HORSE-TAMING--LOVE IN DILEMMA--INJUNCTIONS--SONOROUS VASES
O gran contrasto in giovenil pensiero,
Desir di laude, ed impeto d'amore 1
Ariosto: c. 25.
How great a strife in youthful minds can raise
Impulse of love, and keen desire of praise.
Lord Curryfin, amongst his multifarious acquirements, had taken lessons
from the great horse-tamer, and thought himself as well qualified as
his master to subdue any animal of the species, however vicious. It
was therefore with great pleasure he heard that there was a singularly
refractory specimen in Mr. Gryll's stables.
[Illustration: A singularly refractory specimen 153-123]
The next morning after hearing this, he rose early, and took his
troublesome charge in hand. After some preliminary management he
proceeded to gallop him round and round a large open space in the park,
which was visible from the house. Miss Niphet, always an early riser,
and having just prepared for a walk, saw him from her chamber window
engaged in this perilous exercise, and though she knew nothing of
the peculiar character of his recalcitrant disciple, she saw by its
shakings, kickings, and plungings, that it was exerting all its energies
to get rid of its rider. At last it made a sudden dash into the wood,
and disappeared among the trees.
It was to the young lady a matter of implicit certainty that some
disaster would ensue. She pictured to herself all the contingencies of
accident; being thrown to the ground and kicked by the horse's hoofs,
being dashed against a tree, or suspended, like Absalom, by the hair.
She hurried down and hastened towards the wood, from which, just as she
reached it, the rider and horse emerged at full speed as before. But as
soon as Lord Curryfin saw Miss Niphet, he took a graceful wheel round,
and brought the horse to a stand by her side; for by this time he had
mastered the animal, and brought it to the condition of Sir Walter's
hunter in Wordsworth--
Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned
And foaming like a mountain cataract{1}
She did not attempt to dissemble that she had come to look for him, but
said--
'I expected to find you killed.'
[Illustration: I expected to find you killed 156-124]
He said, 'You see, all my experiments are not failures. I have been more
fortunate with the horse than the sail.'
At this moment one of the keepers appeared at a little distance.
Lord Curryfin beckoned to him, and asked him to take the horse to the
stables. The keeper looked with some amazement, and exclaimed--
'Why, this is the horse that nobody could manage!'
'You will manage him easily enough now,' said _Lord Curryfin._
So it appeared; and the keeper took charge of him, not altogether
without misgiving.
Miss Niphefs feelings had been over-excited, the more so from the
severity with which she was accustomed to repress them. The energy which
had thus far upheld her suddenly gave way. She sat down on a fallen
tree, and burst into tears. Lord Curryfin sat down by her, and took her
hand. She allowed him to retain it awhile; but all at once snatched it
from him and sped towards the house over the grass, with the swiftness
and lightness of Virgil's Camilla, leaving his lordship as much
astonished at her movements as the Volscian crowd, _attonitis inhians
animis_,{2} had been at those of her prototype. He could not help
thinking, 'Few women run gracefully; but she runs like another
Atalanta.'
1 Hartleap Well.
2 Gaping with wondering minds.
When the party met at breakfast, Miss Niphet was in her place, looking
more like a statue than ever, with, if possible, more of marble
paleness. Lord Curryfin's morning exploit, of which the story had soon
found its way from the stable to the hall, was the chief subject of
conversation. He had received a large share of what he had always so
much desired--applause and admiration; but now he thought he would
willingly sacrifice all he had ever received in that line, to see even
the shadow of a smile, or the expression of a sentiment of any kind, on
the impassive face of Melpomene. She left the room when she rose from
the breakfast-table, appeared at the rehearsal, and went through her
part as usual; sat down at luncheon, and departed as soon as it was
over. She answered, as she had always done, everything that was said
to her, frankly, and to the purpose; and also, as usual, she originated
nothing.
