 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
III.
When surrounded by the base and mercenary crew, man,
too long wonted to eye his race with a suspicious disdain, suddenly
is brushed by some angelical plume of humanity, and the
human accents of superhuman love, and the human eyes of
superhuman beauty and glory, suddenly burst on his being;
then how wonderful and fearful the shock! It is as if the sky-cope
were rent, and from the black valley of Jehoshaphat, he
caught upper glimpses of the seraphim in the visible act of
adoring.
He held the artless, angelical letter in his unrealizing hand;
he started, and gazed round his room, and out at the window,
commanding the bare, desolate, all-forbidding quadrangle, and
then asked himself whether this was the place that an angel
should choose for its visit to earth. Then he felt a vast, out-swelling
triumphantness, that the girl whose rare merits his intuitive
soul had once so clearly and passionately discerned,
should indeed, in this most tremendous of all trials, have acquitted
herself with such infinite majesty. Then again, he sunk
utterly down from her, as in a bottomless gulf, and ran shuddering
through hideous galleries of despair, in pursuit of some
vague, white shape, and lo! two unfathomable dark eyes met
his, and Isabel stood mutely and mournfully, yet all-ravishingly
before him.
He started up from his plank; cast off his manifold wrappings,
and crossed the floor to remove himself from the spot,
been made him.
Then a timid little rap was heard at the door.
“Pierre, Pierre; now that thou art risen, may I not come in
—just for a moment, Pierre.”
“Come in, Isabel.”
She was approaching him in her wonted most strange and
sweetly mournful manner, when he retreated a step from her,
and held out his arm, not seemingly to invite, but rather as if
to warn.
She looked fixedly in his face, and stood rooted.
“Isabel, another is coming to me. Thou dost not speak,
Isabel. She is coming to dwell with us so long as we live, Isabel.
Wilt thou not speak?”
The girl still stood rooted; the eyes, which she had first fixed
on him, still remained wide-openly riveted.
“Wilt thou not speak, Isabel?” said Pierre, terrified at her
frozen, immovable aspect, yet too terrified to manifest his own
terror to her; and still coming slowly near her. She slightly
raised one arm, as if to grasp some support; then turned her
head slowly sideways toward the door by which she had entered;
then her dry lips slowly parted—“My bed; lay me;
lay me!”
The verbal effort broke her stiffening enchantment of frost;
her thawed form sloped sidelong into the air; but Pierre caught
her, and bore her into her own chamber, and laid her there on
the bed.
“Fan me; fan me!”
He fanned the fainting flame of her life; by-and-by she
turned slowly toward him.
“Oh! that feminine word from thy mouth, dear Pierre:—
that she, that she!”
Pierre sat silent, fanning her.
“Oh, I want none in the world but thee, my brother—but
Bare earth with my brother were all heaven for me; but all
my life, all my full soul, contents not my brother.”
Pierre spoke not; he but listened; a terrible, burning curiosity
was in him, that made him as heartless. But still all that
she had said thus far was ambiguous.
“Had I known—had I but known it before! Oh bitterly
cruel to reveal it now. That she! That she!”
She raised herself suddenly, and almost fiercely confronted
him.
“Either thou hast told thy secret, or she is not worthy the
commonest love of man! Speak Pierre,—which?”
“The secret is still a secret, Isabel.”
“Then is she worthless, Pierre, whoever she be—foolishly,
madly fond!—Doth not the world know me for thy wife?—
She shall not come! 'Twere a foul blot on thee and me. She
shall not come! One look from me shall murder her, Pierre!”
“This is madness, Isabel. Look: now reason with me. Did
I not before opening the letter, say to thee, that doubtless it
was from some pretty young aunt or cousin?”
“Speak quick!—a cousin?”
“A cousin, Isabel.”
“Yet, yet, that is not wholly out of the degree, I have heard.
Tell me more, and quicker! more! more!”
“A very strange cousin, Isabel; almost a nun in her notions.
Hearing of our mysterious exile, she, without knowing
the cause, hath yet as mysteriously vowed herself ours—not so
much mine, Isabel, as ours, ours—to serve us; and by some
sweet heavenly fancying, to guide us and guard us here.”
“Then, possibly, it may be all very well, Pierre, my brother
—my brother—I can say that now?”
“Any,—all words are thine, Isabel; words and worlds with
all their containings, shall be slaves to thee, Isabel.”
