ISABEL, AND THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY OF ISABEL.
I.
Half wishful that the hour would come; half shuddering that every moment
it still came nearer and more near to him; dry-eyed, but wet with that
dark day's rain; at fall of eve, Pierre emerged from long wanderings in
the primeval woods of Saddle Meadows, and for one instant stood
motionless upon their sloping skirt.
Where he stood was in the rude wood road, only used by sledges in the
time of snow; just where the out-posted trees formed a narrow arch, and
fancied gateway leading upon the far, wide pastures sweeping down toward
the lake. In that wet and misty eve the scattered, shivering pasture
elms seemed standing in a world inhospitable, yet rooted by inscrutable
sense of duty to their place. Beyond, the lake lay in one sheet of
blankness and of dumbness, unstirred by breeze or breath; fast bound
there it lay, with not life enough to reflect the smallest shrub or
twig. Yet in that lake was seen the duplicate, stirless sky above. Only
in sunshine did that lake catch gay, green images; and these but
displaced the imaged muteness of the unfeatured heavens.
On both sides, in the remoter distance, and also far beyond the mild
lake's further shore, rose the long, mysterious mountain masses; shaggy
with pines and hemlocks, mystical with nameless, vapory exhalations, and
in that dim air black with dread and gloom. At their base, profoundest
forests lay entranced, and from their far owl-haunted depths of caves
and rotted leaves, and unused and unregarded inland overgrowth of
decaying wood--for smallest sticks of which, in other climes many a
pauper was that moment perishing; from out the infinite inhumanities of
those profoundest forests, came a moaning, muttering, roaring,
intermitted, changeful sound: rain-shakings of the palsied trees,
slidings of rocks undermined, final crashings of long-riven boughs, and
devilish gibberish of the forest-ghosts.
But more near, on the mild lake's hither shore, where it formed a long
semi-circular and scooped acclivity of corn-fields, there the small and
low red farm-house lay; its ancient roof a bed of brightest mosses; its
north front (from the north the moss-wind blows), also moss-incrusted,
like the north side of any vast-trunked maple in the groves. At one
gabled end, a tangled arbor claimed support, and paid for it by generous
gratuities of broad-flung verdure, one viny shaft of which pointed
itself upright against the chimney-bricks, as if a waving lightning-rod.
Against the other gable, you saw the lowly dairy-shed; its sides close
netted with traced Madeira vines; and had you been close enough, peeping
through that imprisoning tracery, and through the light slats barring
the little embrasure of a window, you might have seen the gentle and
contented captives--the pans of milk, and the snow-white Dutch cheeses
in a row, and the molds of golden butter, and the jars of lily cream. In
front, three straight gigantic lindens stood guardians of this verdant
spot. A long way up, almost to the ridge-pole of the house, they showed
little foliage; but then, suddenly, as three huge green balloons, they
poised their three vast, inverted, rounded cones of verdure in the air.
Soon as Pierre's eye rested on the place, a tremor shook him. Not alone
because of Isabel, as there a harborer now, but because of two dependent
and most strange coincidences which that day's experience had brought to
him. He had gone to breakfast with his mother, his heart charged to
overflowing with presentiments of what would probably be her haughty
disposition concerning such a being as Isabel, claiming her maternal
love: and lo! the Reverend Mr. Falsgrave enters, and Ned and Delly are
discussed, and that whole sympathetic matter, which Pierre had despaired
of bringing before his mother in all its ethic bearings, so as
absolutely to learn her thoughts upon it, and thereby test his own
conjectures; all that matter had been fully talked about; so that,
through that strange coincidence, he now perfectly knew his mother's
mind, and had received forewarnings, as if from heaven, not to make any
present disclosure to her. That was in the morning; and now, at eve
catching a glimpse of the house where Isabel was harboring, at once he
recognized it as the rented farm-house of old Walter Ulver, father to
the self-same Delly, forever ruined through the cruel arts of Ned.
Strangest feelings, almost supernatural, now stole into Pierre. With
little power to touch with awe the souls of less susceptible,
reflective, and poetic beings, such coincidences, however frequently
they may recur, ever fill the finer organization with sensations which
transcend all verbal renderings. They take hold of life's subtlest
problem. With the lightning's flash, the query is spontaneously
propounded--chance, or God? If too, the mind thus influenced be likewise
a prey to any settled grief, then on all sides the query magnifies, and
at last takes in the all-comprehending round of things. For ever is it
seen, that sincere souls in suffering, then most ponder upon final
causes. The heart, stirred to its depths, finds correlative sympathy in
the head, which likewise is profoundly moved. Before miserable men, when
intellectual, all the ages of the world pass as in a manacled
procession, and all their myriad links rattle in the mournful mystery.
Pacing beneath the long-skirting shadows of the elevated wood, waiting
for the appointed hour to come, Pierre strangely strove to imagine to
himself the scene which was destined to ensue. But imagination utterly
failed him here; the reality was too real for him; only the face, the
face alone now visited him; and so accustomed had he been of late to
confound it with the shapes of air, that he almost trembled when he
thought that face to face, that face must shortly meet his own.
