V.
“Sister Mary,” said Pierre, returned from his sunrise stroll,
and tapping at his mother's chamber door:—“do you know,
sister Mary, that the trees which have been up all night, are all
abroad again this morning before you?—Do you not smell
something like coffee, my sister?”
A light step moved from within toward the door; which
opened, showing Mrs. Glendinning, in a resplendently cheerful
morning robe, and holding a gay wide ribbon in her hand.
“Good morning, madam,” said Pierre, slowly, and with a
bow, whose genuine and spontaneous reverence amusingly contrasted
with the sportive manner that had preceded it. For
thus sweetly and religiously was the familiarity of his affections
bottomed on the profoundest filial respect.
“Good afternoon to you, Pierre, for I suppose it is afternoon.
But come, you shall finish my toilette;—here, brother—”
reaching the ribbon—“now acquit yourself bravely—” and
seating herself away from the glass, she awaited the good offices
of Pierre.
“First Lady in waiting to the Dowager Duchess Glendinning,”
laughed Pierre, as bowing over before his mother, he
gracefully passed the ribbon round her neck, simply crossing
the ends in front.
“Well, what is to hold it there, Pierre?”
“I am going to try and tack it with a kiss, sister,—there!—
oh, what a pity that sort of fastening won't always hold!—
where's the cameo with the fawns, I gave you last night?—
Ah! on the slab—you were going to wear it then?—Thank
you, my considerate and most politic sister—there!—but stop
—here's a ringlet gone romping—so now, dear sister, give that
Assyrian toss to your head.”
The haughtily happy mother rose to her feet, and as she
stood before the mirror to criticize her son's adornings, Pierre,
noticing the straggling tie of her slipper, knelt down and
secured it. “And now for the urn,” he cried, “madam!” and
with a humorous gallantry, offering his arm to his mother, the
pair descended to breakfast.
With Mrs. Glendinning it was one of those spontaneous
maxims, which women sometimes act upon without ever
thinking of, never to appear in the presence of her son in any
dishabille that was not eminently becoming. Her own independent
observation of things, had revealed to her many very
common maxims, which often become operatively lifeless from a
vicarious reception of them. She was vividly aware how immense
was that influence, which, even in the closest ties of the
heart, the merest appearances make upon the mind. And as
in the admiring love and graceful devotion of Pierre lay now
her highest joy in life; so she omitted no slightest trifle which
could possibly contribute to the preservation of so sweet and
flattering a thing.
Besides all this, Mary Glendinning was a woman, and with
more than the ordinary vanity of women—if vanity it can be
called—which in a life of nearly fifty years had never betrayed
her into a single published impropriety, or caused her one
known pang at the heart. Moreover, she had never yearned
for admiration; because that was her birthright by the eternal
privilege of beauty; she had always possessed it; she had not
to turn her head for it, since spontaneously it always encompassed
her. Vanity, which in so many women approaches to a
spiritual vice, and therefore to a visible blemish; in her peculiar
case—and though possessed in a transcendent degree—
was still the token of the highest health; inasmuch as never
knowing what it was to yearn for its gratification, she was
almost entirely unconscious of possessing it at all. Many
women carry this light of their lives flaming on their foreheads;
but Mary Glendinning unknowingly bore hers within.
Through all the infinite traceries of feminine art, she evenly
glowed like a vase which, internally illuminated, gives no outward
sign of the lighting flame, but seems to shine by the very
virtue of the exquisite marble itself. But that bluff corporeal
admiration, with which some ball-room women are content,
was no admiration to the mother of Pierre. Not the general
homage of men, but the selected homage of the noblest men,
was what she felt to be her appropriate right. And as her
own maternal partialities were added to, and glorified the rare
and absolute merits of Pierre; she considered the voluntary
allegiance of his affectionate soul, the representative fealty of
the choicest guild of his race. Thus, though replenished
through all her veins with the subtlest vanity, with the homage
of Pierre alone she was content.
But as to a woman of sense and spirit, the admiration of
even the noblest and most gifted man, is esteemed as nothing,
so long as she remains conscious of possessing no directly influencing
and practical sorcery over his soul; and as notwithstanding
all his intellectual superiority to his mother, Pierre,
through the unavoidable weakness of inexperienced and unexpanded
youth, was strangely docile to the maternal tuitions in
nearly all the things which thus far had any ways interested or
affected him; therefore it was, that to Mary Glendinning this
reverence of Pierre was invested with all the proudest delights
and witcheries of self-complacency, which it is possible for the
most conquering virgin to feel. Still more. That nameless
and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness
which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is
cotemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns
and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German
wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to
drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and
nights; this highest and airiest thing in the whole compass of
the experience of our mortal life; this heavenly evanescence—
still further etherealized in the filial breast—was for Mary
Glendinning, now not very far from her grand climacteric,
miraculously revived in the courteous lover-like adoration of
Pierre.
Altogether having its origin in a wonderful but purely fortuitous
combination of the happiest and rarest accidents of
earth; and not to be limited in duration by that climax which
is so fatal to ordinary love; this softened spell which still
wheeled the mother and son in one orbit of joy, seemed a
glimpse of the glorious possibility, that the divinest of those
emotions, which are incident to the sweetest season of love, is
capable of an indefinite translation into many of the less signal
relations of our many chequered life. In a detached and individual
way, it seemed almost to realize here below the sweet
dreams of those religious enthusiasts, who paint to us a Paradise
to come, when etherealized from all drosses and stains, the
holiest passion of man shall unite all kindreds and climes in one
circle of pure and unimpairable delight.
