The Cream of the Jest

"That I am of smirched repute, madam, I lack both grounds and inclination to deny. Yet I am not so through choice. Believe me, I am innately of wellnigh ducal disposition; and by preference, an ill name is as obnoxious to me as – shall we say? – soiled linen or a coat of last year's cut. But then, que voulez-vous? as our lively neighbors observe. Squeamishness was never yet bred in an empty pocket; and I am thus compelled to the commission of divers profitable peccadilloes, once in a blue moon, by the dictates of that same haphazard chance which to-night has pressed me into the service of innocence and virtue."

She kept silence; and he went on in lightheaded wonder as to what this dream, so plainly recognized as such, was all about, and as to whence came the words which sprang so nimbly to his lips, and as to what was the cause of his great wistful sorrow. Perhaps if he listened very attentively to what he was saying, he might find out.

"You do not answer, madam. Yet think a little. I am a notorious rogue: the circumstance is conceded. But do you think I have selfishly become so in quest of amusement? Nay, I can assure you that Newgate, the wigged judge, the jolting cart, the gallows, is no pleasant dream o'nights. But what choice had I? Cast forth to the gutter's miring in the susceptible years of infancy, a girl of the town's byblow, what choice had I, in heaven's name? If I may not live as I would, I must live as I may; in emperors and parsons and sewer-diggers and cheese-mites that claim is equally allowed."

"You are a thief?" she asked, pensively.

"Let us put it, rather, that I have proved in life's hard school an indifferent Latinist, by occasionally confounding meum with tuum."

"A murderer?"

"Something of the sort might be my description in puritanic mouths. You know at least what happened at The Cat and Hautbois."

("But what in the world had happened there?" Kennaston wondered.)

"And yet -" The sweet voice marveled.

"And yet I have saved you from Lord Umfraville? Ah, madam, Providence labors with quaint instruments, dilapidating Troy by means of a wood rocking-horse, and loosing sin into the universe through a half-eaten apple. Nay, I repeat, I am not all base; and I have read somewhere that those who are in honor wholly shipwrecked will yet very often cling desperately to one stray spar of virtue."

He could tell her hand had raised to the knocker on the closed door. "Mr. Vanringham, will you answer me a question?"

"A thousand. (So I am Vanringham.")

"I have not knocked. I possess, as you know, a considerable fortune in my own right. It would be easy for a strong man – and, sure, your shoulders are prodigiously broad, Mr. Cut-throat! – very easy for him to stifle my cries and carry me away, even now. And then, to preserve my honor, I would have no choice save to marry that broad-shouldered man. Is this not truth?"

"It is the goddess herself, newly stolen from her well. O dea certé!"

"I am not absolutely hideous, either?" she queried, absent-mindedly.

"Dame Venus," Kennaston observed, "may have made a similar demand of the waves at Cythera when she first rose among their billows: and I doubt not that the white foaming waters, amorously clutching at her far whiter feet, laughed and murmured the answer I would give did I not know your question was put in a spirit of mockery."

"And yet -" she re-began.

"And yet, I resist all these temptations? Frankly, had you been in my eyes less desirable, madam, you would not have reached home thus uneventfully; for a rich marriage is the only chance adapted to repair my tattered fortunes; and the devil is cunning to avail himself of our flesh's frailty. Had you been the fat widow of some City knight, I would have played my lord of Umfraville's part, upon my pettier scale. Or, had I esteemed it possible for me to have done with my old life, I would have essayed to devote a cleaner existence to your service and worship. Indeed, indeed, I speak the truth, however jestingly!" he said, with sudden wildness. "But what would you have? I would not entrust your fan, much less your happiness, to the keeping of a creature so untrustworthy as I know myself to be. In fine, I look upon you, madam, in such a rapture of veneration and tenderness and joy and heartbreaking yearning, that it is necessary I get very tipsy to-night, and strive to forget that I, too, might have lived cleanlily."