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, a 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.[7]

'You are surprised,' said the lady; 'yet why should you be surprised?

If you had met me in a drawing-room, and I had been introduced to

you by an old woman, it would have been a matter of course: can the

division of two or three walls, and the absence of an unimportant

personage, make the same object essentially different in the

perception of a philosopher?'

'Certainly not,' said Scythrop; 'but when any class of objects

has habitually presented itself to our perceptions in invariable

conjunction with particular relations, then, on the sudden appearance

of one object of the class divested of those accompaniments, the

essential difference of the relation is, by an involuntary process,

transferred to the object itself, which thus offers itself to our

perceptions with all the strangeness of novelty.'

'You are a philosopher,' said the lady, 'and a lover of liberty. You

are the author of a treatise, called "Philosophical Gas; or, a Project

for a General Illumination of the Human Mind."'

'I am,' said Scythrop, delighted at this first blossom of his renown.

'I am a stranger in this country,' said the lady; 'I have been but a

few days in it, yet I find myself immediately under the necessity of

seeking refuge from an atrocious persecution. I had no friend to whom

I could apply; and, in the midst of my difficulties, accident threw

your pamphlet in my way. I saw that I had, at least, one kindred mind

in this nation, and determined to apply to you.'

'And what would you have me do?' said Scythrop, more and more amazed,

and not a little perplexed.

'I would have you,' said the young lady, 'assist me in finding some

place of retreat, where I can remain concealed from the indefatigable

search that is being made for me. I have been so nearly caught once or

twice already, that I cannot confide any longer in my own ingenuity.'

Doubtless, thought Scythrop, this is one of my golden candle-sticks.

'I have constructed,' said he, 'in this tower, an entrance to a small

suite of unknown apartments in the main building, which I defy any

creature living to detect. If you would like to remain there a day or

two, till I can find you a more suitable concealment, you may rely on

the honour of a transcendental eleutherarch.'

'I rely on myself,' said the lady. 'I act as I please, go where I

please, and let the world say what it will. I am rich enough to set

it at defiance. It is the tyrant of the poor and the feeble, but the

slave of those who are above the reach of its injury.'

Scythrop ventured to inquire the name of his fair protegee. 'What

is a name?' said the lady: 'any name will serve the purpose of

distinction. Call me Stella. I see by your looks,' she added, 'that

you think all this very strange. When you know me better, your

surprise will cease. I submit not to be an accomplice in my sex's

slavery. I am, like yourself, a lover of freedom, and I carry my

theory into practice. They alone are subject to blind authority who

have no reliance on their own strength.'

Stella took possession of the recondite apartments. Scythrop intended

to find her another asylum; but from day to day he postponed his

intention, and by degrees forgot it. The young lady reminded him of

it from day to day, till she also forgot it. Scythrop was anxious to

learn her history; but she would add nothing to what she had already

communicated, that she was shunning an atrocious persecution. Scythrop

thought of Lord C. and the Alien Act, and said, 'As you will not

tell your name, I suppose it is in the green bag.' Stella, not

understanding what he meant, was silent; and Scythrop, translating

silence into acquiescence, concluded that he was sheltering an

illuminee whom Lord S. suspected of an intention to take the

Tower, and set fire to the Bank: exploits, at least, as likely to be

accomplished by the hands and eyes of a young beauty, as by a drunken

cobbler and doctor, armed with a pamphlet and an old stocking.

Stella, in her conversations with Scythrop, displayed a highly

cultivated and energetic mind, full of impassioned schemes of liberty,

and impatience of masculine usurpation. She had a lively sense of all

the oppressions that are done under the sun; and the vivid pictures

which her imagination presented to her of the numberless scenes of

injustice and misery which are being acted at every moment in every

part of the inhabited world, gave an habitual seriousness to her

physiognomy, that made it seem as if a smile had never once hovered on

her lips. She was intimately conversant with the German language and

literature; and Scythrop listened with delight to her repetitions of

her favourite passages from Schiller and Goethe, and to her encomiums

on the sublime Spartacus Weishaupt, the immortal founder of the sect

of the Illuminati. Scythrop found that his soul had a greater capacity

of love than the image of Marionetta had filled. The form of Stella

took possession of every vacant corner of the cavity, and by degrees

displaced that of Marionetta from many of the outworks of the citadel;