She looked eagerly and inquiringly at him; then dropped
so more to me, Pierre! Thou art my brother; art thou not
my brother?—But tell me now more of—her; it is all newness,
and utter strangeness to me, Pierre.”
“I have said, my sweetest sister, that she has this wild, nun-like
notion in her. She is willful in it; in this letter she vows
she must and will come, and nothing on earth shall stay her.
Do not have any sisterly jealousy, then, my sister. Thou wilt
find her a most gentle, unobtrusive, ministering girl, Isabel.
She will never name the not-to-be-named things to thee; nor
hint of them; because she knows them not. Still, without
knowing the secret, she yet hath the vague, unspecializing sensation
of the secret—the mystical presentiment, somehow, of the
secret. And her divineness hath drowned all womanly curiosity
in her; so that she desires not, in any way, to verify the presentiment;
content with the vague presentiment only; for in
that, she thinks, the heavenly summons to come to us, lies;—
even there, in that, Isabel. Dost thou now comprehend me?”
“I comprehend nothing, Pierre; there is nothing these eyes
have ever looked upon, Pierre, that this soul comprehended.
Ever, as now, do I go all a-grope amid the wide mysteriousness
of things. Yes, she shall come; it is only one mystery the
more. Doth she talk in her sleep, Pierre? Would it be well,
if I slept with her, my brother?”
“On thy account; wishful for thy sake; to leave thee incommoded;
and—and—not knowing precisely how things
really are;—she probably anticipates and desires otherwise, my
sister.”
She gazed steadfastly at his outwardly firm, but not interiorly
unfaltering aspect; and then dropped her glance in silence.
“Yes, she shall come, my brother; she shall come. But it
weaves its thread into the general riddle, my brother.—Hath
she that which they call the memory, Pierre; the memory?
Hath she that?”
“We all have the memory, my sister.”
“Not all! not all!—poor Bell hath but very little. Pierre!
I have seen her in some dream. She is fair-haired—blue eyes
—she is not quite so tall as I, yet a very little slighter.”
Pierre started. “Thou hast seen Lucy Tartan, at Saddle
Meadows?”
“Is Lucy Tartan the name?—Perhaps, perhaps;—but also,
in the dream, Pierre; she came, with her blue eyes turned beseechingly
on me; she seemed as if persuading me from thee;
—methought she was then more than thy cousin;—methought
she was that good angel, which some say, hovers over every
human soul; and methought—oh, methought that I was thy
other,—thy other angel, Pierre. Look: see these eyes,—this
hair—nay, this cheek;—all dark, dark, dark,—and she—the
blue-eyed—the fair-haired—oh, once the red-cheeked!”
She tossed her ebon tresses over her; she fixed her ebon
eyes on him.
“Say, Pierre; doth not a funerealness invest me? Was
ever hearse so plumed?—Oh, God! that I had been born with
blue eyes, and fair hair! Those make the livery of heaven!
Heard ye ever yet of a good angel with dark eyes, Pierre?—
no, no, no—all blue, blue, blue—heaven's own blue—the clear,
vivid, unspeakable blue, which we see in June skies, when all
clouds are swept by.—But the good angel shall come to thee,
Pierre. Then both will be close by thee, my brother; and
thou mayest perhaps elect,—elect!—She shall come; she shall
come.—When is it to be, dear Pierre?”
“To-morrow, Isabel. So it is here written.”
She fixed her eye on the crumpled billet in his hand. “It
were vile to ask, but not wrong to suppose the asking.—Pierre,
—no, I need not say it,—wouldst thou?”
“No; I would not let thee read it, my sister; I would not;
because I have no right to—no right—no right;—that is it;
no: I have no right. I will burn it this instant, Isabel.”
He stepped from her into the adjoining room; threw the
billet into the stove, and watching its last ashes, returned to
Isabel.
She looked with endless intimations upon him.
“It is burnt, but not consumed; it is gone, but not lost.
Through stove, pipe, and flue, it hath mounted in flame, and
gone as a scroll to heaven! It shall appear again, my brother.
—Woe is me—woe, woe!—woe is me, oh, woe! Do not
speak to me, Pierre; leave me now. She shall come. The
Bad angel shall tend the Good; she shall dwell with us, Pierre.
Mistrust me not; her considerateness to me, shall be outdone
by mine to her.—Let me be alone now, my brother.”
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |