Crotchet Castle
T >>
Thomas Love Peacock >> Crotchet Castle
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9
MR. CHAINMAIL. Really, Captain, I find so many objects of
attraction in this neighbourhood, that I would gladly postpone our
purpose.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Undoubtedly this neighbourhood has many
attractions; but there is something very inviting in the scheme you
laid down.
MR. CHAINMAIL. No doubt there is something very tempting in the
route of Giraldus de Barri. But there are better things in this
vicinity even than that. To tell you the truth, Captain, I have
fallen in love.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. What! while I have been away?
MR. CHAINMAIL. Even so.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. The plunge must have been very sudden, if you
are already over head and ears.
MR. CHAINMAIL. As deep as Llyn-y-dreiddiad-vrawd.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. And what may that be?
MR. CHAINMAIL. A pool not far off: a resting-place of a mountain
stream which is said to have no bottom. There is a tradition
connected with it; and here is a ballad on it, at your service.
LLYN-Y-DREIDDIAD-VRAWD.
THE POOL OF THE DIVING FRIAR.
Gwenwynwyn withdrew from the feasts of his hall:
He slept very little, he prayed not at all:
He pondered, and wandered, and studied alone;
And sought, night and day, the philosopher's stone.
He found it at length, and he made its first proof
By turning to gold all the lead of his roof:
Then he bought some magnanimous heroes, all fire,
Who lived but to smite and be smitten for hire.
With these on the plains like a torrent he broke;
He filled the whole country with flame and with smoke;
He killed all the swine, and he broached all the wine;
He drove off the sheep, and the beeves, and the kine;
He took castles and towns; he cut short limbs and lives;
He made orphans and widows of children and wives:
This course many years he triumphantly ran,
And did mischief enough to be called a great man.
When, at last, he had gained all for which he held striven,
He bethought him of buying a passport to heaven;
Good and great as he was, yet he did not well know,
How soon, or which way, his great spirit might go.
He sought the grey friars, who beside a wild stream,
Refected their frames on a primitive scheme;
The gravest and wisest Gwenwynwyn found out,
All lonely and ghostly, and angling for trout.
Below the white dash of a mighty cascade,
Where a pool of the stream a deep resting-place made,
And rock-rooted oaks stretched their branches on high,
The friar stood musing, and throwing his fly.
To him said Gwenwynwyn, "Hold, father, here's store,
For the good of the church, and the good of the poor;"
Then he gave him the stone; but, ere more he could speak,
Wrath came on the friar, so holy and meek.
He had stretched forth his hand to receive the red gold,
And he thought himself mocked by Gwenwynwyn the Bold;
And in scorn of the gift, and in rage at the giver,
He jerked it immediately into the river.
Gwenwynwyn, aghast, not a syllable spake;
The philosopher's stone made a duck and a drake;
Two systems of circles a moment were seen,
And the stream smoothed them off, as they never had been.
Gwenwynwyn regained, and uplifted his voice,
"Oh friar, grey friar, full rash was thy choice;
The stone, the good stone, which away thou hast thrown,
Was the stone of all stones, the philosopher's stone."
The friar looked pale, when his error he knew;
The friar looked red, and the friar looked blue;
And heels over head, from the point of a rock,
He plunged, without stopping to pull off his frock.
He dived very deep, but he dived all in vain,
The prize he had slighted he found not again;
Many times did the friar his diving renew,
And deeper and deeper the river still grew.
Gwenwynwyn gazed long, of his senses in doubt,
To see the grey friar a diver so stout;
Then sadly and slowly his castle he sought,
And left the friar diving, like dabchick distraught.
Gwenwynwyn fell sick with alarm and despite,
Died, and went to the devil, the very same night;
The magnanimous heroes he held in his pay
Sacked his castle, and marched with the plunder away.
No knell on the silence of midnight was rolled
For the flight of the soul of Gwenwynwyn the Bold.
The brethren, unfeed, let the mighty ghost pass,
Without praying a prayer, or intoning a mass.
The friar haunted ever beside the dark stream;
The philosopher's stone was his thought and his dream:
And day after day, ever head under heels
He dived all the time he could spare from his meals.
He dived, and he dived, to the end of his days,
As the peasants oft witnessed with fear and amaze.
The mad friar's diving-place long was their theme,
And no plummet can fathom that pool of the stream.
And still, when light clouds on the midnight winds ride,
If by moonlight you stray on the lone river-side,
The ghost of the friar may be seen diving there,
With head in the water, and heels in the air.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Well, your ballad is very pleasant: you shall
show me the scene, and I will sketch it; but just now I am more
interested about your love. What heroine of the twelfth century
has risen from the ruins of the old castle, and looked down on you
from the ivied battlements?
