Nightmare Abbey
Page 7
CHAPTER VII
A new visitor arrived at the Abbey, in the person of Mr Asterias,the ichthyologist. This gentleman had passed his life in seeking theliving wonders of the deep through the four quarters of the world;he had a cabinet of stuffed and dried fishes, of shells, sea-weeds,corals, and madrepores, that was the admiration and envy of the RoyalSociety. He had penetrated into the watery den of the Sepia Octopus,disturbed the conjugal happiness of that turtle-dove of the ocean, andcome off victorious in a sanguinary conflict. He had been becalmedin the tropical seas, and had watched, in eager expectation, thoughunhappily always in vain, to see the colossal polypus rise from thewater, and entwine its enormous arms round the masts and the rigging.He maintained the origin of all things from water, and insisted thatthe polypodes were the first of animated things, and that, from theirround bodies and many-shooting arms, the Hindoos had taken their gods,the most ancient of deities. But the chief object of his ambition, theend and aim of his researches, was to discover a triton and a mermaid,the existence of which he most potently and implicitly believed, andwas prepared to demonstrate, _a priori, a posteriori, a fortiori_,synthetically and analytically, syllogistically and inductively,by arguments deduced both from acknowledged facts and plausiblehypotheses. A report that a mermaid had been seen 'sleeking her softalluring locks' on the sea-coast of Lincolnshire, had brought him ingreat haste from London, to pay a long-promised and often-postponedvisit to his old acquaintance, Mr Glowry.
Mr Asterias was accompanied by his son, to whom he had given the nameof Aquarius--flattering himself that he would, in the process of time,become a constellation among the stars of ichthyological science. Whatcharitable female had lent him the mould in which this son was cast,no one pretended to know; and, as he never dropped the most distantallusion to Aquarius's mother, some of the wags of London maintainedthat he had received the favours of a mermaid, and that the scientificperquisitions which kept him always prowling about the sea-shore, weredirected by the less philosophical motive of regaining his lost love.
Mr Asterias perlustrated the sea-coast for several days, and reapeddisappointment, but not despair. One night, shortly after his arrival,he was sitting in one of the windows of the library, looking towardsthe sea, when his attention was attracted by a figure which was movingnear the edge of the surf, and which was dimly visible through themoonless summer night. Its motions were irregular, like those of aperson in a state of indecision. It had extremely long hair, whichfloated in the wind. Whatever else it might be, it certainly was not afisherman. It might be a lady; but it was neither Mrs Hilary nor MissO'Carroll, for they were both in the library. It might be one of thefemale servants; but it had too much grace, and too striking an air ofhabitual liberty, to render it probable. Besides, what should one ofthe female servants be doing there at this hour, moving to and fro,as it seemed, without any visible purpose? It could scarcely be astranger; for Claydyke, the nearest village, was ten miles distant;and what female would come ten miles across the fens, for no purposebut to hover over the surf under the walls of Nightmare Abbey? Mightit not be a mermaid? It was possibly a mermaid. It was probably amermaid. It was very probably a mermaid. Nay, what else could it bebut a mermaid? It certainly was a mermaid. Mr Asterias stole out ofthe library on tiptoe, with his finger on his lips, having beckonedAquarius to follow him.
The rest of the party was in great surprise at Mr Asterias's movement,and some of them approached the window to see if the locality wouldtend to elucidate the mystery. Presently they saw him and Aquariuscautiously stealing along on the other side of the moat, but they sawnothing more; and Mr Asterias returning, told them, with accents ofgreat disappointment, that he had had a glimpse of a mermaid, but shehad eluded him in the darkness, and was gone, he presumed, to sup withsome enamoured triton, in a submarine grotto.
'But, seriously, Mr Asterias,' said the Honourable Mr Listless, 'doyou positively believe there are such things as mermaids?'
MR ASTERIAS
Most assuredly; and tritons too.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
What! things that are half human and half fish?
MR ASTERIAS
Precisely. They are the oran-outangs of the sea. But I am persuadedthat there are also complete sea men, differing in no respect from us,but that they are stupid, and covered with scales; for, though ourorganisation seems to exclude us essentially from the class ofamphibious animals, yet anatomists well know that the _foramen ovale_may remain open in an adult, and that respiration is, in that case,not necessary to life: and how can it be otherwise explained that theIndian divers, employed in the pearl fishery, pass whole hours underthe water; and that the famous Swedish gardener of Troningholm liveda day and a half under the ice without being drowned? A nereid, ormermaid, was taken in the year 1403 in a Dutch lake, and was in everyrespect like a French woman, except that she did not speak. Towardsthe end of the seventeenth century, an English ship, a hundred andfifty leagues from land, in the Greenland seas, discovered a flotillaof sixty or seventy little skiffs, in each of which was a triton, orsea man: at the approach of the English vessel the whole of them,seized with simultaneous fear, disappeared, skiffs and all, underthe water, as if they had been a human variety of the nautilus. Theillustrious Don Feijoo has preserved an authentic and well-attestedstory of a young Spaniard, named Francis de la Vega, who, bathing withsome of his friends in June, 1674, suddenly dived under the sea androse no more. His friends thought him drowned; they were plebeians andpious Catholics; but a philosopher might very legitimately have drawnthe same conclusion.
