I.
Half wishful that the hour would come; half shuddering
that every moment it still came nearer and more near to him;
dry-eyed, but wet with that dark day's rain; at fall of eve,
Pierre emerged from long wanderings in the primeval woods
of Saddle Meadows, and for one instant stood motionless upon
their sloping skirt.
Where he stood was in the rude wood road, only used by
sledges in the time of snow; just where the out-posted trees
formed a narrow arch, and fancied gateway leading upon the
far, wide pastures sweeping down toward the lake. In that
wet and misty eve the scattered, shivering pasture elms seemed
standing in a world inhospitable, yet rooted by inscrutable
sense of duty to their place. Beyond, the lake lay in one
sheet of blankness and of dumbness, unstirred by breeze or
breath; fast bound there it lay, with not life enough to reflect
the smallest shrub or twig. Yet in that lake was seen the
duplicate, stirless sky above. Only in sunshine did that lake
catch gay, green images; and these but displaced the imaged
muteness of the unfeatured heavens.
On both sides, in the remoter distance, and also far beyond
the mild lake's further shore, rose the long, mysterious mountain
masses; shaggy with pines and hemlocks, mystical with
nameless, vapory exhalations, and in that dim air black with
dread and gloom. At their base, profoundest forests lay entranced,
and from their far owl-haunted depths of caves and
rotted leaves, and unused and unregarded inland overgrowth
of decaying wood—for smallest sticks of which, in other climes
many a pauper was that moment perishing; from out the infinite
inhumanities of those profoundest forests, came a moaning,
muttering, roaring, intermitted, changeful sound: rain-shakings
of the palsied trees, slidings of rocks undermined,
final crashings of long-riven boughs, and devilish gibberish of
the forest-ghosts.
But more near, on the mild lake's hither shore, where it
formed a long semi-circular and scooped acclivity of corn-fields,
there the small and low red farm-house lay; its ancient roof a
bed of brightest mosses; its north front (from the north the
moss-wind blows), also moss-incrusted, like the north side of
any vast-trunked maple in the groves. At one gabled end, a
tangled arbor claimed support, and paid for it by generous gratuities
of broad-flung verdure, one viny shaft of which pointed
itself upright against the chimney-bricks, as if a waving lightning-rod.
Against the other gable, you saw the lowly dairy-shed;
its sides close netted with traced Madeira vines; and
had you been close enough, peeping through that imprisoning
tracery, and through the light slats barring the little embrasure
of a window, you might have seen the gentle and contented
captives—the pans of milk, and the snow-white Dutch cheeses
in a row, and the molds of golden butter, and the jars of lily
cream. In front, three straight gigantic lindens stood guardians
of this verdant spot. A long way up, almost to the ridgepole
of the house, they showed little foliage; but then, suddenly,
as three huge green balloons, they poised their three
vast, inverted, rounded cones of verdure in the air.
Soon as Pierre's eye rested on the place, a tremor shook him.
Not alone because of Isabel, as there a harborer now, but be
cause of two dependent and most strange coincidences which
that day's experience had brought to him. He had gone to
breakfast with his mother, his heart charged to overflowing
with presentiments of what would probably be her haughty
disposition concerning such a being as Isabel, claiming her maternal
love: and lo! the Reverend Mr. Falsgrave enters, and
Ned and Delly are discussed, and that whole sympathetic matter,
which Pierre had despaired of bringing before his mother
in all its ethic bearings, so as absolutely to learn her thoughts
upon it, and thereby test his own conjectures; all that matter
had been fully talked about; so that, through that strange coincidence,
he now perfectly knew his mother's mind, and had
received forewarnings, as if from heaven, not to make any present
disclosure to her. That was in the morning; and now, at
eve catching a glimpse of the house where Isabel was harboring,
at once he recognized it as the rented farm-house of old Walter
Ulver, father to the self-same Delly, forever ruined through the
cruel arts of Ned.
Strangest feelings, almost supernatural, now stole into Pierre.
With little power to touch with awe the souls of less susceptible,
reflective, and poetic beings, such coincidences, however
frequently they may recur, ever fill the finer organization with
sensations which transcend all verbal renderings. They take
hold of life's subtlest problem. With the lightning's flash, the
query is spontaneously propounded—chance, or God? If too,
the mind thus influenced be likewise a prey to any settled grief,
then on all sides the query magnifies, and at last takes in the
all-comprehending round of things. For ever is it seen, that
sincere souls in suffering, then most ponder upon final causes.
The heart, stirred to its depths, finds correlative sympathy in
the head, which likewise is profoundly moved. Before miserable
men, when intellectual, all the ages of the world pass as
in a manacled procession, and all their myriad links rattle in
the mournful mystery.
Pacing beneath the long-skirting shadows of the elevated
wood, waiting for the appointed hour to come, Pierre strangely
strove to imagine to himself the scene which was destined to
ensue. But imagination utterly failed him here; the reality
was too real for him; only the face, the face alone now visited
him; and so accustomed had he been of late to confound it
with the shapes of air, that he almost trembled when he
thought that face to face, that face must shortly meet his own.
And now the thicker shadows begin to fall; the place is lost
to him; only the three dim, tall lindens pilot him as he descends
the hill, hovering upon the house. He knows it not,
but his meditative route is sinuous; as if that moment his
thought's stream was likewise serpentining: laterally obstructed
by insinuated misgivings as to the ultimate utilitarian advisability
of the enthusiast resolution that was his. His steps
decrease in quickness as he comes more nigh, and sees one feeble
light struggling in the rustic double-casement. Infallibly
he knows that his own voluntary steps are taking him forever
from the brilliant chandeliers of the mansion of Saddle Meadows,
to join company with the wretched rush-lights of poverty
and woe. But his sublime intuitiveness also paints to him the
sun-like glories of god-like truth and virtue; which though
ever obscured by the dense fogs of earth, still shall shine eventually
in unclouded radiance, casting illustrative light upon the
sapphire throne of God.
