Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  ‘Then,’ says the young lady, in the words of another very admirable ballad — where you will observe it is also the damsel who asks the question:

  Will the love that you’re so rich in, Make a fire in the kitchen?

  On which the poor lover shakes his head, and the lady gives him leave of absence. Hereupon Jamie falls into a train of reflections.

  Mr. (OScarum. Never mind his reflections.

  Mr. Derrydown. The result of which is, that he goes to seek his fortune at sea; intending, with the most perfect and disinterested affection, to give all he can get to his mistress, who seems much pleased with the idea of having it. But when he comes back, as you will see in the sequel, he finds his mistress married to a rich old man. The detail of the circumstances abounds with vast and luminous views of human nature and society, and striking illustrations of the truth of things.

  Mr. Feathernest. I do not yet see that the illustration throws any light on the definition, or that we are at all advanced in the answer to the question concerning Chevy Chase and Paradise Lost.

  Mr. Derrydown. We will examine Chevy Chase, then, with a view to the truth of things, instead of Old Robin Gray: God prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safeties all.

  Mr. G’Scarum. God prosper us all, indeed! if you are going through Chevy Chase at the same rate as you were through Old Robin Gray, there is an end of us all for a month. The truth of things, now! — is it that you’re looking for? Ask Miss Melincourt to touch the harp. The harp is the great key to the truth of things: and in the hand of Miss Melincourt it will teach you the music of the spheres, the concord of creation, and the harmony of the universe.

  Anthelia. You are a libeller of our sex, Mr. Derrydown, if you think the truth of things consists in showing it to be more governed by the meanest species of self-interest than yours. Few, indeed, are the individuals of either in whom the spirit of the age of chivalry survives.

  Mr. Derrydown. And yet, a man distinguished by that spirit would not be in society what Miss Melincourt is — a phoenix. Many knights can wield the sword of Orlando, but only one nymph can wear the girdle of Florimel.

  The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. That would be a very pretty compliment, Mr. Derrydown, if there were no other ladies in the room.

  Poor Mr. Derrydown looked a little disconcerted: he felt conscious that he had on this occasion lost sight of his usual politeness by too close an adherence to the truth of things.

  Anthelia. Both sexes, I am afraid, are too much influenced by the spirit of mercenary calculation. The desire of competence is prudence; but the desire of more than competence is avarice: it is against the latter only that moral censure should be directed: but I fear that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred in which the course of true love is thwarted by considerations of fortune, it will be found that avarice rather than prudence is to be considered as the cause. Love in the age of chivalry, and love in the age of commerce, are certainly two very different deities; so much so, that the former may almost be regarded as a departed power; and, perhaps, the little ballad I am about to sing does not contain too severe an allegory in placing the tomb of chivalric love among the ruins of the castles of romance.

  THE TOMB OF LOVE

  By the mossy weed-flower’d column, Where the setting moonbeam’s glance Streams a radiance cold and solemn On the haunts of old romance:

  Know’st thou what those shafts betoken, Scatter’d on that tablet lone, Where the ivory bow lies broken

  When true knighthood’s shield, neglected, Moulder’d in the empty hall; When the charms that shield protected Slept in death’s eternal thrall; When chivalric glory perish’d Like the pageant of a dream, Love in vain its memory cherish’d, Fired in vain the minstrel’s theme.

  Falsehood to an elfish minion Did the form of Love impart; Cunning plumed its vampire pinion; Avarice tipp’d its golden dart.

  Love, the hideous phantom flying, Hither came, no more to rove:

  There his broken bow is lying On that stone — the tomb of Love!

