“Ah me,” he sighed. “I was just in time; another day—who knows—it might have been too late.... It is going to be contentious. I see it, I hear it, I know it; but let it come, I will out-Solomon Solomon with the keen edge of my diplomacy, and mark you, the infant of my desire will not be severed.”
For some moments the Reverend Tobias Hook balanced himself, now on his heels, now on his toes.
“My young friend,” he resumed with impressive solemnity, “reverence diplomacy primarily and late, for it is the right healing hand of our Maker. It alone diagnoses the depths and shallows of diseased contentions. With subtle pills it ruddies up a pale hope, or judiciously phialing out poppied words it bats the eye of envy. And when the distemper of ambition rolls up the pulse of those around you lay on the gentle fingers of diplomacy, pucker up the wise silent lips, and blinking, fashion out a cure. If, in due time, you should fall, as men have fallen from Adam down, into the fever and ague of marriage, you will need for your own health’s sake this physician’s calming dosage.
“Marriage, marriage,” he soliloquised bitterly, jamming the point of his umbrella viciously into the planks, “that, my young friend, is the act that strips us and leaves us naked of hope. Why did I marry? A question. Was I lonely? No. I was wallowing in youth. Was it greed? No, for it has further impoverished my poverty. Was it ambition? No, I tempt not what caused the fall of angels. Was it love? There is no need to ask that question. Nor is there any use to take the whole inventory of my mind. I did it—that is all.
“This thing and theory of the one woman, my young friend, is like a nettle found in the White Cloud Hills; it tickles sensationally at first, then leaves a rash burning the rest of life. In this nettle simile lies the substance of my whole contention. At the moment of discovery our vision is distorted so that we discern in this very nettle a rose, a lily, or what not so that it is pleasing to our fancy. We pluck, we pop the other eye, and before we know we begin to scratch.
“Moreover, in this rose and lily metaphor lies argument for another drift to the point we are getting at. We grant the one woman to be the perfect rose or lily; man ambling through the garden of womankind spies this choicest flower and plucks it—which is marriage—then for his temerity wanders the rest of life through this endless blooming garden with an herb whose hues are soon no hues, whose perfume has become an odour, and its sweets so galled that the very bees forsake it and hornets extract substance from it for their stings. Furthermore, my young friend, in your feeble youth, unstrengthened by the vicissitudes of matrimony, nor toiled, nor calloused by it, I warn you that the sweetness of one rose is soon blown. No cook can concoct a meal out of one dish, nor prayers nor Aladdins make one meal fill out the course of life. It is variety and abundance that peppers and adorns the monotony of this rutted earth. Ah, if our discretion would only come in youth and our follies in old age! What happiness! We would die from a surfeit of it.”
The Reverend Hook stepped closer to the Breton and laid his hand consolingly on his shoulder.
“My young friend, I have watched you for many weeks standing at dusk on this bund and holding dialogue with empty space, and I conceived the thoughts I have given birth to—that there is a woman in it, for nothing but female imaginings can make a man a companion to shadows and vapours, squeezing music out of noise and plastering the air thick with visions.
“Now mark me, I do not complain of lathering in this fragrant soap that so cleanses our minds of sorrow, but let lather be lather; temporarily it laves us in joy but in the One love—no! no! with it comes only moody agitations of the heart. You try to crib on nature and deceive yourself into believing that the lily cannot lose its whiteness, nor the rose its perfume. Ah, my young dreamer, if you had Mrs. Hook for one week—that is all!
“But let us be cheerful, retrospect your thoughts back to that little dimpled darling in blue pantlets! Could anything be finer? She is curried to my taste, sir, and when chutneyed with a little strife—what a morsel! What a dish!... If I can clasp her once, just once, mark you, she will wail for the love of me.”