MARIONETTA
I must apologise for intruding on you, Mr Flosky; but the interest which I — you — take in my cousin Scythrop —
MR FLOSKY
Pardon me, Miss O’Carroll; I do not take any interest in any person or thing on the face of the earth; which sentiment, if you analyse it, you will find to be the quintessence of the most refined philanthropy.
MARIONETTA
I will take it for granted that it is so, Mr Flosky; I am not conversant with metaphysical subtleties, but —
MR FLOSKY
Subtleties! my dear Miss O’Carroll. I am sorry to find you participating in the vulgar error of the reading public, to whom an unusual collocation of words, involving a juxtaposition of antiperistatical ideas, immediately suggests the notion of hyperoxysophistical paradoxology.
MARIONETTA
Indeed, Mr Flosky, it suggests no such notion to me. I have sought you for the purpose of obtaining information.
MR FLOSKY (shaking his head)
No one ever sought me for such a purpose before.
MARIONETTA
I think, Mr Flosky — that is, I believe — that is, I fancy — that is, I imagine —
MR FLOSKY
The [Greek: toytesti], the id est, the cioè, the c’est à dire, the that is, my dear Miss O’Carroll, is not applicable in this case — if you will permit me to take the liberty of saying so. Think is not synonymous with believe — for belief, in many most important particulars, results from the total absence, the absolute negation of thought, and is thereby the sane and orthodox condition of mind; and thought and belief are both essentially different from fancy, and fancy, again, is distinct from imagination. This distinction between fancy and imagination is one of the most abstruse and important points of metaphysics. I have written seven hundred pages of promise to elucidate it, which promise I shall keep as faithfully as the bank will its promise to pay.
MARIONETTA
I assure you, Mr Flosky, I care no more about metaphysics than I do about the bank; and, if you will condescend to talk to a simple girl in intelligible terms —
MR FLOSKY
Say not condescend! Know you not that you talk to the most humble of men, to one who has buckled on the armour of sanctity, and clothed himself with humility as with a garment?
MARIONETTA
My cousin Scythrop has of late had an air of mystery about him, which gives me great uneasiness.
MR FLOSKY
That is strange: nothing is so becoming to a man as an air of mystery. Mystery is the very key-stone of all that is beautiful in poetry, all that is sacred in faith, and all that is recondite in transcendental psychology. I am writing a ballad which is all mystery; it is ‘such stuff as dreams are made of,’ and is, indeed, stuff made of a dream; for, last night I fell asleep as usual over my book, and had a vision of pure reason. I composed five hundred lines in my sleep; so that, having had a dream of a ballad, I am now officiating as my own Peter Quince, and making a ballad of my dream, and it shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it has no bottom.
MARIONETTA
I see, Mr Flosky, you think my intrusion unseasonable, and are inclined to punish it, by talking nonsense to me. (Mr Flosky gave a start at the word nonsense, which almost overturned the table.) I assure you, I would not have intruded if I had not been very much interested in the question I wish to ask you. (Mr Flosky listened in sullen dignity.) — My cousin Scythrop seems to have some secret preying on his mind. (Mr Flosky was silent.) — He seems very unhappy — Mr Flosky. Perhaps you are acquainted with the cause. (Mr Flosky was still silent.) — I only wish to know — Mr Flosky — if it is any thing — that could be remedied by any thing — that any one — of whom I know any thing — could do.
MR FLOSKY (after a pause)
There are various ways of getting at secrets. The most approved methods, as recommended both theoretically and practically in philosophical novels, are eavesdropping at key-holes, picking the locks of chests and desks, peeping into letters, steaming wafers, and insinuating hot wire under sealing wax; none of which methods I hold it lawful to practise.
MARIONETTA
Surely, Mr Flosky, you cannot suspect me of wishing to adopt or encourage such base and contemptible arts.
MR FLOSKY
Yet are they recommended, and with well-strung reasons, by writers of gravity and note, as simple and easy methods of studying character, and gratifying that laudable curiosity which aims at the knowledge of man.
MARIONETTA
I am as ignorant of this morality which you do not approve, as of the metaphysics which you do: I should be glad to know by your means, what is the matter with my cousin; I do not like to see him unhappy, and I suppose there is some reason for it.
MR FLOSKY
Now I should rather suppose there is no reason for it: it is the fashion to be unhappy. To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly common-place: to be so without any is the province of genius: the art of being miserable for misery’s sake, has been brought to great perfection in our days; and the ancient Odyssey, which held forth a shining example of the endurance of real misfortune, will give place to a modern one, setting out a more instructive picture of querulous impatience under imaginary evils.
MARIONETTA
Will you oblige me, Mr Flosky, by giving me a plain answer to a plain question?
MR FLOSKY
It is impossible, my dear Miss O’Carroll. I never gave a plain answer to a question in my life.
MARIONETTA
Do you, or do you not, know what is the matter with my cousin?