THE REVEREND MR LARYNX
Nothing could be more logical.
MR ASTERIAS
Five years afterwards, some fishermen near Cadiz found in their nets atriton, or sea man; they spoke to him in several languages--
THE REVEREND MR LARYNX
They were very learned fishermen.
MR HILARY
They had the gift of tongues by especial favour of their brotherfisherman, Saint Peter.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
Is Saint Peter the tutelar saint of Cadiz?
(_None of the company could answer this question, and_ MR ASTERIAS_proceeded_.)
They spoke to him in several languages, but he was as mute as a fish.They handed him over to some holy friars, who exorcised him; but thedevil was mute too. After some days he pronounced the name Lierganes.A monk took him to that village. His mother and brothers recognisedand embraced him; but he was as insensible to their caresses as anyother fish would have been. He had some scales on his body, whichdropped off by degrees; but his skin was as hard and rough asshagreen. He stayed at home nine years, without recovering hisspeech or his reason: he then disappeared again; and one of his oldacquaintance, some years after, saw him pop his head out of the waternear the coast of the Asturias. These facts were certified by hisbrothers, and by Don Gaspardo de la Riba Aguero, Knight of SaintJames, who lived near Lierganes, and often had the pleasure ofour triton's company to dinner.--Pliny mentions an embassy of theOlyssiponians to Tiberius, to give him intelligence of a triton whichhad been heard playing on its shell in a certain cave; with severalother authenticated facts on the subject of tritons and nereids.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
You astonish me. I have been much on the sea-shore, in the season, butI do not think I ever saw a mermaid. (_He rang, and summoned Fatout,who made his appearance half-seas-over_.) Fatout! did I ever see amermaid?
FATOUT
Mermaid! mer-r-m-m-aid! Ah! merry maid! Oui, monsieur! Yes, sir, verymany. I vish dere vas von or two here in de kitchen--ma foi! Dey beall as melancholic as so many tombstone.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
I mean, Fatout, an odd kind of human fish.
FATOUT
De odd fish! Ah, oui! I understand de phrase: ve have seen nothingelse since ve left town--ma foi!
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
You seem to have a cup too much, sir.
FATOUT
&
nbsp; Non, monsieur: de cup too little. De fen be very unwholesome, and Idrink-a-de ponch vid Raven de butler, to keep out de bad air.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
Fatout! I insist on your being sober.
FATOUT
Oui, monsieur; I vil be as sober as de reverendissime pere Jean. Ishould be ver glad of de merry maid; but de butler be de odd fish,and he swim in de bowl de ponch. Ah! ah! I do recollect de leetle-asong:--'About fair maids, and about fair maids, and about my merrymaids all.' (_Fatout reeled out, singing_.)
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
I am overwhelmed: I never saw the rascal in such a condition before.But will you allow me, Mr Asterias, to inquire into the _cui bono_ ofall the pains and expense you have incurred to discover a mermaid? The_cui bono_, sir, is the question I always take the liberty to ask whenI see any one taking much trouble for any object. I am myself a sortof Signor Pococurante, and should like to know if there be any thingbetter or pleasanter, than the state of existing and doing nothing?
MR ASTERIAS
I have made many voyages, Mr Listless, to remote and barren shores:I have travelled over desert and inhospitable lands: I have defieddanger--I have endured fatigue--I have submitted to privation. In themidst of these I have experienced pleasures which I would not at anytime have exchanged for that of existing and doing nothing. I haveknown many evils, but I have never known the worst of all, which, asit seems to me, are those which are comprehended in the inexhaustiblevarieties of _ennui_: spleen, chagrin, vapours, blue devils,time-killing, discontent, misanthropy, and all their interminabletrain of fretfulness, querulousness, suspicions, jealousies, andfears, which have alike infected society, and the literature ofsociety; and which would make an arctic ocean of the human mind, ifthe more humane pursuits of philosophy and science did not keep alivethe better feelings and more valuable energies of our nature.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
You are pleased to be severe upon our fashionable belles lettres.
