IV PASSAGES FROM THE ROMANCE OF MY UNCLE TOBY AND THE WIDOW[36]

Now, as Widow Wadman did love my uncle Toby, and my uncle Toby did not love Widow Wadman, there was nothing for Widow Wadman to do, but to go on and love my uncle Toby—or let it alone.

Widow Wadman would do neither the one nor the other....

As soon as the Corporal had finished the story of his amour—or rather my uncle Toby for him—Mrs. Wadman silently sallied forth from her arbor, replaced the pin in her mob, passed the wicker-gate, and advanced slowly toward my uncle Toby's sentry-box; the disposition which Trim had made in my uncle Toby's mind was too favorable a crisis to be let slipt.

The attack was determined upon: it was facilitated still more by my uncle Toby's having ordered the Corporal to wheel off the pioneer's shovel, the spade, the pickax, the piquets, and other military stores which lay scattered upon the ground where Dunkirk stood. The Corporal had marched; the field was clear.

Now, consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting or writing, or anything else (whether in rime to it or not) which a man has occasion to do, to act by plan: for if ever Plan, independent of all circumstances, deserved registering in letters of gold (I mean in the archives of Gotham) it was certainly the Plan of Mrs. Wadman's attack of my uncle Toby in his sentry-box, by Plan. Now, the plan hanging up in it at this juncture, being the Plan of Dunkirk, and the tale of Dunkirk a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression she could make: and, besides, could she have gone upon it, the maneuver of fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-box was so outdone by that of the fair Beguine's, in Trim's story, that just then, that particular attack, however successful before, became the most heartless attack that could be made.

Oh! let woman alone for this. Mrs. Wadman had scarce opened the wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances.

She formed a new attack in a moment.

"I am half distracted, Captain Shandy," said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door of my uncle Toby's sentry-box; "a mote, or sand, or something I know not what, has got into this eye of mine; do look into it; it is not in the white."

In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle Toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up. "Do look into it," said she.

Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart as ever child looked into a raree show-box; and 'twere as much a sin to have hurt thee.

If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature, I've nothing to say to it.

My uncle Toby never did: and I will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly upon a sofa from June to January (which, you know, takes in both the hot and cold months) with an eye as fine as the Thracian Rhodope's beside him, without being able to tell whether it was a black or a blue one.

The difficulty was, to get my uncle Toby to look at one at all.

'Tis surmounted. And—

I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it, looking and looking, then rubbing his eyes, and looking again, with twice the good nature that ever Galileo looked for a spot in the sun.

In vain! for, by all the powers which animate the organ, Widow Wadman's left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right; there is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor particle of opaque matter floating in it. There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions into thine.

If thou lookest, Uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment longer, thou art undone.

An eye is, for all the world, exactly like a cannon, in this respect, that it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is the carriage of the eye and the carriage of the cannon; by which both the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. I don't think the comparison a bad one; however, as 'tis made and placed at the head of the chapter, as much for use as ornament, all I desire in return is, that whenever I speak of Mrs. Wadman's eyes (except once in the next period) that you keep it in your fancy.

"I protest, madam," said my uncle Toby, "I can see nothing whatever in your eye."

"It is not in the white," said Mrs. Wadman. My uncle Toby looked with might and main into the pupil.

Now, of all the eyes which ever were created, from your own, madam, up to those of Venus herself, which certainly were as venereal a pair of eyes as ever stood in a head, there never was an eye of them all so fitted to rob my uncle Toby of his repose as the very eye at which he was looking; it was not, madam, a rolling eye, a romping, or a wanton one; nor was it an eye sparkling, petulant, or imperious, of high claims and terrifying expectations, which would have curdled at once that milk of human nature, of which my uncle Toby was made up; but 'twas an eye full of gentle salutations and soft responses, speaking, not like the trumpet-stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an eye I talk to holds coarse converse, but whispering soft, like that last low accent of an expiring saint, "How can you live comfortless, Captain Shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head on—or trust your cares to?"

It was an eye—

But I shall be in love with it myself, if I say another word about it.

It did my uncle Toby's business....

The world is ashamed of being virtuous. My uncle Toby knew little of the world; and therefore, when he felt he was in love with Widow Wadman, he had no conception that the thing was any more to be made a mystery of than if Mrs. Wadman had given him a cut with a gap'd knife across his finger. Had it been otherwise—yet, as he ever looked upon Trim as a humbler friend, and saw fresh reasons every day of his life to treat him as such—it would have made no variation in the manner in which he informed him of the affair.

"I am in love, Corporal!" quoth my uncle Toby....

Tho the Corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle Toby's great Ramillies wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to produce any great effects from it; it had lain many years squeezed up in the corner of his old campaign-trunk; and as bad forms are not so easy to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have wished. The Corporal, with cheery eye and both arms extended, had fallen back perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if possible, with a better air:—had Spleen given a look at it, 'twould have cost her ladyship a smile; it curled everywhere but where the Corporal would have it; and where a buckle or two, in his opinion, would have done it honor, he could as soon have raised the dead.

Such it was, or rather, such would it have seemed upon any other brow; but the sweet look of goodness which sat upon my uncle Toby's assimilated everything around it so sovereignly to itself, and Nature had, moreover, wrote gentleman with so fair a hand in every line of his countenance, that even his tarnished gold-laced hat and huge cockade of flimsy taffeta became him; and, tho not worth a button in themselves, yet the moment my uncle Toby put them on, they became serious objects, and, altogether, seemed to have been picked up by the hand of Science to set him off to advantage.

