LOVE, DELIGHT, AND ALARM.
I.
On the previous evening, Pierre had arranged with Lucy the plan of a
long winding ride, among the hills which stretched around to the
southward from the wide plains of Saddle-Meadows.
Though the vehicle was a sexagenarian, the animals that drew it, were
but six-year colts. The old phaeton had outlasted several generations of
its drawers.
Pierre rolled beneath the village elms in billowy style, and soon drew
up before the white cottage door. Flinging his reins upon the ground he
entered the house.
The two colts were his particular and confidential friends; born on the
same land with him, and fed with the same corn, which, in the form of
Indian-cakes, Pierre himself was often wont to eat for breakfast. The
same fountain that by one branch supplied the stables with water, by
another supplied Pierre's pitcher. They were a sort of family cousins to
Pierre, those horses; and they were splendid young cousins; very showy
in their redundant manes and mighty paces, but not at all vain or
arrogant. They acknowledged Pierre as the undoubted head of the house of
Glendinning. They well knew that they were but an inferior and
subordinate branch of the Glendinnings, bound in perpetual feudal fealty
to its headmost representative. Therefore, these young cousins never
permitted themselves to run from Pierre; they were impatient in their
paces, but very patient in the halt. They were full of good-humor too,
and kind as kittens.
"Bless me, how can you let them stand all alone that way, Pierre," cried
Lucy, as she and Pierre stepped forth from the cottage door, Pierre
laden with shawls, parasol, reticule, and a small hamper.
"Wait a bit," cried Pierre, dropping his load; "I will show you what my
colts are."
So saying, he spoke to them mildly, and went close up to them, and
patted them. The colts neighed; the nigh colt neighing a little
jealously, as if Pierre had not patted impartially. Then, with a low,
long, almost inaudible whistle, Pierre got between the colts, among the
harness. Whereat Lucy started, and uttered a faint cry, but Pierre told
her to keep perfectly quiet, for there was not the least danger in the
world. And Lucy did keep quiet; for somehow, though she always started
when Pierre seemed in the slightest jeopardy, yet at bottom she rather
cherished a notion that Pierre bore a charmed life, and by no earthly
possibility could die from her, or experience any harm, when she was
within a thousand leagues.
Pierre, still between the horses, now stepped upon the pole of the
phaeton; then stepping down, indefinitely disappeared, or became
partially obscured among the living colonnade of the horses' eight
slender and glossy legs. He entered the colonnade one way, and after a
variety of meanderings, came out another way; during all of which
equestrian performance, the two colts kept gayly neighing, and
good-humoredly moving their heads perpendicularly up and down; and
sometimes turning them sideways toward Lucy; as much as to say--We
understand young master; we understand him, Miss; never fear, pretty
lady: why, bless your delicious little heart, we played with Pierre
before you ever did.
"Are you afraid of their running away now, Lucy?" said Pierre, returning
to her.
"Not much, Pierre; the superb fellows! Why, Pierre, they have made an
officer of you--look!" and she pointed to two foam-flakes epauletting
his shoulders. "Bravissimo again! I called you my recruit, when you left
my window this morning, and here you are promoted."
"Very prettily conceited, Lucy. But see, you don't admire their coats;
they wear nothing but the finest Genoa velvet, Lucy. See! did you ever
see such well-groomed horses?"
"Never!"
"Then what say you to have them for my groomsmen, Lucy? Glorious
groomsmen they would make, I declare. They should have a hundred ells of
white favors all over their manes and tails; and when they drew us to
church, they would be still all the time scattering white favors from
their mouths, just as they did here on me. Upon my soul, they shall be
my groomsmen, Lucy. Stately stags! playful dogs! heroes, Lucy. We shall
have no marriage bells; they shall neigh for us, Lucy; we shall be
wedded to the martial sound of Job's trumpeters, Lucy. Hark! they are
neighing now to think of it."
"Neighing at your lyrics, Pierre. Come, let us be off. Here, the shawl,
the parasol, the basket: what are you looking at them so for?"
"I was thinking, Lucy, of the sad state I am in. Not six months ago, I
saw a poor affianced fellow, an old comrade of mine, trudging along with
his Lucy Tartan, a hillock of bundles under either arm; and I said to
myself--There goes a sumpter, now; poor devil, he's a lover. And now
look at me! Well, life's a burden, they say; why not be burdened
cheerily? But look ye, Lucy, I am going to enter a formal declaration
and protest before matters go further with us. When we are married, I
am not to carry any bundles, unless in cases of real need; and what is
more, when there are any of your young lady acquaintances in sight, I am
not to be unnecessarily called upon to back up, and load for their
particular edification."
"Now I am really vexed with you, Pierre; that is the first ill-natured
innuendo I ever heard from you. Are there any of my young lady
acquaintances in sight now, I should like to know?"
"Six of them, right over the way," said Pierre; "but they keep behind
the curtains. I never trust your solitary village streets, Lucy.
Sharp-shooters behind every clap-board, Lucy."
"Pray, then, dear Pierre, do let us be off!"
II.
While Pierre and Lucy are now rolling along under the elms, let it be
said who Lucy Tartan was. It is needless to say that she was a beauty;
because chestnut-haired, bright-cheeked youths like Pierre Glendinning,
seldom fall in love with any but a beauty. And in the times to come,
there must be--as in the present times, and in the times gone by--some
splendid men, and some transcendent women; and how can they ever be,
unless always, throughout all time, here and there, a handsome youth
weds with a handsome maid!
But though owing to the above-named provisions of dame Nature, there
always will be beautiful women in the world; yet the world will never
see another Lucy Tartan. Her cheeks were tinted with the most delicate
white and red, the white predominating. Her eyes some god brought down
from heaven; her hair was Danae's, spangled with Jove's shower; her
teeth were dived for in the Persian Sea.
