Crotchet Castle
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Thomas Love Peacock >> Crotchet Castle
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MR. CHAINMAIL. I will give up anything but my baronial hall.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. You will never find a wife for your purpose,
unless in the daughter of some old-fashioned farmer.
MR. CHAINMAIL. No, I thank you. I must have a lady of gentle
blood; I shall not marry below my own condition: I am too much of
a herald; I have too much of the twelfth century in me for that.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Why, then your chance is not much better than
mine. A well-born beauty would scarcely be better pleased with
your baronial hall than with my more humble offer of love in a
cottage. She must have a town-house, and an opera-box, and roll
about the streets in a carriage; especially if her father has a
rotten borough, for the sake of which he sells his daughter, that
he may continue to sell his country. But you were inquiring for a
guide to the ruined castle in this vicinity; I know the way and
will conduct you.
The proposal pleased Mr. Chainmail, and they set forth on their
expedition
CHAPTER XIII: THE LAKE--THE RUIN
Or vieni, Amore, e qua meco t'assetta.
ORLANDO INNAMORATO.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Would it not be a fine thing, Captain, you being
picturesque, and I poetical; you being for the lights and shadows
of the present, and I for those of the past; if we were to go
together over the ground which was travelled in the twelfth century
by Giraldus de Barri, when he accompanied Archbishop Baldwin to
preach the crusade?
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Nothing, in my present frame of mind, could be
more agreeable to me.
MR. CHAINMAIL. We would provide ourselves with his Itinerarium;
compare what has been, with what is; contemplate in their decay the
castles and abbeys, which he saw in their strength and splendour;
and, while you were sketching their remains, I would
dispassionately inquire what has been gained by the change.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Be it so.
But the scheme was no sooner arranged, than the Captain was
summoned to London by a letter on business, which he did not expect
to detain him long. Mr. Chainmail, who, like the Captain, was
fascinated with the inn and the scenery, determined to await his
companion's return; and, having furnished him with a list of books,
which he was to bring with him from London, took leave of him, and
began to pass his days like the heroes of Ariosto, who
- tutto il giorno, al bel oprar intenti,
Saliron balze, e traversar torrenti.
One day Mr. Chainmail traced upwards the course of a mountain
stream to a spot where a small waterfall threw itself over a slab
of perpendicular rock, which seemed to bar his farther progress.
On a nearer view, he discovered a flight of steps, roughly hewn in
the rock, on one side of the fall. Ascending these steps, he
entered a narrow winding pass, between high and naked rocks, that
afforded only space for a rough footpath, carved on one side, at
some height above the torrent.
The pass opened on a lake, from which the stream issued, and which
lay like a dark mirror, set in a gigantic frame of mountain
precipices. Fragments of rock lay scattered on the edge of the
lake, some half-buried in the water: Mr. Chainmail scrambled some
way over these fragments, till the base of a rock sinking abruptly
in the water, effectually barred his progress. He sat down on a
large smooth stone; the faint murmur of the stream he had quitted,
the occasional flapping of the wings of the heron, and at long
intervals, the solitary springing of a trout, were the only sounds
that came to his ear. The sun shone brightly half-way down the
opposite rocks, presenting, on their irregular faces, strong masses
of light and shade. Suddenly he heard the dash of a paddle, and,
turning his eyes, saw a solitary and beautiful girl gliding over
the lake in a coracle: she was proceeding from the vicinity of the
point he had quitted, towards the upper end of the lake. Her
apparel was rustic, but there was in its style something more
recherchee, in its arrangement something more of elegance and
precision, than was common to the mountain peasant girl. It had
more of the contadina of the opera, than of the genuine
mountaineer; so at least thought Mr. Chainmail; but she passed so
rapidly, and took him so much by surprise, that he had little
opportunity for accurate observation. He saw her land, at the
farther extremity, and disappear among the rocks: he rose from his
seat, returned to the mouth of the pass, stepped from stone to
stone across the stream, and attempted to pass round by the other
side of the lake; but there again the abruptly sinking precipice
closed his way.
Day after day he haunted the spot, but never saw again either the
damsel or the coracle. At length, marvelling at himself for being
so solicitous about the apparition of a peasant girl in a coracle,
who could not, by any possibility, be anything to him, he resumed
his explorations in another direction.
