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.”