If long wont to fix his glance on those who, trudging through the
humbler walks of life, and whom unequal toil and poverty deform; if that
man shall haply view some fair and gracious daughter of the gods, who,
from unknown climes of loveliness and affluence, comes floating into
sight, all symmetry and radiance; how shall he be transported, that in a
world so full of vice and misery as ours, there should yet shine forth
this visible semblance of the heavens. For a lovely woman is not
entirely of this earth. Her own sex regard her not as such. A crowd of
women eye a transcendent beauty entering a room, much as though a bird
from Arabia had lighted on the window sill. Say what you will, their
jealousy--if any--is but an afterbirth to their open admiration. Do men
envy the gods? And shall women envy the goddesses? A beautiful woman is
born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of
Scots, whether men or women. All mankind are her Scots; her leal clans
are numbered by the nations. A true gentleman in Kentucky would
cheerfully die for a beautiful woman in Hindostan, though he never saw
her. Yea, count down his heart in death-drops for her; and go to Pluto,
that she might go to Paradise. He would turn Turk before he would disown
an allegiance hereditary to all gentlemen, from the hour their Grand
Master, Adam, first knelt to Eve.
A plain-faced Queen of Spain dwells not in half the glory a beautiful
milliner does. Her soldiers can break heads, but her Highness can not
crack a heart; and the beautiful milliner might string hearts for
necklaces. Undoubtedly, Beauty made the first Queen. If ever again the
succession to the German Empire should be contested, and one poor lame
lawyer should present the claims of the first excellingly beautiful
woman he chanced to see--she would thereupon be unanimously elected
Empress of the Holy Roman German Empire;--that is to say, if all the
Germans were true, free-hearted and magnanimous gentlemen, at all
capable of appreciating so immense an honor.
It is nonsense to talk of France as the seat of all civility. Did not
those French heathen have a Salique law? Three of the most bewitching
creatures,--immortal flowers of the line of Valois--were excluded from
the French throne by that infamous provision. France, indeed! whose
Catholic millions still worship Mary Queen of Heaven; and for ten
generations refused cap and knee to many angel Maries, rightful Queens
of France. Here is cause for universal war. See how vilely nations, as
well as men, assume and wear unchallenged the choicest titles, however
without merit. The Americans, and not the French, are the world's models
of chivalry. Our Salique Law provides that universal homage shall be
paid all beautiful women. No man's most solid rights shall weigh against
her airiest whims. If you buy the best seat in the coach, to go and
consult a doctor on a matter of life and death, you shall cheerfully
abdicate that best seat, and limp away on foot, if a pretty woman,
traveling, shake one feather from the stage-house door.
Now, since we began by talking of a certain young lady that went out
riding with a certain youth; and yet find ourselves, after leading such
a merry dance, fast by a stage-house window;--this may seem rather
irregular sort of writing. But whither indeed should Lucy Tartan conduct
us, but among mighty Queens, and all other creatures of high degree; and
finally set us roaming, to see whether the wide world can match so fine
a wonder. By immemorial usage, am I not bound to celebrate this Lucy
Tartan? Who shall stay me? Is she not my hero's own affianced? What can
be gainsaid? Where underneath the tester of the night sleeps such
another?
Yet, how would Lucy Tartan shrink from all this noise and clatter! She
is bragged of, but not brags. Thus far she hath floated as stilly
through this life, as thistle-down floats over meadows. Noiseless, she,
except with Pierre; and even with him she lives through many a panting
hush. Oh, those love-pauses that they know--how ominous of their
future; for pauses precede the earthquake, and every other terrible
commotion! But blue be their sky awhile, and lightsome all their chat,
and frolicsome their humors.
Never shall I get down the vile inventory! How, if with paper and with
pencil I went out into the starry night to inventorize the heavens? Who
shall tell stars as teaspoons? Who shall put down the charms of Lucy
Tartan upon paper?
And for the rest; her parentage, what fortune she would possess, how
many dresses in her wardrobe, and how many rings upon her fingers;
cheerfully would I let the genealogists, tax-gatherers, and upholsterers
attend to that. My proper province is with the angelical part of Lucy.
But as in some quarters, there prevails a sort of prejudice against
angels, who are merely angels and nothing more; therefore I shall
martyrize myself, by letting such gentlemen and ladies into some details
of Lucy Tartan's history.
She was the daughter of an early and most cherished friend of Pierre's
father. But that father was now dead, and she resided an only daughter
with her mother, in a very fine house in the city. But though her home
was in the city, her heart was twice a year in the country. She did not
at all love the city and its empty, heartless, ceremonial ways. It was
very strange, but most eloquently significant of her own natural
angelhood that, though born among brick and mortar in a sea-port, she
still pined for unbaked earth and inland grass. So the sweet linnet,
though born inside of wires in a lady's chamber on the ocean coast, and
ignorant all its life of any other spot; yet, when spring-time comes, it
is seized with flutterings and vague impatiences; it can not eat or
drink for these wild longings. Though unlearned by any experience, still
the inspired linnet divinely knows that the inland migrating time has
come. And just so with Lucy in her first longings for the verdure. Every
spring those wild flutterings shook her; every spring, this sweet
linnet girl did migrate inland. Oh God grant that those other and long
after nameless flutterings of her inmost soul, when all life was become
weary to her--God grant, that those deeper flutterings in her were
equally significant of her final heavenly migration from this heavy
earth.
It was fortunate for Lucy that her Aunt Lanyllyn--a pensive, childless,
white-turbaned widow--possessed and occupied a pretty cottage in the
village of Saddle Meadows; and still more fortunate, that this excellent
old aunt was very partial to her, and always felt a quiet delight in
having Lucy near her. So Aunt Lanyllyn's cottage, in effect, was Lucy's.
And now, for some years past, she had annually spent several months at
Saddle Meadows; and it was among the pure and soft incitements of the
country that Pierre first had felt toward Lucy the dear passion which
now made him wholly hers.
Lucy had two brothers; one her senior, by three years, and the other her
junior by two. But these young men were officers in the navy; and so
they did not permanently live with Lucy and her mother.
