The solitary sage and the
solitary Maid.
While such the entrance of Marmaduke Nevile into a
court, that if far less intellectual and refined than
those of later days, was yet more calculated to dazzle
the fancy, to sharpen the wit, and to charm the senses,—for
round the throne of Edward IV. chivalry was magnificent,
intrigue restless, and pleasure ever on the wing,—Sibyll
had ample leisure in her solitary home to muse over
the incidents that had preceded the departure of the
young guest. Though she had rejected Marmaduke’s
proffered love, his tone, so suddenly altered, his
abrupt, broken words and confusion, his farewell,
so soon succeeding his passionate declaration, could
not fail to wound that pride of woman which never
sleeps till modesty is gone. But this made the
least cause of the profound humiliation which bowed
down her spirit. The meaning taunt conveyed
in the rhyme of the tymbesteres pierced her to the
quick; the calm, indifferent smile of the stranger,
as he regarded her, the beauty of the dame he attended,
woke mingled and contrary feelings, but those of jealousy
were perhaps the keenest: and in the midst of
all she started to ask herself if indeed she had suffered
her vain thoughts to dwell too tenderly upon one from
whom the vast inequalities of human life must divide
her evermore. What to her was his indifference?
Nothing,—yet had she given worlds to banish
that careless smile from her remembrance.
Shrinking at last from the tyranny of thoughts till
of late unknown, her eye rested upon the gipsire which
Alwyn had sent her by the old servant. The sight
restored to her the holy recollection of her father,
the sweet joy of having ministered to his wants.
She put up the little treasure, intending to devote
it all to Warner; and after bathing her heavy eyes,
that no sorrow of hers might afflict the student,
she passed with a listless step into her father’s
chamber.
There is, to the quick and mercurial spirits of the
young, something of marvellous and preternatural in
that life within life, which the strong passion of
science and genius forms and feeds,—that
passion so much stronger than love, and so much more
self-dependent; which asks no sympathy, leans on no
kindred heart; which lives alone in its works and
fancies, like a god amidst his creations.
The philosopher, too, had experienced a great affliction
since they met last. In the pride of his heart
he had designed to show Marmaduke the mystic operations
of his model, which had seemed that morning to open
into life; and when the young man was gone, and he
made the experiment alone, alas! he found that new
progress but involved him in new difficulties.
He had gained the first steps in the gigantic creation
of modern days, and he was met by the obstacle that
baffled so long the great modern sage. There
was the cylinder, there the boiler; yet, work as he
would, the steam failed to keep the cylinder at work.
And now, patiently as the spider re-weaves the broken
web, his untiring ardour was bent upon constructing
a new cylinder of other materials. “Strange,”
he said to himself, “that the heat of the mover
aids not the movement;” and so, blundering near
the truth, he laboured on.