MR. CHAINMAIL. You are nearer the mark than you suppose. Even
from those battlements a heroine of the twelfth century has looked
down on me.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Oh! some vision of an ideal beauty. I suppose
the whole will end in another tradition and a ballad.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Genuine flesh and blood; as genuine as Lady
Clarinda. I will tell you the story.
Mr. Chainmail narrated his adventures.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Then you seem to have found what you wished.
Chance has thrown in your way what none of the gods would have
ventured to promise you.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Yes, but I know nothing of her birth and parentage.
She tells me nothing of herself, and I have no right to question
her directly.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. She appears to be expressly destined for the
light of your baronial hall. Introduce me in this case, two heads
are better than one.
MR. CHAINMAIL. No, I thank you. Leave me to manage my chance of a
prize, and keep you to your own chance of a -
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Blank. As you please. Well, I will pitch my
tent here, till I have filled my portfolio, and shall be glad of as
much of your company as you can spare from more attractive society.
Matters went on pretty smoothly for several days, when an unlucky
newspaper threw all into confusion. Mr. Chainmail received
newspapers by the post, which came in three times a week. One
morning, over their half-finished breakfast, the Captain had read
half a newspaper very complacently, when suddenly he started up in
a frenzy, hurled over the breakfast table, and, bouncing from the
apartment, knocked down Harry Ap Heather, who was coming in at the
door to challenge his supposed rival to a boxing-match.
Harry sprang up, in a double rage, and intercepted Mr. Chainmail's
pursuit of the Captain, placing himself in the doorway, in a
pugilistic attitude. Mr. Chainmail, not being disposed for this
mode of combat, stepped back into the parlour, took the poker in
his right hand, and displacing the loose bottom of a large elbow
chair, threw it over his left arm as a shield. Harry, not liking
the aspect of the enemy in this imposing attitude, retreated with
backward steps into the kitchen, and tumbled over a cur, which
immediately fastened on his rear.
Mr. Chainmail, half-laughing, half-vexed, anxious to overtake the
Captain, and curious to know what was the matter with him, pocketed
the newspaper, and sallied forth, leaving Harry roaring for a
doctor and tailor, to repair the lacerations of his outward man.
Mr. Chainmail could find no trace of the Captain. Indeed, he
sought him but in one direction, which was that leading to the
farm; where he arrived in due time, and found Miss Susan alone. He
laid the newspaper on the table, as was his custom, and proceeded
to converse with the young lady: a conversation of many pauses, as
much of signs as of words. The young lady took up the paper, and
turned it over and over, while she listened to Mr. Chainmail, whom
she found every day more and more agreeable, when suddenly her eye
glanced on something which made her change colour, and dropping the
paper on the ground, she rose from her seat, exclaiming:
"Miserable must she be who trusts any of your faithless sex! never,
never, never, will I endure such misery twice." And she vanished
up the stairs. Mr. Chainmail was petrified. At length, he cried
aloud: "Cornelius Agrippa must have laid a spell on this accursed
newspaper;" and was turning it over, to look for the source of the
mischief, when Mrs. Ap Llymry made her appearance.
MRS. AP LLYMRY. What have you done to poor dear Miss Susan? she is
crying ready to break her heart.
MR. CHAINMAIL. So help me the memory of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, I
have not the most distant notion of what is the matter.
MRS. AP LLYMRY. Oh, don't tell me, sir; you must have ill-used
her. I know how it is. You have been keeping company with her, as
if you wanted to marry her; and now, all at once, you have been
insulting her. I have seen such tricks more than once, and you
ought to be ashamed of yourself.
MR. CHAINMAIL. My dear madam, you wrong me utterly. I have none
but the kindest feelings and the most honourable purposes towards
her. She has been disturbed by something she has seen in this
rascally paper.
MRS. AP LLYMRY. Why, then, the best thing you can do is to go
away, and come again tomorrow.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Not I, indeed, madam. Out of this house I stir
not, till I have seen the young lady, and obtained a full
explanation.
MRS. AP LLYMRY. I will tell Miss Susan what you say. Perhaps she
will come down.
Mr. Chainmail sat with as much patience as he could command,
running over the paper, from column to column. At length he
lighted on an announcement of the approaching marriage of Lady
Clarinda Bossnowl with Mr. Crotchet the younger. This explained
the Captain's discomposure, but the cause of Miss Susan's was still
to be sought: he could not know that it was one and the same.