One day he wandered to the ruined castle, on the sea-shore, which
was not very distant from his inn; and sitting on the rock, near
the base of the ruin, was calling up the forms of past ages on the
wall of an ivied tower, when on its summit appeared a female
figure, whom he recognised in an instant for his nymph of the
coracle. The folds of the blue gown pressed by the sea-breeze
against one of the most symmetrical of figures, the black feather
of the black hat, and the ringleted hair beneath it fluttering in
the wind; the apparent peril of her position, on the edge of the
mouldering wall, from whose immediate base the rock went down
perpendicularly to the sea, presented a singularly interesting
combination to the eye of the young antiquary.
Mr. Chainmail had to pass half round the castle, on the land side,
before he could reach the entrance: he coasted the dry and
bramble-grown moat, crossed the unguarded bridge, passed the
unportcullised arch of the gateway, entered the castle court,
ascertained the tower, ascended the broken stairs, and stood on the
ivied wall. But the nymph of the place was gone. He searched the
ruins within and without, but he found not what he sought: he
haunted the castle day after day, as he had done the lake, but the
damsel appeared no more.
CHAPTER XIV: THE DINGLE
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her, and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place,
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face.--WORDSWORTH.
Miss Susannah Touchandgo had read the four great poets of Italy,
and many of the best writers of France. About the time of her
father's downfall, accident threw into her way Les Reveries du
Promeneur Solitaire; and from the impression which these made on
her, she carried with her into retirement all the works of
Rousseau. In the midst of that startling light, which the conduct
of old friends on a sudden reverse of fortune throws on a young and
inexperienced mind, the doctrines of the philosopher of Geneva
struck with double force upon her sympathies: she imbibed the
sweet poison, as somebody calls it, of his writings, even to a love
of truth; which, every wise man knows, ought to be left to those
who can get anything by it. The society of children, the beauties
of nature, the solitude of the mountains, became her consolation,
and, by degrees, her delight. The gay society from which she had
been excluded, remained on her memory only as a disagreeable dream.
She imbibed her new monitor's ideas of simplicity of dress,
assimilating her own with that of the peasant-girls in the
neighbourhood: the black hat, the blue gown, the black stockings,
the shoes, tied on the instep.
Pride was, perhaps, at the bottom of the change: she was willing
to impose in some measure on herself, by marking a contemptuous
indifference to the characteristics of the class of society from
which she had fallen.
And with the food of pride sustained her soul
In solitude.
It is true that she somewhat modified the forms of her rustic
dress: to the black hat she added a black feather, to the blue
gown she added a tippet, and a waistband fastened in front with a
silver buckle; she wore her black stockings very smooth and tight
on her ankles, and tied her shoes in tasteful bows, with the nicest
possible ribbon. In this apparel, to which, in winter, she added a
scarlet cloak, she made dreadful havoc among the rustic
mountaineers, many of whom proposed to "keep company" with her in
the Cambrian fashion, an honour which, to their great surprise, she
always declined. Among these, Harry Ap-Heather, whose father
rented an extensive sheepwalk, and had a thousand she-lambs
wandering in the mountains, was the most strenuous in his suit, and
the most pathetic in his lamentations for her cruelty.
Miss Susannah often wandered among the mountains alone, even to
some distance from the farmhouse. Sometimes she descended into the
bottom of the dingles, to the black rocky beds of the torrents, and
dreamed away hours at the feet of the cataracts. One spot in
particular, from which she had at first shrunk with terror, became
by degrees her favourite haunt. A path turning and returning at
acute angles, led down a steep wood-covered slope to the edge of a
chasm, where a pool, or resting-place of a torrent, lay far below.
A cataract fell in a single sheet into the pool; the pool boiled
and bubbled at the base of the fall, but through the greater part
of its extent, lay calm, deep, and black, as if the cataract had
plunged through it to an unimaginable depth, without disturbing its
eternal repose. At the opposite extremity of the pool, the rocks
almost met at their summits, the trees of the opposite banks
intermingled their leaves, and another cataract plunged from the
pool into a chasm, on which the sunbeams never gleamed. High
above, on both sides, the steep woody slopes of the dingle soared
into the sky; and from a fissure in the rock, on which the little
path terminated, a single gnarled and twisted oak stretched itself
over the pool, forming a fork with its boughs at a short distance
from the rock. Miss Susannah often sat on the rock, with her feet
resting on this tree; in time, she made her seat on the tree
itself, with her feet hanging over the abyss; and at length, she
accustomed herself to lie along upon its trunk, with her side on
the mossy bole of the fork, and an arm round one of the branches.
