The Scholar on his Wedding Day

Squinting through the thick lenses of his spectacles, a scholar limped down the muddy way, holding a posy of flowers in one hand and a small book tied with a ribbon in the other. He seemed to have so many difficulties navigating his course, from keeping his slipping wig on his head to controlling the sudden forward lurches when he stepped into a puddle of uncertain depth. You wouldn't have imagined his heart on fire with the passion of love, nor that he felt brave, capable, and possessing a character that the world would have to reckon with soon. The scholar saw himself striding rather than tripping. He heard himself declaiming rather than mumbling. A great clarity of purpose replaced the blurs and shadows that normally surrounded him.

These, of course, were thoughts appropriate to a young man on a wedding day. And he was, in truth, a man of courage if casting away a sizable patrimony for the sake of love could be said to be courageous or courageously foolish. He was as wealthy as the four guineas in his purse and the twelve books he supposed he could sell in his library.

A maid turned up her nose as she shook out a rug as if to say she was above such vulgar beings. An amused feminine laugh came from a carriage's curtained window as the wheels splattered mud over the scholar. This inspired two ragged tittering boys to hurl several fistfuls of compacted filth against the back of his frock coat, which he didn't appear to notice.

A moment later, his thoughts darkened, not because of the muddy assaults but from an unpleasant recollection. What his father had said about Kate was difficult to forgive, words delivered with the same crushing certainty as his sermons about perspiring demons shoveling the naked souls of the damned into hell's blazing furnaces.

Dressed in his sermonizing black frock coat and breeches, his reverend father, a man of intimidating height and strict doctrine, seemed to have increased in both when he interviewed his son in his study. As was his custom in sermons, the towering preacher began to speak quietly, as if imparting an intimacy to a friend: "Stephen, I've made inquiries into the character of the young woman you claim has won your affection. You will doubtless note that I do not presume to say 'lady,' and even to call her 'woman' does her sex great injustice. Had I been a man of weak constitution, the information presented to me would have deprived me of the power of speech."

At this moment, Stephen realized he was in trouble because his father had never been at a loss for words. "It mystifies me how you could imagine that such a creature would be welcomed into intimate proximity with your dear mother and innocent sisters. This, this…" The reverend drew in a breath and exhaled like the first puff out of an erupting volcano, "strumpet, strumpet, I declare, this pernicious, lascivious, diseased hellcat harlot, this laced mutton, who cunningly lays traps for young men of virtue…." Thus he launched into his tirade.

Stephen hadn't realized that his father could detail all the weaknesses of the flesh, all the varieties of sin—"the poisonous fruit of suppurating carnality," "oozing black deceit and leprous guile," "that single sinful act breaks four, nay, five of our Lord's commandments and therefore is fivefold damning" —for three hours without repeating himself. Kate, in his father's opinion, was the epitome and summation of them all. His two sisters, small, pale, childlike women, were crying in the next room. The eldest was engaged to the youngest son of a baronet, and this union of shame and depravity would throw that alliance into doubt.

Stephen had listened dutifully, waiting for his opportunity to respond. "And if you persist in pursuing this shameful connection with the serpentine Jezebel, if you allow your wicked lust to dangle your mortal soul over the lake of burning brimstone, then I will disown you, nay, I will refuse to acknowledge you when you pass on the street, and I will exert my influence to ensure you'll never find a place in Oxford or any other college or as a tutor in any family of substance, nay, not even in a miserable master in a grammar school in some windblown forgotten corner of the world."

Stephen lifted his bowed head and spoke his first words in three hours: "Sir, I accept the consequence of my decision and consider myself fully disowned, although you, my most gracious father, my saintly mother, and my lovely sisters will always have a dear place in my heart."

His father seemed to choke momentarily with surprise. This great sermonizer had always taken pride in directing the righteous paths of his children in the same way God directed the righteous orbits of the planets.

Stephen should have been afraid for the future. He had no doubt his father would keep his word and even take pains to oust him from a position instructing half-wild children of the sheepherders and fishermen in the Outer Hebrides. An idea, however, had distracted him from his father's wrath, an idea resonating with the force of vision and prophecy. As clearly as the fulminating figure before him, Stephen saw himself standing with his dear Kate on the prow of a ship bound for the colonies. Then he saw Kate smiling in the doorway of a small house on the edge of a vast forest in the new land. He heard inside the laughter of many children. The conviction settled on him that, like Abraham, his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

From a distance, Stephen could discern Kate by the colors of her clothing. She always dressed in a blue gown and yellow petticoat when she was to meet him, so he could, despite his poor eyesight, easily pick her out of a crowd. Kate was waiting for him in front of a church with several friends he knew could fairly be classified as harlots. He waved to her with the beribboned book, hurried his pace, and held out the posy of flowers.

