Nightmare Abbey Read online

  CHAPTER III

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

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

  Miss Marionetta Celestina O'Carroll was a very blooming andaccomplished young lady. Being a compound of the _Allegro Vivace_ ofthe O'Carrolls, and of the _Andante Doloroso_ of the Glowries, sheexhibited in her own character all the diversities of an April sky.Her hair was light-brown; her eyes hazel, and sparkling with a mildbut fluctuating light; her features regular; her lips full, and ofequal size; and her person surpassingly graceful. She was a proficientin music. Her conversation was sprightly, but always on subjects lightin 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, andrejecting it when in her power as not worth the trouble of possession.

  Whether she was touched with a _penchant_ for her cousin Scythrop, orwas merely curious to see what effect the tender passion would have onso _outre_ a person, she had not been three days in the Abbey beforeshe threw out all the lures of her beauty and accomplishments to makea prize of his heart. Scythrop proved an easy conquest. The image ofMiss Emily Girouette was already sufficiently dimmed by the power ofphilosophy and the exercise of reason: for to these influences, or toany influence but the true one, are usually ascribed the mental curesperformed by the great physician Time. Scythrop's romantic dreams hadindeed given him many _pure anticipated cognitions_ of combinationsof beauty and intelligence, which, he had some misgivings, were notexactly realised in his cousin Marionetta; but, in spite of thesemisgivings, he soon became distractedly in love; which, when the younglady clearly perceived, she altered her tactics, and assumed as muchcoldness and reserve as she had before shown ardent and ingenuousattachment. Scythrop was confounded at the sudden change; but, insteadof falling at her feet and requesting an explanation, he retreatedto his tower, muffled himself in his nightcap, seated himself inthe president's chair of his imaginary secret tribunal, summonedMarionetta with all terrible formalities, frightened her out of herwits, disclosed himself, and clasped the beautiful penitent to hisbosom.

  While he was acting this reverie--in the moment in which the awfulpresident of the secret tribunal was throwing back his cowl and hismantle, and discovering himself to the lovely culprit as her adoringand magnanimous lover, the door of the study opened, and the realMarionetta appeared.

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

  Each stood a few moments fixed in their respective places--the lady inastonishment, and the gentleman in confusion. Marionetta was the firstto 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 thematter. I adore you, Marionetta, and your cruelty drives me mad.'He threw himself at her knees, devoured her hand with kisses, andbreathed a thousand vows in the most passionate language of romance.

  Marionetta listened a long time in silence, till her lover hadexhausted his eloquence and paused for a reply. She then said, with avery arch look, 'I prithee deliver thyself like a man of this world.'The levity of this quotation, and of the manner in which it wasdelivered, jarred so discordantly on the high-wrought enthusiasm ofthe romantic inamorato, that he sprang upon his feet, and beat hisforehead 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 awinning seriousness, and said, in the tenderest possible tone, 'Whatwould 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 mythoughts, the auxiliary of my great designs for the emancipation ofmankind.'

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

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

  Marionetta could not reply; she had not so strong a stomach asRosalia, and turned sick at the proposition. She disengaged herselfsuddenly from Scythrop, sprang through the door of the tower, and fledwith precipitation along the corridors. Scythrop pursued her, crying,'Stop, stop, Marionetta--my life, my love!' and was gaining rapidly onher flight, when, at an ill-omened corner, where two corridors endedin an angle, at the head of a staircase, he came into sudden andviolent contact with Mr Toobad, and they both plunged together to thefoot of the stairs, like two billiard-balls into one pocket. This gavethe 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 theinnumerable proofs of the temporary supremacy of the devil; for whatbut a systematic design and concurrent contrivance of evil could havemade the angles of time and place coincide in our unfortunate personsat the head of this accursed staircase?'

  'Nothing else, certainly,' said Scythrop: 'you are perfectly in theright, Mr Toobad. Evil, and mischief, and misery, and confusion,and vanity, and vexation of spirit, and death, and disease, andassassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, and famine, andavarice, and selfishness, and rancour, and jealousy, and spleen,and malevolence, and the disappointments of philanthropy, and thefaithlessness of friendship, and the crosses of love--all prove theaccuracy of your views, and the truth of your system; and it is notimpossible that the infernal interruption of this fall downstairs maythrow 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 disconsolatestep, to dress for dinner; while Mr Toobad stalked across the hall,repeating, 'Woe
to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the sea, forthe devil is come among you, having great wrath.'

  * * * * *