From this position a portion of the sky and the woods was reflected
in the pool, which, from its bank, was but a mass of darkness. The
first time she reclined in this manner, her heart beat audibly; in
time she lay down as calmly as on the mountain heather; the
perception of the sublime was probably heightened by an
intermingled sense of danger; and perhaps that indifference to
life, which early disappointment forces upon sensitive minds, was
necessary to the first experiment. There was, in the novelty and
strangeness of the position, an excitement which never wholly
passed away, but which became gradually subordinate to the
influence, at once tranquillising and elevating, of the mingled
eternity of motion, sound, and solitude.
One sultry noon, she descended into this retreat with a mind more
than usually disturbed by reflections on the past. She lay in her
favourite position, sometimes gazing on the cataract; looking
sometimes up the steep sylvan acclivities, into the narrow space of
the cloudless ether; sometimes down into the abyss of the pool, and
the deep bright-blue reflections that opened another immensity
below her. The distressing recollections of the morning, the world
and all its littlenesses, faded from her thoughts like a dream; but
her wounded and wearied spirit drank in too deeply the
tranquillising power of the place, and she dropped asleep upon the
tree like a ship-boy on the mast.
At this moment Mr. Chainmail emerged into daylight, on a projection
of the opposite rock, having struck down through the woods in
search of unsophisticated scenery. The scene he discovered filled
him with delight: he seated himself on the rock, and fell into one
of his romantic reveries; when suddenly the semblance of a black
hat and feather caught his eye among the foliage of the projecting
oak. He started up, shifted his position, and got a glimpse of a
blue gown. It was his lady of the lake, his enchantress of the
ruined castle, divided from him by a barrier which, at a few yards
below, he could almost overleap, yet unapproachable but by a
circuit perhaps of many hours. He watched with intense anxiety.
To listen if she breathed was out of the question: the noses of a
dean and chapter would have been soundless in the roar of the
torrent. From her extreme stillness, she appeared to sleep: yet
what creature, not desperate, would go wilfully to sleep in such a
place? Was she asleep, then? Nay, was she alive? She was as
motionless as death. Had she been murdered, thrown from above, and
caught in the tree? She lay too regularly and too composedly for
such a supposition. She was asleep, then, and, in all probability,
her waking would be fatal. He shifted his position. Below the
pool two beetle-browed rocks nearly overarched the chasm, leaving
just such a space at the summit as was within the possibility of a
leap; the torrent roared below in a fearful gulf. He paused some
time on the brink, measuring the practicability and the danger, and
casting every now and then an anxious glance to his sleeping
beauty. In one of these glances he saw a slight movement of the
blue gown, and, in a moment after, the black hat and feather
dropped into the pool. Reflection was lost for a moment, and, by a
sudden impulse, he bounded over the chasm.
He stood above the projecting oak; the unknown beauty lay like the
nymph of the scene; her long black hair, which the fall of her hat
had disengaged from its fastenings, drooping through the boughs:
he saw that the first thing to be done, was to prevent her throwing
her feet off the trunk, in the first movements of waking. He sat
down on the rock, and placed his feet on the stem, securing her
ankles between his own: one of her arms was round a branch of the
fork, the other lay loosely on her side. The hand of this arm he
endeavoured to reach, by leaning forward from his seat; he
approximated, but could not touch it: after several tantalising
efforts, he gave up the point in despair. He did not attempt to
wake her, because he feared it might have bad consequences, and he
resigned himself to expect the moment of her natural waking,
determined not to stir from his post, if she should sleep till
midnight.
In this period of forced inaction, he could contemplate at leisure
the features and form of his charmer. She was not one of the
slender beauties of romance; she was as plump as a partridge; her
cheeks were two roses, not absolutely damask, yet verging
thereupon; her lips twin-cherries, of equal size; her nose regular,
and almost Grecian; her forehead high, and delicately fair; her
eyebrows symmetrically arched; her eyelashes, long, black, and
silky, fitly corresponding with the beautiful tresses that hung
among the leaves of the oak, like clusters of wandering grapes.
Her eyes were yet to be seen; but how could he doubt that their
opening would be the rising of the sun, when all that surrounded
their fringy portals was radiant as "the forehead of the morning
sky?"
