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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