THE PRESENTIMENT AND THE VERIFICATION.
I.
The face, of which Pierre and Lucy so strangely and fearfully hinted,
was not of enchanted air; but its mortal lineaments of mournfulness had
been visibly beheld by Pierre. Nor had it accosted him in any privacy;
or in any lonely byeway; or beneath the white light of the crescent
moon; but in a joyous chamber, bright with candles, and ringing with two
score women's gayest voices. Out of the heart of mirthfulness, this
shadow had come forth to him. Encircled by bandelets of light, it had
still beamed upon him; vaguely historic and prophetic; backward, hinting
of some irrevocable sin; forward, pointing to some inevitable ill. One
of those faces, which now and then appear to man, and without one word
of speech, still reveal glimpses of some fearful gospel. In natural
guise, but lit by supernatural light; palpable to the senses, but
inscrutable to the soul; in their perfectest impression on us, ever
hovering between Tartarean misery and Paradisaic beauty; such faces,
compounded so of hell and heaven, overthrow in us all foregone
persuasions, and make us wondering children in this world again.
The face had accosted Pierre some weeks previous to his ride with Lucy
to the hills beyond Saddle Meadows; and before her arrival for the
summer at the village; moreover it had accosted him in a very common
and homely scene; but this enhanced the wonder.
On some distant business, with a farmer-tenant, he had been absent from
the mansion during the best part of the day, and had but just come home,
early of a pleasant moonlight evening, when Dates delivered a message to
him from his mother, begging him to come for her about half-past seven
that night to Miss Llanyllyn's cottage, in order to accompany her thence
to that of the two Miss Pennies. At the mention of that last name,
Pierre well knew what he must anticipate. Those elderly and truly pious
spinsters, gifted with the most benevolent hearts in the world, and at
mid-age deprived by envious nature of their hearing, seemed to have made
it a maxim of their charitable lives, that since God had not given them
any more the power to hear Christ's gospel preached, they would
therefore thenceforth do what they could toward practicing it.
Wherefore, as a matter of no possible interest to them now, they
abstained from church; and while with prayer-books in their hands the
Rev. Mr. Falsgrave's congregation were engaged in worshiping their God,
according to the divine behest; the two Miss Pennies, with thread and
needle, were hard at work in serving him; making up shirts and gowns for
the poor people of the parish. Pierre had heard that they had recently
been at the trouble of organizing a regular society, among the
neighboring farmers' wives and daughters, to meet twice a month at their
own house (the Miss Pennies) for the purpose of sewing in concert for
the benefit of various settlements of necessitous emigrants, who had
lately pitched their populous shanties further up the river. But though
this enterprise had not been started without previously acquainting Mrs.
Glendinning of it,--for indeed she was much loved and honored by the
pious spinsters,--and their promise of solid assistance from that
gracious manorial lady; yet Pierre had not heard that his mother had
been officially invited to preside, or be at all present at the
semi-monthly meetings; though he supposed, that far from having any
scruples against so doing, she would be very glad to associate that way,
with the good people of the village.
"Now, brother Pierre"--said Mrs. Glendinning, rising from Miss
Llanyllyn's huge cushioned chair--"throw my shawl around me; and
good-evening to Lucy's aunt.--There, we shall be late."
As they walked along, she added--"Now, Pierre, I know you are apt to be
a little impatient sometimes, of these sewing scenes; but courage; I
merely want to peep in on them; so as to get some inkling of what they
would indeed be at; and then my promised benefactions can be better
selected by me. Besides, Pierre, I could have had Dates escort me, but I
preferred you; because I want you to know who they are you live among;
how many really pretty, and naturally-refined dames and girls you shall
one day be lord of the manor of. I anticipate a rare display of rural
red and white."
Cheered by such pleasant promises, Pierre soon found himself leading his
mother into a room full of faces. The instant they appeared, a
gratuitous old body, seated with her knitting near the door, squeaked
out shrilly--"Ah! dames, dames,--Madam Glendinning!--Master Pierre
Glendinning!"
Almost immediately following this sound, there came a sudden,
long-drawn, unearthly, girlish shriek, from the further corner of the
long, double room. Never had human voice so affected Pierre before.
Though he saw not the person from whom it came, and though the voice was
wholly strange to him, yet the sudden shriek seemed to split its way
clean through his heart, and leave a yawning gap there. For an instant,
he stood bewildered; but started at his mother's voice; her arm being
still in his. "Why do you clutch my arm so, Pierre? You pain me. Pshaw!
some one has fainted,--nothing more."
Instantly Pierre recovered himself, and affecting to mock at his own
trepidation, hurried across the room to offer his services, if such
were needed. But dames and maidens had been all beforehand with him; the
lights were wildly flickering in the air-current made by the flinging
open of the casement, near to where the shriek had come. But the climax
of the tumult was soon past; and presently, upon closing the casement,
it subsided almost wholly. The elder of the spinster Pennies, advancing
to Mrs. Glendinning, now gave her to understand, that one of the further
crowd of industrious girls present, had been attacked by a sudden, but
fleeting fit, vaguely imputable to some constitutional disorder or
other. She was now quite well again. And so the company, one and all,
seemingly acting upon their natural good-breeding, which in any one at
bottom, is but delicacy and charity, refrained from all further
curiosity; reminded not the girl of what had passed; noted her scarce at
all; and all needles stitched away as before.
Leaving his mother to speak with whom she pleased, and attend alone to
her own affairs with the society; Pierre, oblivious now in such a lively
crowd, of any past unpleasantness, after some courtly words to the Miss
Pennies,--insinuated into their understandings through a long coiled
trumpet, which, when not in use, the spinsters wore, hanging like a
powder-horn from their girdles:--and likewise, after manifesting the
profoundest and most intelligent interest in the mystic mechanism of a
huge woolen sock, in course of completion by a spectacled old lady of
his more particular acquaintance; after all this had been gone through,
and something more too tedious to detail, but which occupied him for
nearly half an hour, Pierre, with a slightly blushing, and imperfectly
balanced assurance, advanced toward the further crowd of maidens; where,
by the light of many a well-snuffed candle, they clubbed all their
bright contrasting cheeks, like a dense bed of garden tulips. There were
the shy and pretty Maries, Marthas, Susans, Betties, Jennies, Nellies;
and forty more fair nymphs, who skimmed the cream, and made the butter
of the fat farms of Saddle Meadows.
Assurance is in presence of the assured. Where embarrassments prevail,
they affect the most disembarrassed. What wonder, then, that gazing on
such a thick array of wreathing, roguish, half-averted, blushing
faces--still audacious in their very embarrassment--Pierre, too, should
flush a bit, and stammer in his attitudes a little? Youthful love and
graciousness were in his heart; kindest words upon his tongue; but there
he stood, target for the transfixing glances of those ambushed archers
of the eye.