CHAPTER XV: THE FARM
Da ydyw'r gwaith, rhaid d'we'yd y gwir,
Ar fryniau Sir Meirionydd;
Golwg oer o'r gwaela gawn
Mae hi etto yn llawn llawenydd.
Though Meirion's rocks, and hills of heath,
Repel the distant sight,
Yet where, than those bleak hills beneath,
Is found more true delight?
At length the young lady awoke. She was startled at the sudden
sight of the stranger, and somewhat terrified at the first
perception of her position. But she soon recovered her self-
possession, and, extending her hand to the offered hand of Mr.
Chainmail, she raised herself up on the tree, and stepped on the
rocky bank.
Mr. Chainmail solicited permission to attend her to her home, which
the young lady graciously conceded. They emerged from the woody
dingle, traversed an open heath, wound along a mountain road by the
shore of a lake, descended to the deep bed of another stream,
crossed it by a series of stepping-stones, ascended to some height
on the opposite side, and followed upwards the line of the stream,
till the banks opened into a spacious amphitheatre, where stood, in
its fields and meadows, the farmhouse of Ap-Llymry.
During this walk, they had kept up a pretty animated conversation.
The lady had lost her hat, and, as she turned towards Mr.
Chainmail, in speaking to him, there was no envious projection of
brim to intercept the beams of those radiant eyes he had been so
anxious to see unclosed. There was in them a mixture of softness
and brilliancy, the perfection of the beauty of female eyes, such
as some men have passed through life without seeing, and such as no
man ever saw, in any pair of eyes, but once; such as can never be
seen and forgotten. Young Crotchet had seen it; he had not
forgotten it; but he had trampled on its memory, as the renegade
tramples on the emblems of a faith which his interest only, and not
his heart or his reason, has rejected.
Her hair streamed over her shoulders; the loss of the black feather
had left nothing but the rustic costume, the blue gown, the black
stockings, and the ribbon-tied shoes. Her voice had that full soft
volume of melody which gives to common speech the fascination of
music. Mr. Chainmail could not reconcile the dress of the damsel
with her conversation and manners. He threw out a remote question
or two, with the hope of solving the riddle, but, receiving no
reply, he became satisfied that she was not disposed to be
communicative respecting herself, and, fearing to offend her, fell
upon other topics. They talked of the scenes of the mountains, of
the dingle, the ruined castle, the solitary lake. She told him,
that lake lay under the mountains behind her home, and the coracle
and the pass at the extremity, saved a long circuit to the nearest
village, whither she sometimes went to inquire for letters.
Mr. Chainmail felt curious to know from whom these letters might
be; and he again threw out two or three fishing questions, to
which, as before, he obtained no answer.
The only living biped they met in their walk was the unfortunate
Harry Ap-Heather, with whom they fell in by the stepping-stones,
who, seeing the girl of his heart hanging on another man's arm,
and, concluding at once that they were "keeping company," fixed on
her a mingled look of surprise, reproach, and tribulation; and,
unable to control his feelings under the sudden shock, burst into a
flood of tears, and blubbered till the rocks re-echoed.
They left him mingling his tears with the stream, and his
lamentations with its murmurs. Mr. Chainmail inquired who that
strange creature might be, and what was the matter with him. The
young lady answered, that he was a very worthy young man, to whom
she had been the innocent cause of much unhappiness.
"I pity him sincerely," said Mr. Chainmail and, nevertheless, he
could scarcely restrain his laughter at the exceedingly original
figure which the unfortunate rustic lover had presented by the
stepping-stones.
The children ran out to meet their dear Miss Susan, jumped all
round her, and asked what was become of her hat. Ap-Llymry came
out in great haste, and invited Mr. Chainmail to walk in and dine:
Mr. Chainmail did not wait to be asked twice. In a few minutes the
whole party, Miss Susan and Mr. Chainmail, Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Llymry,
and progeny, were seated over a clean homespun table cloth,
ornamented with fowls and bacon, a pyramid of potatoes, another of
cabbage, which Ap-Llymry said "was poiled with the pacon, and as
coot as marrow," a bowl of milk for the children, and an immense
brown jug of foaming ale, with which Ap-Llymry seemed to delight in
filling the horn of his new guest.
