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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