 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
III.
This history goes forward and goes backward, as occasion
calls. Nimble center, circumference elastic you must have.
Now we return to Pierre, wending homeward from his reveries
beneath the pine-tree.
His burst of impatience against the sublime Italian, Dante,
arising from that poet being the one who, in a former time,
had first opened to his shuddering eyes the infinite cliffs and
gulfs of human mystery and misery;—though still more in
the way of experimental vision, than of sensational presentiment
or experience (for as yet he had not seen so far and deep
as Dante, and therefore was entirely incompetent to meet the
grim bard fairly on his peculiar ground), this ignorant burst of
dislike, and sometimes selfish loathing, with which, either naturally
feeble or undeveloped minds, regard those dark ravings
of the loftier poets, which are in eternal opposition to their own
fine-spun, shallow dreams of rapturous or prudential Youth;—
this rash, untutored burst of Pierre's young impatience, seemed
to have carried off with it, all the other forms of his melancholy
—if melancholy it had been—and left him now serene again,
and ready for any tranquil pleasantness the gods might have in
store. For his, indeed, was true Youth's temperament,—summary
with sadness, swift to joyfulness, and long protracting,
and detaining with that joyfulness, when once it came fully
nigh to him.
As he entered the dining-hall, he saw Dates retiring from
another door with his tray. Alone and meditative, by the
bared half of the polished table, sat his mother at her dessert;
fruit-baskets and a decanter were before her. On the other
leaf of the same table, still lay the cloth, folded back upon itself,
and set out with one plate and its usual accompaniments.
“Sit down, Pierre; when I came home, I was surprised to
hear that the phaeton had returned so early, and here I waited
dinner for you, until I could wait no more. But go to the green
pantry now, and get what Dates has but just put away for you
there. Heigh-ho! too plainly I foresee it—no more regular
dinner-hours, or tea-hours, or supper-hours, in Saddle Meadows,
till its young lord is wedded. And that puts me in mind of
something, Pierre; but I'll defer it till you have eaten a little.
Do you know, Pierre, that if you continue these irregular meals
of yours, and deprive me so entirely almost of your company,
that I shall run fearful risk of getting to be a terrible wine-bibber;—yes,
could you unalarmed see me sitting all alone here
with this decanter, like any old nurse, Pierre; some solitary,
forlorn old nurse, Pierre, deserted by her last friend, and therefore
forced to embrace her flask?”
“No, I did not feel any great alarm, sister,” said Pierre,
smiling, “since I could not but perceive that the decanter was
still full to the stopple.”
“Possibly it may be only a fresh decanter, Pierre;” then
changing her voice suddenly—“but mark me, Mr. Pierre Glendinning!”
“Well, Mrs. Mary Glendinning!”
“Do you know, sir, that you are very shortly to be married,
—that indeed the day is all but fixed?”
“How!” cried Pierre, in real joyful astonishment, both at the
nature of the tidings, and the earnest tones in which they were
conveyed—“dear, dear mother, you have strangely changed
your mind then, my dear mother.”
“It is even so, dear brother;—before this day month I hope
to have a little sister Tartan.”
“You talk very strangely, mother,” rejoined Pierre, quickly.
“I suppose, then, I have next to nothing to say in the matter?”
“Next to nothing, Pierre! What indeed could you say to
the purpose? what at all have you to do with it, I should like
to know? Do you so much as dream, you silly boy, that men
ever have the marrying of themselves? Juxtaposition marries
men. There is but one match-maker in the world, Pierre, and
that is Mrs. Juxtaposition, a most notorious lady!”
“Very peculiar, disenchanting sort of talk, this, under the circumstances,
sister Mary,” laying down his fork. “Mrs. Juxtaposition,
ah! And in your opinion, mother, does this fine glorious
passion only amount to that?”
“Only to that, Pierre; but mark you: according to my
creed—though this part of it is a little hazy—Mrs. Juxtaposition
moves her pawns only as she herself is moved to so doing
by the spirit.”
“Ah! that sets it all right again,” said Pierre, resuming his
fork—“my appetite returns. But what was that about my being
married so soon?” he added, vainly striving to assume an air
seems to me, sister, either you or I was but just now wandering
in the mind a little, on that subject. Are you really thinking
of any such thing? and have you really vanquished
your sagacious scruples by yourself, after I had so long and ineffectually
sought to do it for you? Well, I am a million times
delighted; tell me quick!”
“I will, Pierre. You very well know, that from the first
hour you apprised me—or rather, from a period prior to that—
from the moment that I, by my own insight, became aware of
your love for Lucy, I have always approved it. Lucy is a delicious
girl; of honorable descent, a fortune, well-bred, and the
very pattern of all that I think amiable and attractive in a girl
of seventeen.”
“Well, well, well,” cried Pierre rapidly and impetuously;
“we both knew that before.”
“Well, well, well, Pierre,” retorted his mother, mockingly.
“It is not well, well, well; but ill, ill, ill, to torture me so,
mother; go on, do!”
“But notwithstanding my admiring approval of your choice,
Pierre; yet, as you know, I have resisted your entreaties for my
consent to your speedy marriage, because I thought that a girl
of scarcely seventeen, and a boy scarcely twenty, should not be
in such a hurry;—there was plenty of time, I thought, which
could be profitably employed by both.”
“Permit me here to interrupt you, mother. Whatever you
may have seen in me; she,—I mean Lucy,—has never been in
the slightest hurry to be married;—that's all. But I shall regard
it as a lapsus-lingua in you.”
“Undoubtedly, a lapsus. But listen to me. I have been
carefully observing both you and Lucy of late; and that has
made me think further of the matter. Now, Pierre, if you
were in any profession, or in any business at all; nay, if I were
a farmer's wife, and you my child, working in my fields; why,
nothing to do but to think of Lucy by day, and dream of her
by night, and as she is in the same predicament, I suppose
with respect to you; and as the consequence of all this begins
to be discernible in a certain, just perceptible, and quite harmless
thiness, so to speak, of the cheek; but a very conspicuous
and dangerous febrileness of the eye; therefore, I choose the
lesser of two evils; and now you have my permission to be
married, as soon as the thing can be done with propriety. I
dare say you have no objection to have the wedding take place
before Christmas, the present month being the first of summer.”
Pierre said nothing; but leaping to his feet, threw his two
arms around his mother, and kissed her repeatedly.
“A most sweet and eloquent answer, Pierre; but sit down
again. I desire now to say a little concerning less attractive,
but quite necessary things connected with this affair. You
know, that by your father's will, these lands and—”
“Miss Lucy, my mistress;” said Dates, throwing open the
door.
Pierre sprang to his feet; but as if suddenly mindful of his
mother's presence, composed himself again, though he still approached
the door.
Lucy entered, carrying a little basket of strawberries.
“Why, how do you do, my dear,” said Mrs. Glendinning affectionately.
“This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“Yes; and I suppose that Pierre here is a little surprised
too; seeing that he was to call upon me this evening, and not
I upon him before sundown. But I took a sudden fancy for a
solitary stroll,—the afternoon was such a delicious one; and
chancing—it was only chancing—to pass through the Locust
Lane leading hither, I met the strangest little fellow, with this
basket in his hand.—`Yes, buy them, miss'—said he. `And
how do you know I want to buy them,' returned I, `I don't
want to buy them.'—`Yes you do, miss; they ought to be
shilling. I always want the odd half cent, I do. Come, I
can't wait, I have been expecting you long enough.'”
“A very sagacious little imp,” laughed Mrs. Glendinning.
“Impertinent little rascal,” cried Pierre.
“And am I not now the silliest of all silly girls, to be telling
you my adventures so very frankly,” smiled Lucy.
“No; but the most celestial of all innocents,” cried Pierre,
in a rhapsody of delight. “Frankly open is the flower, that
hath nothing but purity to show.”
“Now, my dear little Lucy,” said Mrs. Glendinning, “let
Pierre take off your shawl, and come now and stay to tea with
us. Pierre has put back the dinner so, the tea-hour will come
now very soon.”
“Thank you; but I can not stay this time. Look, I have
forgotten my own errand; I brought these strawberries for you,
Mrs. Glendinning, and for Pierre;—Pierre is so wonderfully
fond of them.”
“I was audacious enough to think as much,” cried Pierre,
“for you and me, you see, mother; for you and me, you understand
that, I hope.”
“Perfectly, my dear brother.”
Lucy blushed.
“How warm it is, Mrs. Glendinning.”
“Very warm, Lucy. So you won't stay to tea?”
“No, I must go now; just a little stroll, that's all; good-bye!
Now don't be following me, Pierre. Mrs. Glendinning,
will you keep Pierre back? I know you want him; you were
talking over some private affair when I entered; you both
looked so very confidential.”
“And you were not very far from right, Lucy,” said Mrs.
Glendinning, making no sign to stay her departure.
“Yes, business of the highest importance,” said Pierre, fixing
his eyes upon Lucy significantly.
At this moment, Lucy just upon the point of her departure,
was hovering near the door; the setting sun, streaming through
the window, bathed her whole form in golden loveliness and
light; that wonderful, and most vivid transparency of her clear
Welsh complexion, now fairly glowed like rosy snow. Her
flowing, white, blue-ribboned dress, fleecily invested her.
Pierre almost thought that she could only depart the house
by floating out of the open window, instead of actually stepping
from the door. All her aspect to him, was that moment
touched with an indescribable gayety, buoyancy, fragility, and
an unearthly evanescence.
Youth is no philosopher. Not into young Pierre's heart
did there then come the thought, that as the glory of the
rose endures but for a day, so the full bloom of girlish airiness
and bewitchingness, passes from the earth almost as soon; as
jealously absorbed by those frugal elements, which again incorporate
that translated girlish bloom, into the first expanding
flower-bud. Not into young Pierre, did there then steal that
thought of utmost sadness; pondering on the inevitable evanescence
of all earthly loveliness; which makes the sweetest
things of life only food for ever-devouring and omnivorous
melancholy. Pierre's thought was different from this, and yet
somehow akin to it.
This to be my wife? I that but the other day weighed an
hundred and fifty pounds of solid avoirdupois;—I to wed this
heavenly fleece? Methinks one husbandly embrace would break
her airy zone, and she exhale upward to that heaven whence
she hath hither come, condensed to mortal sight. It can not
be; I am of heavy earth, and she of airy light. By heaven,
but marriage is an impious thing!
Meanwhile, as these things ran through his soul, Mrs. Glendinning
also had thinkings of her own.
“A very beautiful tableau,” she cried, at last, artistically
turning her gay head a little sideways—“very beautiful, indeed;
Orpheus finding his Eurydice; or Pluto stealing Proserpine.
Admirable! It might almost stand for either.”
“No,” said Pierre, gravely; “it is the last. Now, first I
see a meaning there.” Yes, he added to himself inwardly, I
am Pluto stealing Proserpine; and every accepted lover is.
“And you would be very stupid, brother Pierre, if you did
not see something there,” said his mother, still that way pursuing
her own different train of thought. “The meaning
thereof is this: Lucy has commanded me to stay you; but in
reality she wants you to go along with her. Well, you may
go as far as the porch; but then, you must return, for we have
not concluded our little affair, you know. Adieu, little lady!”
There was ever a slight degree of affectionate patronizing in
the manner of the resplendent, full-blown Mrs. Glendinning,
toward the delicate and shrinking girlhood of young Lucy.