And now the thicker shadows begin to fall; the place is lost to him;
only the three dim, tall lindens pilot him as he descends the hill,
hovering upon the house. He knows it not, but his meditative route is
sinuous; as if that moment his thought's stream was likewise
serpentining: laterally obstructed by insinuated misgivings as to the
ultimate utilitarian advisability of the enthusiast resolution that was
his. His steps decrease in quickness as he comes more nigh, and sees one
feeble light struggling in the rustic double-casement. Infallibly he
knows that his own voluntary steps are taking him forever from the
brilliant chandeliers of the mansion of Saddle Meadows, to join company
with the wretched rush-lights of poverty and woe. But his sublime
intuitiveness also paints to him the sun-like glories of god-like truth
and virtue; which though ever obscured by the dense fogs of earth, still
shall shine eventually in unclouded radiance, casting illustrative light
upon the sapphire throne of God.
II.
He stands before the door; the house is steeped in silence; he knocks;
the casement light flickers for a moment, and then moves away; within,
he hears a door creak on its hinges; then his whole heart beats wildly
as the outer latch is lifted; and holding the light above her
supernatural head, Isabel stands before him. It is herself. No word is
spoken; no other soul is seen. They enter the room of the double
casement; and Pierre sits down, overpowered with bodily faintness and
spiritual awe. He lifts his eyes to Isabel's gaze of loveliness and
loneliness; and then a low, sweet, half-sobbing voice of more than
natural musicalness is heard:--
"And so, thou art my brother;--shall I call thee Pierre?"
Steadfastly, with his one first and last fraternal inquisition of the
person of the mystic girl, Pierre now for an instant eyes her; and in
that one instant sees in the imploring face, not only the nameless
touchingness of that of the sewing-girl, but also the subtler expression
of the portrait of his then youthful father, strangely translated, and
intermarryingly blended with some before unknown, foreign feminineness.
In one breath, Memory and Prophecy, and Intuition tell him--"Pierre,
have no reserves; no minutest possible doubt;--this being is thy sister;
thou gazest on thy father's flesh."
"And so thou art my brother!--shall I call thee Pierre?"
He sprang to his feet, and caught her in his undoubting arms.
"Thou art! thou art!"
He felt a faint struggling within his clasp; her head drooped against
him; his whole form was bathed in the flowing glossiness of her long and
unimprisoned hair. Brushing the locks aside, he now gazed upon the
death-like beauty of the face, and caught immortal sadness from it. She
seemed as dead; as suffocated,--the death that leaves most unimpaired
the latent tranquillities and sweetnesses of the human countenance.
He would have called aloud for succor; but the slow eyes opened upon
him; and slowly he felt the girl's supineness leaving her; and now she
recovers herself a little,--and again he feels her faintly struggling in
his arms, as if somehow abashed, and incredulous of mortal right to hold
her so. Now Pierre repents his over-ardent and incautious warmth, and
feels himself all reverence for her. Tenderly he leads her to a bench
within the double casement; and sits beside her; and waits in silence,
till the first shock of this encounter shall have left her more composed
and more prepared to hold communion with him.
"How feel'st thou now, my sister?"
"Bless thee! bless thee!"
Again the sweet, wild power of the musicalness of the voice, and some
soft, strange touch of foreignness in the accent,--so it fancifully
seemed to Pierre, thrills through and through his soul. He bent and
kissed her brow; and then feels her hand seeking his, and then clasping
it without one uttered word.
All his being is now condensed in that one sensation of the clasping
hand. He feels it as very small and smooth, but strangely hard. Then he
knew that by the lonely labor of her hands, his own father's daughter
had earned her living in the same world, where he himself, her own
brother, had so idly dwelled. Once more he reverently kissed her brow,
and his warm breath against it murmured with a prayer to heaven.
"I have no tongue to speak to thee, Pierre, my brother. My whole being,
all my life's thoughts and longings are in endless arrears to thee; then
how can I speak to thee? Were it God's will, Pierre, my utmost blessing
now, were to lie down and die. Then should I be at peace. Bear with me,
Pierre."
"Eternally will I do that, my beloved Isabel! Speak not to me yet
awhile, if that seemeth best to thee, if that only is possible to thee.
This thy clasping hand, my sister, _this_ is now thy tongue to me."
"I know not where to begin to speak to thee, Pierre; and yet my soul
o'erbrims in me."
"From my heart's depths, I love and reverence thee; and feel for thee,
backward and forward, through all eternity!"
"Oh, Pierre, can'st thou not cure in me this dreaminess, this
bewilderingness I feel? My poor head swims and swims, and will not
pause. My life can not last long thus; I am too full without discharge.
Conjure tears for me, Pierre; that my heart may not break with the
present feeling,--more death-like to me than all my grief gone by!"
"Ye thirst-slaking evening skies, ye hilly dews and mists, distil your
moisture here! The bolt hath passed; why comes not the following
shower?--Make her to weep!"
Then her head sought his support; and big drops fell on him; and anon,
Isabel gently slid her head from him, and sat a little composedly beside
him.