Presently, the sound of the longed-for step was heard on the
stairs; the young lady reappeared, and resumed her seat: her eyes
showed that she had been weeping. The gentleman was now
exceedingly puzzled how to begin, but the young lady relieved him
by asking, with great simplicity: "What do you wish to have
explained, sir?"
MR. CHAINMAIL. I wish, if I may be permitted, to explain myself to
you. Yet could I first wish to know what it was that disturbed you
in this unlucky paper. Happy should I be if I could remove the
cause of your inquietude!
MISS SUSANNAH. The cause is already removed. I saw something that
excited painful recollections; nothing that I could now wish
otherwise than as it is.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Yet, may I ask why it is that I find one so
accomplished living in this obscurity, and passing only by the name
of Miss Susan?
MISS SUSANNAH. The world and my name are not friends. I have left
the world, and wish to remain for ever a stranger to all whom I
once knew in it.
MR. CHAINMAIL. You can have done nothing to dishonour your name.
MISS SUSANNAH. No, sir. My father has done that of which the
world disapproves, in matters of which I pretend not to judge. I
have suffered for it as I will never suffer again. My name is my
own secret: I have no other, and that is one not worth knowing.
You see what I am, and all I am. I live according to the condition
of my present fortune, and here, so living, I have found
tranquillity.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Yet, I entreat you, tell me your name.
MISS SUSANNAH. Why, sir?
MR. CHAINMAIL. Why, but to throw my hand, my heart, my fortune, at
your feet, if -.
MISS SUSANNAH. If my name be worthy of them.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Nay, nay, not so; if your hand and heart are free.
MISS SUSANNAH. My hand and heart are free; but they must be sought
from myself, and not from my name.
She fixed her eyes on him, with a mingled expression of mistrust,
of kindness, and of fixed resolution, which the far-gone inamorato
found irresistible.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Then from yourself alone I seek them.
MISS SUSANNAH. Reflect. You have prejudices on the score of
parentage. I have not conversed with you so often without knowing
what they are. Choose between them and me. I too have my own
prejudices on the score of personal pride.
MR. CHAINMAIL. I would choose you from all the world, were you
even the daughter of the executeur des hautes oeuvres, as the
heroine of a romantic story I once read turned out to be.
MISS SUSANNAH. I am satisfied. You have now a right to know my
history, and if you repent, I absolve you from all obligations.
She told him her history; but he was out of the reach of
repentance. "It is true," as at a subsequent period he said to the
captain, "she is the daughter of a money-changer: one who, in the
days of Richard the First, would have been plucked by the beard in
the streets: but she is, according to modern notions, a lady of
gentle blood. As to her father's running away, that is a minor
consideration: I have always understood, from Mr. Mac Quedy, who
is a great oracle in this way, that promises to pay ought not to be
kept; the essence of a safe and economical currency being an
interminable series of broken promises. There seems to be a
difference among the learned as to the way in which the promises
ought to be broken; but I am not deep enough in this casuistry to
enter into such nice distinctions."
In a few days there was a wedding, a pathetic leave-taking of the
farmer's family, a hundred kisses from the bride to the children,
and promises twenty times reclaimed and renewed, to visit them in
the ensuing year.
CHAPTER XVII: THE INVITATION
A cup of wine, that's brisk and fine,
And drink unto the lemon mine.
Master Silence.
This veridicous history began in May, and the occurrences already
narrated have carried it on to the middle of autumn. Stepping over
the interval to Christmas, we find ourselves in our first locality,
among the chalk hills of the Thames; and we discover our old
friend, Mr. Crotchet, in the act of accepting an invitation, for
himself, and any friends who might be with him, to pass their
Christmas Day at Chainmail Hall, after the fashion of the twelfth
century. Mr. Crochet had assembled about him, for his own
Christmas festivities, nearly the same party which was introduced
to the reader in the spring. Three of that party were wanting.
Dr. Morbific, by inoculating himself once too often with non-
contagious matter, had explained himself out of the world. Mr.
Henbane had also departed, on the wings of an infallible antidote.
Mr. Eavesdrop, having printed in a magazine some of the after-
dinner conversations of the castle, had had sentence of exclusion
passed upon him, on the motion of the Reverend Doctor Folliott, as
a flagitious violator of the confidences of private life.