Shall we describe the spacious apartment, which was at once
kitchen, hall, and dining-room,--the large dark rafters, the
pendent bacon and onions, the strong old oaken furniture, the
bright and trimly-arranged utensils? Shall we describe the cut of
Ap-Llymry's coat, the colour and tie of his neckcloth, the number
of buttons at his knees,--the structure of Mrs. Ap-Llymry's cap,
having lappets over the ears, which were united under the chin,
setting forth especially whether the bond of union were a pin or a
ribbon? We shall leave this tempting field of interesting
expatiation to those whose brains are high-pressure steam-engines
for spinning prose by the furlong, to be trumpeted in paid-for
paragraphs in the quack's corner of newspapers: modern literature
having attained the honourable distinction of sharing, with
blacking and Macassar oil, the space which used to be monopolised
by razor-strops and the lottery; whereby that very enlightened
community, the reading public, is tricked into the perusal of much
exemplary nonsense; though the few who see through the trickery
have no reason to complain, since as "good wine needs no bush," so,
ex vi oppositi, these bushes of venal panegyric point out very
clearly that the things they celebrate are not worth reading.
The party dined very comfortably in a corner most remote from the
fire: and Mr. Chainmail very soon found his head swimming with two
or three horns of ale, of a potency to which even he was
unaccustomed. After dinner Ap-Llymry made him finish a bottle of
mead, which he willingly accepted, both as an excuse to remain and
as a drink of the dark ages, which he had no doubt was a genuine
brewage from uncorrupted tradition.
In the meantime, as soon as the cloth was removed, the children had
brought out Miss Susannah's harp. She began, without affectation,
to play and sing to the children, as was her custom of an
afternoon, first in their own language, and their national
melodies, then in English; but she was soon interrupted by a
general call of little voices for "Ouf! di giorno." She complied
with the request, and sang the ballad from Paer's Camilla: "Un di
carco il mulinaro." The children were very familiar with every
syllable of this ballad, which had been often fully explained to
them. They danced in a circle with the burden of every verse,
shouting out the chorus with good articulation and joyous energy;
and at the end of the second stanza, where the traveller has his
nose pinched by his grandmother's ghost, every nose in the party
was nipped by a pair of little fingers. Mr. Chainmail, who was not
prepared for the process, came in for a very energetic tweak from a
chubby girl that sprang suddenly on his knees for the purpose, and
made the roof ring with her laughter.
So passed the time till evening, when Mr. Chainmail moved to
depart. But it turned out on inquiry that he was some miles from
his inn, that the way was intricate, and that he must not make any
difficulty about accepting the farmer's hospitality till morning.
The evening set in with rain: the fire was found agreeable; they
drew around it. The young lady made tea; and afterwards, from time
to time, at Mr. Chainmail's special request, delighted his ear with
passages of ancient music. Then came a supper of lake trout, fried
on the spot, and thrown, smoking hot, from the pan to the plate.
Then came a brewage, which the farmer called his nightcap, of which
he insisted on Mr. Chainmail's taking his full share. After which
the gentleman remembered nothing till he awoke, the next morning,
to the pleasant consciousness that he was under the same roof with
one of the most fascinating creatures under the canopy of heaven.
CHAPTER XVI: THE NEWSPAPER
[Greek text]
Sprung from what line, adorns the maid
These, valleys deep in mountain-shade?
PIND. Pyth. IX
Mr. Chainmail forgot the Captain and the route of Giraldus de
Barri. He became suddenly satisfied that the ruined castle in his
present neighbourhood was the best possible specimen of its class,
and that it was needless to carry his researches further.
He visited the farm daily: found himself always welcome; flattered
himself that the young lady saw him with pleasure, and dragged a
heavier chain at every new parting from Miss Susan, as the children
called his nymph of the mountains. What might be her second name,
he had vainly endeavoured to discover.
Mr. Chainmail was in love: but the determination he had long
before formed and fixed in his mind, to marry only a lady of gentle
blood, without a blot in her escutcheon, repressed the declarations
of passion which were often rising to his lips. In the meantime he
left no means untried to pluck out the heart of her mystery.
The young lady soon divined his passion, and penetrated his
prejudices. She began to look on him with favourable eyes; but she
feared her name and parentage would present an insuperable barrier
to his feudal pride.
Things were in this state when the Captain returned, and unpacked
his maps and books in the parlour of the inn.
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