Mrs. Tartan was mistress of an ample fortune. She was, moreover,
perfectly aware that such was the fact, and was somewhat inclined to
force it upon the notice of other people, nowise interested in the
matter. In other words, Mrs. Tartan, instead of being daughter-proud,
for which she had infinite reason, was a little inclined to being
purse-proud, for which she had not the slightest reason; seeing that the
Great Mogul probably possessed a larger fortune than she, not to speak
of the Shah of Persia and Baron Rothschild, and a thousand other
millionaires; whereas, the Grand Turk, and all their other majesties of
Europe, Asia, and Africa to boot, could not, in all their joint
dominions, boast so sweet a girl as Lucy. Nevertheless, Mrs. Tartan was
an excellent sort of lady, as this lady-like world goes. She subscribed
to charities, and owned five pews in as many churches, and went about
trying to promote the general felicity of the world, by making all the
handsome young people of her acquaintance marry one another. In other
words, she was a match-maker--not a Lucifer match-maker--though, to tell
the truth, she may have kindled the matrimonial blues in certain
dissatisfied gentlemen's breasts, who had been wedded under her
particular auspices, and by her particular advice. Rumor said--but rumor
is always fibbing--that there was a secret society of dissatisfied young
husbands, who were at the pains of privately circulating handbills among
all unmarried young strangers, warning them against the insidious
approaches of Mrs. Tartan; and, for reference, named themselves in
cipher. But this could not have been true; for, flushed with a thousand
matches--burning blue or bright, it made little matter--Mrs. Tartan
sailed the seas of fashion, causing all topsails to lower to her; and
towing flotillas of young ladies, for all of whom she was bound to find
the finest husband harbors in the world.
But does not match-making, like charity, begin at home? Why is her own
daughter Lucy without a mate? But not so fast; Mrs. Tartan years ago
laid out that sweet programme concerning Pierre and Lucy; but in this
case, her programme happened to coincide, in some degree, with a
previous one in heaven, and only for that cause did it come to pass,
that Pierre Glendinning was the proud elect of Lucy Tartan. Besides,
this being a thing so nearly affecting herself, Mrs. Tartan had, for the
most part, been rather circumspect and cautious in all her
manoeuvrings with Pierre and Lucy. Moreover, the thing demanded no
manoeuvring at all. The two Platonic particles, after roaming in quest
of each other, from the time of Saturn and Ops till now; they came
together before Mrs. Tartan's own eyes; and what more could Mrs. Tartan
do toward making them forever one and indivisible? Once, and only once,
had a dim suspicion passed through Pierre's mind, that Mrs. Tartan was a
lady thimble-rigger, and slyly rolled the pea.
In their less mature acquaintance, he was breakfasting with Lucy and
her mother in the city, and the first cup of coffee had been poured out
by Mrs. Tartan, when she declared she smelt matches burning somewhere in
the house, and she must see them extinguished. So banning all pursuit,
she rose to seek for the burning matches, leaving the pair alone to
interchange the civilities of the coffee; and finally sent word to them,
from above stairs, that the matches, or something else, had given her a
headache, and begged Lucy to send her up some toast and tea, for she
would breakfast in her own chamber that morning.
Upon this, Pierre looked from Lucy to his boots, and as he lifted his
eyes again, saw Anacreon on the sofa on one side of him, and Moore's
Melodies on the other, and some honey on the table, and a bit of white
satin on the floor, and a sort of bride's veil on the chandelier.
Never mind though--thought Pierre, fixing his gaze on Lucy--I'm entirely
willing to be caught, when the bait is set in Paradise, and the bait is
such an angel. Again he glanced at Lucy, and saw a look of infinite
subdued vexation, and some unwonted pallor on her cheek. Then willingly
he would have kissed the delicious bait, that so gently hated to be
tasted in the trap. But glancing round again, and seeing that the music,
which Mrs. Tartan, under the pretense of putting in order, had been
adjusting upon the piano; seeing that this music was now in a vertical
pile against the wall, with--"_Love was once a little boy_," for the
outermost and only visible sheet; and thinking this to be a remarkable
coincidence under the circumstances; Pierre could not refrain from a
humorous smile, though it was a very gentle one, and immediately
repented of, especially as Lucy seeing and interpreting it, immediately
arose, with an unaccountable, indignant, angelical, adorable, and
all-persuasive "Mr. Glendinning?" utterly confounded in him the
slightest germ of suspicion as to Lucy's collusion in her mother's
imagined artifices.
Indeed, Mrs. Tartan's having any thing whatever to do, or hint, or
finesse in this matter of the loves of Pierre and Lucy, was nothing less
than immensely gratuitous and sacrilegious. Would Mrs. Tartan doctor
lilies when they blow? Would Mrs. Tartan set about match-making between
the steel and magnet? Preposterous Mrs. Tartan! But this whole world is
a preposterous one, with many preposterous people in it; chief among
whom was Mrs. Tartan, match-maker to the nation.
This conduct of Mrs. Tartan, was the more absurd, seeing that she could
not but know that Mrs. Glendinning desired the thing. And was not Lucy
wealthy?--going to be, that is, very wealthy when her mother died;--(sad
thought that for Mrs. Tartan)--and was not her husband's family of the
best; and had not Lucy's father been a bosom friend of Pierre's father?
And though Lucy might be matched to some one man, where among women was
the match for Lucy? Exceedingly preposterous Mrs. Tartan! But when a
lady like Mrs. Tartan has nothing positive and useful to do, then she
will do just such preposterous things as Mrs. Tartan did.
Well, time went on; and Pierre loved Lucy, and Lucy, Pierre; till at
last the two young naval gentlemen, her brothers, happened to arrive in
Mrs. Tartan's drawing-room, from their first cruise--a three years' one
up the Mediterranean. They rather stared at Pierre, finding him on the
sofa, and Lucy not very remote.
"Pray, be seated, gentlemen," said Pierre. "Plenty of room."
"My darling brothers!" cried Lucy, embracing them.
"My darling brothers and sister!" cried Pierre, folding them together.
"Pray, hold off, sir," said the elder brother, who had served as a
passed midshipman for the last two weeks. The younger brother retreated
a little, and clapped his hand upon his dirk, saying, "Sir, we are from
the Mediterranean. Sir, permit me to say, this is decidedly improper!
Who may you be, sir?"
"I can't explain for joy," cried Pierre, hilariously embracing them all
again.
"Most extraordinary!" cried the elder brother, extricating his
shirt-collar from the embrace, and pulling it up vehemently.
"Draw!" cried the younger, intrepidly.
"Peace, foolish fellows," cried Lucy--"this is your old play-fellow,
Pierre Glendinning."
"Pierre? why, Pierre?" cried the lads--"a hug all round again! You've
grown a fathom!--who would have known you? But, then--Lucy? I say,
Lucy?--what business have you here in this--eh? eh?--hugging-match, I
should call it?"
"Oh! Lucy don't mean any thing," cried Pierre--"come, one more all
round."