Kate waved back. She was a large, warm, soft girl, full of maternal care. She had never denied to Stephen that she had been a whore for half her eighteen years. In fact, Kate had made Stephen's acquaintance when some other scholars had gotten him drunk and shoved him into her room, informing her that she would never find a young man so thoroughly ignorant of women. They then paid her to instruct him in the ways of the flesh, with the provision that she would give a full narrative of her lessons the next day. Accordingly, she undressed the wobbly young scholar and began to caress him intimately. His innocence seemed impenetrable, perhaps because of the quantity of ale he had imbibed. Despite her earnest efforts at seduction, he fell asleep diagonally across the bed. She pushed the drunk naked young scholar over and curled up next to him, resigning herself to sleep.

Kate had planned to make another attempt in the morning, but by the time she awoke, he was already hopping around, shirttails flying and one foot in his breeches. Kate began to weep. She begged the blushing stumbling boy to allow her to invent a story. One of his fellow scholars, in on the jest, had an unforgiving temper and would beat her if he didn't receive a lurid narrative worth his coin.

"Madam, I will thrash the brute," the ridiculous young man declared, spinning around, trying to insert his other foot.

Kate laughed. "La, good sir, Master Paul Morgan is reputed to be as dangerous with his fists as he is deadly with sword or pistol. He is a violent and cruel man. He broke Patricia's nose and gouged out the eye of a wainwright who trod on his toe without apologizing."

"I promise on my honor that I'll thrash the brute, Madam," the scholar insisted. "Your humble servant," he declared as he successfully pulled up his breeches, tucked in his shirt, then left.

She laughed again at this young, harmless fool who even believed she deserved the courtesy of being called "madam."

Stephen fulfilled his promise, his weapon of choice being his forehead. Having bumped and tripped throughout his life, he was oblivious to pain. He butted Master Paul Morgan eight times, successively breaking eight ribs of that formidable opponent and making him lose the contents of his stomach. When he related his victory to Kate, they had a long conversation during which she expressed the desire to learn how to read.

"Why, I will instruct you, madam," Stephen exclaimed.

"La, good sir, please, call me Kate," she said. "You make me dizzy when you madam me like I were a lady.'"

"Well, then, if we are to be on familiar terms, you must call me Stephen."

"My means are too modest to afford a tutor, Stephen. Perhaps you might…."

Stephen was too dense to pick up the clue, so she let it drop.

"Nay, Mistress Kate, I will instruct you to read for the simple pleasure of the company of a graceful, intelligent, and beautiful lady."

Stephen was unaware at that moment of how completely he had conquered Kate's heart. She didn't dare to believe that he would ever propose marriage, but she might be his mistress, or if he weren't the type of man to keep mistresses, which seemed likely, a lowly maid in his household. Kate gave up her trade soon after meeting Stephen and lived on savings by hiring herself as a seamstress—a skill she had been cultivating to see her through old age. Every day, the young scholar visited to instruct her how to read.

The affair was far from one-sided. Stephen was a magnet for small disasters—torn stockings, stained shirts, little injuries—which resulted from his nearsightedness and his headlong rush towards a goal, and so needed care. Kate had always been adept at mending, body as well as fabric. She would often demand that he explain how something had happened, like a black eye or the reason he had hobbled in without a shoe, and it often cost Stephen an effort to remember the incident. He was gentle and virtuous, even though there wasn't any reason to be virtuous with her. He blushed like a thirteen-year-old maiden when he gathered up the courage to ask permission to kiss her, even though in their first meeting, she had given him ample view of the entirety of her naked body.

When Stephen asked her to become his betrothed, her heart leaped with gratitude, then dropped in cold despair. By then, she was acquainted enough with his character to understand that he wouldn't back down once he made a decision. He would lose everything—position, reputation, inheritance—by marrying her. Kate begged him to withdraw the offer. "Fie, sir. Do you know who I am? Fie! Fie! Fie! Do you know what I've been? Do you know how many men will laugh at you because they've bedded me and how many good ladies look through me when they pass me on the street?"

No matter how many times she refused, he was adamant. "I have claimed you as my betrothed and let the world be damned by its own ridicule." Stephen was as myopic to the consequences as he was to the physical world. So Kate consented because he would butt his head against any obstacle as long as was needed to defeat it.

Despite the knowledge of his loss of fortune and family, Kate was happy that day. She brushed off his frock coat, decided not to question why his left shoe was missing its buckle, and kissed him on the brow as tenderly as any man had ever been kissed. Amidst hoots and insults from the crowd that had gathered to observe the novelty of a dozen harlots on the church steps, Kate and Stephen proceeded inside, where a cleric in a very faint voice married them. Kate shivered while Stephen saw in his mind's eye the house on the edge of the forest filled with their children's voices.