  CHAPTER X

  THE TORRENT

  ANTHELIA DID NOT wish to condemn herself to celibacy, but in none of her present suitors could she discover any trace of the character she had drawn in her mind for the companion of her life: yet she was aware of the rashness of precipitate judgments, and willing to avail herself of this opportunity of studying the kind of beings that constitute modern society. She was happy in the long interval between breakfast and dinner, to retire to the seclusion of her favourite apartment; whence she sometimes wandered into the shades of her shrubbery: sometimes passing onward through a little postern door, she descended a flight of rugged steps, which had been cut in the solid stone, into the gloomy glen of the torrent that dashed round the base of the castle rock; and following a lonely path through the woods that fringed its sides, wandered into the deepest recesses of mountain solitude. The sunshine of a fine autumnal day, the solemn beauty of the fading woods, the thin gray mist, that spread waveless over the mountains, the silence of the air, the deep stillness of nature, broken only by the sound of the eternal streams, tempted her on one occasion beyond her usual limits.

  Passing over the steep and wood-fringed hills of rock that formed the boundary of the valley of Melincourt, she descended through a grove of pines into a romantic chasm, where a foaming stream was crossed by a rude and ancient bridge, consisting of two distinct parts, each of which rested against a columnar rock, that formed an island in the roaring waters. An ash had fixed its roots in the fissures of the rock, and the knotted base of its aged trunk offered to the passenger a natural seat, over-canopied with its beautiful branches and leaves, now tinged with their autumnal yellow. Anthelia rested awhile in this delightful solitude. There was no breath of wind, no song of birds, no humming of insects, only the dashing of the waters beneath. She felt the presence of the genius of the scene. She sat absorbed in a train of contemplations, dimly defined, but infinitely delightful: emotions rather than thoughts, which attention would have utterly dissipated, if it had paused to seize their images.

  She was roused from her reverie by sounds of music, issuing from the grove of pines through which she had just passed, and which skirted the hollow. The notes were wild and irregular, but their effect was singular and pleasing. They ceased. Anthelia looked to the spot from whence they had proceeded, and saw, or thought she saw, a face peeping at her through the trees; but the glimpse was momentary. There was in the expression of the countenance something so extraordinary, that she almost felt convinced her imagination had created it; yet her imagination was not in the habit of creating such physiognomies. She could not, however, apprehend that this remarkable vision portended any evil to her; for, if so, alone and defenceless as she was, why should it be deferred? She rose, therefore, to pursue her walk, and ascended, by a narrow winding path, the brow of a lofty hill, which sank precipitously on the other side, to the margin of a lake, that seemed to slumber in the same eternal stillness as the rocks that bordered it. The murmur of the torrent was inaudible at that elevation. There was an almost oppressive silence in the air. The motion and life of nature seemed suspended. The gray mist that hung on the mountains, spreading its thin transparent uniform veil over the whole surrounding scene, gave a deeper impression to the mystery of loneliness, the predominant feeling that pressed on the mind of Anthelia, to seem the only thing that lived and moved in all that wide and awful scene of beauty.

  Suddenly the gray mist fled before the rising wind, and a deep black line of clouds appeared in the west, that, rising rapidly, volume on volume, obscured in a few minutes the whole face of the heavens. There was no interval of preparation, no notice for retreat. The rain burst down in a sheeted cataract, comparable only to the bursting of a waterspout. The sides of the mountains gleamed at once with a thousand torrents. Every little hollow and rain-worn channel, which but a few minutes before was dry, became instantaneously the bed of a foaming stream. Every half-visible rivulet swelled to a powerful and turbid river. Anthelia
glided down the hill like an Oread, but the wet and slippery footing of the steep descent necessarily retarded her progress. When she regained the bridge, the swollen torrent had filled the chasm beneath, and was still rising like a rapid and impetuous tide, rushing and roaring along with boiling tumult and inconceivable swiftness. She had passed one half of the bridge — she had gained the insular rock — a few steps would have placed her on the other side of the chasm — when a large trunk of an oak, which months, perhaps years, before had baffled the woodman’s skill, and fallen into the dingle above, now disengaged by the flood, and hurled onward with irresistible strength, with large and projecting boughs towering high above the surface, struck the arch she had yet to pass, which, shattered into instant ruin, seemed to melt like snow into the torrent, leaving scarcely a vestige of its place.