In the afternoon Lord Curryfin went down to the pavilion. She was not
there. He wandered about the grounds in all directions, and returned
several times to the pavilion, always in vain. At last he sat down in
the pavilion, and fell into a meditation. He asked himself how it could
be, that having begun by making love to Miss Gryll, having, indeed,
gone too far to recede unless the young lady absolved him, he was now
evidently in a transition state towards a more absorbing and violent
passion, for a person who, with all her frankness, was incomprehensible,
and whose snowy exterior seemed to cover a volcanic fire, which she
struggled to repress, and was angry with herself when she did not
thoroughly succeed in so doing. If he were quite free he would do his
part towards the solution of the mystery, by making a direct and formal
proposal to her. As a preliminary to this, he might press Miss Gryll
for an answer. All he had yet obtained from her was, 'Wait till we are
better acquainted.' He was in a dilemma between Morgana and Melpomene.
It had not entered into his thoughts that Morgana was in love with him;
but he thought it nevertheless very probable that she was in a fair
way to become so, and that even as it was she liked him well enough to
accept him. On the other hand, he could not divest himself of the idea
that Melpomene was in love with him. It was true, all the sympathy she
had yet shown might have arisen from the excitement of strong feelings,
at the real or supposed peril of a person with whom she was in the
habit of daily intercourse. It might be so. Still, the sympathy was very
impassioned; though, but for his rashness in self-exposure to danger, he
might never have known it. A few days ago, he would not press Miss Gryll
for an answer, because he feared it might be a negative. Now he would
not, because he was at least not in haste for an affirmative. But
supposing it were a negative, what certainty had he that a negative from
Morgana would not be followed by a negative from Melpomene? Then his
heart would be at sea without rudder or compass. We shall leave him
awhile to the contemplation of his perplexities.
As his thoughts were divided, so were Morgana's. If Mr. Falconer should
propose to her, she felt she could accept him without hesitation. She
saw clearly the tendency of his feelings towards her. She saw, at the
same time, that he strove to the utmost against them in behalf of his
old associations, though, with all his endeavours, he could not suppress
them in her presence. So there was the lover who did not propose, and
who would have been preferred; and there was the lover who had proposed,
and who, if it had been clear that the former chance was hopeless, would
not have been lightly given up.
If her heart had been as much interested in _Lord Curryfin._ as it was
in Mr. Falconer, she would quickly have detected a diminution in
the ardour of his pursuit; but so far as she might have noticed any
différence in his conduct, she ascribed it only to deference to her
recommendation to 'wait till they were better acquainted.' The longer
and the more quietly he waited, the better it seemed to please her. It
was not on him, but on Mr. Falconer, that the eyes of her observance
were fixed. She would have given Lord Curryfin his liberty instantly if
she had thought he wished it.
Mr. Falconer also had his own dilemma, between his new love and his old
affections. Whenever the first seemed likely to gain the ascendency,
the latter rose in their turn, like Antaeus from earth, with renovated
strength. And he kept up their force by always revisiting the Tower,
when the contest seemed doubtful.
Thus, Lord Curryfin and Mr. Falconer were rivals, with a new phase of
rivalry. In some of their variations of feeling, each wished the other
success; the latter, because he struggled against a spell that grew
more and more difficult to be resisted; the former, because he had been
suddenly overpowered by the same kind of light that had shone from the
statue of Pygmalion. Thus their rivalry, such as it was, was entirely
without animosity, and in no way disturbed the harmony of the
Aristophanic party.
The only person concerned in these complications whose thoughts and
feelings were undivided, was Miss Niphet. She had begun by laughing at
Lord Curryfin, and had ended by forming a decided partiality lor him.
She contended against the feeling; she was aware of his intentions
towards Miss Gryll; and she would perhaps have achieved a conquest over
herself, if her sympathies had not been kept in a continual fever by the
rashness with which he exposed himself to accidents by flood and field.
At the same time, as she was more interested in observing Morgana
than Morgana was in observing her, she readily perceived the latter's
predilection for Mr. Falconer, and the gradual folding around him of
the enchanted net. These observations, and the manifest progressive
concentration of Lord Curryfin's affections on herself, showed her that
she was not in the way of inflicting any very severe wound on her young
friend's feelings, or encouraging a tendency to absolute hopelessness in
her own.
