 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
I.
If a frontier man be seized by wild Indians, and carried far
and deep into the wilderness, and there held a captive, with no
slightest probability of eventual deliverance; then the wisest
thing for that man is to exclude from his memory by every
possible method, the least images of those beloved objects now
forever reft from him. For the more delicious they were to
him in the now departed possession, so much the more agonizing
shall they be in the present recalling. And though a
strong man may sometimes succeed in strangling such tormenting
memories; yet, if in the beginning permitted to encroach
upon him unchecked, the same man shall, in the end,
become as an idiot. With a continent and an ocean between
him and his wife—thus sundered from her, by whatever imperative
cause, for a term of long years;—the husband, if passionately
devoted to her, and by nature broodingly sensitive of soul,
is wise to forget her till he embrace her again;—is wise never
to remember her if he hear of her death. And though such
complete suicidal forgettings prove practically impossible, yet is
it the shallow and ostentatious affections alone which are bustling
in the offices of obituarian memories. The love deep as
death—what mean those five words, but that such love can not
more? If it be thus then in cases where entire unremorsefulness
as regards the beloved absent objects is presumed, how
much more intolerable, when the knowledge of their hopeless
wretchedness occurs, attended by the visitations of before latent
upbraidings in the rememberer as having been any way—
even unwillingly—the producers of their sufferings. There
seems no other sane recourse for some moody organizations on
whom such things, under such circumstances intrude, but right
and left to flee them, whatever betide.
If little or nothing hitherto has been said of Lucy Tartan in
reference to the condition of Pierre after his departure from the
Meadows, it has only been because her image did not willingly
occupy his soul. He had striven his utmost to banish it thence;
and only once—on receiving the tidings of Glen's renewed attentions—did
he remit the intensity of those strivings, or rather
feel them, as impotent in him in that hour of his manifold
and overwhelming prostration.
Not that the pale form of Lucy, swooning on her snow-white
bed; not that the inexpressible anguish of the shriek—“My
heart! my heart!” would not now at times force themselves
upon him, and cause his whole being to thrill with a nameless
horror and terror. But the very thrillingness of the phantom
made him to shun it, with all remaining might of his spirit.
Nor were there wanting still other, and far more wonderful,
though but dimly conscious influences in the breast of Pierre,
to meet as repellants the imploring form. Not to speak of his
being devoured by the all-exacting theme of his book, there
were sinister preoccupations in him of a still subtler and more
fearful sort, of which some inklings have already been given.
It was while seated solitary in his room one morning; his
flagging faculties seeking a momentary respite; his head side-ways
turned toward the naked floor, following the seams in it,
which, as wires, led straight from where he sat to the connecting
that he started at a tap at that very door, followed by the
wonted, low, sweet voice,—
“Pierre! a letter for thee—dost thou hear? a letter,—may
I come in?”
At once he felt a dart of surprise and apprehension; for he
was precisely in that general condition with respect to the outer
world, that he could not reasonably look for any tidings but
disastrous, or at least, unwelcome ones. He assented; and Isabel
entered, holding out the billet in her hand.
“'Tis from some lady, Pierre; who can it be?—not thy mother
though, of that I am certain;—the expression of her face, as
seen by me, not at all answering to the expression of this
handwriting here.”
“My mother? from my mother?” muttered Pierre, in wild
vacancy—“no! no! it can scarce be from her.—Oh, she writes
no more, even in her own private tablets now! Death hath
stolen the last leaf, and rubbed all out, to scribble his own ineffaceable
hic jacet there!”
“Pierre!” cried Isabel, in affright.
“Give it me!” he shouted, vehemently, extending his hand.
“Forgive me, sweet, sweet Isabel, I have wandered in my mind;
this book makes me mad. There; I have it now”—in a tone
of indifference—“now, leave me again. It is from some pretty
aunt, or cousin, I suppose,” carelessly balancing the letter in his
hand.
Isabel quitted the room; the moment the door closed upon
her, Pierre eagerly split open the letter, and read:—
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |