Chapter III

Mr Glowry returned from London with the loss of his lawsuit. Justice
was with him, but the law was against him. He found Scythrop in a
mood most sympathetically tragic; and they vied with each other in
enlivening their cups by lamenting the depravity of this degenerate
age, and occasionally interspersing divers grim jokes about graves,
worms, and epitaphs. Mr Glowry's friends, whom we have mentioned in
the first chapter, availed themselves of his return to pay him a
simultaneous visit. At the same time arrived Scythrop's friend and
fellow-collegian, the Honourable Mr Listless. Mr Glowry had discovered
this fashionable young gentleman in London, 'stretched on the rack of
a too easy chair,' and devoured with a gloomy and misanthropical nil
curo, and had pressed him so earnestly to take the benefit of the
pure country air, at Nightmare Abbey, that Mr Listless, finding it
would give him more trouble to refuse than to comply, summoned his
French valet, Fatout, and told him he was going to Lincolnshire. On
this simple hint, Fatout went to work, and the imperials were packed,
and the post-chariot was at the door, without the Honourable Mr
Listless having said or thought another syllable on the subject.

Mr and Mrs Hilary brought with them an orphan niece, a daughter of Mr
Glowry's youngest sister, who had made a runaway love-match with an
Irish officer. The lady's fortune disappeared in the first year: love,
by a natural consequence, disappeared in the second: the Irishman
himself, by a still more natural consequence, disappeared in the
third. Mr Glowry had allowed his sister an annuity, and she had lived
in retirement with her only daughter, whom, at her death, which had
recently happened, she commended to the care of Mrs Hilary.

Miss Marionetta Celestina O'Carroll was a very blooming and
accomplished young lady. Being a compound of the Allegro Vivace of
the O'Carrolls, and of the Andante Doloroso of the Glowries, she
exhibited in her own character all the diversities of an April sky.
Her hair was light-brown; her eyes hazel, and sparkling with a mild
but fluctuating light; her features regular; her lips full, and of
equal size; and her person surpassingly graceful. She was a proficient
in music. Her conversation was sprightly, but always on subjects light
in their nature and limited in their interest: for moral sympathies,
in any general sense, had no place in her mind. She had some coquetry,
and more caprice, liking and disliking almost in the same moment;
pursuing an object with earnestness while it seemed unattainable, and
rejecting it when in her power as not worth the trouble of possession.

Whether she was touched with a penchant for her cousin Scythrop, or
was merely curious to see what effect the tender passion would have on
so outre a person, she had not been three days in the Abbey before
she threw out all the lures of her beauty and accomplishments to make
a prize of his heart. Scythrop proved an easy conquest. The image of
Miss Emily Girouette was already sufficiently dimmed by the power of
philosophy and the exercise of reason: for to these influences, or to
any influence but the true one, are usually ascribed the mental cures
performed by the great physician Time. Scythrop's romantic dreams had
indeed given him many pure anticipated cognitions of combinations
of beauty and intelligence, which, he had some misgivings, were not
exactly realised in his cousin Marionetta; but, in spite of these
misgivings, he soon became distractedly in love; which, when the young
lady clearly perceived, she altered her tactics, and assumed as much
coldness and reserve as she had before shown ardent and ingenuous
attachment. Scythrop was confounded at the sudden change; but, instead
of falling at her feet and requesting an explanation, he retreated
to his tower, muffled himself in his nightcap, seated himself in
the president's chair of his imaginary secret tribunal, summoned
Marionetta with all terrible formalities, frightened her out of her
wits, disclosed himself, and clasped the beautiful penitent to his
bosom.

While he was acting this reverie--in the moment in which the awful
president of the secret tribunal was throwing back his cowl and his
mantle, and discovering himself to the lovely culprit as her adoring
and magnanimous lover, the door of the study opened, and the real
Marionetta appeared.

