Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/220

3, 1860.] question. But then there is Annie Lorie, down in Perthshire—she too is waiting for me like the Spirit of the Waterfall—pale as a moonbeam, but warm and soft, and full of tricks as a kitten. I will not break her young heart. Annie shall be blest. And Therèse! what will become of her? She will be dragged to the Mairie by some beast of a French captain with red hands—or by a pale mesmeric humbug who calls himself a physician. Could I cut myself into pieces, they should all be happy: but it is clear that the British Legislature has only proceeded one step—one faltering insufficient step—in the right direction. There is a good deal in the theory of Polygamy. so it be rightly applied. But, hey-day, what is this? Six o’clock. I must hurry home, or Flora will be kept waiting for dinner, and I shall get into a scrape.

It will be unnecessary to give the dialogue between the soother of my existence, and myself, at any great length; but it will, I think, be sufficient to set out the sum of the arguments I employed. I confess that at the hearing my own propositions did not tell as well as they appear to do when arranged fairly in order as below. The contest was an unequal one. When Serjeants Boozey and Spigot are engaged in hot argument at the bar—Boozey’s firm soul is never diverted from its set purpose by the personal charms of Spigot. Should Spigot even allow a diamond drop to trickle down his learned cheek—Boozey would not care a button about it. The emotions with which his rival’s soul was distracted, would be nothing to him, or he might even suppose that here was an attempt to tamper with the jury. If Spigot should interrupt the flow of his eloquence, in an irregular way, he would fix his hands the more firmly on his dogmatic hips and solicit the intervention of the Bench in restraint of his antagonist. Now, it is not so easy to maintain the rivulet of logic within its proper banks when you are arguing with an exceedingly pretty woman.

And Flora is a pretty woman, although she has pleaded guilty to xxviii. for the last x years; but I have frequently noticed that it is the case with our fair countrywomen, that when they have been twenty-eight years of age for about twelve years, their ripe autumn is even more attractive than the primrose-time of sweet seventeen. When they have stood at twenty-eight for about four years, they fall off, and then pick up again by some wonderful process of Nature’s animal chemistry. We do not, indeed, so immediately connect them with the notion of Fawns, Fairies, Flowers, and other such trivial conceits, but something far better has taken the place of these mere moonbeams of the mind. Does not the enraptured poet speak of the Widow Malone as—

By Paphos and Cnidus I swear that those rounded, but still symmetric forms—those bright intelligent eyes, rich with the rogueries of x years—are better worth than the puling sentimentalities of the boarding-schools for young ladies. Who would spend his days with an Italian greyhound, or as gentleman of the bed-chamber to a Canary bird? I missed some of my very best points by allowing my eye to revel over the polished smoothness of Flora’s arm. She has a way of resting her elbow—it is white and dimpled—on the chair; she then permits the hand to drop forward, so that her cheek rests upon the back of it—just where my masculine knuckles would be—and the taper-fingers hanging down complete the work of fascination. Even the late Sir William Follett would, I think, have been puzzled to show cause against Flora, when she has taken up this—her favourite—position, and has brought the artillery of her eyes fairly into action.

As nearly as I can remember, I spoke as follows:

“Marriage, my dearest Flora, was an institution ordained for the happiness—not the misery—of the human race. If it be asserted that reciprocal affection constitutes the best reason for contracting such an union as the one indicated—and I am sure my Flora would never defend the meretricious mockery of money marriages—surely it follows as the natural correlative of this argument, that reciprocal aversion is a sound reason for dissolving the bond. The priest and the magistrate can give the person—they can give no more. Our affections are our own. It is not every one who has been so blest—so doubly and trebly blest—in a wife as I have been; but put the case that I had blundered into a marriage with Margaret Dobbs. That Daisy; that Pearl, would soon to me have been but Hateful Peg. Should I have been compelled to Peg on to the end of the chapter! (Flora intimated that such would have been my duty.) What! to feel one’s home a Lazaret—never to hear words other than those of whining and reproach, to be kept working all one’s life like a horse in a mill, for an object one loathed and despised. What if Peg took to physicking herself, or to acrid theology, or to jealousy, or to dram-drinking, or even to simple ‘nagging ” (Flora suggested that I should pray for strength), “but,” I continued, “the result would be, that I should be miserable and Peg not happy. (I may here be permitted to remark parenthetically, that I was well aware that Flora entertained a most deeply-rooted aversion to Miss Dobbs, hence I had selected that lady for illustration.) But carry the matter one step further. Suppose, Flora, that during the period when Peg had me on the rack, and was screwing me up with all the tenderness of a sincere Dominican, I had met you either in the first blushing unconsciousness of your youthful beauty, or still worse, now, when the rosebud has kept its early promise, and the mature and lovely woman stands confessed before me in all her glowing charms; should I have been bound down to my Hobson’s choice?” (Flora intimated that, under such circumstances, she should have regarded a glance of admiration as an insult); “but, Flora, put the case, only put the case—that your bright glance had rested on me, not wholly as an object to excite disgust—suppose, just suppose, my own dearest girl, that you had pitied me, and surely so gentle a being (I have always observed that ladies like to he called ‘beings’) as my Flora would have pitied the sufferings which her own beauty had