So they all embraced again; and that evening it was publicly known that
Pierre was to wed with Lucy.
Whereupon, the young officers took it upon themselves to think--though
they by no means presumed to breathe it--that they had authoritatively,
though indirectly, accelerated a before ambiguous and highly
incommendable state of affairs between the now affianced lovers.
III.
In the fine old robust times of Pierre's grandfather, an American
gentleman of substantial person and fortune spent his time in a somewhat
different style from the green-house gentlemen of the present day. The
grandfather of Pierre measured six feet four inches in height; during a
fire in the old manorial mansion, with one dash of his foot, he had
smitten down an oaken door, to admit the buckets of his negro slaves;
Pierre had often tried on his military vest, which still remained an
heirloom at Saddle Meadows, and found the pockets below his knees, and
plenty additional room for a fair-sized quarter-cask within its buttoned
girth; in a night-scuffle in the wilderness before the Revolutionary
War, he had annihilated two Indian savages by making reciprocal
bludgeons of their heads. And all this was done by the mildest hearted,
and most blue-eyed gentleman in the world, who, according to the
patriarchal fashion of those days, was a gentle, white-haired worshiper
of all the household gods; the gentlest husband, and the gentlest
father; the kindest of masters to his slaves; of the most wonderful
unruffledness of temper; a serene smoker of his after-dinner pipe; a
forgiver of many injuries; a sweet-hearted, charitable Christian; in
fine, a pure, cheerful, child-like, blue-eyed, divine old man; in whose
meek, majestic soul, the lion and the lamb embraced--fit image of his
God.
Never could Pierre look upon his fine military portrait without an
infinite and mournful longing to meet his living aspect in actual life.
The majestic sweetness of this portrait was truly wonderful in its
effects upon any sensitive and generous-minded young observer. For such,
that portrait possessed the heavenly persuasiveness of angelic speech; a
glorious gospel framed and hung upon the wall, and declaring to all
people, as from the Mount, that man is a noble, god-like being, full of
choicest juices; made up of strength and beauty.
Now, this grand old Pierre Glendinning was a great lover of horses; but
not in the modern sense, for he was no jockey;--one of his most intimate
friends of the masculine gender was a huge, proud, gray horse, of a
surprising reserve of manner, his saddle-beast; he had his horses'
mangers carved like old trenchers, out of solid maple logs; the key of
the corn-bin hung in his library; and no one grained his steeds, but
himself; unless his absence from home promoted Moyar, an incorruptible
and most punctual old black, to that honorable office. He said that no
man loved his horses, unless his own hands grained them. Every Christmas
he gave them brimming measures. "I keep Christmas with my horses," said
grand old Pierre. This grand old Pierre always rose at sunrise; washed
his face and chest in the open air; and then, returning to his closet,
and being completely arrayed at last, stepped forth to make a
ceremonious call at his stables, to bid his very honorable friends there
a very good and joyful morning. Woe to Cranz, Kit, Douw, or any other of
his stable slaves, if grand old Pierre found one horse unblanketed, or
one weed among the hay that filled their rack. Not that he ever had
Cranz, Kit, Douw, or any of them flogged--a thing unknown in that
patriarchal time and country--but he would refuse to say his wonted
pleasant word to them; and that was very bitter to them, for Cranz, Kit,
Douw, and all of them, loved grand old Pierre, as his shepherds loved
old Abraham.
What decorous, lordly, gray-haired steed is this? What old Chaldean
rides abroad?--'Tis grand old Pierre; who, every morning before he eats,
goes out promenading with his saddle-beast; nor mounts him, without
first asking leave. But time glides on, and grand old Pierre grows old:
his life's glorious grape now swells with fatness; he has not the
conscience to saddle his majestic beast with such a mighty load of
manliness. Besides, the noble beast himself is growing old, and has a
touching look of meditativeness in his large, attentive eyes. Leg of
man, swears grand old Pierre, shall never more bestride my steed; no
more shall harness touch him! Then every spring he sowed a field with
clover for his steed; and at mid-summer sorted all his meadow grasses,
for the choicest hay to winter him; and had his destined grain thrashed
out with a flail, whose handle had once borne a flag in a brisk battle,
into which this same old steed had pranced with grand old Pierre; one
waving mane, one waving sword!
Now needs must grand old Pierre take a morning drive; he rides no more
with the old gray steed. He has a phaeton built, fit for a vast General,
in whose sash three common men might hide. Doubled, trebled are the
huge S shaped leather springs; the wheels seem stolen from some mill;
the canopied seat is like a testered bed. From beneath the old archway,
not one horse, but two, every morning now draw forth old Pierre, as the
Chinese draw their fat god Josh, once every year from out his fane.
But time glides on, and a morning comes, when the phaeton emerges not;
but all the yards and courts are full; helmets line the ways;
sword-points strike the stone steps of the porch; muskets ring upon the
stairs; and mournful martial melodies are heard in all the halls. Grand
old Pierre is dead; and like a hero of old battles, he dies on the eve
of another war; ere wheeling to fire on the foe, his platoons fire over
their old commander's grave; in A. D. 1812, died grand old Pierre. The
drum that beat in brass his funeral march, was a British kettle-drum,
that had once helped beat the vain-glorious march, for the thirty
thousand predestined prisoners, led into sure captivity by that bragging
boy, Burgoyne.
Next day the old gray steed turned from his grain; turned round, and
vainly whinnied in his stall. By gracious Moyar's hand, he refuses to be
patted now; plain as horse can speak, the old gray steed says--"I smell
not the wonted hand; where is grand old Pierre? Grain me not, and groom
me not;--Where is grand old Pierre?"
He sleeps not far from his master now; beneath the field he cropt, he
has softly lain him down; and long ere this, grand old Pierre and steed
have passed through that grass to glory.
But his phaeton--like his plumed hearse, outlives the noble load it
bore. And the dark bay steeds that drew grand old Pierre alive, and by
his testament drew him dead, and followed the lordly lead of the led
gray horse; those dark bay steeds are still extant; not in themselves or
in their issue; but in the two descendants of stallions of their own
breed. For on the lands of Saddle Meadows, man and horse are both
hereditary; and this bright morning Pierre Glendinning, grandson of
grand old Pierre, now drives forth with Lucy Tartan, seated where his
own ancestor had sat, and reining steeds, whose
great-great-great-grandfathers grand old Pierre had reined before.