But his abashments last too long; his cheek hath changed from blush to
pallor; what strange thing does Pierre Glendinning see? Behind the first
close, busy breast-work of young girls, are several very little stands,
or circular tables, where sit small groups of twos and threes, sewing in
small comparative solitudes, as it were. They would seem to be the less
notable of the rural company; or else, for some cause, they have
voluntarily retired into their humble banishment. Upon one of these
persons engaged at the furthermost and least conspicuous of these little
stands, and close by a casement, Pierre's glance is palely fixed.
The girl sits steadily sewing; neither she nor her two companions speak.
Her eyes are mostly upon her work; but now and then a very close
observer would notice that she furtively lifts them, and moves them
sideways and timidly toward Pierre; and then, still more furtively and
timidly toward his lady mother, further off. All the while, her
preternatural calmness sometimes seems only made to cover the intensest
struggle in her bosom. Her unadorned and modest dress is black; fitting
close up to her neck, and clasping it with a plain, velvet border. To a
nice perception, that velvet shows elastically; contracting and
expanding, as though some choked, violent thing were risen up there
within from the teeming region of her heart. But her dark, olive cheek
is without a blush, or sign of any disquietude. So far as this girl lies
upon the common surface, ineffable composure steeps her. But still, she
sideways steals the furtive, timid glance. Anon, as yielding to the
irresistible climax of her concealed emotion, whatever that may be, she
lifts her whole marvelous countenance into the radiant candlelight, and
for one swift instant, that face of supernaturalness unreservedly meets
Pierre's. Now, wonderful loveliness, and a still more wonderful
loneliness, have with inexplicable implorings, looked up to him from
that henceforth immemorial face. There, too, he seemed to see the fair
ground where Anguish had contended with Beauty, and neither being
conqueror, both had laid down on the field.
Recovering at length from his all too obvious emotion, Pierre turned
away still farther, to regain the conscious possession of himself. A
wild, bewildering, and incomprehensible curiosity had seized him, to
know something definite of that face. To this curiosity, at the moment,
he entirely surrendered himself; unable as he was to combat it, or
reason with it in the slightest way. So soon as he felt his outward
composure returned to him, he purposed to chat his way behind the
breastwork of bright eyes and cheeks, and on some parlor pretense or
other, hear, if possible, an audible syllable from one whose mere silent
aspect had so potentially moved him. But at length, as with this object
in mind, he was crossing the room again, he heard his mother's voice,
gayly calling him away; and turning, saw her shawled and bonneted. He
could now make no plausible stay, and smothering the agitation in him,
he bowed a general and hurried adieu to the company, and went forth with
his mother.
They had gone some way homeward, in perfect silence, when his mother
spoke.
"Well, Pierre, what can it possibly be!"
"My God, mother, did you see her then!"
"My son!" cried Mrs. Glendinning, instantly stopping in terror, and
withdrawing her arm from Pierre, "what--what under heaven ails you? This
is most strange! I but playfully asked, what you were so steadfastly
thinking of; and here you answer me by the strangest question, in a
voice that seems to come from under your great-grandfather's tomb! What,
in heaven's name, does this mean, Pierre? Why were you so silent, and
why now are you so ill-timed in speaking! Answer me;--explain all
this;--_she_--_she_--what _she_ should you be thinking of but Lucy
Tartan?--Pierre, beware, beware! I had thought you firmer in your lady's
faith, than such strange behavior as this would seem to hint. Answer me,
Pierre, what may this mean? Come, I hate a mystery; speak, my son."
Fortunately, this prolonged verbalized wonder in his mother afforded
Pierre time to rally from his double and aggravated astonishment,
brought about by first suspecting that his mother also had been struck
by the strange aspect of the face, and then, having that suspicion so
violently beaten back upon him, by her apparently unaffected alarm at
finding him in some region of thought wholly unshared by herself at the
time.
"It is nothing--nothing, sister Mary; just nothing at all in the world.
I believe I was dreaming--sleep-walking, or something of that sort. They
were vastly pretty girls there this evening, sister Mary, were they not?
Come, let us walk on--do, sister mine."
"Pierre, Pierre!--but I will take your arm again;--and have you really
nothing more to say? were you really wandering, Pierre?"
"I swear to you, my dearest mother, that never before in my whole
existence, have I so completely gone wandering in my soul, as at that
very moment. But it is all over now." Then in a less earnest and
somewhat playful tone, he added: "And sister mine, if you know aught of
the physical and sanitary authors, you must be aware, that the only
treatment for such a case of harmless temporary aberration, is for all
persons to ignore it in the subject. So no more of this foolishness.
Talking about it only makes me feel very unpleasantly silly, and there
is no knowing that it may not bring it back upon me."
"Then by all means, my dear boy, not another word about it. But it's
passing strange--very, very strange indeed. Well, about that morning
business; how fared you? Tell me about it."
II.
So Pierre, gladly plunging into this welcome current of talk, was
enabled to attend his mother home without furnishing further cause for
her concern or wonderment. But not by any means so readily could he
allay his own concern and wonderment. Too really true in itself, however
evasive in its effect at the time, was that earnest answer to his
mother, declaring that never in his whole existence had he been so
profoundly stirred. The face haunted him as some imploring, and
beauteous, impassioned, ideal Madonna's haunts the morbidly longing and
enthusiastic, but ever-baffled artist. And ever, as the mystic face thus
rose before his fancy's sight, another sense was touched in him; the
long-drawn, unearthly, girlish shriek pealed through and through his
soul; for now he knew the shriek came from the face--such Delphic shriek
could only come from such a source. And wherefore that shriek? thought
Pierre. Bodes it ill to the face, or me, or both? How am I changed, that
my appearance on any scene should have power to work such woe? But it
was mostly the face--the face, that wrought upon him. The shriek seemed
as incidentally embodied there.
The emotions he experienced seemed to have taken hold of the deepest
roots and subtlest fibres of his being. And so much the more that it was
so subterranean in him, so much the more did he feel its weird
inscrutableness. What was one unknown, sad-eyed, shrieking girl to him?
There must be sad-eyed girls somewhere in the world, and this was only
one of them. And what was the most beautiful sad-eyed girl to him?
Sadness might be beautiful, as well as mirth--he lost himself trying to
follow out this tangle. "I will no more of this infatuation," he would
cry; but forth from regions of irradiated air, the divine beauty and
imploring sufferings of the face, stole into his view.