  Anthelia followed the trunk with her eyes till it disappeared among the rocks, and stood gazing on the torrent with feelings of awful delight. The contemplation of the mighty energies of nature, energies of liberty and power which nothing could resist or impede, absorbed, for a time, all considerations of the difficulty of regaining her home. The water continued to rise, but still she stood riveted to the spot, watching with breathless interest its tumultuous revolutions. She dreamed not that its increasing pressure was mining the foundation of the arch she had passed. She was roused from her reverie only by the sound of its dissolution. She looked back, and found herself on the solitary rock insulated by the swelling flood.

  Would the flood rise above the level of the rock? The ash must in that case be her refuge. Could the force of the torrent rend its massy roots from the rocky fissures which grasped them with giant strength? Nothing could seem less likely: yet it was not impossible. But she had always looked with calmness on the course of necessity: she felt that she was always in the order of nature. Though her life had been a series of uniform prosperity, she had considered deeply the changes of things, and the nearness of the paths of night and day in every pursuit and circumstance of human life. She sat on the stem of the ash. The torrent rolled almost at her feet. Could this be the calm sweet scene of the morning, the ivied bridges, the romantic chasm, the stream far below, bright in its bed of rocks, chequered by the pale sunbeams through the leaves of the ash?

  She looked towards the pine-grove, through which she had descended in the morning; she thought of the wild music she had heard, and of the strange face that had appeared among the trees. Suddenly it appeared again: and shortly after a stranger issuing from the wood ran with surprising speed to the edge of the chasm.

  Anthelia had never seen so singular a physiognomy; but there was nothing in it to cause alarm. The stranger seemed interested for her situation, and made gestures expressive of a design to assist her. He paused a moment, as if measuring with his eyes the breadth of the chasm, and then, returning to the grove, proceeded very deliberately to pull up a pine. Anthelia thought him mad; but infinite was her astonishment to see the tree sway and bend beneath the efforts of his incredible strength, till at length he tore it from the soil, and bore it on his shoulders to the chasm: where placing one end on a high point of the bank, and lowering the other on the insulated rock, he ran like a flash of lightning along the stem, caught Anthelia in his arms, and carried her safely over in an instant: not that we should wish the reader to suppose our heroine, a mountaineer from her infancy, could not have crossed a pine-bridge without such assistance; but the stranger gave her no time to try the experiment.

  The remarkable physiognomy and unparalleled strength of the stranger caused much of surprise, and something of apprehension to mingle with Anthelia’s gratitude: but the air of high fashion which characterised his whole deportment

  diminished her apprehension, while it increased her surprise at the exploit he had performed.

  Shouts were now heard in the wood, from which shortly emerged Mr. Hippy, Lord Anophel Achthar, and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub. Anthelia had been missed at Melincourt at the commencement of the storm, and Mr. Hippy had been half distracted on the occasion. The whole party had in consequence dispersed in various directions in search of her, and accident had directed these three gentlemen to the spot where Anthelia was just set down by her polite deliverer, Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet.

  Mr. Hippy ran up with great alacrity to Anthelia, assuring her that at the time when Miss Danaretta Contantina Pinmoney informed him his dear niece was missing, he was suffering under a complete paralysis of his right leg, and was on the point of swallowing a potion sent to him by Dr. Killquick, which, on receiving the alarming intelligence, he had thrown out of the window, and he believed it had alighted on the doctor’s head as he was crossing the court. Anthelia communicated to him the particulars of the signal service she had received from the stranger, whom Mr. Hippy stared at heartily, and shook hands with cordially.

  Lord Anophel now came up, and surveyed Sir Oran through his quizzing-glass, who, making him a polite bow, took his quizzing-glass from him, and examined him through it in the same manner. Lord Anophel flew into a furious passion; but receiving a gentle hint from Mr. Hippy, that the gentleman to whom he was talking had just pulled up a pine, he deemed it prudent to restrain his anger within due bounds.