How proud felt Pierre: In fancy's eye, he saw the horse-ghosts a-tandem
in the van; "These are but wheelers"--cried young Pierre--"the leaders
are the generations."
IV.
But Love has more to do with his own possible and probable posterities,
than with the once living but now impossible ancestries in the past. So
Pierre's glow of family pride quickly gave place to a deeper hue, when
Lucy bade love's banner blush out from his cheek.
That morning was the choicest drop that Time had in his vase. Ineffable
distillations of a soft delight were wafted from the fields and hills.
Fatal morning that, to all lovers unbetrothed; "Come to your
confessional," it cried. "Behold our airy loves," the birds chirped from
the trees; far out at sea, no more the sailors tied their bowline-knots;
their hands had lost their cunning; will they, nill they, Love tied
love-knots on every spangled spar.
Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth, the beauty, and the bloom, and
the mirthfulness thereof! The first worlds made were winter worlds; the
second made, were vernal worlds; the third, and last, and perfectest,
was this summer world of ours. In the cold and nether spheres, preachers
preach of earth, as we of Paradise above. Oh, there, my friends, they
say, they have a season, in their language known as summer. Then their
fields spin themselves green carpets; snow and ice are not in all the
land; then a million strange, bright, fragrant things powder that sward
with perfumes; and high, majestic beings, dumb and grand, stand up with
outstretched arms, and hold their green canopies over merry angels--men
and women--who love and wed, and sleep and dream, beneath the approving
glances of their visible god and goddess, glad-hearted sun, and pensive
moon!
Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth; the beauty, and the bloom, and
the mirthfulness thereof. We lived before, and shall live again; and as
we hope for a fairer world than this to come; so we came from one less
fine. From each successive world, the demon Principle is more and more
dislodged; he is the accursed clog from chaos, and thither, by every new
translation, we drive him further and further back again. Hosannahs to
this world! so beautiful itself, and the vestibule to more. Out of some
past Egypt, we have come to this new Canaan; and from this new Canaan,
we press on to some Circassia. Though still the villains, Want and Woe,
followed us out of Egypt, and now beg in Canaan's streets: yet
Circassia's gates shall not admit them; they, with their sire, the demon
Principle, must back to chaos, whence they came.
Love was first begot by Mirth and Peace, in Eden, when the world was
young. The man oppressed with cares, he can not love; the man of gloom
finds not the god. So, as youth, for the most part, has no cares, and
knows no gloom, therefore, ever since time did begin, youth belongs to
love. Love may end in grief and age, and pain and need, and all other
modes of human mournfulness; but love begins in joy. Love's first sigh
is never breathed, till after love hath laughed. Love laughs first, and
then sighs after. Love has not hands, but cymbals; Love's mouth is
chambered like a bugle, and the instinctive breathings of his life
breathe jubilee notes of joy!
That morning, two bay horses drew two Laughs along the road that led to
the hills from Saddle Meadows. Apt time they kept; Pierre Glendinning's
young, manly tenor, to Lucy Tartan's girlish treble.
Wondrous fair of face, blue-eyed, and golden-haired, the bright blonde,
Lucy, was arrayed in colors harmonious with the heavens. Light blue be
thy perpetual color, Lucy; light blue becomes thee best--such the
repeated azure counsel of Lucy Tartan's mother. On both sides, from the
hedges, came to Pierre the clover bloom of Saddle Meadows, and from
Lucy's mouth and cheek came the fresh fragrance of her violet young
being.
"Smell I the flowers, or thee?" cried Pierre.
"See I lakes, or eyes?" cried Lucy, her own gazing down into his soul,
as two stars gaze down into a tarn.
No Cornwall miner ever sunk so deep a shaft beneath the sea, as Love
will sink beneath the floatings of the eyes. Love sees ten million
fathoms down, till dazzled by the floor of pearls. The eye is Love's own
magic glass, where all things that are not of earth, glide in
supernatural light. There are not so many fishes in the sea, as there
are sweet images in lovers' eyes. In those miraculous translucencies
swim the strange eye-fish with wings, that sometimes leap out, instinct
with joy; moist fish-wings wet the lover's cheek. Love's eyes are holy
things; therein the mysteries of life are lodged; looking in each
other's eyes, lovers see the ultimate secret of the worlds; and with
thrills eternally untranslatable, feel that Love is god of all. Man or
woman who has never loved, nor once looked deep down into their own
lover's eyes, they know not the sweetest and the loftiest religion of
this earth. Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a
volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of
humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.
Endless is the account of Love. Time and space can not contain Love's
story. All things that are sweet to see, or taste, or feel, or hear,
all these things were made by Love; and none other things were made by
Love. Love made not the Arctic zones, but Love is ever reclaiming them.
Say, are not the fierce things of this earth daily, hourly going out?
Where now are your wolves of Britain? Where in Virginia now, find you
the panther and the pard? Oh, love is busy everywhere. Everywhere Love
hath Moravian missionaries. No Propagandist like to love. The south wind
wooes the barbarous north; on many a distant shore the gentler west wind
persuades the arid east.
All this Earth is Love's affianced; vainly the demon Principle howls to
stay the banns. Why round her middle wears this world so rich a zone of
torrid verdure, if she be not dressing for the final rites? And why
provides she orange blossoms and lilies of the valley, if she would not
that all men and maids should love and marry? For every wedding where
true lovers wed, helps on the march of universal Love. Who are brides
here shall be Love's bridemaids in the marriage world to come. So on all
sides Love allures; can contain himself what youth who views the wonders
of the beauteous woman-world? Where a beautiful woman is, there is all
Asia and her Bazars. Italy hath not a sight before the beauty of a
Yankee girl; nor heaven a blessing beyond her earthly love. Did not the
angelical Lotharios come down to earth, that they might taste of mortal
woman's Love and Beauty? even while her own silly brothers were pining
after the self-same Paradise they left? Yes, those envying angels did
come down; did emigrate; and who emigrates except to be better off?
Love is this world's great redeemer and reformer; and as all beautiful
women are her selectest emissaries, so hath Love gifted them with a
magnetical persuasiveness, that no youth can possibly repel. The own
heart's choice of every youth, seems ever as an inscrutable witch to
him; and by ten thousand concentric spells and circling incantations,
glides round and round him, as he turns: murmuring meanings of
unearthly import; and summoning up to him all the subterranean sprites
and gnomes; and unpeopling all the sea for naiads to swim round him; so
that mysteries are evoked as in exhalations by this Love;--what wonder
then that Love was aye a mystic?