Hitherto I have ever held but lightly, thought Pierre, all stories of
ghostly mysticalness in man; my creed of this world leads me to believe
in visible, beautiful flesh, and audible breath, however sweet and
scented; but only in visible flesh, and audible breath, have I hitherto
believed. But now!--now!--and again he would lose himself in the most
surprising and preternatural ponderings, which baffled all the
introspective cunning of his mind. Himself was too much for himself. He
felt that what he had always before considered the solid land of
veritable reality, was now being audaciously encroached upon by bannered
armies of hooded phantoms, disembarking in his soul, as from flotillas
of specter-boats.
The terrors of the face were not those of Gorgon; not by repelling
hideousness did it smite him so; but bewilderingly allured him, by its
nameless beauty, and its long-suffering, hopeless anguish.
But he was sensible that this general effect upon him, was also special;
the face somehow mystically appealing to his own private and individual
affections; and by a silent and tyrannic call, challenging him in his
deepest moral being, and summoning Truth, Love, Pity, Conscience, to the
stand. Apex of all wonders! thought Pierre; this indeed almost unmans me
with its wonderfulness. Escape the face he could not. Muffling his own
in his bed-clothes--that did not hide it. Flying from it by sunlight
down the meadows, was as vain.
Most miraculous of all to Pierre was the vague impression, that
somewhere he had seen traits of the likeness of that face before. But
where, he could not say; nor could he, in the remotest degree, imagine.
He was not unaware--for in one or two instances, he had experienced the
fact--that sometimes a man may see a passing countenance in the street,
which shall irresistibly and magnetically affect him, for a moment, as
wholly unknown to him, and yet strangely reminiscent of some vague face
he has previously encountered, in some fancied time, too, of extreme
interest to his life. But not so was it now with Pierre. The face had
not perplexed him for a few speculative minutes, and then glided from
him, to return no more. It stayed close by him; only--and not
invariably--could he repel it, by the exertion of all his resolution and
self-will. Besides, what of general enchantment lurked in his strange
sensations, seemed concentringly condensed, and pointed to a spear-head,
that pierced his heart with an inexplicable pang, whenever the
specializing emotion--to call it so--seized the possession of his
thoughts, and waved into his visions, a thousand forms of by-gone times,
and many an old legendary family scene, which he had heard related by
his elderly relations, some of them now dead.
Disguising his wild reveries as best he might from the notice of his
mother, and all other persons of her household, for two days Pierre
wrestled with his own haunted spirit; and at last, so effectually purged
it of all weirdnesses, and so effectually regained the general mastery
of himself, that for a time, life went with him, as though he had never
been stirred so strangely. Once more, the sweet unconditional thought of
Lucy slid wholly into his soul, dislodging thence all such phantom
occupants. Once more he rode, he walked, he swam, he vaulted; and with
new zest threw himself into the glowing practice of all those manly
exercises, he so dearly loved. It almost seemed in him, that ere
promising forever to protect, as well as eternally to love, his Lucy, he
must first completely invigorate and embrawn himself into the possession
of such a noble muscular manliness, that he might champion Lucy against
the whole physical world.
Still--even before the occasional reappearance of the face to
him--Pierre, for all his willful ardor in his gymnasticals and other
diversions, whether in-doors or out, or whether by book or foil; still,
Pierre could not but be secretly annoyed, and not a little perplexed, as
to the motive, which, for the first time in his recollection, had
impelled him, not merely to conceal from his mother a singular
circumstance in his life (for that, he felt would have been but venial;
and besides, as will eventually be seen, he could find one particular
precedent for it, in his past experience) but likewise, and
superaddedly, to parry, nay, to evade, and, in effect, to return
something alarmingly like a fib, to an explicit question put to him by
his mother;--such being the guise, in which part of the conversation
they had had that eventful night, now appeared to his fastidious sense.
He considered also, that his evasive answer had not pantheistically
burst from him in a momentary interregnum of self-command. No; his
mother had made quite a lengthy speech to him; during which he well
remembered, he had been carefully, though with trepidation, turning over
in his mind, how best he might recall her from her unwished-for and
untimely scent. Why had this been so? Was this his wont? What
inscrutable thing was it, that so suddenly had seized him, and made him
a falsifyer--ay, a falsifyer and nothing less--to his own
dearly-beloved, and confiding mother? Here, indeed, was something
strange for him; here was stuff for his utmost ethical meditations. But,
nevertheless, on strict introspection, he felt, that he would not
willingly have it otherwise; not willingly would he now undissemble
himself in this matter to his mother. Why was this, too? Was this his
wont? Here, again, was food for mysticism. Here, in imperfect inklings,
tinglings, presentiments, Pierre began to feel--what all mature men, who
are Magians, sooner or later know, and more or less assuredly--that not
always in our actions, are we our own factors. But this conceit was very
dim in Pierre; and dimness is ever suspicious and repugnant to us; and
so, Pierre shrank abhorringly from the infernal catacombs of thought,
down into which, this foetal fancy beckoned him. Only this, though in
secret, did he cherish; only this, he felt persuaded of; namely, that
not for both worlds would he have his mother made a partner to his
sometime mystic mood.
But with this nameless fascination of the face upon him, during those
two days that it had first and fully possessed him for its own, did
perplexed Pierre refrain from that apparently most natural of all
resources,--boldly seeking out, and returning to the palpable cause, and
questioning her, by look or voice, or both together--the mysterious girl
herself? No; not entirely did Pierre here refrain. But his profound
curiosity and interest in the matter--strange as it may seem--did not so
much appear to be embodied in the mournful person of the olive girl, as
by some radiations from her, embodied in the vague conceits which
agitated his own soul. _There_, lurked the subtler secret: _that_,
Pierre had striven to tear away. From without, no wonderful effect is
wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets
it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous
marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and
superber trophies than all the stars in universal space. Wonder
interlocks with wonder; and then the confounding feeling comes. No cause
have we to fancy, that a horse, a dog, a fowl, ever stand transfixed
beneath yon skyey load of majesty. But our soul's arches underfit into
its; and so, prevent the upper arch from falling on us with
unsustainable inscrutableness. "Explain ye my deeper mystery," said the
shepherd Chaldean king, smiting his breast, lying on his back upon the
plain; "and then, I will bestow all my wonderings upon ye, ye stately
stars!" So, in some sort, with Pierre. Explain thou this strange
integral feeling in me myself, he thought--turning upon the fancied
face--and I will then renounce all other wonders, to gaze wonderingly at
thee. But thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one,
thou face! For me, thou hast uncovered one infinite, dumb, beseeching
countenance of mystery, underlying all the surfaces of visible time and
space.
But during those two days of his first wild vassalage to his original
sensations, Pierre had not been unvisited by less mysterious impulses.
Two or three very plain and practical plannings of desirable procedures
in reference to some possible homely explication of all this
nonsense--so he would momentarily denominate it--now and then flittingly
intermitted his pervading mood of semi-madness. Once he had seized his
hat, careless of his accustomed gloves and cane, and found himself in
the street, walking very rapidly in the direction of the Miss Pennies'.