"If thou feelest in endless arrears of thought to me, my sister; so do I
feel toward thee. I too, scarce know what I should speak to thee. But
when thou lookest on me, my sister, thou beholdest one, who in his soul
hath taken vows immutable, to be to thee, in all respects, and to the
uttermost bounds and possibilities of Fate, thy protecting and
all-acknowledging brother!"
"Not mere sounds of common words, but inmost tones of my heart's deepest
melodies should now be audible to thee. Thou speakest to a human thing,
but something heavenly should answer thee;--some flute heard in the air
should answer thee; for sure thy most undreamed-of accents, Pierre, sure
they have not been unheard on high. Blessings that are imageless to all
mortal fancyings, these shall be thine for this."
"Blessing like to thine, doth but recoil and bless homeward to the heart
that uttered it. I can not bless thee, my sister, as thou dost bless
thyself in blessing my unworthiness. But, Isabel, by still keeping
present the first wonder of our meeting, we shall make our hearts all
feebleness. Let me then rehearse to thee what Pierre is; what life
hitherto he hath been leading; and what hereafter he shall lead;--so
thou wilt be prepared."
"Nay, Pierre, that is my office; thou art first entitled to my tale,
then, if it suit thee, thou shalt make me the unentitled gift of thine.
Listen to me, now. The invisible things will give me strength;--it is
not much, Pierre;--nor aught very marvelous. Listen then;--I feel
soothed down to utterance now."
During some brief, interluding, silent pauses in their interview thus
far, Pierre had heard a soft, slow, sad, to-and-fro, meditative stepping
on the floor above; and in the frequent pauses that intermitted the
strange story in the following chapter, that same soft, slow, sad,
to-and-fro, meditative, and most melancholy stepping, was again and
again audible in the silent room.
III.
"I never knew a mortal mother. The farthest stretch of my life's memory
can not recall one single feature of such a face. If, indeed, mother of
mine hath lived, she is long gone, and cast no shadow on the ground she
trod. Pierre, the lips that do now speak to thee, never touched a
woman's breast; I seem not of woman born. My first dim life-thoughts
cluster round an old, half-ruinous house in some region, for which I now
have no chart to seek it out. If such a spot did ever really exist, that
too seems to have been withdrawn from all the remainder of the earth. It
was a wild, dark house, planted in the midst of a round, cleared,
deeply-sloping space, scooped out of the middle of deep stunted pine
woods. Ever I shrunk at evening from peeping out of my window, lest the
ghostly pines should steal near to me, and reach out their grim arms to
snatch me into their horrid shadows. In summer the forest unceasingly
hummed with unconjecturable voices of unknown birds and beasts. In
winter its deep snows were traced like any paper map, with dotting
night-tracks of four-footed creatures, that, even to the sun, were never
visible, and never were seen by man at all. In the round open space the
dark house stood, without one single green twig or leaf to shelter it;
shadeless and shelterless in the heart of shade and shelter. Some of the
windows were rudely boarded up, with boards nailed straight up and down;
and those rooms were utterly empty, and never were entered, though they
were doorless. But often, from the echoing corridor, I gazed into them
with fear; for the great fire-places were all in ruins; the lower tier
of back-stones were burnt into one white, common crumbling; and the
black bricks above had fallen upon the hearths, heaped here and there
with the still falling soot of long-extinguished fires. Every
hearth-stone in that house had one long crack through it; every floor
drooped at the corners; and outside, the whole base of the house, where
it rested on the low foundation of greenish stones, was strewn with
dull, yellow molderings of the rotting sills. No name; no scrawled or
written thing; no book, was in the house; no one memorial speaking of
its former occupants. It was dumb as death. No grave-stone, or mound, or
any little hillock around the house, betrayed any past burials of man or
child. And thus, with no trace then to me of its past history, thus it
hath now entirely departed and perished from my slightest knowledge as
to where that house so stood, or in what region it so stood. None other
house like it have I ever seen. But once I saw plates of the outside of
French chateaux which powerfully recalled its dim image to me,
especially the two rows of small dormer windows projecting from the
inverted hopper-roof. But that house was of wood, and these of stone.
Still, sometimes I think that house was not in this country, but
somewhere in Europe; perhaps in France; but it is all bewildering to me;
and so you must not start at me, for I can not but talk wildly upon so
wild a theme.
"In this house I never saw any living human soul, but an old man and
woman. The old man's face was almost black with age, and was one purse
of wrinkles, his hoary beard always tangled, streaked with dust and
earthy crumbs. I think in summer he toiled a little in the garden, or
some spot like that, which lay on one side of the house. All my ideas
are in uncertainty and confusion here. But the old man and the old woman
seem to have fastened themselves indelibly upon my memory. I suppose
their being the only human things around me then, _that_ caused the hold
they took upon me. They seldom spoke to me; but would sometimes, of
dark, gusty nights, sit by the fire and stare at me, and then mumble to
each other, and then stare at me again. They were not entirely unkind to
me; but, I repeat, they seldom or never spoke to me. What words or
language they used to each other, this it is impossible for me to
recall. I have often wished to; for then I might at least have some
additional idea whether the house was in this country or somewhere
beyond the sea. And here I ought to say, that sometimes I have, I know
not what sort of vague remembrances of at one time--shortly after the
period I now speak of--chattering in two different childish languages;
one of which waned in me as the other and latter grew. But more of this
anon. It was the woman that gave me my meals; for I did not eat with
them. Once they sat by the fire with a loaf between them, and a bottle
of some thin sort of reddish wine; and I went up to them, and asked to
eat with them, and touched the loaf. But instantly the old man made a
motion as if to strike me, but did not, and the woman, glaring at me,
snatched the loaf and threw it into the fire before them. I ran
frightened from the room; and sought a cat, which I had often tried to
coax into some intimacy, but, for some strange cause, without success.
But in my frightened loneliness, then, I sought the cat again, and found
her up-stairs, softly scratching for some hidden thing among the litter
of the abandoned fire-places. I called to her, for I dared not go into
the haunted chamber; but she only gazed sideways and unintelligently
toward me; and continued her noiseless searchings. I called again, and
then she turned round and hissed at me; and I ran down stairs, still
stung with the thought of having been driven away there, too. I now knew
not where to go to rid myself of my loneliness. At last I went outside
of the house, and sat down on a stone, but its coldness went up to my
heart, and I rose and stood on my feet. But my head was dizzy; I could
not stand; I fell, and knew no more. But next morning I found myself in
bed in my uncheerable room, and some dark bread and a cup of water by
me.
"It has only been by chance that I have told thee this one particular
reminiscence of my early life in that house. I could tell many more like
it, but this is enough to show what manner of life I led at that time.
Every day that I then lived, I felt all visible sights and all audible
sounds growing stranger and stranger, and fearful and more fearful to
me. To me the man and the woman were just like the cat; none of them
would speak to me; none of them were comprehensible to me. And the man,
and the woman, and the cat, were just like the green foundation stones
of the house to me; I knew not whence they came, or what cause they had
for being there. I say again, no living human soul came to the house but
the man and the woman; but sometimes the old man early trudged away to a
road that led through the woods, and would not come back till late in
the evening; he brought the dark bread, and the thin, reddish wine with
him. Though the entrance to the wood was not so very far from the door,
yet he came so slowly and infirmly trudging with his little load, that
it seemed weary hours on hours between my first descrying him among the
trees, and his crossing the splintered threshold.
"Now the wide and vacant blurrings of my early life thicken in my mind.
All goes wholly memoryless to me now. It may have been that about that
time I grew sick with some fever, in which for a long interval I lost
myself. Or it may be true, which I have heard, that after the period of
our very earliest recollections, then a space intervenes of entire
unknowingness, followed again by the first dim glimpses of the
succeeding memory, more or less distinctly embracing all our past up to
that one early gap in it.
"However this may be, nothing more can I recall of the house in the wide
open space; nothing of how at last I came to leave it; but I must have
been still extremely young then. But some uncertain, tossing memory have
I of being at last in another round, open space, but immensely larger
than the first one, and with no encircling belt of woods. Yet often it
seems to me that there were three tall, straight things like pine-trees
somewhere there nigh to me at times; and that they fearfully shook and
snapt as the old trees used to in the mountain storms. And the floors
seemed sometimes to droop at the corners still more steeply than the old
floors did; and changefully drooped too, so that I would even seem to
feel them drooping under me.
"Now, too, it was that, as it sometimes seems to me, I first and last
chattered in the two childish languages I spoke of a little time ago.
There seemed people about me, some of whom talked one, and some the
other; but I talked both; yet one not so readily as the other; and but
beginningly as it were; still this other was the one which was gradually
displacing the former. The men who--as it sometimes dreamily seems to me
at times--often climbed the three strange tree-like things, they
talked--I needs must think--if indeed I have any real thought about so
bodiless a phantom as this is--they talked the language which I speak of
as at this time gradually waning in me. It was a bonny tongue; oh, seems
to me so sparkling-gay and lightsome; just the tongue for a child like
me, if the child had not been so sad always. It was pure children's
language, Pierre; so twittering--such a chirp.
"In thy own mind, thou must now perceive, that most of these dim
remembrances in me, hint vaguely of a ship at sea. But all is dim and
vague to me. Scarce know I at any time whether I tell you real things,
or the unrealest dreams. Always in me, the solidest things melt into
dreams, and dreams into solidities. Never have I wholly recovered from
the effects of my strange early life. This it is, that even now--this
moment--surrounds thy visible form, my brother, with a mysterious
mistiness; so that a second face, and a third face, and a fourth face
peep at me from within thy own. Now dim, and more dim, grows in me all
the memory of how thou and I did come to meet. I go groping again amid
all sorts of shapes, which part to me; so that I seem to advance through
the shapes; and yet the shapes have eyes that look at me. I turn round,
and they look at me; I step forward, and they look at me.--Let me be
silent now; do not speak to me."
IV.
Filled with nameless wonderings at this strange being, Pierre sat mute,
intensely regarding her half-averted aspect. Her immense soft tresses of
the jettiest hair had slantingly fallen over her as though a curtain
were half drawn from before some saint enshrined. To Pierre, she seemed
half unearthly; but this unearthliness was only her mysteriousness, not
any thing that was repelling or menacing to him. And still, the low
melodies of her far interior voice hovered in sweet echoes in the room;
and were trodden upon, and pressed like gushing grapes, by the steady
invisible pacing on the floor above.
She moved a little now, and after some strange wanderings more
coherently continued.
"My next memory which I think I can in some degree rely upon, was yet
another house, also situated away from human haunts, in the heart of a
not entirely silent country. Through this country, and by the house,
wound a green and lagging river. That house must have been in some
lowland; for the first house I spoke of seems to me to have been
somewhere among mountains, or near to mountains;--the sounds of the far
waterfalls,--I seem to hear them now; the steady up-pointed cloud-shapes
behind the house in the sunset sky--I seem to see them now. But this
other house, this second one, or third one, I know not which, I say
again it was in some lowland. There were no pines around it; few trees
of any sort; the ground did not slope so steeply as around the first
house. There were cultivated fields about it, and in the distance
farm-houses, and out-houses, and cattle, and fowls, and many objects of
that familiar sort. This house I am persuaded was in this country; on
this side of the sea. It was a very large house, and full of people; but
for the most part they lived separately. There were some old people in
it, and there were young men, and young women in it,--some very
handsome; and there were children in it. It seemed a happy place to some
of these people; many of them were always laughing; but it was not a
happy place for me.
"But here I may err, because of my own consciousness I can not identify
in myself--I mean in the memory of my whole foregoing life,--I say, I
can not identify that thing which is called happiness; that thing whose
token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may
have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel
a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks
different food from happiness; for I think I have a suspicion of what it
is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of
happiness, and without praying for happiness. I pray for peace--for
motionlessness--for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing
life without seeking it, and existing without individual sensation. I
feel that there can be no perfect peace in individualness. Therefore I
hope one day to feel myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating
all things. I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying.--Yes; in thy
speech, thou smilest.--But let me be silent again. Do not answer me.
When I resume, I will not wander so, but make short end."
Reverently resolved not to offer the slightest let or hinting hindrance
to the singular tale rehearsing to him, but to sit passively and receive
its marvelous droppings into his soul, however long the pauses; and as
touching less mystical considerations, persuaded that by so doing he
should ultimately derive the least nebulous and imperfect account of
Isabel's history; Pierre still sat waiting her resuming, his eyes fixed
upon the girl's wonderfully beautiful ear, which chancing to peep forth
from among her abundant tresses, nestled in that blackness like a
transparent sea-shell of pearl.
She moved a little now; and after some strange wanderings more
coherently continued; while the sound of the stepping on the floor
above--it seemed to cease.
"I have spoken of the second or rather the third spot in my memory of
the past, as it first appeared to me; I mean, I have spoken of the
people in the house, according to my very earliest recallable impression
of them. But I stayed in that house for several years--five, six,
perhaps, seven years--and during that interval of my stay, all things
changed to me, because I learned more, though always dimly. Some of its
occupants departed; some changed from smiles to tears; some went moping
all the day; some grew as savages and outrageous, and were dragged
below by dumb-like men into deep places, that I knew nothing of, but
dismal sounds came through the lower floor, groans and clanking
fallings, as of iron in straw. Now and then, I saw coffins silently at
noon-day carried into the house, and in five minutes' time emerge again,
seemingly heavier than they entered; but I saw not who was in them.
Once, I saw an immense-sized coffin, endwise pushed through a lower
window by three men who did not speak; and watching, I saw it pushed out
again, and they drove off with it. But the numbers of those invisible
persons who thus departed from the house, were made good by other
invisible persons arriving in close carriages. Some in rags and tatters
came on foot, or rather were driven on foot. Once I heard horrible
outcries, and peeping from my window, saw a robust but squalid and
distorted man, seemingly a peasant, tied by cords with four long ends to
them, held behind by as many ignorant-looking men who with a lash drove
the wild squalid being that way toward the house. Then I heard answering
hand-clappings, shrieks, howls, laughter, blessings, prayers, oaths,
hymns, and all audible confusions issuing from all the chambers of the
house.
"Sometimes there entered the house--though only transiently, departing
within the hour they came--people of a then remarkable aspect to me.
They were very composed of countenance; did not laugh; did not groan;
did not weep; did not make strange faces; did not look endlessly
fatigued; were not strangely and fantastically dressed; in short, did
not at all resemble any people I had ever seen before, except a little
like some few of the persons of the house, who seemed to have authority
over the rest. These people of a remarkable aspect to me, I thought they
were strangely demented people;--composed of countenance, but wandering
of mind; soul-composed and bodily-wandering, and strangely demented
people.
"By-and-by, the house seemed to change again, or else my mind took in
more, and modified its first impressions. I was lodged up-stairs in a
little room; there was hardly any furniture in the room; sometimes I
wished to go out of it; but the door was locked. Sometimes the people
came and took me out of the room, into a much larger and very long room,
and here I would collectively see many of the other people of the house,
who seemed likewise brought from distant and separate chambers. In this
long room they would vacantly roam about, and talk vacant talk to each
other. Some would stand in the middle of the room gazing steadily on the
floor for hours together, and never stirred, but only breathed and gazed
upon the floor. Some would sit crouching in the corner, and sit
crouching there, and only breathe and crouch in the corners. Some kept
their hands tight on their hearts, and went slowly promenading up and
down, moaning and moaning to themselves. One would say to another--"Feel
of it--here, put thy hand in the break." Another would mutter--"Broken,
broken, broken"--and would mutter nothing but that one word broken. But
most of them were dumb, and could not, or would not speak, or had
forgotten how to speak. They were nearly all pale people. Some had hair
white as snow, and yet were quite young people. Some were always talking
about Hell, Eternity, and God; and some of all things as fixedly
decreed; others would say nay to this, and then they would argue, but
without much conviction either way. But once nearly all the people
present--even the dumb moping people, and the sluggish persons crouching
in the corners--nearly all of them laughed once, when after a whole
day's loud babbling, two of these predestinarian opponents, said each to
the other--'Thou hast convinced me, friend; but we are quits; for so
also, have I convinced thee, the other way; now then, let's argue it all
over again; for still, though mutually converted, we are still at odds.'
Some harangued the wall; some apostrophized the air; some hissed at the
air; some lolled their tongues out at the air; some struck the air; some
made motions, as if wrestling with the air, and fell out of the arms of
the air, panting from the invisible hug.
"Now, as in the former thing, thou must, ere this, have suspected what
manner of place this second or third house was, that I then lived in.
But do not speak the word to me. That word has never passed my lips;
even now, when I hear the word, I run from it; when I see it printed in
a book, I run from the book. The word is wholly unendurable to me. Who
brought me to the house; how I came there, I do not know. I lived a long
time in the house; that alone I know; I say I know, but still I am
uncertain; still Pierre, still the--oh the dreaminess, the
bewilderingness--it never entirely leaves me. Let me be still again."
She leaned away from him; she put her small hard hand to her forehead;
then moved it down, very slowly, but still hardly over her eyes, and
kept it there, making no other sign, and still as death. Then she moved
and continued her vague tale of terribleness.
"I must be shorter; I did not mean to turn off into the mere
offshootings of my story, here and there; but the dreaminess I speak of
leads me sometimes; and I, as impotent then, obey the dreamy prompting.
Bear with me; now I will be briefer."
"It came to pass, at last, that there was a contention about me in the
house; some contention which I heard in the after rumor only, not at the
actual time. Some strangers had arrived; or had come in haste, being
sent for to the house. Next day they dressed me in new and pretty, but
still plain clothes, and they took me down stairs, and out into the air,
and into a carriage with a pleasant-looking woman, a stranger to me; and
I was driven off a good way, two days nearly we drove away, stopping
somewhere over-night; and on the evening of the second day we came to
another house, and went into it, and stayed there.
"This house was a much smaller one than the other, and seemed sweetly
quiet to me after that. There was a beautiful infant in it; and this
beautiful infant always archly and innocently smiling on me, and
strangely beckoning me to come and play with it, and be glad with it;
and be thoughtless, and be glad and gleeful with it; this beautiful
infant first brought me to my own mind, as it were; first made me
sensible that I was something different from stones, trees, cats; first
undid in me the fancy that all people were as stones, trees, cats; first
filled me with the sweet idea of humanness; first made me aware of the
infinite mercifulness, and tenderness, and beautifulness of humanness;
and this beautiful infant first filled me with the dim thought of
Beauty; and equally, and at the same time, with the feeling of the
Sadness; of the immortalness and universalness of the Sadness. I now
feel that I should soon have gone,---- stop me now; do not let me go
that way. I owe all things to that beautiful infant. Oh, how I envied
it, lying in its happy mother's breast, and drawing life and gladness,
and all its perpetual smilingness from that white and smiling breast.
That infant saved me; but still gave me vague desirings. Now I first
began to reflect in my mind; to endeavor after the recalling past
things; but try as I would, little could I recall, but the
bewilderingness;--and the stupor, and the torpor, and the blackness, and
the dimness, and the vacant whirlingness of the bewilderingness. Let me
be still again."
And the stepping on the floor above,--it then resumed.
V.
"I must have been nine, or ten, or eleven years old, when the
pleasant-looking woman carried me away from the large house. She was a
farmer's wife; and now that was my residence, the farm-house. They
taught me to sew, and work with wool, and spin the wool; I was nearly
always busy now. This being busy, too, this it must have been, which
partly brought to me the power of being sensible of myself as something
human. Now I began to feel strange differences. When I saw a snake
trailing through the grass, and darting out the fire-fork from its
mouth, I said to myself, That thing is not human, but I am human. When
the lightning flashed, and split some beautiful tree, and left it to rot
from all its greenness, I said, That lightning is not human, but I am
human. And so with all other things. I can not speak coherently here;
but somehow I felt that all good, harmless men and women were human
things, placed at cross-purposes, in a world of snakes and lightnings,
in a world of horrible and inscrutable inhumanities. I have had no
training of any sort. All my thoughts well up in me; I know not whether
they pertain to the old bewilderings or not; but as they are, they are,
and I can not alter them, for I had nothing to do with putting them in
my mind, and I never affect any thoughts, and I never adulterate any
thoughts; but when I speak, think forth from the tongue, speech being
sometimes before the thought; so, often, my own tongue teaches me new
things.
"Now as yet I never had questioned the woman, or her husband, or the
young girls, their children, why I had been brought to the house, or how
long I was to stay in the house. There I was; just as I found myself in
the world; there I was; for what cause I had been brought into the
world, would have been no stranger question to me, than for what cause I
had been brought to the house. I knew nothing of myself, or any thing
pertaining to myself; I felt my pulse, my thought; but other things I
was ignorant of, except the general feeling of my humanness among the
inhumanities. But as I grew older, I expanded in my mind. I began to
learn things out of me; to see still stranger, and minuter differences.
I called the woman mother, and so did the other girls; yet the woman
often kissed them, but seldom me. She always helped them first at table.
The farmer scarcely ever spoke to me. Now months, years rolled on, and
the young girls began to stare at me. Then the bewilderingness of the
old starings of the solitary old man and old woman, by the cracked
hearth-stone of the desolate old house, in the desolate, round, open
space; the bewilderingness of those old starings now returned to me; and
the green starings, and the serpent hissings of the uncompanionable cat,
recurred to me, and the feeling of the infinite forlornness of my life
rolled over me. But the woman was very kind to me; she taught the girls
not to be cruel to me; she would call me to her, and speak cheerfully to
me, and I thanked--not God, for I had been taught no God--I thanked the
bright human summer, and the joyful human sun in the sky; I thanked the
human summer and the sun, that they had given me the woman; and I would
sometimes steal away into the beautiful grass, and worship the kind
summer and the sun; and often say over to myself the soft words, summer
and the sun.
"Still, weeks and years ran on, and my hair began to vail me with its
fullness and its length; and now often I heard the word beautiful,
spoken of my hair, and beautiful, spoken of myself. They would not say
the word openly to me, but I would by chance overhear them whispering
it. The word joyed me with the human feeling of it. They were wrong not
to say it openly to me; my joy would have been so much the more assured
for the openness of their saying beautiful, to me; and I know it would
have filled me with all conceivable kindness toward every one. Now I
had heard the word beautiful, whispered, now and then, for some months,
when a new being came to the house; they called him gentleman. His face
was wonderful to me. Something strangely like it, and yet again unlike
it, I had seen before, but where, I could not tell. But one day, looking
into the smooth water behind the house, there I saw the
likeness--something strangely like, and yet unlike, the likeness of his
face. This filled me with puzzlings. The new being, the gentleman, he
was very gracious to me; he seemed astonished, confounded at me; he
looked at me, then at a very little, round picture--so it seemed--which
he took from his pocket, and yet concealed from me. Then he kissed me,
and looked with tenderness and grief upon me; and I felt a tear fall on
me from him. Then he whispered a word into my ear. 'Father,' was the
word he whispered; the same word by which the young girls called the
farmer. Then I knew it was the word of kindness and of kisses. I kissed
the gentleman.
"When he left the house I wept for him to come again. And he did come
again. All called him my father now. He came to see me once every month
or two; till at last he came not at all; and when I wept and asked for
him, they said the word _Dead_ to me. Then the bewilderings of the
comings and the goings of the coffins at the large and populous house;
these bewilderings came over me. What was it to be dead? What is it to
be living? Wherein is the difference between the words Death and Life?
Had I been ever dead? Was I living? Let me be still again. Do not speak
to me."
And the stepping on the floor above; again it did resume.
"Months ran on; and now I somehow learned that my father had every now
and then sent money to the woman to keep me with her in the house; and
that no more money had come to her after he was dead; the last penny of
the former money was now gone. Now the farmer's wife looked troubledly
and painfully at me; and the farmer looked unpleasantly and impatiently
at me. I felt that something was miserably wrong; I said to myself, I am
one too many; I must go away from the pleasant house. Then the
bewilderings of all the loneliness and forlornness of all my forlorn and
lonely life; all these bewilderings and the whelmings of the
bewilderings rolled over me; and I sat down without the house, but could
not weep.
"But I was strong, and I was a grown girl now. I said to the woman--Keep
me hard at work; let me work all the time, but let me stay with thee.
But the other girls were sufficient to do the work; me they wanted not.
The farmer looked out of his eyes at me, and the out-lookings of his
eyes said plainly to me--Thee we do not want; go from us; thou art one
too many; and thou art more than one too many. Then I said to the
woman--Hire me out to some one; let me work for some one.--But I spread
too wide my little story. I must make an end.
"The woman listened to me, and through her means I went to live at
another house, and earned wages there. My work was milking the cows, and
making butter, and spinning wool, and weaving carpets of thin strips of
cloth. One day there came to this house a pedler. In his wagon he had a
guitar, an old guitar, yet a very pretty one, but with broken strings.