though the latter still held possession of the keep. He judged, from

his new friend calling herself Stella, that, if it were not her real

name, she was an admirer of the principles of the German play from

which she had taken it, and took an opportunity of leading the

conversation to that subject; but to his great surprise, the lady

spoke very ardently of the singleness and exclusiveness of love, and

declared that the reign of affection was one and indivisible; that it

might be transferred, but could not be participated. 'If I ever love,'

said she, 'I shall do so without limit or restriction. I shall hold

all difficulties light, all sacrifices cheap, all obstacles gossamer.

But for love so total, I shall claim a return as absolute. I will have

no rival: whether more or less favoured will be of little moment. I

will be neither first nor second--I will be alone. The heart which I

shall possess I will possess entirely, or entirely renounce.'

Scythrop did not dare to mention the name of Marionetta; he trembled

lest some unlucky accident should reveal it to Stella, though he

scarcely knew what result to wish or anticipate, and lived in the

double fever of a perpetual dilemma. He could not dissemble to himself

that he was in love, at the same time, with two damsels of minds and

habits as remote as the antipodes. The scale of predilection always

inclined to the fair one who happened to be present; but the absent

was never effectually outweighed, though the degrees of exaltation and

depression varied according to accidental variations in the outward

and visible signs of the inward and spiritual graces of his respective

charmers. Passing and repassing several times a day from the company

of the one to that of the other, he was like a shuttlecock between two

battledores, changing its direction as rapidly as the oscillations of

a pendulum, receiving many a hard knock on the cork of a sensitive

heart, and flying from point to point on the feathers of a

super-sublimated head. This was an awful state of things. He had

now as much mystery about him as any romantic transcendentalist or

transcendental romancer could desire. He had his esoterical and his

exoterical love. He could not endure the thought of losing either of

them, but he trembled when he imagined the possibility that some fatal

discovery might deprive him of both. The old proverb concerning two

strings to a bow gave him some gleams of comfort; but that concerning

two stools occurred to him more frequently, and covered his forehead

with a cold perspiration. With Stella, he could indulge freely in all

his romantic and philosophical visions. He could build castles in the

air, and she would pile towers and turrets on the imaginary edifices.

With Marionetta it was otherwise: she knew nothing of the world and

society beyond the sphere of her own experience. Her life was all

music and sunshine, and she wondered what any one could see to

complain of in such a pleasant state of things. She loved Scythrop,

she hardly knew why; indeed she was not always sure that she loved him

at all: she felt her fondness increase or diminish in an inverse ratio

to his. When she had manoeuvred him into a fever of passionate love,

she often felt and always assumed indifference: if she found that her

coldness was contagious, and that Scythrop either was, or pretended to

be, as indifferent as herself, she would become doubly kind, and raise

him again to that elevation from which she had previously thrown him

down. Thus, when his love was flowing, hers was ebbing: when his was

ebbing, hers was flowing. Now and then there were moments of level

tide, when reciprocal affection seemed to promise imperturbable

harmony; but Scythrop could scarcely resign his spirit to the pleasing

illusion, before the pinnace of the lover's affections was caught in

some eddy of the lady's caprice, and he was whirled away from the

shore of his hopes, without rudder or compass, into an ocean of mists

and storms. It resulted, from this system of conduct, that all that

passed between Scythrop and Marionetta, consisted in making and

unmaking love. He had no opportunity to take measure of her

understanding by conversations on general subjects, and on his

favourite designs; and, being left in this respect to the exercise of

indefinite conjecture, he took it for granted, as most lovers would do

in similar circumstances, that she had great natural talents, which

she wasted at present on trifles: but coquetry would end with

marriage, and leave room for philosophy to exert its influence on her

mind. Stella had no coquetry, no disguise: she was an enthusiast in

subjects of general interest; and her conduct to Scythrop was always

uniform, or rather showed a regular progression of partiality which

seemed fast ripening into love.

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