Miss Crotchet had become Lady Bossnowl, but Lady Clarinda had not
yet changed her name to Crotchet. She had, on one pretence and
another, procrastinated the happy event, and the gentleman had not
been very pressing; she had, however, accompanied her brother and
sister-in-law, to pass Christmas at Crotchet Castle. With these,
Mr. Mac Quedy, Mr. Philpot, Mr. Trillo, Mr. Skionar, Mr. Toogood,
and Mr. Firedamp were sitting at breakfast, when the Reverend
Doctor Folliott entered and took his seat at the table.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Well, Mr. Mac Quedy, it is now some weeks since
we have met: how goes on the march of mind?
MR. MAC QUEDY. Nay, sir; I think you may see that with your own
eyes.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, I have seen it, much to my discomfiture.
It has marched into my rickyard, and set my stacks on fire, with
chemical materials, most scientifically compounded. It has marched
up to the door of my vicarage, a hundred and fifty strong; ordered
me to surrender half my tithes; consumed all the provisions I had
provided for my audit feast, and drunk up my old October. It has
marched in through my back-parlour shutters, and out again with my
silver spoons, in the dead of the night. The policeman who has
been down to examine says my house has been broken open on the most
scientific principles. All this comes of education.
MR. MAC QUEDY. I rather think it comes of poverty.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. No, sir. Robbery, perhaps, comes of poverty,
but scientific principles of robbery come of education. I suppose
the learned friend has written a sixpenny treatise on mechanics,
and the rascals who robbed me have been reading it.
MR. CROTCHET. Your house would have been very safe, Doctor, if
they had had no better science than the learned friend's to work
with.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Well, sir, that may be. Excellent potted char.
The Lord deliver me from the learned friend.
MR. CROTCHET. Well, Doctor, for your comfort, here is a
declaration of the learned friend's that he will never take office.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Then, sir, he will be in office next week.
Peace be with him. Sugar and cream.
MR. CROTCHET. But, Doctor, are you for Chainmail Hall on Christmas
Day?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. That am I, for there will be an excellent
dinner, though, peradventure, grotesquely served.
MR. CROTCHET. I have not seen my neighbour since he left us on the
canal.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. He has married a wife, and brought her home.
LADY CLARINDA. Indeed! If she suits him, she must be an oddity:
it will be amusing to see them together.
LORD BOSSNOWL. Very amusing. He! He! Mr. Firedamp. Is there any
water about Chainmail Hall?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. An old moat.
MR. FIREDAMP. I shall die of malaria.
MR. TRILLO. Shall we have any music?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. An old harper.
MR. TRILLO. Those fellows are always horridly out of tune. What
will he play?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Old songs and marches.
MR. SKIONAR. Among so many old things, I hope we shall find Old
Philosophy.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. An old woman.
MR. PHILPOT. Perhaps an old map of the river in the twelfth
century.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. No doubt.
MR. MAC QUEDY. How many more old things?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Old hospitality; old wine; old ale; all the
images of old England; an old butler.
MR. TOOGOOD. Shall we all be welcome?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Heartily; you will be slapped on the shoulder,
and called Old Boy.
LORD BOSSNOWL. I think we should all go in our old clothes. He!
He!
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. You will sit on old chairs, round an old table,
by the light of old lamps, suspended from pointed arches, which,
Mr. Chainmail says, first came into use in the twelfth century,
with old armour on the pillars and old banners in the roof.
LADY CLARINDA. And what curious piece of antiquity is the lady of
the mansion?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. No antiquity there; none.
LADY CLARINDA. Who was she?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. That I know not.
LADY CLARINDA. Have you seen her?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I have.
LADY CLARINDA. Is she pretty?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. More,--beautiful. A subject for the pen of
Nonnus or the pencil of Zeuxis. Features of all loveliness,
radiant with all virtue and intelligence. A face for Antigone. A
form at once plump and symmetrical, that, if it be decorous to
divine it by externals, would have been a model for the Venus of
Cnidos. Never was anything so goodly to look on, the present
company excepted; and poor dear Mrs. Folliott. She reads moral
philosophy, Mr. Mac Quedy, which indeed she might as well let
alone; she reads Italian poetry, Mr. Skionar; she sings Italian
music, Mr. Trillo; but, with all this, she has the greatest of
female virtues, for she superintends the household and looks after
her husband's dinner. I believe she was a mountaineer: [Greek
text] {1} as Nonnus sweetly sings.
CHAPTER XVIII: CHAINMAIL HALL
Vous autres dictes que ignorance est mere de tous maulx, et dictes
vray: mais toutesfoys vous ne la bannissez mye de vos entendemens,
et vivez en elle, avecques elle, et par elle. C'est pourquoy tant
de maulx vous meshaignent de jour en jour.--RABELIAS, 1. 5. c. 7.