MR FLOSKY
To say that I do not know, would be to say that I am ignorant of something; and God forbid, that a transcendental metaphysician, who has pure anticipated cognitions of every thing, and carries the whole science of geometry in his head without ever having looked into Euclid, should fall into so empirical an error as to declare himself ignorant of any thing: to say that I do know, would be to pretend to positive and circumstantial knowledge touching present matter of fact, which, when you consider the nature of evidence, and the various lights in which the same thing may be seen —
MARIONETTA
I see, Mr Flosky, that either you have no information, or are determined not to impart it; and I beg your pardon for having given you this unnecessary trouble.
MR FLOSKY
My dear Miss O’Carroll, it would have given me great pleasure to have said any thing that would have given you pleasure; but if any person living could make report of having obtained any information on any subject from Ferdinando Flosky, my transcendental reputation would be ruined for ever.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IX
SCYTHROP GREW EVERY day more reserved, mysterious, and distrait; and gradually lengthened the duration of his diurnal seclusions in his tower. Marionetta thought she perceived in all this very manifest symptoms of a warm love cooling.
It was seldom that she found herself alone with him in the morning, and, on these occasions, if she was silent in the hope of his speaking first, not a syllable would he utter; if she spoke to him indirectly, he assented monosyllabically; if she questioned him, his answers were brief, constrained, and evasive. Still, though her spirits were depressed, her playfulness had not so totally forsaken her, but that it illuminated at intervals the gloom of Nightmare Abbey; and if, on any occasion, she observed in Scythrop tokens of unextinguished or returning passion, her love of tormenting her lover immediately got the better both of her grief and her sympathy, though not of her curiosity, which Scythrop seemed determined not to satisfy. This playfulness, however, was in a great measure artificial, and usually vanished with the irritable Strephon, to whose annoyance it had been exerted. The Genius Loci, the tutela of Nightmare Abbey, the spirit of black melancholy, began to set his seal on her pallescent countenance. Scythrop perceived the change, found his tender sympathies awakened, and did his utmost to comfort the afflicted damsel, assuring her that his seeming
inattention had only proceeded from his being involved in a profound meditation on a very hopeful scheme for the regeneration of human society. Marionetta called him ungrateful, cruel, cold-hearted, and accompanied her reproaches with many sobs and tears; poor Scythrop growing every moment more soft and submissive — till, at length, he threw himself at her feet, and declared that no competition of beauty, however dazzling, genius, however transcendent, talents, however cultivated, or philosophy, however enlightened, should ever make him renounce his divine Marionetta.
‘Competition!’ thought Marionetta, and suddenly, with an air of the most freezing indifference, she said, ‘You are perfectly at liberty, sir, to do as you please; I beg you will follow your own plans, without any reference to me.’
Scythrop was confounded. What was become of all her passion and her tears? Still kneeling, he kissed her hand with rueful timidity, and said, in most pathetic accents, ‘Do you not love me, Marionetta?’
‘No,’ said Marionetta, with a look of cold composure: ‘No.’ Scythrop still looked up incredulously. ‘No, I tell you.’
‘Oh! very well, madam,’ said Scythrop, rising, ‘if that is the case, there are those in the world—’
‘To be sure there are, sir; — and do you suppose I do not see through your designs, you ungenerous monster?’
‘My designs? Marionetta!’
‘Yes, your designs, Scythrop. You have come here to cast me off, and artfully contrive that it should appear to be my doing, and not yours, thinking to quiet your tender conscience with this pitiful stratagem. But do not suppose that you are of so much consequence to me: do not suppose it: you are of no consequence to me at all — none at all: therefore, leave me: I renounce you: leave me; why do you not leave me?’
Scythrop endeavoured to remonstrate, but without success. She reiterated her injunctions to him to leave her, till, in the simplicity of his spirit, he was preparing to comply. When he had nearly reached the door, Marionetta said, ‘Farewell.’ Scythrop looked back. ‘Farewell, Scythrop,’ she repeated, ‘you will never see me again.’
‘Never see you again, Marionetta?’
‘I shall go from hence to-morrow, perhaps to-day; and before we meet again, one of us will be married, and we might as well be dead, you know, Scythrop.’
The sudden change of her voice in the last few words, and the burst of tears that accompanied them, acted like electricity on the tender-hearted youth; and, in another instant, a complete reconciliation was accomplished without the intervention of words.
There are, indeed, some learned casuists, who maintain that love has no language, and that all the misunderstandings and dissensions of lovers arise from the fatal habit of employing words on a subject to which words are inapplicable; that love, beginning with looks, that is to say, with the physiognomical expression of congenial mental dispositions, tends through a regular gradation of signs and symbols of affection, to that consummation which is most devoutly to be wished; and that it neither is necessary that there should be, nor probable that there would be, a single word spoken from first to last between two sympathetic spirits, were it not that the arbitrary institutions of society have raised, at every step of this very simple process, so many complicated impediments and barriers in the shape of settlements and ceremonies, parents and guardians, lawyers, Jew-brokers, and parsons, that many an adventurous knight (who, in order to obtain the conquest of the Hesperian fruit, is obliged to fight his way through all these monsters), is either repulsed at the onset, or vanquished before the achievement of his enterprise: and such a quantity of unnatural talking is rendered inevitably necessary through all the stages of the progression, that the tender and volatile spirit of love often takes flight on the pinions of some of the [Greek: epea pteroenta], or winged words which are pressed into his service in despite of himself.
At this conjuncture, Mr Glowry entered, and sitting down near them, said, ‘I see how it is; and, as we are all sure to be miserable do what we may, there is no need of taking pains to make one another more so; therefore, with God’s blessing and mine, there’ — joining their hands as he spoke.
Scythrop was not exactly prepared for this decisive step; but he could only stammer out, ‘Really, sir, you are too good;’ and Mr Glowry departed to bring Mr Hilary to ratify the act.
Now, whatever truth there may be in the theory of love and language, of which we have so recently spoken, certain it is, that during Mr Glowry’s absence, which lasted half an hour, not a single word was said by either Scythrop or Marionetta.
Mr Glowry returned with Mr Hilary, who was delighted at the prospect of so advantageous an establishment for his orphan niece, of whom he considered himself in some manner the guardian, and nothing remained, as Mr Glowry observed, but to fix the day.
Marionetta blushed, and was silent. Scythrop was also silent for a time, and at length hesitatingly said, ‘My dear sir, your goodness overpowers me; but really you are so precipitate.’
Now, this remark, if the young lady had made it, would, whether she thought it or not — for sincerity is a thing of no account on these occasions, nor indeed on any other, according to Mr Flosky — this remark, if the young lady had made it, would have been perfectly comme il faut; but, being made by the young gentleman, it was toute autre chose, and was, indeed, in the eyes of his mistress, a most heinous and irremissible offence. Marionetta was angry, very angry, but she concealed her anger, and said, calmly and coldly, ‘Certainly, you are much too precipitate, Mr Glowry. I assure you, sir, I have by no means made up my mind; and, indeed, as far as I know it, it inclines the other way; but it will be quite time enough to think of these matters seven years hence. Before surprise permitted reply, the young lady had locked herself up in her own apartment.
‘Why, Scythrop,’ said Mr Glowry, elongating his face exceedingly, ‘the devil is come among us sure enough, as Mr Toobad observes: I thought you and Marionetta were both of a mind.’
‘So we are, I believe, sir,’ said Scythrop, gloomily, and stalked away to his tower.
‘Mr Glowry,’ said Mr Hilary, ‘I do not very well understand all this.’
‘Whims, brother Hilary,’ said Mr Glowry; ‘some little foolish love quarrel, nothing more. Whims, freaks, April showers. They will be blown over by to-morrow.’
‘If not,’ said Mr Hilary, ‘these April showers have made us April fools.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Glowry, ‘you are a happy man, and in all your afflictions you can console yourself with a joke, let it be ever so bad, provided you crack it yourself. I should be very happy to laugh with you, if it would give you any satisfaction; but, really, at present, my heart is so sad, that I find it impossible to levy a contribution on my muscles.’
* * * * *
CHAPTER X
ON THE EVENING on which Mr Asterias had caught a glimpse of a female figure on the sea-shore, which he had translated into the visual sign of his interior cognition of a mermaid, Scythrop, retiring to his tower, found his study preoccupied. A stranger, muffled in a cloak, was sitting at his table. Scythrop paused in surprise. The stranger rose at his entrance, and looked at him intently a few minutes, in silence. The eyes of the stranger alone were visible. All the rest of the figure was muffled and mantled in the folds of a black cloak, which was raised, by the right hand, to the level of the eyes. This scrutiny being completed, the stranger, dropping the cloak, said, ‘I see, by your physiognomy, that you may be trusted;’ and revealed to the astonished Scythrop a female form and countenance of dazzling grace and beauty, with long flowing hair of raven blackness, and large black eyes of almost oppressive brilliancy, which strikingly contrasted with a complexion of snowy whiteness. Her dress was extremely elegant, but had an appearance of foreign fashion, as if both the lady and her mantua-maker were of ‘a far countree.’
‘I guess ’twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly.’
For, if it be terrible to one young lady to find another
under a tree at midnight, it must, à fortiori, be much more terrible to a young gentleman to find a young lady in his study at that hour. If the logical consecutiveness of this conclusion be not manifest to my readers, I am sorry for their dulness, and must refer them, for more ample elucidation, to a treatise which Mr Flosky intends to write, on the Categories of Relation, which comprehend Substance and Accident, Cause and Effect, Action and Re-action.
Scythrop, therefore, either was or ought to have been frightened; at all events, he was astonished; and astonishment, though not in itself fear, is nevertheless a good stage towards it, and is, indeed, as it were, the half-way house between respect and terror, according to Mr Burke’s graduated scale of the sublime.
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 40