He had got it slyly in part exchange from the servants of a grand house
some distance off. Spite of the broken strings, the thing looked very
graceful and beautiful to me; and I knew there was melodiousness lurking
in the thing, though I had never seen a guitar before, nor heard of one;
but there was a strange humming in my heart that seemed to prophesy of
the hummings of the guitar. Intuitively, I knew that the strings were
not as they should be. I said to the man--I will buy of thee the thing
thou callest a guitar. But thou must put new strings to it. So he went
to search for them; and brought the strings, and restringing the guitar,
tuned it for me. So with part of my earnings I bought the guitar.
Straightway I took it to my little chamber in the gable, and softly laid
it on my bed. Then I murmured; sung and murmured to it; very lowly, very
softly; I could hardly hear myself. And I changed the modulations of my
singings and my murmurings; and still sung, and murmured, lowly,
softly,--more and more; and presently I heard a sudden sound: sweet and
low beyond all telling was the sweet and sudden sound. I clapt my hands;
the guitar was speaking to me; the dear guitar was singing to me;
murmuring and singing to me, the guitar. Then I sung and murmured to it
with a still different modulation; and once more it answered me from a
different string; and once more it murmured to me, and it answered to me
with a different string. The guitar was human; the guitar taught me the
secret of the guitar; the guitar learned me to play on the guitar. No
music-master have I ever had but the guitar. I made a loving friend of
it; a heart friend of it. It sings to me as I to it. Love is not all on
one side with my guitar. All the wonders that are unimaginable and
unspeakable; all these wonders are translated in the mysterious
melodiousness of the guitar. It knows all my past history. Sometimes it
plays to me the mystic visions of the confused large house I never name.
Sometimes it brings to me the bird-twitterings in the air; and sometimes
it strikes up in me rapturous pulsations of legendary delights eternally
unexperienced and unknown to me. Bring me the guitar."
VI.
Entranced, lost, as one wandering bedazzled and amazed among innumerable
dancing lights, Pierre had motionlessly listened to this
abundant-haired, and large-eyed girl of mystery.
"Bring me the guitar!"
Starting from his enchantment, Pierre gazed round the room, and saw the
instrument leaning against a corner. Silently he brought it to the girl,
and silently sat down again.
"Now listen to the guitar; and the guitar shall sing to thee the sequel
of my story; for not in words can it be spoken. So listen to the
guitar."
Instantly the room was populous with sounds of melodiousness, and
mournfulness, and wonderfulness; the room swarmed with the
unintelligible but delicious sounds. The sounds seemed waltzing in the
room; the sounds hung pendulous like glittering icicles from the corners
of the room; and fell upon him with a ringing silveryness; and were
drawn up again to the ceiling, and hung pendulous again, and dropt down
upon him again with the ringing silveryness. Fire-flies seemed buzzing
in the sounds; summer-lightnings seemed vividly yet softly audible in
the sounds.
And still the wild girl played on the guitar; and her long dark shower
of curls fell over it, and vailed it; and still, out from the vail came
the swarming sweetness, and the utter unintelligibleness, but the
infinite significancies of the sounds of the guitar.
"Girl of all-bewildering mystery!" cried Pierre--"Speak to me;--sister,
if thou indeed canst be a thing that's mortal--speak to me, if thou be
Isabel!"
"Mystery! Mystery!
Mystery of Isabel!
Mystery! Mystery!
Isabel and Mystery!"
Among the waltzings, and the droppings, and the swarmings of the sounds,
Pierre now heard the tones above deftly stealing and winding among the
myriad serpentinings of the other melody:--deftly stealing and winding
as respected the instrumental sounds, but in themselves wonderfully and
abandonedly free and bold--bounding and rebounding as from multitudinous
reciprocal walls; while with every syllable the hair-shrouded form of
Isabel swayed to and fro with a like abandonment, and suddenness, and
wantonness:--then it seemed not like any song; seemed not issuing from
any mouth; but it came forth from beneath the same vail concealing the
guitar.
Now a strange wild heat burned upon his brow; he put his hand to it.
Instantly the music changed; and drooped and changed; and changed and
changed; and lingeringly retreated as it changed; and at last was wholly
gone.
Pierre was the first to break the silence.
"Isabel, thou hast filled me with such wonderings; I am so distraught
with thee, that the particular things I had to tell to thee, when I
hither came; these things I can not now recall, to speak them to
thee:--I feel that something is still unsaid by thee, which at some
other time thou wilt reveal. But now I can stay no longer with thee.
Know me eternally as thy loving, revering, and most marveling brother,
who will never desert thee, Isabel. Now let me kiss thee and depart,
till to-morrow night; when I shall open to thee all my mind, and all my
plans concerning me and thee. Let me kiss thee, and adieu!"
As full of unquestioning and unfaltering faith in him, the girl sat
motionless and heard him out. Then silently rose, and turned her
boundlessly confiding brow to him. He kissed it thrice, and without
another syllable left the place.