Headlong Hall Part 9

"I would not have her," said Squire Headlong, "if she had fifty. I'll think of somebody presently. I should like to be married on the same day with Caprioletta."

"Caprioletta!" said Miss Brindle-mew; "without my being consulted."

"Consulted!" said the squire: "I was commissioned to tell you, but somehow or other I let it slip. However, she is going to be married to my friend Mr Foster, the philosopher."

"Oh!" said the maiden aunt, "that a daughter of our ancient family should marry a philosopher! It is enough to make the bones of all the Ap-Rhaiaders turn in their graves!"

"I happen to be more enlightened," said Squire Headlong, "than any of my ancestors were. Besides, it is Caprioletta's affair, not mine. I tell you, the matter is settled, fixed, determined; and so am I, to be married on the same day. I don't know, now I think of it, whom I can choose better than one of the daughters of my friend Chromatic."

"A Saxon!" said the aunt, turning up her nose, and was commencing a vehement remonstrance; but the squire, exclaiming "Music has charms!"

flew over to Mr Chromatic, and, with a hearty slap on the shoulder, asked him "how he should like him for a son-in-law?" Mr Chromatic, rubbing his shoulder, and highly delighted with the proposal, answered, "Very much indeed:" but, proceeding to ascertain which of his daughters had captivated the squire, the squire demurred, and was unable to satisfy his curiosity. "I hope," said Mr Chromatic, "it may be Tenorina; for I imagine Graziosa has conceived a _penchant_ for Sir Patrick O'Prism."--"Tenorina, exactly," said Squire Headlong; and became so impatient to bring the matter to a conclusion, that Mr Chromatic undertook to communicate with his daughter immediately. The young lady proved to be as ready as the squire, and the preliminaries were arranged in little more than five minutes.

Mr Chromatic's words, that he imagined his daughter Graziosa had conceived a _penchant_ for Sir Patrick O'Prism, were not lost on the squire, who at once determined to have as many companions in the sc.r.a.pe as possible, and who, as soon as he could tear himself from Mrs Headlong elect, took three flying bounds across the room to the baronet, and said, "So, Sir Patrick, I find you and I are going to be married?"

"Are we?" said Sir Patrick: "then sure won't I wish you joy, and myself too? for this is the first I have heard of it."

"Well," said Squire Headlong, "I have made up my mind to it, and you must not disappoint me."

"To be sure I won't, if I can help it," said Sir Patrick; "and I am very much obliged to you for taking so much trouble off my hands. And pray, now, who is it that I am to be metamorphosing into Lady O'Prism?"

"Miss Graziosa Chromatic," said the squire.

"Och violet and vermilion!" said Sir Patrick; "though I never thought of it before, I dare say she will suit me as well as another: but then you must persuade the ould Orpheus to draw out a few _notes_ of rather a more magical description than those he is so fond of sc.r.a.ping on his crazy violin."

"To be sure he shall," said the squire; and, immediately returning to Mr Chromatic, concluded the negotiation for Sir Patrick as expeditiously as he had done for himself.

The squire next addressed himself to Mr Escot: "Here are three couple of us going to throw off together, with the Reverend Doctor Gaster for whipper-in: now, I think you cannot do better than make the fourth with Miss Cephalis; and then, as my father-in-law that is to be would say, we shall compose a very harmonious octave."

"Indeed," said Mr Escot, "nothing would be more agreeable to both of us than such an arrangement: but the old gentleman, since I first knew him, has changed, like the rest of the world, very lamentably for the worse: now, we wish to bring him to reason, if possible, though we mean to dispense with his consent, if he should prove much longer refractory."

"I'll settle him," said Squire Headlong; and immediately posted up to Mr Cranium, informing him that four marriages were about to take place by way of a merry winding up of the Christmas festivities.

"Indeed!" said Mr Cranium; "and who are the parties?"

"In the first place," said the squire, "my sister and Mr Foster: in the second, Miss Graziosa Chromatic and Sir Patrick O'Prism: in the third, Miss Tenorina Chromatic and your humble servant: and in the fourth to which, by the by, your consent is wanted----"

"Oho!" said Mr Cranium.

"Your daughter," said Squire Headlong.

"And Mr Panscope?" said Mr Cranium.

"And Mr Escot," said Squire Headlong. "What would you have better? He has ten thousand virtues."

"So has Mr Panscope," said Mr Cranium; "he has ten thousand a year."

"Virtues?" said Squire Headlong.

"Pounds," said Mr Cranium.

"I have set my mind on Mr Escot," said the squire.

"I am much obliged to you," said Mr Cranium, "for dethroning me from my paternal authority."

"Who fished you out of the water?" said Squire Headlong.

"What is that to the purpose?" said Mr Cranium. "The whole process of the action was mechanical and necessary. The application of the poker necessitated the ignition of the powder: the ignition necessitated the explosion: the explosion necessitated my sudden fright, which necessitated my sudden jump, which, from a necessity equally powerful, was in a curvilinear ascent: the descent, being in a corresponding curve, and commencing at a point perpendicular to the extreme line of the edge of the tower, I was, by the necessity of gravitation, attracted, first, through the ivy, and secondly through the hazel, and thirdly through the ash, into the water beneath. The motive or impulse thus adhibited in the person of a drowning man, was as powerful on his material compages as the force of gravitation on mine; and he could no more help jumping into the water than I could help falling into it."

"All perfectly true," said Squire Headlong; "and, on the same principle, you make no distinction between the man who knocks you down and him who picks you up."

"I make this distinction," said Mr Cranium, "that I avoid the former as a machine containing a peculiar _cataballitive_ quality, which I have found to be not consentaneous to my mode of pleasurable existence; but I attach no moral merit or demerit to either of them, as these terms are usually employed, seeing that they are equally creatures of necessity, and must act as they do from the nature of their organisation. I no more blame or praise a man for what is called vice or virtue, than I tax a tuft of hemlock with malevolence, or discover great philanthropy in a field of potatoes, seeing that the men and the plants are equally incapacitated, by their original internal organisation, and the combinations and modifications of external circ.u.mstances, from being any thing but what they are. _Quod victus fateare necesse est_."

"Yet you destroy the hemlock," said Squire Headlong, "and cultivate the potato; that is my way, at least."

"I do," said Mr Cranium; "because I know that the farinaceous qualities of the potato will tend to preserve the great requisites of unity and coalescence in the various const.i.tuent portions of my animal republic; and that the hemlock, if gathered by mistake for parsley, chopped up small with b.u.t.ter, and eaten with a boiled chicken, would necessitate a great derangement, and perhaps a total decomposition, of my corporeal mechanism."

"Very well," said the squire; "then you are necessitated to like Mr Escot better than Mr Panscope?"

"That is a _non sequitur_," said Mr Cranium.

"Then this is a _sequitur_," said the squire: "your daughter and Mr Escot are necessitated to love one another; and, unless you feel necessitated to adhibit your consent, they will feel necessitated to dispense with it; since it does appear to moral and political economists to be essentially inherent in the eternal fitness of things."

Mr Cranium fell into a profound reverie: emerging from which, he said, looking Squire Headlong full in the face, "Do you think Mr Escot would give me that skull?"

"Skull!" said Squire Headlong.

"Yes," said Mr Cranium, "the skull of Cadwallader."

"To be sure he will," said the squire.

"Ascertain the point," said Mr Cranium.

"How can you doubt it?" said the squire.

"I simply know," said Mr Cranium, "that if it were once in my possession, I would not part with it for any acquisition on earth, much less for a wife. I have had one: and, as marriage has been compared to a pill, I can very safely a.s.sert that _one is a dose_; and my reason for thinking that he will not part with it is, that its extraordinary magnitude tends to support his system, as much as its very marked protuberances tend to support mine; and you know his own system is of all things the dearest to every man of liberal thinking and a philosophical tendency."

The Squire flew over to Mr Escot. "I told you," said he, "I would settle him: but there is a very hard condition attached to his compliance."

"I submit to it," said Mr Escot, "be it what it may."

"Nothing less," said Squire Headlong, "than the absolute and unconditional surrender of the skull of Cadwallader."

"I resign it," said Mr Escot.

"The skull is yours," said the squire, skipping over to Mr Cranium.

"I am perfectly satisfied," said Mr Cranium.