V.
And this self-same morning Pierre was very mystical; not continually,
though; but most mystical one moment, and overflowing with mad,
unbridled merriment, the next. He seemed a youthful Magian, and almost a
mountebank together. Chaldaic improvisations burst from him, in quick
Golden Verses, on the heel of humorous retort and repartee. More
especially, the bright glance of Lucy was transporting to him. Now,
reckless of his horses, with both arms holding Lucy in his embrace, like
a Sicilian diver he dives deep down in the Adriatic of her eyes, and
brings up some king's-cup of joy. All the waves in Lucy's eyes seemed
waves of infinite glee to him. And as if, like veritable seas, they did
indeed catch the reflected irradiations of that pellucid azure morning;
in Lucy's eyes, there seemed to shine all the blue glory of the general
day, and all the sweet inscrutableness of the sky. And certainly, the
blue eye of woman, like the sea, is not uninfluenced by the atmosphere.
Only in the open air of some divinest, summer day, will you see its
ultramarine,--its fluid lapis lazuli. Then would Pierre burst forth in
some screaming shout of joy; and the striped tigers of his chestnut eyes
leaped in their lashed cages with a fierce delight. Lucy shrank from him
in extreme love; for the extremest top of love, is Fear and Wonder.
Soon the swift horses drew this fair god and goddess nigh the wooded
hills, whose distant blue, now changed into a variously-shaded green,
stood before them like old Babylonian walls, overgrown with verdure;
while here and there, at regular intervals, the scattered peaks seemed
mural towers; and the clumped pines surmounting them, as lofty archers,
and vast, out-looking watchers of the glorious Babylonian City of the
Day. Catching that hilly air, the prancing horses neighed; laughed on
the ground with gleeful feet. Felt they the gay delightsome spurrings of
the day; for the day was mad with excessive joy; and high in heaven you
heard the neighing of the horses of the sun; and down dropt their
nostrils' froth in many a fleecy vapor from the hills.
From the plains, the mists rose slowly; reluctant yet to quit so fair a
mead. At those green slopings, Pierre reined in his steeds, and soon the
twain were seated on the bank, gazing far, and far away; over many a
grove and lake; corn-crested uplands, and Herd's-grass lowlands; and
long-stretching swales of vividest green, betokening where the greenest
bounty of this earth seeks its winding channels; as ever, the most
heavenly bounteousness most seeks the lowly places; making green and
glad many a humble mortal's breast, and leaving to his own lonely
aridness, many a hill-top prince's state.
But Grief, not Joy, is a moralizer; and small moralizing wisdom caught
Pierre from that scene. With Lucy's hand in his, and feeling, softly
feeling of its soft tinglingness; he seemed as one placed in linked
correspondence with the summer lightnings; and by sweet shock on shock,
receiving intimating fore-tastes of the etherealest delights of earth.
Now, prone on the grass he falls, with his attentive upward glance fixed
on Lucy's eyes. "Thou art my heaven, Lucy; and here I lie thy
shepherd-king, watching for new eye-stars to rise in thee. Ha! I see
Venus' transit now;--lo! a new planet there;--and behind all, an
infinite starry nebulousness, as if thy being were backgrounded by some
spangled vail of mystery."
Is Lucy deaf to all these ravings of his lyric love? Why looks she down,
and vibrates so; and why now from her over-charged lids, drops such warm
drops as these? No joy now in Lucy's eyes, and seeming tremor on her
lips.
"Ah! thou too ardent and impetuous Pierre!"
"Nay, thou too moist and changeful April! know'st thou not, that the
moist and changeful April is followed by the glad, assured, and
showerless joy of June? And this, Lucy, this day should be thy June,
even as it is the earth's?"
"Ah Pierre! not June to me. But say, are not the sweets of June made
sweet by the April tears?"
"Ay, love! but here fall more drops,--more and more;--these showers are
longer than beseem the April, and pertain not to the June."
"June! June!--thou bride's month of the summer,--following the spring's
sweet courtship of the earth,--my June, my June is yet to come!"
"Oh! yet to come, but fixedly decreed;--good as come, and better."
"Then no flower that, in the bud, the April showers have nurtured; no
such flower may untimely perish, ere the June unfolds it? Ye will not
swear that, Pierre?"
"The audacious immortalities of divinest love are in me; and I now swear
to thee all the immutable eternities of joyfulness, that ever woman
dreamed of, in this dream-house of the earth. A god decrees to thee
unchangeable felicity; and to me, the unchallenged possession of thee
and them, for my inalienable fief.--Do I rave? Look on me, Lucy; think
on me, girl."
"Thou art young, and beautiful, and strong; and a joyful manliness
invests thee, Pierre; and thy intrepid heart never yet felt the touch of
fear;--But--"
"But what?"
"Ah, my best Pierre!"
"With kisses I will suck thy secret from thy cheek!--but what?"
"Let us hie homeward, Pierre. Some nameless sadness, faintness,
strangely comes to me. Foretaste I feel of endless dreariness. Tell me
once more the story of that face, Pierre,--that mysterious, haunting
face, which thou once told'st me, thou didst thrice vainly try to shun.
Blue is the sky, oh, bland the air, Pierre;--but--tell me the story of
the face,--the dark-eyed, lustrous, imploring, mournful face, that so
mystically paled, and shrunk at thine. Ah, Pierre, sometimes I have
thought,--never will I wed with my best Pierre, until the riddle of that
face be known. Tell me, tell me, Pierre;--as a fixed basilisk, with eyes
of steady, flaming mournfulness, that face this instant fastens me."
"Bewitched! bewitched!--Cursed be the hour I acted on the thought, that
Love hath no reserves. Never should I have told thee the story of that
face, Lucy. I have bared myself too much to thee. Oh, never should Love
know all!"
