“Not with the naked eye, maid!”
“Well,” says she, “you might try, jus’ t’ please God.”
To be sure I might: I might pour at a guess. But, unhappily (and it may be that there is some philosophy in this for a self-indulgent world), I was not in awe of Judith’s fantastic conception of divinity, whatever I thought of my own, by whom, however, I was not conjured. Moreover, I loved my uncle, who had continued to make me happy all my life, and would venture far in the service of his comfort. The twinkling, benevolent aspect of the maid’s Deity could not compel a lad to righteousness: I could with perfect complacency conduct myself perversely before it. And must we then, lads and men, worship a God of wrath, quick to punish, niggardly in fatherly forgiveness, lest we stray into evil ways? I do not know. ’Tis beyond me to guess the change to be worked in the world by a new conception of the eternal attributes.
“An’ will you not?” says she.
It chanced, now, that she held the lamp near her face, so that her beauty was illumined and transfigured. ’Twas a beauty most tender––most pure and elfin and religious. ’Tis a mean, poor justification, I know, to say that I was in some mysterious way––by the magic resident in the beauty of a maid, and virulently, wickedly active within its sphere, which is the space the vision of a lad may carry––that I was by this magic incapacitated 210 and overcome. ’Tis an excuse made by fallen lads since treason was writ of; ’tis a mere excuse, ennobling no traitorious act: since love, to be sure, has no precedence of loyalty in hearts of truth and manful aspiration. Love? surely it walks with glorious modesty in the train of honor––or is a brazen baggage. But, as it unhappily chanced, whatever the academic conception, the maid held the lamp too close for my salvation: so close that her blue, shadowy eyes bewildered me, and her lips, red and moist, with a gleam of white teeth between, I recall, tempted me quite beyond the endurance of self-respect. I slipped, indeed, most sadly in the path, and came a shamefaced, ridiculous cropper.
“An’ will you not,” says she, “pour but a quarter of a inch t’ the glass?”
“I will,” I swore, “for a kiss!”
’Twas an outrageous betrayal of my uncle.
“For shame!” cries she.
“I will for a kiss,” I repeated, my soul offered on a platter to the devil, “regardless o’ the consequences.”