The party which was assembled on Christmas Day in Chainmail Hall
comprised all the guests of Crotchet Castle, some of Mr.
Chainmail's other neighbours, all his tenants and domestics, and
Captain Fitzchrome. The hall was spacious and lofty; and with its
tall fluted pillars and pointed arches, its windows of stained
glass, its display of arms and banners intermingled with holly and
mistletoe, its blazing cressets and torches, and a stupendous fire
in the centre, on which blocks of pine were flaming and crackling,
had a striking effect on eyes unaccustomed to such a dining-room.
The fire was open on all sides, and the smoke was caught and
carried back under a funnel-formed canopy into a hollow central
pillar. This fire was the line of demarcation between gentle and
simple on days of high festival. Tables extended from it on two
sides to nearly the end of the hall.
Mrs. Chainmail was introduced to the company. Young Crotchet felt
some revulsion of feeling at the unexpected sight of one whom he
had forsaken, but not forgotten, in a condition apparently so much
happier than his own. The lady held out her hand to him with a
cordial look of more than forgiveness; it seemed to say that she
had much to thank him for. She was the picture of a happy bride,
rayonnante de joie et d'amour.
Mr. Crotchet told the Reverend Doctor Folliott the news of the
morning. "As you predicted," he said, "your friend, the learned
friend, is in office; he has also a title; he is now Sir Guy de
Vaux."
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Thank heaven for that! he is disarmed from
further mischief. It is something, at any rate, to have that
hollow and wind-shaken reed rooted up for ever from the field of
public delusion.
MR. CROTCHET. I suppose, Doctor, you do not like to see a great
reformer in office; you are afraid for your vested interests.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Not I, indeed, sir; my vested interests are
very safe from all such reformers as the learned friend. I
vaticinate what will be the upshot of all his schemes of reform.
He will make a speech of seven hours' duration, and this will be
its quintessence: that, seeing the exceeding difficulty of putting
salt on the bird's tail, it will be expedient to consider the best
method of throwing dust in the bird's eyes. All the rest will be
[Greek text in verse]
as Aristophanes has it; and so I leave him, in Nephelococcygia.
Mr. Mac Quedy came up to the divine as Mr. Crotchet left him, and
said: "There is one piece of news which the old gentleman has not
told you. The great firm of Catchflat and Company, in which young
Crotchet is a partner, has stopped payment."
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Bless me! that accounts for the young
gentleman's melancholy. I thought they would overreach themselves
with their own tricks. The day of reckoning, Mr. Mac Quedy, is the
point which your paper-money science always leaves out of view.
MR. MAC QUEDY. I do not see, sir, that the failure of Catchflat
and Company has anything to do with my science.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. It has this to do with it, sir, that you would
turn the whole nation into a great paper-money shop, and take no
thought of the day of reckoning. But the dinner is coming. I
think you, who are so fond of paper promises, should dine on the
bill of fare.
The harper at the head of the hall struck up an ancient march, and
the dishes were brought in, in grand procession.
The boar's head, garnished with rosemary, with a citron in its
mouth, led the van. Then came tureens of plum-porridge; then a
series of turkeys, and in the midst of them an enormous sausage,
which it required two men to carry. Then came geese and capons,
tongues and hams, the ancient glory of the Christmas pie, a
gigantic plum pudding, a pyramid of mince pies, and a baron of beef
bringing up the rear.
"It is something new under the sun," said the divine, as he sat
down, "to see a great dinner without fish."
MR. CHAINMAIL. Fish was for fasts in the twelfth century.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Well, sir, I prefer our reformed system of
putting fasts and feasts together. Not but here is ample
indemnity.
Ale and wine flowed in abundance. The dinner passed off merrily:
the old harper playing all the while the oldest music in his
repertory. The tables being cleared, he indemnified himself for
lost time at the lower end of the hall, in company with the old
butler and the other domestics, whose attendance on the banquet had
been indispensable.
The scheme of Christmas gambols, which Mr. Chainmail had laid for
the evening, was interrupted by a tremendous clamour without.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. What have we here? Mummers?
MR. CHAINMAIL. Nay, I know not. I expect none.
"Who is there?" he added, approaching the door of the hall.
"Who is there?" vociferated the divine, with the voice of Stentor.
"Captain Swing," replied a chorus of discordant voices.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Ho, ho! here is a piece of the dark ages we did
not bargain for. Here is the Jacquerie. Here is the march of mind
with a witness.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9