Nothing, in this world could have cooperated more powerfully toward this than my uncle Toby's blue and gold, had not Quantity, in some measure, been necessary to grace. In a period of fifteen or sixteen years since they had been made, by a total inactivity in my uncle Toby's life (for he seldom went further than the bowling green), his blue and gold had become so miserably too straight for him that it was with the utmost difficulty the Corporal was able to get him into them; the taking up at the sleeves was of no advantage; they were laced, however, down the back, and at the seams of the sides, etc., in the mode of King William's reign; and to shorten all description, they shone so bright against the sun that morning, and had so metallic and doughty an air with them, that, had my uncle Toby thought of attacking in armor, nothing could have so well imposed upon his imagination.

As for the thin scarlet breeches, they had been unripped by the tailor between the legs, and left at sixes and sevens.

Yes, madam; but let us govern our fancies. It is enough they were held impracticable the night before; and, as there was no alternative in my uncle Toby's wardrobe, he sallied forth in the red plush.

The Corporal had arrayed himself in poor Le Fevre's regimental coat; and with his hair tucked up under his Montero-cap, which he had furbished up for the occasion, marched three paces distant from his master; a whiff of military pride had puffed out his shirt at the wrist; and upon that, in a black leather thong clipt into a tassel beyond the knot, hung the Corporal's stick. My uncle Toby carried his cane like a pike.

"It looks well, at least," quoth my father to himself....

When my uncle Toby and the Corporal had marched down to the bottom of the avenue, they recollected their business lay the other way; so they faced about, and marched up straight to Mrs. Wadman's door.

"I warrant your Honor," said the Corporal, touching his Montero-cap with his hand as he passed him in order to give a knock at the door. My uncle Toby, contrary to his invariable way of treating his faithful servant, said nothing good or bad; the truth was, he had not altogether marshaled his ideas; he wished for another conference, and, as the Corporal was mounting up the three steps before the door, he hem'd twice; a portion of my uncle Toby's most modest spirits fled, at each expulsion, toward the Corporal; he stood with the rapper of the door suspended for a full minute in his hand, he scarce knew why. Bridget stood perdue within, with her finger and her thumb upon the latch, benumbed with expectation; and Mrs. Wadman, with an eye ready to be deflowered again, sat breathless behind the window-curtain of her bed-chamber, watching their approach.

"Trim!" said my uncle Toby; but, as he articulated the word, the minute expired, and Trim let fall the rapper.

My uncle Toby, perceiving that all hopes of a conference were knocked on the head by it, whistled Lillabullero.

As Mrs. Bridget opened the door before the Corporal had well given the rap, the interval betwixt that and my uncle Toby's introduction into the parlor was so short that Mrs. Wadman had but just time to get from behind the curtain, lay a Bible upon the table, and advance a step or two toward the door to receive him.

My uncle Toby saluted Mrs. Wadman, after the manner in which women were saluted by men in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and thirteen; then facing about, he marched up abreast with her to the sofa, and in three plain words, tho not before he was sat down, nor after he was sat down, but as he was sitting down, told her, "he was in love"; so that my uncle Toby strained himself more in the declaration than he needed.

Mrs. Wadman naturally looked down upon a slit she had been darning up in her apron, in expectation every moment that my uncle Toby would go on; but having no talents for amplification, and Love, moreover, of all others, being a subject of which he was the least a master, when he had told Mrs. Wadman once that he loved her, he let it alone, and left the matter to work after its own way.

My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle Toby's, as he falsely called it, and would often say, That could his brother Toby to his process have added but a pipe of tobacco, he had wherewithal to have his way, if there was faith in a Spanish proverb, toward the hearts of half the women upon the globe.

My uncle Toby never understood what my father meant; nor will I presume to extract more from it than a condemnation of an error which the bulk of the world lie under; but the French, every one of them to a man, who believe in it almost as much as the Real Presence, "That talking of love is making it."

I would as soon set about making a black pudding by the same receipt.

Let us go on: Mrs. Wadman sat in expectation my uncle Toby would do so, to almost the first pulsation of that minute, wherein silence on one side or the other generally becomes indecent; so edging herself a little more toward him, and raising up her eyes, sub-blushing as she did it, she took up the gantlet, or the discourse (if you like it better), and communed with my uncle Toby thus:

"The cares and disquietudes of the marriage-state," quoth Mrs. Wadman, "are very great."

"I suppose so," said my uncle Toby.

"And therefore when a person," continued Mrs. Wadman, "is so much at his ease as you are, so happy, Captain Shandy, in yourself, your friends, and your amusements, I wonder what reasons can incline you to the state?"

"They are written," quoth my uncle Toby, "in the Common Prayer-Book."

Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, and kept within his depth, leaving Mrs. Wadman to sail upon the gulf as she pleased.

"As for children," said Mrs. Wadman, "tho a principal end, perhaps, of the institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent, yet do not we all find that they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain comforts? and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-aches, what compensation for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and defenseless mother who brings them into life?"

"I declare," said my uncle Toby, smitten with pity, "I know of none: unless it be the pleasure which it has pleased God ..."

"A fiddlestick!" quoth she....

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