But whither now? he disenchantingly interrogated himself. Where would
you go? A million to one, those deaf old spinsters can tell you nothing
you burn to know. Deaf old spinsters are not used to be the depositaries
of such mystical secrecies. But then, they may reveal her name--where
she dwells, and something, however fragmentary and unsatisfactory, of
who she is, and whence. Ay; but then, in ten minutes after your leaving
them, all the houses in Saddle Meadows would be humming with the gossip
of Pierre Glendinning engaged to marry Lucy Tartan, and yet running
about the country, in ambiguous pursuit of strange young women. That
will never do. You remember, do you not, often seeing the Miss Pennies,
hatless and without a shawl, hurrying through the village, like two
postmen intent on dropping some tit-bit of precious gossip? What a
morsel for them, Pierre, have you, if you now call upon them. Verily,
their trumpets are both for use and for significance. Though very deaf,
the Miss Pennies are by no means dumb. They blazon very wide.
"Now be sure, and say that it was the Miss Pennies, who left the
news--be sure--we--the Miss Pennies--remember--say to Mrs. Glendinning
it was we." Such was the message that now half-humorously occurred to
Pierre, as having been once confided to him by the sister spinsters, one
evening when they called with a choice present of some very _recherche_
chit-chat for his mother; but found the manorial lady out; and so
charged her son with it; hurrying away to all the inferior houses, so as
not to be anywhere forestalled in their disclosure.
Now, I wish it had been any other house than the Miss Pennies; any other
house but theirs, and on my soul I believe I should have gone. But not
to them--no, that I can not do. It would be sure to reach my mother, and
then she would put this and that together--stir a little--let it
simmer--and farewell forever to all her majestic notions of my
immaculate integrity. Patience, Pierre, the population of this region is
not so immense. No dense mobs of Nineveh confound all personal
identities in Saddle Meadows. Patience; thou shalt see it soon again;
catch it passing thee in some green lane, sacred to thy evening
reveries. She that bears it can not dwell remote. Patience, Pierre. Ever
are such mysteries best and soonest unraveled by the eventual unraveling
of themselves. Or, if you will, go back and get your gloves, and more
especially your cane, and begin your own secret voyage of discovery
after it. Your cane, I say; because it will probably be a very long and
weary walk. True, just now I hinted, that she that bears it can not
dwell very remote; but then her nearness may not be at all conspicuous.
So, homeward, and put off thy hat, and let thy cane stay still, good
Pierre. Seek not to mystify the mystery so.
Thus, intermittingly, ever and anon during those sad two days of
deepest sufferance, Pierre would stand reasoning and expostulating with
himself; and by such meditative treatment, reassure his own spontaneous
impulses. Doubtless, it was wise and right that so he did; doubtless:
but in a world so full of all dubieties as this, one can never be
entirely certain whether another person, however carefully and
cautiously conscientious, has acted in all respects conceivable for the
very best.
But when the two days were gone by, and Pierre began to recognize his
former self as restored to him from its mystic exile, then the thoughts
of personally and pointedly seeking out the unknown, either
preliminarily by a call upon the sister spinsters, or generally by
performing the observant lynx-eyed circuit of the country on foot, and
as a crafty inquisitor, dissembling his cause of inquisition; these and
all similar intentions completely abandoned Pierre.
He was now diligently striving, with all his mental might, forever to
drive the phantom from him. He seemed to feel that it begat in him a
certain condition of his being, which was most painful, and every way
uncongenial to his natural, wonted self. It had a touch of he knew not
what sort of unhealthiness in it, so to speak; for, in his then
ignorance, he could find no better term; it seemed to have in it a germ
of somewhat which, if not quickly extirpated, might insidiously poison
and embitter his whole life--that choice, delicious life which he had
vowed to Lucy for his one pure and comprehensive offering--at once a
sacrifice and a delight.
Nor in these endeavorings did he entirely fail. For the most part, he
felt now that he had a power over the comings and the goings of the
face; but not on all occasions. Sometimes the old, original mystic
tyranny would steal upon him; the long, dark, locks of mournful hair
would fall upon his soul, and trail their wonderful melancholy along
with them; the two full, steady, over-brimming eyes of loveliness and
anguish would converge their magic rays, till he felt them kindling he
could not tell what mysterious fires in the heart at which they aimed.
When once this feeling had him fully, then was the perilous time for
Pierre. For supernatural as the feeling was, and appealing to all things
ultramontane to his soul; yet was it a delicious sadness to him. Some
hazy fairy swam above him in the heavenly ether, and showered down upon
him the sweetest pearls of pensiveness. Then he would be seized with a
singular impulse to reveal the secret to some one other individual in
the world. Only one, not more; he could not hold all this strange
fullness in himself. It must be shared. In such an hour it was, that
chancing to encounter Lucy (her, whom above all others, he did
confidingly adore), she heard the story of the face; nor slept at all
that night; nor for a long time freed her pillow completely from wild,
Beethoven sounds of distant, waltzing melodies, as of ambiguous fairies
dancing on the heath.
III.
This history goes forward and goes backward, as occasion calls. Nimble
center, circumference elastic you must have. Now we return to Pierre,
wending homeward from his reveries beneath the pine-tree.
His burst of impatience against the sublime Italian, Dante, arising from
that poet being the one who, in a former time, had first opened to his
shuddering eyes the infinite cliffs and gulfs of human mystery and
misery;--though still more in the way of experimental vision, than of
sensational presentiment or experience (for as yet he had not seen so
far and deep as Dante, and therefore was entirely incompetent to meet
the grim bard fairly on his peculiar ground), this ignorant burst of
his young impatience,--also arising from that half contemptuous dislike,
and sometimes selfish loathing, with which, either naturally feeble or
undeveloped minds, regard those dark ravings of the loftier poets, which
are in eternal opposition to their own fine-spun, shallow dreams of
rapturous or prudential Youth;--this rash, untutored burst of Pierre's
young impatience, seemed to have carried off with it, all the other
forms of his melancholy--if melancholy it had been--and left him now
serene again, and ready for any tranquil pleasantness the gods might
have in store. For his, indeed, was true Youth's temperament,--summary
with sadness, swift to joyfulness, and long protracting, and detaining
with that joyfulness, when once it came fully nigh to him.
As he entered the dining-hall, he saw Dates retiring from another door
with his tray. Alone and meditative, by the bared half of the polished
table, sat his mother at her dessert; fruit-baskets, and a decanter were
before her. On the other leaf of the same table, still lay the cloth,
folded back upon itself, and set out with one plate and its usual
accompaniments.
"Sit down, Pierre; when I came home, I was surprised to hear that the
phaeton had returned so early, and here I waited dinner for you, until I
could wait no more. But go to the green pantry now, and get what Dates
has but just put away for you there. Heigh-ho! too plainly I foresee
it--no more regular dinner-hours, or tea-hours, or supper-hours, in
Saddle Meadows, till its young lord is wedded. And that puts me in mind
of something, Pierre; but I'll defer it till you have eaten a little. Do
you know, Pierre, that if you continue these irregular meals of yours,
and deprive me so entirely almost of your company, that I shall run
fearful risk of getting to be a terrible wine-bibber;--yes, could you
unalarmed see me sitting all alone here with this decanter, like any old
nurse, Pierre; some solitary, forlorn old nurse, Pierre, deserted by her
last friend, and therefore forced to embrace her flask?"
"No, I did not feel any great alarm, sister," said Pierre, smiling,
"since I could not but perceive that the decanter was still full to the
stopple."
"Possibly it may be only a fresh decanter, Pierre;" then changing her
voice suddenly--"but mark me, Mr. Pierre Glendinning!"
"Well, Mrs. Mary Glendinning!"
"Do you know, sir, that you are very shortly to be married,--that indeed
the day is all but fixed?"
"How-!" cried Pierre, in real joyful astonishment, both at the nature of
the tidings, and the earnest tones in which they were conveyed--"dear,
dear mother, you have strangely changed your mind then, my dear mother."
"It is even so, dear brother;--before this day month I hope to have a
little sister Tartan."
"You talk very strangely, mother," rejoined Pierre, quickly. "I suppose,
then, I have next to nothing to say in the matter!"
"Next to nothing, Pierre! What indeed could you say to the purpose? what
at all have you to do with it, I should like to know? Do you so much as
dream, you silly boy, that men ever have the marrying of themselves?
Juxtaposition marries men. There is but one match-maker in the world,
Pierre, and that is Mrs. Juxtaposition, a most notorious lady!"
"Very peculiar, disenchanting sort of talk, this, under the
circumstances, sister Mary," laying down his fork. "Mrs. Juxtaposition,
ah! And in your opinion, mother, does this fine glorious passion only
amount to that?"
"Only to that, Pierre; but mark you: according to my creed--though this
part of it is a little hazy--Mrs. Juxtaposition moves her pawns only as
she herself is moved to so doing by the spirit."
"Ah! that sets it all right again," said Pierre, resuming his fork--"my
appetite returns. But what was that about my being married so soon?" he
added, vainly striving to assume an air of incredulity and unconcern;
"you were joking, I suppose; it seems to me, sister, either you or I was
but just now wandering in the mind a little, on that subject. Are you
really thinking of any such thing? and have you really vanquished your
sagacious scruples by yourself, after I had so long and ineffectually
sought to do it for you? Well, I am a million times delighted; tell me
quick!"
"I will, Pierre. You very well know, that from the first hour you
apprised me--or rather, from a period prior to that--from the moment
that I, by my own insight, became aware of your love for Lucy, I have
always approved it. Lucy is a delicious girl; of honorable descent, a
fortune, well-bred, and the very pattern of all that I think amiable and
attractive in a girl of seventeen."
"Well, well, well," cried Pierre rapidly and impetuously; "we both knew
that before."
"Well, well, well, Pierre," retorted his mother, mockingly.
"It is not well, well, well; but ill, ill, ill, to torture me so,
mother; go on, do!"
"But notwithstanding my admiring approval of your choice, Pierre; yet,
as you know, I have resisted your entreaties for my consent to your
speedy marriage, because I thought that a girl of scarcely seventeen,
and a boy scarcely twenty, should not be in such a hurry;--there was
plenty of time, I thought, which could be profitably employed by both."
"Permit me here to interrupt you, mother. Whatever you may have seen in
me; she,--I mean Lucy,--has never been in the slightest hurry to be
married;--that's all. But I shall regard it as a _lapsus-lingua_ in
you."
"Undoubtedly, a _lapsus_. But listen to me. I have been carefully
observing both you and Lucy of late; and that has made me think further
of the matter. Now, Pierre, if you were in any profession, or in any
business at all; nay, if I were a farmer's wife, and you my child,
working in my fields; why, then, you and Lucy should still wait awhile.
But as you have nothing to do but to think of Lucy by day, and dream of
her by night, and as she is in the same predicament, I suppose; with
respect to you; and as the consequence of all this begins to be
discernible in a certain, just perceptible, and quite harmless thinness,
so to speak, of the cheek; but a very conspicuous and dangerous
febrileness of the eye; therefore, I choose the lesser of two evils; and
now you have my permission to be married, as soon as the thing can be
done with propriety. I dare say you have no objection to have the
wedding take place before Christmas, the present month being the first
of summer."
Pierre said nothing; but leaping to his feet, threw his two arms around
his mother, and kissed her repeatedly.
"A most sweet and eloquent answer, Pierre; but sit down again. I desire
now to say a little concerning less attractive, but quite necessary
things connected with this affair. You know, that by your father's will,
these lands and--"
"Miss Lucy, my mistress;" said Dates, throwing open the door.
Pierre sprang to his feet; but as if suddenly mindful of his mother's
presence, composed himself again, though he still approached the door.
Lucy entered, carrying a little basket of strawberries.
"Why, how do you do, my dear," said Mrs. Glendinning affectionately.
"This is an unexpected pleasure."
"Yes; and I suppose that Pierre here is a little surprised too; seeing
that he was to call upon me this evening, and not I upon him before
sundown. But I took a sudden fancy for a solitary stroll,--the afternoon
was such a delicious one; and chancing--it was only chancing--to pass
through the Locust Lane leading hither, I met the strangest little
fellow, with this basket in his hand.--'Yes, buy them, miss'--said he.
'And how do you know I want to buy them,' returned I, 'I don't want to
buy them.'--'Yes you do, miss; they ought to be twenty-six cents, but
I'll take thirteen cents, that being my shilling. I always want the odd
half cent, I do. Come, I can't wait, I have been expecting you long
enough.'"
"A very sagacious little imp," laughed Mrs. Glendinning.
"Impertinent little rascal," cried Pierre.
"And am I not now the silliest of all silly girls, to be telling you my
adventures so very frankly," smiled Lucy.
"No; but the most celestial of all innocents," cried Pierre, in a
rhapsody of delight. "Frankly open is the flower, that hath nothing but
purity to show."
"Now, my dear little Lucy," said Mrs. Glendinning, "let Pierre take off
your shawl, and come now and stay to tea with us. Pierre has put back
the dinner so, the tea-hour will come now very soon."
"Thank you; but I can not stay this time. Look, I have forgotten my own
errand; I brought these strawberries for you, Mrs. Glendinning, and for
Pierre;--Pierre is so wonderfully fond of them."
"I was audacious enough to think as much," cried Pierre, "for you _and_
me, you see, mother; for you _and_ me, you understand that, I hope."
"Perfectly, my dear brother."
Lucy blushed.
"How warm it is, Mrs. Glendinning."
"Very warm, Lucy. So you won't stay to tea?"
"No, I must go now; just a little stroll, that's all; good-bye! Now
don't be following me, Pierre. Mrs. Glendinning, will you keep Pierre
back? I know you want him; you were talking over some private affair
when I entered; you both looked so very confidential."
"And you were not very far from right, Lucy," said Mrs. Glendinning,
making no sign to stay her departure.
"Yes, business of the highest importance," said Pierre, fixing his eyes
upon Lucy significantly.
At this moment, Lucy just upon the point of her departure, was hovering
near the door; the setting sun, streaming through the window, bathed her
whole form in golden loveliness and light; that wonderful, and most
vivid transparency of her clear Welsh complexion, now fairly glowed like
rosy snow. Her flowing, white, blue-ribboned dress, fleecily invested
her. Pierre almost thought that she could only depart the house by
floating out of the open window, instead of actually stepping from the
door. All her aspect to him, was that moment touched with an
indescribable gayety, buoyancy, fragility, and an unearthly evanescence.
Youth is no philosopher. Not into young Pierre's heart did there then
come the thought, that as the glory of the rose endures but for a day,
so the full bloom of girlish airiness and bewitchingness, passes from
the earth almost as soon; as jealously absorbed by those frugal
elements, which again incorporate that translated girlish bloom, into
the first expanding flower-bud. Not into young Pierre, did there then
steal that thought of utmost sadness; pondering on the inevitable
evanescence of all earthly loveliness; which makes the sweetest things
of life only food for ever-devouring and omnivorous melancholy. Pierre's
thought was different from this, and yet somehow akin to it.
This to be my wife? I that but the other day weighed an hundred and
fifty pounds of solid avoirdupois;--_I_ to wed this heavenly fleece?
Methinks one husbandly embrace would break her airy zone, and she exhale
upward to that heaven whence she hath hither come, condensed to mortal
sight. It can not be; I am of heavy earth, and she of airy light. By
heaven, but marriage is an impious thing!
Meanwhile, as these things ran through his soul, Mrs. Glendinning also
had thinkings of her own.
"A very beautiful tableau," she cried, at last, artistically turning her
gay head a little sideways--"very beautiful, indeed; this, I suppose is
all premeditated for my entertainment. Orpheus finding his Eurydice; or
Pluto stealing Proserpine. Admirable! It might almost stand for either."
"No," said Pierre, gravely; "it is the last. Now, first I see a meaning
there." Yes, he added to himself inwardly, I am Pluto stealing
Proserpine; and every accepted lover is.
"And you would be very stupid, brother Pierre, if you did not see
something there," said his mother, still that way pursuing her own
different train of thought. "The meaning thereof is this: Lucy has
commanded me to stay you; but in reality she wants you to go along with
her. Well, you may go as far as the porch; but then, you must return,
for we have not concluded our little affair, you know. Adieu, little
lady!"
There was ever a slight degree of affectionate patronizing in the manner
of the resplendent, full-blown Mrs. Glendinning, toward the delicate and
shrinking girlhood of young Lucy. She treated her very much as she might
have treated some surpassingly beautiful and precocious child; and this
was precisely what Lucy was. Looking beyond the present period, Mrs.
Glendinning could not but perceive, that even in Lucy's womanly
maturity, Lucy would still be a child to her; because, she, elated,
felt, that in a certain intellectual vigor, so to speak, she was the
essential opposite of Lucy, whose sympathetic mind and person had both
been cast in one mould of wondrous delicacy. But here Mrs. Glendinning
was both right and wrong. So far as she here saw a difference between
herself and Lucy Tartan, she did not err; but so far--and that was very
far--as she thought she saw her innate superiority to her in the
absolute scale of being, here she very widely and immeasurably erred.
For what may be artistically styled angelicalness, this is the highest
essence compatible with created being; and angelicalness hath no vulgar
vigor in it. And that thing which very often prompts to the display of
any vigor--which thing, in man or woman, is at bottom nothing but
ambition--this quality is purely earthly, and not angelical. It is
false, that any angels fell by reason of ambition. Angels never fall;
and never feel ambition. Therefore, benevolently, and affectionately,
and all-sincerely, as thy heart, oh, Mrs. Glendinning! now standest
affected toward the fleecy Lucy; still, lady, thou dost very sadly
mistake it, when the proud, double-arches of the bright breastplate of
thy bosom, expand with secret triumph over one, whom thou so sweetly,
but still so patronizingly stylest, The Little Lucy.
But ignorant of these further insights, that very superb-looking lady,
now waiting Pierre's return from the portico door, sat in a very
matronly revery; her eyes fixed upon the decanter of amber-hued wine
before her. Whether it was that she somehow saw some lurking analogical
similitude between that remarkably slender, and gracefully cut little
pint-decanter, brimfull of light, golden wine, or not, there is no
absolute telling now. But really, the peculiarly, and reminiscently, and
forecastingly complacent expression of her beaming and benevolent
countenance, seemed a tell-tale of some conceit very much like the
following:--Yes, she's a very pretty little pint-decanter of a girl: a
very pretty little Pale Sherry pint-decanter of a girl; and I--I'm a
quart decanter of--of--Port--potent Port! Now, Sherry for boys, and Port
for men--so I've heard men say; and Pierre is but a boy; but when his
father wedded me,--why, his father was turned of five-and-thirty years.
After a little further waiting for him, Mrs. Glendinning heard Pierre's
voice--"Yes, before eight o'clock at least, Lucy--no fear;" and then the
hall door banged, and Pierre returned to her.
But now she found that this unforeseen visit of Lucy had completely
routed all business capacity in her mercurial son; fairly capsizing him
again into, there was no telling what sea of pleasant pensiveness.
"Dear me! some other time, sister Mary."
"Not this time; that is very certain, Pierre. Upon my word I shall have
to get Lucy kidnapped, and temporarily taken out of the country, and you
handcuffed to the table, else there will be no having a preliminary
understanding with you, previous to calling in the lawyers. Well, I
shall yet manage you, one way or other. Good-bye, Pierre; I see you
don't want me now. I suppose I shan't see you till to-morrow morning.
Luckily, I have a very interesting book to read. Adieu!"
But Pierre remained in his chair; his gaze fixed upon the stilly sunset
beyond the meadows, and far away to the now golden hills. A glorious,
softly glorious, and most gracious evening, which seemed plainly a
tongue to all humanity, saying: I go down in beauty to rise in joy; Love
reigns throughout all worlds that sunsets visit; it is a foolish ghost
story; there is no such thing as misery. Would Love, which is
omnipotent, have misery in his domain? Would the god of sunlight decree
gloom? It is a flawless, speckless, fleckless, beautiful world
throughout; joy now, and joy forever!
Then the face, which before had seemed mournfully and reproachfully
looking out upon him from the effulgent sunset's heart; the face slid
from him; and left alone there with his soul's joy, thinking that that
very night he would utter the magic word of marriage to his Lucy; not a
happier youth than Pierre Glendinning sat watching that day's sun go
down.
IV.
After this morning of gayety, this noon of tragedy, and this evening so
full of chequered pensiveness; Pierre now possessed his soul in joyful
mildness and steadfastness; feeling none of that wild anguish of
anticipative rapture, which, in weaker minds, too often dislodges Love's
sweet bird from her nest.
The early night was warm, but dark--for the moon was not risen yet--and
as Pierre passed on beneath the pendulous canopies of the long arms of
the weeping elms of the village, an almost impenetrable blackness
surrounded him, but entered not the gently illuminated halls of his
heart. He had not gone very far, when in the distance beyond, he noticed
a light moving along the opposite side of the road, and slowly
approaching. As it was the custom for some of the more elderly, and
perhaps timid inhabitants of the village, to carry a lantern when going
abroad of so dark a night, this object conveyed no impression of novelty
to Pierre; still, as it silently drew nearer and nearer, the one only
distinguishable thing before him, he somehow felt a nameless
presentiment that the light must be seeking him. He had nearly gained
the cottage door, when the lantern crossed over toward him; and as his
nimble hand was laid at last upon the little wicket-gate, which he
thought was now to admit him to so much delight; a heavy hand was laid
upon himself, and at the same moment, the lantern was lifted toward his
face, by a hooded and obscure-looking figure, whose half-averted
countenance he could but indistinctly discern. But Pierre's own open
aspect, seemed to have been quickly scrutinized by the other.
"I have a letter for Pierre Glendinning," said the stranger, "and I
believe this is he." At the same moment, a letter was drawn forth, and
sought his hand.
"For me!" exclaimed Pierre, faintly, starting at the strangeness of the
encounter;--"methinks this is an odd time and place to deliver your
mail;--who are you?--Stay!"
But without waiting an answer, the messenger had already turned about,
and was re-crossing the road. In the first impulse of the moment, Pierre
stept forward, and would have pursued him; but smiling at his own
causeless curiosity and trepidation, paused again; and softly turned
over the letter in his hand. What mysterious correspondent is this,
thought he, circularly moving his thumb upon the seal; no one writes me
but from abroad; and their letters come through the office; and as for
Lucy--pooh!--when she herself is within, she would hardly have her notes
delivered at her own gate. Strange! but I'll in, and read it;--no, not
that;--I come to read again in her own sweet heart--that dear missive to
me from heaven,--and this impertinent letter would pre-occupy me. I'll
wait till I go home.
He entered the gate, and laid his hand upon the cottage knocker. Its
sudden coolness caused a slight, and, at any other time, an
unaccountable sympathetic sensation in his hand. To his unwonted mood,
the knocker seemed to say--"Enter not!--Begone, and first read thy
note."
Yielding now, half alarmed, and half bantering with himself, to these
shadowy interior monitions, he half-unconsciously quitted the door;
repassed the gate; and soon found himself retracing his homeward path.
He equivocated with himself no more; the gloom of the air had now burst
into his heart, and extinguished its light; then, first in all his life,
Pierre felt the irresistible admonitions and intuitions of Fate.
He entered the hall unnoticed, passed up to his chamber, and hurriedly
locking the door in the dark, lit his lamp. As the summoned flame
illuminated the room, Pierre, standing before the round center-table,
where the lamp was placed, with his hand yet on the brass circle which
regulated the wick, started at a figure in the opposite mirror. It bore
the outline of Pierre, but now strangely filled with features
transformed, and unfamiliar to him; feverish eagerness, fear, and
nameless forebodings of ill! He threw himself into a chair, and for a
time vainly struggled with the incomprehensible power that possessed
him. Then, as he avertedly drew the letter from his bosom, he whispered
to himself--Out on thee, Pierre! how sheepish now will ye feel when this
tremendous note will turn out to be an invitation to a supper to-morrow
night; quick, fool, and write the stereotyped reply: Mr. Pierre
Glendinning will be very happy to accept Miss so and so's polite
invitation.
Still for the moment he held the letter averted. The messenger had so
hurriedly accosted him, and delivered his duty, that Pierre had not yet
so much as gained one glance at the superscription of the note. And now
the wild thought passed through his mind of what would be the result,
should he deliberately destroy the note, without so much as looking at
the hand that had addressed it. Hardly had this half-crazy conceit fully
made itself legible in his soul, when he was conscious of his two hands
meeting in the middle of the sundered note! He leapt from his chair--By
heaven! he murmured, unspeakably shocked at the intensity of that mood
which had caused him unwittingly as it were, to do for the first time in
his whole life, an act of which he was privately ashamed. Though the
mood that was on him was none of his own willful seeking; yet now he
swiftly felt conscious that he had perhaps a little encouraged it,
through that certain strange infatuation of fondness, which the human
mind, however vigorous, sometimes feels for any emotion at once novel
and mystical. Not willingly, at such times--never mind how fearful we
may be--do we try to dissolve the spell which seems, for the time, to
admit us, all astonished, into the vague vestibule of the spiritual
worlds.
Pierre now seemed distinctly to feel two antagonistic agencies within
him; one of which was just struggling into his consciousness, and each
of which was striving for the mastery; and between whose respective
final ascendencies, he thought he could perceive, though but shadowly,
that he himself was to be the only umpire. One bade him finish the
selfish destruction of the note; for in some dark way the reading of it
would irretrievably entangle his fate. The other bade him dismiss all
misgivings; not because there was no possible ground for them, but
because to dismiss them was the manlier part, never mind what might
betide. This good angel seemed mildly to say--Read, Pierre, though by
reading thou may'st entangle thyself, yet may'st thou thereby
disentangle others. Read, and feel that best blessedness which, with the
sense of all duties discharged, holds happiness indifferent. The bad
angel insinuatingly breathed--Read it not, dearest Pierre; but destroy
it, and be happy. Then, at the blast of his noble heart, the bad angel
shrunk up into nothingness; and the good one defined itself clearer and
more clear, and came nigher and more nigh to him, smiling sadly but
benignantly; while forth from the infinite distances wonderful harmonies
stole into his heart; so that every vein in him pulsed to some heavenly
swell.
V.
"The name at the end of this letter will be wholly strange to thee.
Hitherto my existence has been utterly unknown to thee. This letter will
touch thee and pain thee. Willingly would I spare thee, but I can not.
My heart bears me witness, that did I think that the suffering these
lines would give thee, would, in the faintest degree, compare with what
mine has been, I would forever withhold them.
"Pierre Glendinning, thou art not the only child of thy father; in the
eye of the sun, the hand that traces this is thy sister's; yes, Pierre,
Isabel calls thee her brother--her brother! oh, sweetest of words, which
so often I have thought to myself, and almost deemed it profanity for an
outcast like me to speak or think. Dearest Pierre, my brother, my own
father's child! art thou an angel, that thou canst overleap all the
heartless usages and fashions of a banded world, that will call thee
fool, fool, fool! and curse thee, if thou yieldest to that heavenly
impulse which alone can lead thee to respond to the long tyrannizing,
and now at last unquenchable yearnings of my bursting heart? Oh, my
brother!
"But, Pierre Glendinning, I will be proud with thee. Let not my hapless
condition extinguish in me, the nobleness which I equally inherit with
thee. Thou shall not be cozened, by my tears and my anguish, into any
thing which thy most sober hour will repent. Read no further. If it suit
thee, burn this letter; so shalt thou escape the certainty of that
knowledge, which, if thou art now cold and selfish, may hereafter, in
some maturer, remorseful, and helpless hour, cause thee a poignant
upbraiding. No, I shall not, I will not implore thee.--Oh, my brother,
my dear, dear Pierre,--help me, fly to me; see, I perish without
thee;--pity, pity,--here I freeze in the wide, wide world;--no father,
no mother, no sister, no brother, no living thing in the fair form of
humanity, that holds me dear. No more, oh no more, dear Pierre, can I
endure to be an outcast in the world, for which the dear Savior died.
Fly to me, Pierre;--nay, I could tear what I now write,--as I have torn
so many other sheets, all written for thy eye, but which never reached
thee, because in my distraction, I knew not how to write to thee, nor
what to say to thee; and so, behold again how I rave.
"Nothing more; I will write no more;--silence becomes this grave;--the
heart-sickness steals over me, Pierre, my brother.
"Scarce know I what I have written. Yet will I write thee the fatal
line, and leave all the rest to thee, Pierre, my brother.--She that is
called Isabel Banford dwells in the little red farm-house, three miles
from the village, on the slope toward the lake. To-morrow
night-fall--not before--not by day, not by day, Pierre.
THY SISTER, ISABEL."
VI.
This letter, inscribed in a feminine, but irregular hand, and in some
places almost illegible, plainly attesting the state of the mind which
had dictated it;--stained, too, here and there, with spots of tears,
which chemically acted upon by the ink, assumed a strange and reddish
hue--as if blood and not tears had dropped upon the sheet;--and so
completely torn in two by Pierre's own hand, that it indeed seemed the
fit scroll of a torn, as well as bleeding heart;--this amazing letter,
deprived Pierre for the time of all lucid and definite thought or
feeling. He hung half-lifeless in his chair; his hand, clutching the
letter, was pressed against his heart, as if some assassin had stabbed
him and fled; and Pierre was now holding the dagger in the wound, to
stanch the outgushing of the blood.
Ay, Pierre, now indeed art thou hurt with a wound, never to be
completely healed but in heaven; for thee, the before undistrusted moral
beauty of the world is forever fled; for thee, thy sacred father is no
more a saint; all brightness hath gone from thy hills, and all peace
from thy plains; and now, now, for the first time, Pierre, Truth rolls a
black billow through thy soul! Ah, miserable thou, to whom Truth, in her
first tides, bears nothing but wrecks!
The perceptible forms of things; the shapes of thoughts; the pulses of
life, but slowly came back to Pierre. And as the mariner, shipwrecked
and cast on the beach, has much ado to escape the recoil of the wave
that hurled him there; so Pierre long struggled, and struggled, to
escape the recoil of that anguish, which had dashed him out of itself,
upon the beach of his swoon.
But man was not made to succumb to the villain Woe. Youth is not young
and a wrestler in vain. Pierre staggeringly rose to his feet; his wide
eyes fixed, and his whole form in a tremble.
"Myself am left, at least," he slowly and half-chokingly murmured. "With
myself I front thee! Unhand me all fears, and unlock me all spells!
Henceforth I will know nothing but Truth; glad Truth, or sad Truth; I
will know what is, and do what my deepest angel dictates.--The
letter!--Isabel,--sister,--brother,--me, _me_--my sacred father!--This
is some accursed dream!--nay, but this paper thing is forged,--a base
and malicious forgery, I swear;--Well didst thou hide thy face from me,
thou vile lanterned messenger, that didst accost me on the threshold of
Joy, with this lying warrant of Woe! Doth Truth come in the dark, and
steal on us, and rob us so, and then depart, deaf to all pursuing
invocations? If this night, which now wraps my soul, be genuine as that
which now wraps this half of the world; then Fate, I have a choice
quarrel with thee. Thou art a palterer and a cheat; thou hast lured me
on through gay gardens to a gulf. Oh! falsely guided in the days of my
Joy, am I now truly led in this night of my grief?--I will be a raver,
and none shall stay me! I will lift my hand in fury, for am I not
struck? I will be bitter in my breath, for is not this cup of gall? Thou
Black Knight, that with visor down, thus confrontest me, and mockest at
me; Lo! I strike through thy helm, and will see thy face, be it
Gorgon!--Let me go, ye fond affections; all piety leave me;--I will be
impious, for piety hath juggled me, and taught me to revere, where I
should spurn. From all idols, I tear all veils; henceforth I will see
the hidden things; and live right out in my own hidden life!--Now I feel
that nothing but Truth can move me so. This letter is not a forgery. Oh!
Isabel, thou art my sister; and I will love thee, and protect thee, ay,
and own thee through all. Ah! forgive me, ye heavens, for my ignorant
ravings, and accept this my vow.--Here I swear myself Isabel's. Oh! thou
poor castaway girl, that in loneliness and anguish must have long
breathed that same air, which I have only inhaled for delight; thou who
must even now be weeping, and weeping, cast into an ocean of uncertainty
as to thy fate, which heaven hath placed in my hands; sweet Isabel!
would I not be baser than brass, and harder, and colder than ice, if I
could be insensible to such claims as thine? Thou movest before me, in
rainbows spun of thy tears! I see thee long weeping, and God demands me
for thy comforter; and comfort thee, stand by thee, and fight for thee,
will thy leapingly-acknowledging brother, whom thy own father named
Pierre!"
He could not stay in his chamber: the house contracted to a nut-shell
around him; the walls smote his forehead; bare-headed he rushed from the
place, and only in the infinite air, found scope for that boundless
expansion of his life.