My Novel Part 4

"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him, Sprott," said the parson, more politely I fear than honestly,--for he had seen enough of that cross-grained thing called the human heart, even in the little world of a country parish, to know that it requires management and coaxing and flattering, to interfere successfully between a man and his own donkey,--"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him; but he has already got a sore on his shoulder as big as my hand, poor thing!"

"Lord love 'un! yes; that was done a playing with the manger the day I gave 'un oats!" said the tinker.

Dr. Riccabocca adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the a.s.s. The a.s.s p.r.i.c.ked up his other ear, and surveyed Dr. Riccabocca. In that mutual survey of physical qualifications, each being regarded according to the average symmetry of its species, it may be doubted whether the advantage was on the side of the philosopher.

The parson had a great notion of the wisdom of his friend in all matters not purely ecclesiastical.

"Say a good word for the donkey!" whispered he.

"Sir," said the doctor, addressing Mr. Sprott, with a respectful salutation, "there's a great kettle at my house--the Casino--which wants soldering: can you recommend me a tinker?"

"Why, that's all in my line," said Sprott; "and there ben't a tinker in the county that I vould recommend like myself, tho'f I say it."

"You jest, good sir," said the doctor, smiling pleasantly. "A man who can't mend a hole in his own donkey can never demean himself by patching up my great kettle."

"Lord, sir!" said the tinker, archly, "if I had known that poor Neddy had had two sitch friends in court, I'd have seen he vas a gintleman, and treated him as sitch."

"Corpo di Bacco!" quoth the doctor, "though that jest's not new, I think the tinker comes very well out of it."

"True; but the donkey!" said the parson; "I've a great mind to buy it."

"Permit me to tell you an anecdote in point," said Dr. Riccabocca.

"Well?" said the parson, interrogatively.

"Once on a time," pursued Riccabocca, "the Emperor Adrian, going to the public baths, saw an old soldier, who had served under him, rubbing his back against the marble wall. The emperor, who was a wise, and therefore a curious, inquisitive man, sent for the soldier, and asked him why he resorted to that sort of friction. 'Because,' answered the veteran, 'I am too poor to have slaves to rub me down.' The emperor was touched, and gave him slaves and money. The next day, when Adrian went to the baths, all the old men in the city were to be seen rubbing themselves against the marble as hard as they could. The emperor sent for them, and asked them the same question which he had put to the soldier; the cunning old rogues, of course, made the same answer. 'Friends,' said Adrian, 'since there are so many of you, you will just rub one another!' Mr. Dale, if you don't want to have all the donkeys in the county with holes in their shoulders, you had better not buy the tinker's!"

"It is the hardest thing in the world to do the least bit of good,"

groaned the parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge nervously, snapped it in two, and flung away the fragments: one of them hit the donkey on the nose. If the a.s.s could have spoken Latin he would have said, "Et tu, Brute!" As it was, he hung down his ears, and walked on.

"Gee hup," said the tinker, and he followed the a.s.s. Then stopping, he looked over his shoulder, and seeing that the parson's eyes were gazing mournfully on his protege, "Never fear, your reverence," cried the tinker, kindly, "I'll not spite 'un."

CHAPTER VII.

"Four, o'clock," cried the parson, looking at his watch; "half an hour after dinner-time, and Mrs. Dale particularly begged me to be punctual, because of the fine trout the squire sent us. Will you venture on what our homely language calls 'pot-luck,' Doctor?"

Now Riccabocca was a professed philosopher, and valued himself on his penetration into the motives of human conduct. And when the parson thus invited him to pot-luck, he smiled with a kind of lofty complacency; for Mrs. Dale enjoyed the reputation of having what her friends styled "her little tempers." And, as well-bred ladies rarely indulge "little tempers" in the presence of a third person not of the family, so Dr.

Riccabocca instantly concluded that he was invited to stand between the pot and the luck! Nevertheless--as he was fond of trout, and a much more good-natured man than he ought to have been according to his principles--he accepted the hospitality; but he did so with a sly look from over his spectacles, which brought a blush into the guilty cheeks of the parson. Certainly Riccabocca had for once guessed right in his estimate of human motives.

The two walked on, crossed a little bridge that spanned the rill, and entered the parsonage lawn. Two dogs, that seemed to have sat on watch for their master, sprang towards him, barking; and the sound drew the notice of Mrs. Dale, who, with parasol in hand, sallied out from the sash window which opened on the lawn. Now, O reader! I know that, in thy secret heart, thou art chuckling over the want of knowledge in the sacred arcana of the domestic hearth betrayed by the author; thou art saying to thyself, "A pretty way to conciliate 'little tempers' indeed, to add to the offence of spoiling the fish the crime of bringing an unexpected friend to eat it. Pot-luck, quotha, when the pot 's boiled over this half hour!"

But, to thy utter shame and confusion, O reader! learn that both the author and Parson Dale knew very well what they were about.

Dr. Riccabocca was the special favourite of Mrs. Dale, and the only person in the whole county who never put her out, by dropping in. In fact, strange though it may seem at first glance, Dr. Riccabocca had that mysterious something about him, which we of his own s.e.x can so little comprehend, but which always propitiates the other. He owed this, in part, to his own profound but hypocritical policy; for he looked upon woman as the natural enemy to man, against whom it was necessary to be always on the guard; whom it was prudent to disarm by every species of fawning servility and abject complaisance. He owed it also, in part, to the compa.s.sionate and heavenly nature of the angels whom his thoughts thus villanously traduced--for women like one whom they can pity without despising; and there was something in Signor Riccabocca's poverty, in his loneliness, in his exile, whether voluntary or compelled, that excited pity; while, despite his threadbare coat, the red umbrella, and the wild hair, he had, especially when addressing ladies, that air of gentleman and cavalier, which is or was more innate in an educated Italian, of whatever rank, than perhaps in the highest aristocracy of any other country in Europe. For, though I grant that nothing is more exquisite than the politeness of your French marquis of the old regime, nothing more frankly gracious than the cordial address of a high-bred English gentleman, nothing more kindly prepossessing than the genial good-nature of some patriarchal German, who will condescend to forget his sixteen quarterings in the pleasure of doing you a favour,--yet these specimens of the suavity of their several nations are rare; whereas blandness and polish are common attributes with your Italian.

They seem to have been immemorially handed down to him, from ancestors emulating the urbanity of Caesar, and refined by the grace of Horace.

"Dr. Riccabocca consents to dine with us," cried the parson, hastily.

"If Madame permit?" said the Italian, bowing over the hand extended to him, which, however, he forbore to take, seeing it was already full of the watch.

"I am only sorry that the trout must be quite spoiled," began Mrs. Dale, plaintively.

"It is not the trout one thinks of when one dines with Mrs. Dale," said the infamous dissimulator.

"But I see James coming to say that dinner is ready," observed the parson.

"He said that three-quarters of an hour ago, Charles dear," retorted Mrs. Dale, taking the arm of Dr. Riccabocca.

CHAPTER VIII.

While the parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to regale the reader with a small treatise a propos of that "Charles dear,"

murmured by Mrs. Dale,--a treatise expressly written for the benefit of The Domestic Circle.

It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the close, as in that "Charles dear" of Mrs. Dale, it has spilled so much of its natural bitterness by the way that it a.s.sumes even a smile, "amara lento temperet risu." Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch.

For example:--

(Plaintive.) "I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles dear."

"Nay, I am very glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles dear."

"Not quite so loud! If you had but my poor head, Charles dear," etc.

(Arch.) "If you could spill the ink anywhere but on the best tablecloth, Charles dear!"

"But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite faultless, own, Charles dear," etc.

When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its venom is naturally less exhausted. For example:--

"Really, I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person," etc.

"And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should just like to know whose fault it was--that's all."

"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the children than--" etc.

But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then a.s.sumes the majesty of "my" before it; it is generally more than simple objurgation,--it prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious a.s.sumption of the Petruchian paterfamilias--the head of the family--boding, not perhaps "peace and love, and quiet life," but certainly "awful rule and right supremacy." For example:--

"My dear Jane, I wish you would just put by that everlasting crochet, and listen to me for a few moments," etc. "My dear Jane, I wish you would understand me for once; don't think I am angry,--no, but I am hurt! You must consider," etc.

"My dear Jane, I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for their husband's property," etc.

"My dear Jane, I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the world to be jealous; but I'll be d---d if that puppy, Captain Prettyman," etc.