. Nevertheless, I missed him constantly from my walks, and saw well enough that something was afoot, though he kept a respectable silence about the girl. Once or twice he dropped hints of her, taking pains to say indifferently that she would grace his table mightily, and take the fickle eye of London most uncommonly. He had by this discarded his jesting humour, and I began to think that he had grown uncomfortable (as I had always predicted for him) upon the nearer consideration of his absurd behaviour. But, being determined to show him little mercy for his folly, I suffered him to suppose I looked upon his withdrawal as inevitable, knowing this to be the surest way to keep him to his whimsical purpose. But presently I found his condition to be other than I had imagined.
It dawned on me slowly through a variety of observations. First, he was infrequently in my company, deserting the house often at early morning, and making excuses for his irregular appearances through the day. Then, too, he began to wear the marks familiar in such cases: to smile at space, to murmur to himself, to wander by the garden brook, to take an affectionate interest in flowers, and to shut himself up in his room with an abundance of quills and paper. Each day, whether fair or foul, he declared to be delightful; and whereas before he had often spoken of a return to town, he now swore the country only was inhabitable. But most of all was I astonished and tickled by his bearing to my lord, which soon was noticeable. At the outset merely contemptuous, he came to use his name with so little respect that his own list of vile terms was too meagre for him, and he was fain to borrow from mine. 'A thick-bellied popinjay,' 'a witless moonface,' 'a damned vessel for a damneder title:' these are poor instances of his abuse. And, indeed, he was openly uncivil in his presence, and snarled on all occasions against hereditary honours and fat pockets. He grew so ill at ease and showed so much distress that I, who upon learning his state had been most sardonic in my demeanour to him, at length forbore in fear of a rupture. And this was the remarkable condition of things when one morning near noon he burst suddenly upon my privacy, his hair unkempt for the first time in my knowledge, his face betraying a most lively and ferocious anxiety.
'By God, Squire,' he cried, 'she has gone to church with your dastard of a lord.'
His fingers twitched, his eyes burned. I took a pinch of snuff.
'Marriage,' said I, 'my London exquisite, is of the remotest consequence.'