MR ASTERIAS
Surely not without reason, when pirates, highwaymen, and othervarieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only _beau ideal_of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of thespeculative energy. A gloomy brow and a tragical voice seem to havebeen of late the characteristics of fashionable manners: and a morbid,withering, deadly, antisocial sirocco, loaded with moral and politicaldespair, breathes through all the groves and valleys of the modernParnassus; while science moves on in the calm dignity of its course,affording to youth delights equally pure and vivid--to maturity, calmand grateful occupation--to old age, the most pleasing recollectionsand inexhaustible materials of agreeable and salutary reflection; and,while its votary enjoys the disinterested pleasure of enlarging theintellect and increasing the comforts of society, he is himselfindependent of the caprices of human intercourse and the accidents ofhuman fortune. Nature is his great and inexhaustible treasure. Hisdays are always too short for his enjoyment: _ennui_ is a stranger tohis door. At peace with the world and with his own mind, he sufficesto himself, makes all around him happy, and the close of his pleasingand beneficial existence is the evening of a beautiful day.[6]
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
Really I should like very well to lead such a life myself, but theexertion would be too much for me. Besides, I have been at college.I contrive to get through my day by sinking the morning in bed,and killing the evening in company; dressing and dining in theintermediate space, and stopping the chinks and crevices of the fewvacant moments that remain with a little easy reading. And thatamiable discontent and antisociality which you reprobate in ourpresent drawing-room-table literature, I find, I do assure you, a veryfine mental tonic, which reconciles me to my favourite pursuit ofdoing nothing, by showing me that nobody is worth doing any thing for.
MARIONETTA
But is there not in such compositions a kind of unconsciousself-detection, which seems to carry their own antidote with them? Forsurely no one who cordially and truly either hates or despises theworld will publish a volume every three months to say so.
MR FLOSKY
There is a secret in all this, which I will elucidate with a duskyremark. According to Berkeley, the _esse_ of things is _percipi_. Theyexist as they are perceived. But, leaving for the present, as faras relates to the material world, the materialists, hyloists, andantihyloists, to settle this point among them, which is indeed
A subtle question, raised among Those out o' their wits, and those i' the wrong:
for only we transcendentalists are in the right: we may very safelyassert that the _esse_ of happiness is _percipi_. It exists as it isperceived. 'It is the mind that maketh well or ill.' The elements ofpleasure and pain are every where. The degree of happiness that anycircumstances or objects can confer on us depends on the mentaldisposition with which we approach them. If you consider what is meantby the common phrases, a happy disposition and a discontented temper,you will perceive that the truth for which I am contending isuniversally admitted.
_(Mr Flosky suddenly stopped: he found himself unintentionallytrespassing within the limits of common sense.)_
MR HILARY
It is very true; a happy disposition finds materials of enjoymentevery where. In the city, or the country--in society, or insolitude--in the theatre, or the forest--in the hum of the multitude,or in the silence of the mountains, are alike materials of reflectionand elements of pleasure. It is one mode of pleasure to listen tothe music of 'Don Giovanni,' in a theatre glittering with light, andcrowded with elegance and beauty: it is another to glide at sunsetover the bosom of a lonely lake, where no sound disturbs the silencebut the motion of the boat through the waters. A happy dispositionderives pleasure from both, a discontented temper from neither, butis always busy in detecting deficiencies, and feeding dissatisfactionwith comparisons. The one gathers all the flowers, the other all thenettles, in its path. The one has the faculty of enjoying every thing,the other of enjoying nothing. The one realises all the pleasure ofthe present good; the other converts it into pain, by pining aftersomething better, which is only better because it is not present, andwhich, if it were present, would not be enjoyed. These morbid spiritsare in life what professed critics are in literature; they see nothingbut faults, because they are predetermined to shut their eyes tobeauties. The critic does his utmost to blight genius in its infancy;that which rises in spite of him he will not see; and then hecomplains of the decline of literature. In like manner, these cankersof society complain of human nature and society, when they havewilfully debarred themselves from all the good they contain, and donetheir utmost to blight their own happiness and that of all aroundthem. Misanthropy is sometimes the product of disappointedbenevolence; but it is more frequently the offspring of overweeningand mortified vanity, quarrelling with the world for not being bettertreated than it deserves.
SCYTHROP (_to Marionetta_)
These remarks are rather uncharitable. There is great good in humannature, but it is at present ill-conditioned. Ardent spirits cannotbut be dissatisfied with things as they are; and, according to theirviews of the probabilities of amelioration, they will rush into theextremes of either hope or despair--of which the first is enthusiasm,and the second misanthropy; but their sources in this case are thesame, as the Severn and the Wye run in different directions, and bothrise in Plinlimmon.
MARIONETTA
'And there is salmon in both;' for the resemblance is about as closeas that between Macedon and Monmouth.
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