"Knows not all, then loves not all, Pierre. Never shalt thou so say
again;--and Pierre, listen to me. Now,--now, in this inexplicable
trepidation that I feel, I do conjure thee, that thou wilt ever continue
to do as thou hast done; so that I may ever continue to know all that
agitatest thee, the airiest and most transient thought, that ever shall
sweep into thee from the wide atmosphere of all things that hem
mortality. Did I doubt thee here;--could I ever think, that thy heart
hath yet one private nook or corner from me;--fatal disenchanting day
for me, my Pierre, would that be. I tell thee, Pierre--and 'tis Love's
own self that now speaks through me--only in unbounded confidence and
interchangings of all subtlest secrets, can Love possibly endure. Love's
self is a secret, and so feeds on secrets, Pierre. Did I only know of
thee, what the whole common world may know--what then were Pierre to
me?--Thou must be wholly a disclosed secret to me; Love is vain and
proud; and when I walk the streets, and meet thy friends, I must still
be laughing and hugging to myself the thought,--They know him not;--I
only know my Pierre;--none else beneath the circuit of yon sun. Then,
swear to me, dear Pierre, that thou wilt never keep a secret from
me--no, never, never;--swear!"
"Something seizes me. Thy inexplicable tears, falling, falling on my
heart, have now turned it to a stone. I feel icy cold and hard; I will
not swear!"
"Pierre! Pierre!"
"God help thee, and God help me, Lucy. I can not think, that in this
most mild and dulcet air, the invisible agencies are plotting treasons
against our loves. Oh! if ye be now nigh us, ye things I have no name
for; then by a name that should be efficacious--by Christ's holy name, I
warn ye back from her and me. Touch her not, ye airy devils; hence to
your appointed hell! why come ye prowling in these heavenly perlieus?
Can not the chains of Love omnipotent bind ye, fiends?"
"Is this Pierre? His eyes glare fearfully; now I see layer on layer
deeper in him; he turns round and menaces the air and talks to it, as if
defied by the air. Woe is me, that fairy love should raise this evil
spell!--Pierre?"
"But now I was infinite distances from thee, oh my Lucy, wandering
baffled in the choking night; but thy voice might find me, though I had
wandered to the Boreal realm, Lucy. Here I sit down by thee; I catch a
soothing from thee."
"My own, own Pierre! Pierre, into ten trillion pieces I could now be
torn for thee; in my bosom would yet hide thee, and there keep thee
warm, though I sat down on Arctic ice-floes, frozen to a corpse. My own,
best, blessed Pierre! Now, could I plant some poniard in me, that my
silly ailings should have power to move thee thus, and pain thee thus.
Forgive me, Pierre; thy changed face hath chased the other from me; the
fright of thee exceeds all other frights. It does not so haunt me now.
Press hard my hand; look hard on me, my love, that its last trace may
pass away. Now I feel almost whole again; now, 'tis gone. Up, my Pierre;
let us up, and fly these hills, whence, I fear, too wide a prospect
meets us. Fly we to the plain. See, thy steeds neigh for thee--they call
thee--see, the clouds fly down toward the plain--lo, these hills now
seem all desolate to me, and the vale all verdure. Thank thee,
Pierre.--See, now, I quit the hills, dry-cheeked; and leave all tears
behind to be sucked in by these evergreens, meet emblems of the
unchanging love, my own sadness nourishes in me. Hard fate, that Love's
best verdure should feed so on tears!"
Now they rolled swiftly down the slopes; nor tempted the upper hills;
but sped fast for the plain. Now the cloud hath passed from Lucy's eye;
no more the lurid slanting light forks upward from her lover's brow. In
the plain they find peace, and love, and joy again.
"It was the merest, idling, wanton vapor, Lucy!"
"An empty echo, Pierre, of a sad sound, long past. Bless thee, my
Pierre!"
"The great God wrap thee ever, Lucy. So, now, we are home."
VI.
After seeing Lucy into her aunt's most cheerful parlor, and seating her
by the honeysuckle that half clambered into the window there; and near
to which was her easel for crayon-sketching, upon part of whose frame
Lucy had cunningly trained two slender vines, into whose earth-filled
pots two of the three legs of the easel were inserted; and sitting down
himself by her, and by his pleasant, lightsome chat, striving to chase
the last trace of sadness from her; and not till his object seemed fully
gained; Pierre rose to call her good aunt to her, and so take his leave
till evening, when Lucy called him back, begging him first to bring her
the blue portfolio from her chamber, for she wished to kill her last
lingering melancholy--if any indeed did linger now--by diverting her
thoughts, in a little pencil sketch, to scenes widely different from
those of Saddle Meadows and its hills.
So Pierre went up stairs, but paused on the threshold of the open door.
He never had entered that chamber but with feelings of a wonderful
reverentialness. The carpet seemed as holy ground. Every chair seemed
sanctified by some departed saint, there once seated long ago. Here his
book of Love was all a rubric, and said--Bow now, Pierre, bow. But this
extreme loyalty to the piety of love, called from him by such glimpses
of its most secret inner shrine, was not unrelieved betimes by such
quickenings of all his pulses, that in fantasy he pressed the wide
beauty of the world in his embracing arms; for all his world resolved
itself into his heart's best love for Lucy.
Now, crossing the magic silence of the empty chamber, he caught the
snow-white bed reflected in the toilet-glass. This rooted him. For one
swift instant, he seemed to see in that one glance the two separate
beds--the real one and the reflected one--and an unbidden, most
miserable presentiment thereupon stole into him. But in one breath it
came and went. So he advanced, and with a fond and gentle joyfulness,
his eye now fell upon the spotless bed itself, and fastened on a
snow-white roll that lay beside the pillow. Now he started; Lucy seemed
coming in upon him; but no--'tis only the foot of one of her little
slippers, just peeping into view from under the narrow nether curtains
of the bed. Then again his glance fixed itself upon the slender,
snow-white, ruffled roll; and he stood as one enchanted. Never precious
parchment of the Greek was half so precious in his eyes. Never
trembling scholar longed more to unroll the mystic vellum, than Pierre
longed to unroll the sacred secrets of that snow-white, ruffled thing.
But his hands touched not any object in that chamber, except the one he
had gone thither for.
"Here is the blue portfolio, Lucy. See, the key hangs to its silver
lock;--were you not fearful I would open it?--'twas tempting, I must
confess."
"Open it!" said Lucy--"why, yes, Pierre, yes; what secret thing keep I
from thee? Read me through and through. I am entirely thine. See!" and
tossing open the portfolio, all manner of rosy things came floating from
it, and a most delicate perfume of some invisible essence.
