SKATING--PAS DE DEUX ON THE ICE--CONGENIALITY--FLINTS AMONG BONES
Ubi lepos, joci, risus, ebrietas decent,
Gratias, decor, hilaritas, atque delectatio,
Qui quaerit alia his, malum videtur quaerere.
--Plautus: In Pseudolo.
Where sport, mirth, wine, joy, grace, conspire to please,
He seeks but ill who seeks aught else than these.
The frost continued. The lake was covered over with solid ice. This
became the chief scene of afternoon amusement, and Lord Curryfin carried
off the honours of the skating. In the dead of the night there came
across his memory a ridiculous stave:
There's Mr. Tait, he cuts an eight,
He cannot cut a nine:
and he determined on trying if he could not out-do Mr. Tait.
[Illustration: Trying if he could not out-do Mr. Tait 187-157]
He thought it would be best to try his experiment without witnesses: and
having more than an hour's daylight before breakfast, he devoted that
portion of the morning to his purpose. But cutting a nine by itself
baffled his skill, and treated him to two or three tumbles, which,
however, did not abate his ardour. At length he bethought him of cutting
a nine between two eights, and by shifting his feet rapidly at the
points of difficulty, striking in and out of the nine to and from
the eights on each side. In this he succeeded, and exhibiting his
achievement in the afternoon, adorned the surface of the ice with
successions of 898, till they amounted to as many sextillions, with
their homogeneous sequences. He then enclosed the line with an oval, and
returned to the bank through an admiring circle, who, if they had been
as numerous as the spectators to the Olympic games, would have greeted
him with as loud shouts of triumph as saluted Epharmostus of Opus.{1}
Among the spectators on the bank were Miss Niphet and Mr. MacBorrowdale,
standing side by side. While Lord Curryfin was cutting his sextillions,
Mr. MacBorrowdale said: 'There is a young gentleman who is capable of
anything, and who would shine in any pursuit, if he would keep to it.
He shines as it is, in almost everything he takes in hand in private
society: there is genius even in his failures, as in the case of the
theatrical vases; but the world is a field of strong competition, and
affords eminence to few in any sphere of exertion, and to those few
rarely but in one.'
_Miss Niphet._ Before I knew him, I never heard of him but as a lecturer
on Fish; and to that he seems to limit his public ambition. In private
life, his chief aim seems to be that of pleasing his company. Of course,
you do not attach much value to his present pursuit. You see no utility
in it.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ On the contrary, I see great utility in it. I am
for a healthy mind in a healthy body: the first can scarcely be without
the last, and the last can scarcely be without good exercise in pure
air. In this way, there is nothing better than skating. I should be very
glad to cut eights and nines with his lordship: but the only figure I
should tut would be that of as many feet as would measure my own length
on the ice.
Lord Curryfin, on his return to land, thought it his duty first to
accost Miss Gryll, who was looking on by the side of Miss Ilex.
He asked her if she ever skated. She answered in the
negative. 'I have tried it,' she said, 'but unsuccessfully. I admire it
extremely, and regret my inability to participate in it.' He then went
up to Miss Niphet, and asked her the same question. She answered: 'I
have skated often in our grounds at home.' 'Then why not now?' he asked.
She answered: 'I have never done it before so many witnesses.' 'But
what is the objection?' he asked. 'None that I know of,' she answered.
'Then,' he said, 'as I have done or left undone some things to please
you, will you do this one thing to please me?'
1 (Greek phrase)--PIND. Olymp. ix.
With what a clamour he passed through the circle.
'Certainly,' she replied: adding to herself: 'I will do anything in my
power to please you.'
[Illustration: She was an Atalanta on ice as on turf 191-161]
She equipped herself expeditiously, and started before he was well
aware. She was half round the lake before he came up with her. She then
took a second start, and completed the circle before he came up with
her again. He saw that she was an Atalanta on ice as on turf. He placed
himself by her side, slipped her arm through his, and they started
together on a second round, which they completed arm-in-arm. By this
time the blush-rose bloom which had so charmed him on a former occasion
again mantled on her cheeks, though from a different cause, for it
was now only the glow of healthful exercise; but he could not help
exclaiming, 'I now see why and with what tints the Athenians coloured
their statues.'
'Is it clear,' she asked, 'that they did so?'
'I have doubted it before,' he answered, 'but I am now certain that they
did.'
In the meantime, Miss Gryll, Miss Ilex, and the Reverend Doctor Opimian
had been watching their movements from the bank.
_Miss Ilex._ I have seen much graceful motion in dancing, in private
society and on the Italian stage; and some in skating before to-day; but
anything so graceful as that double-gliding over the ice by those two
remarkably handsome young persons, I certainly never saw before.
_Miss Gryll._ Lord Curryfin is unquestionably handsome, and Miss Niphet,
especially with that glow on her cheeks, is as beautiful a young woman
as imagination can paint. They move as if impelled by a single will. It
is impossible not to admire them both.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ They remind me of the mythological fiction, that
Jupiter made men and women in pairs, like the Siamese twins; but in this
way they grew so powerful and presumptuous, that he cut them in two; and
now the main business of each half is to look for the other; which is
very rarely found, and hence so few marriages are happy. Here the two
true halves seem to have met.
The doctor looked at Miss Gryll, to see what impression this remark
might make on her. He concluded that, if she thought seriously of Lord
Curryfin, she would show some symptom of jealousy of Miss Niphet; but
she did not. She merely said--
'I quite agree with you, doctor. There is evidently great congeniality
between them, even in their respective touches of eccentricity.'
But the doctor's remark had suggested to her what she herself had failed
to observe; Lord Curryfin's subsidence from ardour into deference, in
his pursuit of herself. She had been so undividedly 'the cynosure of
neighbouring eyes,' that she could scarcely believe in the possibility
of even temporary eclipse. Her first impulse was to resign him to
her young friend. But then appearances might be deceitful. Her own
indifference might have turned his attentions into another channel,
without his heart being turned with them. She had seen nothing to show
that Miss Niphet's feelings were deeply engaged in the question. She was
not a coquette; but she would still feel it as a mortification that her
hitherto unquestioned supremacy should be passing from her. She had felt
all along that there was one cause which would lead her to a decided
rejection of _Lord Curryfin._ But her Orlando had not seized the golden
forelock; perhaps he never would. After having seemed on the point of
doing so, he had disappeared, and not returned. He was now again within
the links of the sevenfold chain, which had bound him from his earliest
days. She herself, too, had had, perhaps had still, the chance of the
golden forelock in another quarter. Might she not subject her after-life
to repentance, if her first hope should fail her when the second had
been irrevocably thrown away? The more she contemplated the sacrifice,
the greater it appeared. Possibly doubt had given preponderance to her
thoughts of Mr. Falconer; and certainly had caused them to repose in the
case of Lord Curryfin; but when doubt was thrown into the latter
scale also, the balance became more even. She would still give him his
liberty, if she believed that he wished it; for then her pride would
settle the question; but she must have more conclusive evidence on
the point than the Reverend Doctor's metaphorical deduction from a
mythological fiction.
In the evening, while the party in the drawing-room were amusing
themselves in various ways, Mr. MacBorrowdale laid a drawing on the
table, and said, 'Doctor, what should you take that to represent?'
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ An unformed lump of I know not what.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Not unformed. It is a flint formation of a very
peculiar kind.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Very peculiar, certainly. Who on earth can have
amused himself with drawing a misshapen flint? There must be some riddle
in it; some ænigma, as insoluble to me as _Aelia Laelia Crispis_.{1}
1 This ænigma has been the subject of many learned
disquisitions. The reader who is unacquainted with it may
find it under the article 'ænigma' in the _Encyclopedia
Britannica_; and probably in every other encyclopaedia.
Lord Curryfin, and others of the party, were successively asked their
opinions. One of the young ladies guessed it to be the petrifaction
of an antediluvian mussel. Lord Curryfin said petrifactions were often
siliceous, but never pure silex; which this purported to be. It gave him
the idea of an ass's head; which, however, could not by any process have
been turned into flint.
Conjecture being exhausted, Mr. MacBorrowdale said, 'It is a thing
they call a Celt. The ass's head is somewhat germane to the matter. The
Artium Societatis Syndicus Et Socii have determined that it is a weapon
of war, evidently of human manufacture. It has been found, with many
others like it, among bones of mammoths and other extinct animals, and
is therefore held to prove that men and mammoths were contemporaries.'
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ A weapon of war? Had it a handle? Is there a
hole for a handle?
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ That does not appear.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ These flints, and no other traces of men, among
the bones of mammoths?
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ None whatever.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ What do the Artium Societatis Syndicus Et Socii
suppose to have become of the men who produced these demonstrations of
high aboriginal art?
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ They think these finished specimens of skill in the
art of chipping prove that the human race is of greater antiquity than
has been previously supposed; and the fact that there is no other relic
to prove the position they consider of no moment whatever.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Ha! ha! ha! This beats the Elephant in the
Moon,{1} which turned out to be a mouse in a telescope. But I can help
them to an explanation of what became of these primaeval men-of-arms.
They were an ethereal race, and evaporated.
1 See Butler's poem, with that title, in his _Miscellaneous
Works_.