The motives which had led her to the tower were a little penitence, a
little concern, a little affection, and a little fear as to what the
sudden secession of Scythrop, occasioned by her sudden change of
manner, might portend. She had tapped several times unheard, and of
course unanswered; and at length, timidly and cautiously opening the
door, she discovered him standing up before a black velvet chair,
which was mounted on an old oak table, in the act of throwing open his
striped calico dressing-gown, and flinging away his nightcap--which is
what the French call an imposing attitude.

Each stood a few moments fixed in their respective places--the lady in
astonishment, and the gentleman in confusion. Marionetta was the first
to break silence. 'For heaven's sake,' said she, 'my dear Scythrop,
what is the matter?'

'For heaven's sake, indeed!' said Scythrop, springing from the table;
'for your sake, Marionetta, and you are my heaven,--distraction is the
matter. I adore you, Marionetta, and your cruelty drives me mad.'
He threw himself at her knees, devoured her hand with kisses, and
breathed a thousand vows in the most passionate language of romance.

Marionetta listened a long time in silence, till her lover had
exhausted his eloquence and paused for a reply. She then said, with a
very arch look, 'I prithee deliver thyself like a man of this world.'
The levity of this quotation, and of the manner in which it was
delivered, jarred so discordantly on the high-wrought enthusiasm of
the romantic inamorato, that he sprang upon his feet, and beat his
forehead with his clenched fist. The young lady was terrified; and,
deeming it expedient to soothe him, took one of his hands in hers,
placed the other hand on his shoulder, looked up in his face with a
winning seriousness, and said, in the tenderest possible tone, 'What
would you have, Scythrop?'

Scythrop was in heaven again. 'What would I have? What but you,
Marionetta? You, for the companion of my studies, the partner of my
thoughts, the auxiliary of my great designs for the emancipation of
mankind.'

'I am afraid I should be but a poor auxiliary, Scythrop. What would
you have me do?'

'Do as Rosalia does with Carlos, divine Marionetta. Let us each open
a vein in the other's arm, mix our blood in a bowl, and drink it as
a sacrament of love. Then we shall see visions of transcendental
illumination, and soar on the wings of ideas into the space of pure
intelligence.'

Marionetta could not reply; she had not so strong a stomach as
Rosalia, and turned sick at the proposition. She disengaged herself
suddenly from Scythrop, sprang through the door of the tower, and fled
with precipitation along the corridors. Scythrop pursued her, crying,
'Stop, stop, Marionetta--my life, my love!' and was gaining rapidly on
her flight, when, at an ill-omened corner, where two corridors ended
in an angle, at the head of a staircase, he came into sudden and
violent contact with Mr Toobad, and they both plunged together to the
foot of the stairs, like two billiard-balls into one pocket. This gave
the young lady time to escape, and enclose herself in her chamber;
while Mr Toobad, rising slowly, and rubbing his knees and shoulders,
said, 'You see, my dear Scythrop, in this little incident, one of the
innumerable proofs of the temporary supremacy of the devil; for what
but a systematic design and concurrent contrivance of evil could have
made the angles of time and place coincide in our unfortunate persons
at the head of this accursed staircase?'

'Nothing else, certainly,' said Scythrop: 'you are perfectly in the
right, Mr Toobad. Evil, and mischief, and misery, and confusion,
and vanity, and vexation of spirit, and death, and disease, and
assassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, and famine, and
avarice, and selfishness, and rancour, and jealousy, and spleen,
and malevolence, and the disappointments of philanthropy, and the
faithlessness of friendship, and the crosses of love--all prove the
accuracy of your views, and the truth of your system; and it is not
impossible that the infernal interruption of this fall downstairs may
throw a colour of evil on the whole of my future existence.'

'My dear boy,' said Mr Toobad, 'you have a fine eye for consequences.'

So saying, he embraced Scythrop, who retired, with a disconsolate
step, to dress for dinner; while Mr Toobad stalked across the hall,
repeating, 'Woe to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the sea, for
the devil is come among you, having great wrath.'

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