"Ah! thou holy angel, Lucy!"
"Why, Pierre, thou art transfigured; thou now lookest as one who--why,
Pierre?"
"As one who had just peeped in at paradise, Lucy; and----"
"Again wandering in thy mind, Pierre; no more--Come, you must leave me,
now. I am quite rested again. Quick, call my aunt, and leave me. Stay,
this evening we are to look over the book of plates from the city, you
know. Be early;--go now, Pierre."
"Well, good-bye, till evening, thou height of all delight."
VII.
As Pierre drove through the silent village, beneath the vertical shadows
of the noon-day trees, the sweet chamber scene abandoned him, and the
mystical face recurred to him, and kept with him. At last, arrived at
home, he found his mother absent; so passing straight through the wide
middle hall of the mansion, he descended the piazza on the other ride,
and wandered away in reveries down to the river bank.
Here one primeval pine-tree had been luckily left standing by the
otherwise unsparing woodmen, who long ago had cleared that meadow. It
was once crossing to this noble pine, from a clump of hemlocks far
across the river, that Pierre had first noticed the significant fact,
that while the hemlock and the pine are trees of equal growth and
stature, and are so similar in their general aspect, that people unused
to woods sometimes confound them; and while both trees are proverbially
trees of sadness, yet the dark hemlock hath no music in its thoughtful
boughs; but the gentle pine-tree drops melodious mournfulness.
At its half-bared roots of sadness, Pierre sat down, and marked the
mighty bulk and far out-reaching length of one particular root, which,
straying down the bank, the storms and rains had years ago exposed.
"How wide, how strong these roots must spread! Sure, this pine-tree
takes powerful hold of this fair earth! Yon bright flower hath not so
deep a root. This tree hath outlived a century of that gay flower's
generations, and will outlive a century of them yet to come. This is
most sad. Hark, now I hear the pyramidical and numberless, flame-like
complainings of this Eolean pine;--the wind breathes now upon it:--the
wind,--that is God's breath! Is He so sad? Oh, tree! so mighty thou, so
lofty, yet so mournful! This is most strange! Hark! as I look up into
thy high secrecies, oh, tree, the face, the face, peeps down on
me!--'Art thou Pierre? Come to me'--oh, thou mysterious girl,--what an
ill-matched pendant thou, to that other countenance of sweet Lucy, which
also hangs, and first did hang within my heart! Is grief a pendant then
to pleasantness? Is grief a self-willed guest that _will_ come in? Yet I
have never known thee, Grief;--thou art a legend to me. I have known
some fiery broils of glorious frenzy; I have oft tasted of revery;
whence comes pensiveness; whence comes sadness; whence all delicious
poetic presentiments;--but thou, Grief! art still a ghost-story to me. I
know thee not,--do half disbelieve in thee. Not that I would be without
my too little cherished fits of sadness now and then; but God keep me
from thee, thou other shape of far profounder gloom! I shudder at thee!
The face!--the face!--forth again from thy high secrecies, oh, tree! the
face steals down upon me. Mysterious girl! who art thou? by what right
snatchest thou thus my deepest thoughts? Take thy thin fingers from
me;--I am affianced, and not to thee. Leave me!--what share hast thou in
me? Surely, thou lovest not me?--that were most miserable for thee, and
me, and Lucy. It can not be. What, _who_ art thou? Oh! wretched
vagueness--too familiar to me, yet inexplicable,--unknown, utterly
unknown! I seem to founder in this perplexity. Thou seemest to know
somewhat of me, that I know not of myself,--what is it then? If thou
hast a secret in thy eyes of mournful mystery, out with it; Pierre
demands it; what is that thou hast veiled in thee so imperfectly, that I
seem to see its motion, but not its form? It visibly rustles behind the
concealing screen. Now, never into the soul of Pierre, stole there
before, a muffledness like this! If aught really lurks in it, ye
sovereign powers that claim all my leal worshipings, I conjure ye to
lift the veil; I must see it face to face. Tread I on a mine, warn me;
advance I on a precipice, hold me back; but abandon me to an unknown
misery, that it shall suddenly seize me, and possess me, wholly,--that
ye will never do; else, Pierre's fond faith in ye--now clean,
untouched--may clean depart; and give me up to be a railing atheist! Ah,
now the face departs. Pray heaven it hath not only stolen back, and
hidden again in thy high secrecies, oh tree! But 'tis
gone--gone--entirely gone; and I thank God, and I feel joy again; joy,
which I also feel to be my right as man; deprived of joy, I feel I
should find cause for deadly feuds with things invisible. Ha! a coat of
iron-mail seems to grow round, and husk me now; and I have heard, that
the bitterest winters are foretold by a thicker husk upon the Indian
corn; so our old farmers say. But 'tis a dark similitude. Quit thy
analogies; sweet in the orator's mouth, bitter in the thinker's belly.
Now, then, I'll up with my own joyful will; and with my joy's face scare
away all phantoms:--so, they go; and Pierre is Joy's, and Life's again.
Thou pine-tree!--henceforth I will resist thy too treacherous
persuasiveness. Thou'lt not so often woo me to thy airy tent, to ponder
on the gloomy rooted stakes that bind it. Hence now I go; and peace be
with thee, pine! That blessed sereneness which lurks ever at the heart
of sadness--mere sadness--and remains when all the rest has gone;--that
sweet feeling is now mine, and cheaply mine. I am not sorry I was sad, I
feel so blessed now. Dearest Lucy!--well, well;--'twill be a pretty time
we'll have this evening; there's the book of Flemish prints--that first
we must look over; then, second, is Flaxman's Homer--clear-cut outlines,
yet full of unadorned barbaric nobleness. Then Flaxman's Dante;--Dante!
Night's and Hell's poet he. No, we will not open Dante. Methinks now the
face--the face--minds me a little of pensive, sweet Francesca's
face--or, rather, as it had been Francesca's daughter's face--wafted on
the sad dark wind, toward observant Virgil and the blistered Florentine.
No, we will not open Flaxman's Dante. Francesca's mournful face is now
ideal to me. Flaxman might evoke it wholly,--make it present in lines of
misery--bewitching power. No! I will not open Flaxman's Dante! Damned be
the hour I read in Dante! more damned than that wherein Paolo and
Francesca read in fatal Launcelot!"