Lord Curryfin was pursuing his meditations in the pavilion, when the
young lady, whom he had sought there in vain, presented herself before
him in great agitation. He started up to meet her, and held out both his
hands. She took them both, held them a moment, disengaged them, and sat
down at a little distance, which he immediately reduced to nothing. He
then expressed his disappointment at not having previously found her
in the pavilion, and his delight at seeing her now. After a pause,
she said: 'I felt so much disturbed in the morning, that I should
have devoted the whole day to recovering calmness of thought, but for
something I have just heard. My maid tells me that you are going to try
that horrid horse in harness, and in a newly-invented high phaeton of
your own, and that the grooms say they would not drive that horse in
any carriage, nor any horse in that carriage, and that you have a double
chance of breaking your neck. I have disregarded all other feelings to
entreat you to give up your intention.'
Lord Curryfin assured her that he felt too confident in his power over
horses, and in the safety of his new invention, to admit the possibility
of danger: but that it was a very small sacrifice to her to restrict
himself to tame horses and low carriages, or to abstinence from all
horses and carriages, if she desired it.
'And from sailing-boats,' she added.
'And from sailing-boats,' he answered.
'And from balloons,' she said.
'And from balloons,' he answered. 'But what made you think of balloons?'
'Because,' she said, 'they are dangerous, and you are inquiring and
adventurous.'
[Illustration: And from balloons 162-130]
'To tell you the truth,' he said, 'I have been up in a balloon. I
thought it the most disarming excursion I ever made. I have thought of
going up again. I have invented a valve------'
'O heavens!' she exclaimed. 'But I have your promise touching horses,
and carriages, and sails, and balloons.'
'You have,' he said. 'It shall be strictly adhered to.'
She rose to return to the house. But this time he would not part with
her, and they returned together.
Thus prohibited by an authority to which he yielded implicit obedience
from trying further experiments at the risk of his neck, he restricted
his inventive faculty to safer channels, and determined that the
structure he was superintending should reproduce, as far as possible,
all the peculiarities of the Athenian Theatre. Amongst other things,
he studied attentively the subject of the _echeia,_ or sonorous vases,
which, in that vast theatre, propagated and clarified sound; and though
in its smaller representative they were not needed, he thought it still
possible that they might produce an agreeable effect But with all the
assistance of the Reverend Doctor Opimian, he found it difficult
to arrive at a clear idea of their construction, or even of their
principle; for the statement of Vitruvius, that they gave an accordant
resonance in the fourth, the fifth, and the octave, seemed incompatible
with the idea of changes of key, and not easily reconcilable with the
doctrine of Harmonics. At last he made up his mind that they had no
reference to key, but solely to pitch, modified by duly-proportioned
magnitude and distance; he therefore set to work assiduously, got a
number of vases made, ascertained that they would give a resonance of
some kind, and had them disposed at proper intervals round the audience
part of the building. This being done, the party assembled, some as
audience, some as performers, to judge of the effect. The first burst of
choral music produced a resonance, like the sound produced by sea-shells
when placed against the ear, only many times multiplied, and growing
like the sound of a gong: it was the exaggerated concentration of the
symphony of a lime-grove full of cockchafers,{1} on a fine evening in
the early summer. The experiment was then tried with single voices: the
hum was less in itself, but greater in proportion. It was then tried
with speaking: the result was the same: a powerful and perpetual
hum, not resonant peculiarly to the diatessaron, the diapente, or the
diapason, but making a new variety of continuous fundamental bass.
1 The drone of the cockchafer, as he wheels by you in drowsy
hum, sounds his _corno di bassetto_ on F below the line.--
Gardiner's Music of Nature.
'I am satisfied,' said Lord Curryfin, 'the art of making these vases is
as hopelessly lost as that of making mummies.' Miss Niphet encouraged
him to persevere. She said:
'You have produced a decided resonance: the only thing is to subdue it,
which you may perhaps effect by diminishing the number and enlarging the
intervals of the vases.'
He determined to act on the suggestion, and she felt that, for some
little time at least, she had kept him out of mischief. But whenever
anything was said or sung in the theatre, it was necessary, for the
time, to remove the _echeia_.