She treated her very much as she might have treated some
surpassingly beautiful and precocious child; and this was precisely
what Lucy was. Looking beyond the present period,
Mrs. Glendinning could not but perceive, that even in Lucy's
womanly maturity, Lucy would still be a child to her; because,
she, elated, felt, that in a certain intellectual vigor, so to
speak, she was the essential opposite of Lucy, whose sympathetic
mind and person had both been cast in one mould of
wondrous delicacy. But here Mrs. Glendinning was both right
and wrong. So far as she here saw a difference between herself
and Lucy Tartan, she did not err; but so far—and that
was very far—as she thought she saw her innate superiority to
her in the absolute scale of being, here she very widely and
immeasurably erred. For what may be artistically styled angelicalness,
this is the highest essence compatible with created
being; and angelicalness hath no vulgar vigor in it. And that
thing which very often prompts to the display of any vigor—
which thing, in man or woman, is at bottom nothing but ambition—this
false, that any angels fell by reason of ambition. Angels never
fall; and never feel ambition. Therefore, benevolently, and
affectionately, and all-sincerely, as thy heart, oh, Mrs. Glendinning!
now standest affected toward the fleecy Lucy; still,
lady, thou dost very sadly mistake it, when the proud, double-arches
of the bright breastplate of thy bosom, expand with
secret triumph over one, whom thou so sweetly, but still so
patronizingly stylest, The Little Lucy.
But ignorant of these further insights, that very superb-looking
lady, now waiting Pierre's return from the portico door, sat
in a very matronly revery; her eyes fixed upon the decanter of
amber-hued wine before her. Whether it was that she somehow
saw some lurking analogical similitude between that remarkably
slender, and gracefully cut little pint-decanter, brimfull
of light, golden wine, or not, there is no absolute telling
now. But really, the peculiarly, and reminiscently, and forecastingly
complacent expression of her beaming and benevolent
countenance, seemed a tell-tale of some conceit very much like
the following:—Yes, she's a very pretty little pint-decanter of
a girl: a very pretty little Pale Sherry pint-decanter of a girl;
and I—I'm a quart decanter of—of—Port—potent Port!
Now, Sherry for boys, and Port for men—so I've heard men
say; and Pierre is but a boy; but when his father wedded me,
—why, his father was turned of five-and-thirty years.
After a little further waiting for him, Mrs. Glendinning heard
Pierre's voice—“Yes, before eight o'clock at least, Lucy—no
fear;” and then the hall door banged, and Pierre returned to
her.
But now she found that this unforeseen visit of Lucy had
completely routed all business capacity in her mercurial son;
fairly capsizing him again into, there was no telling what sea
of pleasant pensiveness.
“Dear me! some other time, sister Mary.”
“Not this time; that is very certain, Pierre. Upon my
word I shall have to get Lucy kidnapped, and temporarily
taken out of the country, and you handcuffed to the table, else
there will be no having a preliminary understanding with you,
previous to calling in the lawyers. Well, I shall yet manage
you, one way or other. Good-bye, Pierre; I see you don't
want me now. I suppose I shan't see you till to-morrow morning.
Luckily, I have a very interesting book to read. Adieu!”
But Pierre remained in his chair; his gaze fixed upon the
stilly sunset beyond the meadows, and far away to the now
golden hills. A glorious, softly glorious, and most gracious
evening, which seemed plainly a tongue to all humanity, saying:
I go down in beauty to rise in joy; Love reigns throughout
all worlds that sunsets visit; it is a foolish ghost story;
there is no such thing as misery. Would Love, which is omnipotent,
have misery in his domain? Would the god of sunlight
decree gloom? It is a flawless, speckless, fleckless, beautiful
world throughout; joy now, and joy forever!
Then the face, which before had seemed mournfully and reproachfully
looking out upon him from the effulgent sunset's
heart; the face slid from him; and left alone there with his
soul's joy, thinking that that very night he would utter the
magic word of marriage to his Lucy; not a happier youth than
Pierre Glendinning sat watching that day's sun go down.
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |