CHAPTER XLIV

Dexterously as Wilfrid has turned Tracy to his uses by means of the

foregoing correspondence, in doing so he had exposed himself to the

retributive poison administered by that cunning youth. And now the

Hippogriff seized him, and mounted with him into mid-air; not as when the

idle boy Ganymede was caught up to act as cup-bearer in celestial Courts,

but to plunge about on yielding vapours, with nothing near him save the

voice of his desire.

The Philosopher here peremptorily demands the pulpit. We are subject, he

says, to fantastic moods, and shall dry ready-minted phrases picture them

forth? As, for example, can the words 'delirium,' or 'frenzy,' convey an

image of Wilfrid's state, when his heart began to covet Emilia again, and

his sentiment not only interposed no obstacle, but trumpeted her charms

and fawned for her, and he thought her lost, remembered that she had been

his own, and was ready to do any madness to obtain her? 'Madness' is the

word that hits the mark, but it does not fully embrace the meaning. To be

in this state, says the Philosopher, is to be 'On The Hippogriff;' and to

this, as he explains, the persons who travel to Love by the road of

sentiment will come, if they have any stuff in them, and if the one who

kindles them is mighty. He distinguishes being on the Hippogriff from

being possessed by passion. Passion, he says, is noble strength on fire,

and points to Emilia as a representation of passion. She asks for what

she thinks she may have; she claims what she imagines to be her own. She

has no shame, and thus, believing in, she never violates, nature, and

offends no law, wild as she may seem. Passion does not turn on her and

rend her when it is thwarted. She was never carried out of the limit of

her own intelligent force, seeing that it directed her always, with the

simple mandate to seek that which belonged to her. She was perfectly

sane, and constantly just to herself, until the failure of her voice,

telling her that she was a beggar in the world, came as a second blow,

and partly scared her reason. Constantly just to herself, mind! This is

the quality of true passion. Those who make a noise, and are not thus

distinguishable, are on Hippogriff.

--By which it is clear to me that my fantastic Philosopher means to

indicate the lover mounted in this wise, as a creature bestriding an

extraneous power. "The sentimentalist," he says, "goes on accumulating

images and hiving sensations, till such time as (if the stuff be in him)

they assume a form of vitality, and hurry him headlong. This is not

passion, though it amazes men, and does the madder thing."

In fine, it is Hippogriff. And right loath am I to continue my

partnership with a fellow who will not see things on the surface, and is,

as a necessary consequence, blind to the fact that the public detest him.

I mean, this garrulous, super-subtle, so-called Philosopher, who first

set me upon the building of 'The Three Volumes,' it is true, but whose

stipulation that he should occupy so large a portion of them has made

them rock top-heavy, to the forfeit of their stability. He maintains that

a story should not always flow, or, at least, not to a given measure.

When we are knapsack on back, he says, we come to eminences where a

survey of our journey past and in advance is desireable, as is a distinct

pause in any business, here and there. He points proudly to the fact that

our people in this comedy move themselves,--are moved from their own

impulsion,--and that no arbitrary hand has posted them to bring about any

event and heap the catastrophe. In vain I tell him that he is meantime

making tatters of the puppets' golden robe illusion: that he is sucking

the blood of their warm humanity out of them. He promises that when

Emilia is in Italy he will retire altogether; for there is a field of

action, of battles and conspiracies, nerve and muscle, where life fights

for plain issues, and he can but sum results. Let us, he entreats, be

true to time and place. In our fat England, the gardener Time is playing

all sorts of delicate freaks in the lines and traceries of the flower of

life, and shall we not note them? If we are to understand our species,

and mark the progress of civilization at all, we must. Thus the

Philosopher. Our partner is our master, and I submit, hopefully looking

for release with my Emilia, in the day when Italy reddens the sky with

the banners of a land revived.

I hear Wilfrid singing out that he is aloft, burning to rush ahead, while

his beast capers in one spot, abominably ludicrous. This trick of

Hippogriff is peculiar, viz., that when he loses all faith in himself, he

sinks--in other words, goes to excesses of absurd humility to regain it.

Passion has likewise its panting intervals, but does nothing so

preposterous. The wreath of black briony, spoken of by Tracy as the crown

of Emilia's forehead, had begun to glow with a furnace-colour in

Wilfrid's fancy. It worked a Satanic distraction in him. The girl sat

before him swathed in a darkness, with the edges of the briony leaves

shining deadly--radiant above--young Hecate! The next instant he was

bleeding with pity for her, aching with remorse, and again stung to

intense jealousy of all who might behold her (amid a reserve of angry

sensations at her present happiness).

Why had she not made allowance for his miserable situation that night in

Devon? Why did she not comprehend his difficulties in relation to his

father's affairs? Why did she not know that he could not fail to love her

for ever?

Interrogations such as these were so many switches of the whip in the

flanks of Hippogriff.

Another peculiarity of the animal gifted with wings is, that around the

height he soars to he can see no barriers nor any of the fences raised by

men. And here again he differs from Passion, which may tug against common

sense but is never, in a great nature, divorced from it: In air on

Hippogriff, desires wax boundless, obstacles are hidden. It seemed

nothing to Wilfrid (after several tremendous descents of humility) that

he should hurry for Monmouth away, to gaze on Emilia under her fair,

infernal, bewitching wreath; nothing that he should put an arm round her;

nothing that he should forthwith carry her off, though he died for it.

Forming no design beyond that of setting his eyes on her, he turned the

head of Hippogriff due Westward.