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?"