  The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub now rolled up to the party, muffled in a ponderous greatcoat, and surmounted with an enormous umbrella, humbly soliciting Miss Melincourt to take shelter. Anthelia assured him that she was so completely wet through, as to render all shelter superfluous, till she could change her clothes. On this, Mr. Hippy, who was wet through himself, but had not till that moment been aware that he was so, voted for returning to Melincourt with all possible expedition; adding that he feared it would be necessary, immediately on their arrival, to send off an express for Dr. Killquick, for his dear Anthelia’s sake,’ as well as his own. Anthelia disclaimed any intention or necessity on her part of calling in the services of the learned doctor, and, turning to Sir Oran, requested the favour of his company to dinner at Melincourt. This invitation was warmly seconded by Mr. Hippy, with gestures as well as words. Sir Oran bowed acknowledgment, but pointing in a direction different from that of Melincourt, shook his head, and took a respectful farewell.

  ‘I wonder who he is,’ said Mr. Hippy, as they walked rapidly homewards: ‘manifestly dumb, poor fellow! a man of consequence, no doubt: no great beauty, by the bye; but as strong as Hercules — quite an Orlando Furioso. He pulled up a pine, my lord, as you would do a mushroom.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Lord Anophel, ‘I have nothing to do with mushrooms; and as to this gentleman, whoever he is, I must say, notwithstanding his fashionable air, his taking my quizzing-glass was a piece of impertinence, for which I shall feel necessitated to require gentlemanly satisfaction.’

  A long, toilsome, and slippery walk brought the party to the castle gate.

  CHAPTER XI

  LOVE AND MARRIAGE

  SIR ORAN HAUT-TON, as we conjecture, had taken a very long ramble beyond the limits of Redrose Abbey, and had sat down in the pine-grove to solace himself with his flute, when Anthelia, bursting upon him like a beautiful vision, riveted him in silent admiration to the spot whence she departed, about which he lingered in hopes of her reappearance, till the accident which occurred on her return enabled him to exert his extraordinary physical strength in a manner so remarkably advantageous to her. On parting from her and her companions, he ran back all the way to the Abbey, a formidable distance, and relieved the anxious apprehensions which his friend Mr. Forester entertained respecting him.

  A few mornings after this occurrence, as Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran were sitting at breakfast, a letter was brought in, addressed to Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet, Redrose Abbey; a circumstance which very much surprised Mr. Forester, as he could not imagine how Sir Oran had obtained a correspondent, seeing that he could neither write nor read. He accordingly took the liberty of opening the letter himself.

  It proved to be from a limb of the law, signing himself Richard Ratstail, and purporting to be
a notice to Sir Oran to defend himself in an action brought against him by the said Richard Ratstail, solicitor, in behalf of his client, Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, lord of the manor of Muckwormsby, for that he, the said Oran Haut-ton, did, with force and arms, videlicet, sword, pistols, daggers, bludgeons, and staves, break into the manor of the said Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, and did then and there, with malice aforethought, and against the peace of our sovereign lord the King, his crown and dignity, cut down, «S root up, hew, hack, and cut in pieces, sundry and several pine-trees, of various sizes and dimensions, to the utter ruin, havoc, waste, and devastation of a large tract of pine-land; and that he had wilfully, maliciously, and with intent to injure the said Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, carried off with force and arms, namely, swords, pistols, bludgeons, daggers, and staves, fifty cartloads of trunks, fifty cartloads of bark, fifty cartloads of loppings, and fifty cartloads of toppings.

  This was a complete enigma to Mr. Forester; and his surprise was increased when, on reading further, he found that Miss Melincourt, of Melincourt Castle, was implicated in the affair, as having aided and abetted Sir Oran in devastating the pine-grove, and carrying it off by cartloads with force and arms.