V.
“Though but one day hath passed, my brother, since we
first met in life, yet thou hast that heavenly magnet in thee,
which draws all my soul's interior to thee. I will go on.—
Having to wait for a neighbor's wagon, I arrived but late at
the Sewing Circle. When I entered, the two joined rooms
were very full. With the farmer's girls, our neighbors, I passed
along to the further corner, where thou didst see me; and
as I went, some heads were turned, and some whisperings I
heard, of—`She's the new help at poor Walter Ulver's—the
strange girl they've got—she thinks herself 'mazing pretty, I'll
be bound;—but nobody knows her—Oh, how demure!—but
not over-good, I guess;—I wouldn't be her, not I—mayhap
she's some other ruined Delly, run away;—minx!' It was the
first time poor Bell had ever mixed in such a general crowded
company; and knowing little or nothing of such things, I had
thought, that the meeting being for charity's sweet sake, uncharity
could find no harbor there; but no doubt it was mere
thoughtlessness, not malice in them. Still, it made my heart
ache in me sadly; for then I very keenly felt the dread suspiciousness,
in which a strange and lonely grief invests itself to
common eyes; as if grief itself were not enough, nor innocence
any armor to us, but despite must also come, and icy infamy!
Miserable returnings then I had—even in the midst of bright-budding
girls and full-blown women—miserable returnings then
I had of the feeling, the bewildering feeling of the inhumanities
I spoke of in my earlier story. But Pierre, blessed Pierre,
do not look so sadly and half-reproachfully upon me. Lone
and lost though I have been, I love my kind; and charitably
and intelligently pity them, who uncharitably and unintelligently
do me despite. And thou,
thou, blessed brother, hath
glorified many somber places in my soul, and taught me once
for all to know, that my kind are capable of things which would
be glorious in angels. So look away from me, dear Pierre, till
thou hast taught thine eyes more wonted glances.”
“They are vile falsifying telegraphs of me, then, sweet Isabel.
What my look was I can not tell, but my heart was only dark
with ill-restrained upbraidings against heaven that could unrelentingly
see such innocence as thine so suffer. Go on with
thy too-touching tale.”
“Quietly I sat there sewing, not brave enough to look up at
all, and thanking my good star, that had led me to so concealed
a nook behind the rest: quietly I sat there, sewing on a
flannel shirt, and with each stitch praying God, that whatever
heart it might be folded over, the flannel might hold it truly
warm; and keep out the wide-world-coldness which I felt myself;
and which no flannel, or thickest fur, or any fire then
could keep off from me; quietly I sat there sewing, when I
heard the announcing words—oh, how deep and ineffaceably
engraved they are!—`Ah, dames, dames, Madame Glendinning,—Master
Pierre Glendinning.' Instantly, my sharp needle
went through my side and stitched my heart; the flannel dropt
from my hand; thou heard'st my shriek. But the good people
bore me still nearer to the casement close at hand, and
threw it open wide; and God's own breath breathed on me;
and I rallied; and said it was some merest passing fit—'twas
quite over now—I was used to it—they had my heart's best
thanks—but would they now only leave me to myself, it were
best for me;—I would go on and sew. And thus it came and
passed away; and again I sat sewing on the flannel, hoping
either that the unanticipated persons would soon depart, or
else that some spirit would catch me away from there; I sat
sewing on—till, Pierre! Pierre!—without looking up—for
that I dared not do at any time that evening—only once—
without looking up, or knowing aught but the flannel on my
knee, and the needle in my heart, I felt,—Pierre,
felt—a
glance of magnetic meaning on me. Long, I, shrinking, side-ways
turned to meet it, but could not; till some helping spirit
seized me, and all my soul looked up at thee in my full-fronting
face. It was enough. Fate was in that moment. All
the loneliness of my life, all the choked longings of my soul,
now poured over me. I could not away from them. Then
first I felt the complete deplorableness of my state; that while
thou, my brother, had a mother, and troops of aunts and
cousins, and plentiful friends in city and in country—I, I,
Isabel, thy own father's daughter, was thrust out of all hearts'
gates, and shivered in the winter way. But this was but the
least. Not poor Bell can tell thee all the feelings of poor Bell,
or what feelings she felt first. It was all one whirl of old and
new bewilderings, mixed and slanted with a driving madness.
But it was most the sweet, inquisitive, kindly interested aspect
of thy face,—so strangely like thy father's, too—the one only
being that I first did love—it was that which most stirred the
distracting storm in me; most charged me with the immense
longings for some one of my blood to know me, and to own
me, though but once, and then away. Oh, my dear brother—
Pierre! Pierre!—could'st thou take out my heart, and look at
it in thy hand, then thou would'st find it all over written, this
way and that, and crossed again, and yet again, with continual
lines of longings, that found no end but in suddenly calling
thee. Call him! Call him! He will come!—so cried my
heart to me; so cried the leaves and stars to me, as I that
night went home. But pride rose up—the very pride in my
own longings,—and as one arm pulled, the other held. So I
stood still, and called thee not. But Fate will be Fate, and it
was fated. Once having met thy fixed regardful glance; once
having seen the full angelicalness in thee, my whole soul was
undone by thee; my whole pride was cut off at the root, and
soon showed a blighting in the bud; which spread deep into
my whole being, till I knew, that utterly decay and die away
I must, unless pride let me go, and I, with the one little trumpet
of a pen, blew my heart's shrillest blast, and called dear
Pierre to me. My soul was full; and as my beseeching ink
went tracing o'er the page, my tears contributed their mite,
and made a strange alloy. How blest I felt that my so bitterly
tear-mingled ink—that last depth of my anguish—would
never be visibly known to thee, but the tears would dry upon
the page, and all be fair again, ere the so submerged-freighted
letter should meet thine eye.
“Ah, there thou wast deceived, poor Isabel,” cried Pierre
impulsively; “thy tears dried not fair, but dried red, almost
like blood; and nothing so much moved my inmost soul as
that tragic sight.”
“How? how? Pierre, my brother? Dried they red? Oh,
horrible! enchantment! most undreamed of!”
“Nay, the ink—the ink! something chemic in it changed
thy real tears to seeming blood;—only that, my sister.”
“Oh Pierre! thus wonderfully is it—seems to me—that our
own hearts do not ever know the extremity of their own sufferings;
sometimes we bleed blood, when we think it only water.
Of our sufferings, as of our talents, others sometimes are the
better judges. But stop me! force me backward to my story!
Yet methinks that now thou knowest all;—no, not entirely all.
Thou dost not know what planned and winnowed motive I did
have in writing thee; nor does poor Bell know that; for poor
Bell was too delirious to have planned and winnowed motives
then. The impulse in me called thee, not poor Bell. God
called thee, Pierre, not poor Bell. Even now, when I have
passed one night after seeing thee, and hearkening to all thy
full love and graciousness; even now, I stand as one amazed,
and feel not what may be coming to me, or what will now befall
me, from having so rashly claimed thee for mine. Pierre,
now,
now, this instant a vague anguish fills me. Tell me, by
loving me, by owning me, publicly or secretly,—tell me, doth
it involve any vital hurt to thee? Speak without reserve;
speak honestly; as I do to thee! Speak now, Pierre, and
tell me all!”
“Is Love a harm? Can Truth betray to pain? Sweet
Isabel, how can hurt come in the path to God? Now, when I
know thee all, now did I forget thee, fail to acknowledge thee,
and love thee before the wide world's whole brazen width—
could I do that; then might'st thou ask thy question reasonably
and say—Tell me, Pierre, does not the suffocating in thee
of poor Bell's holy claims, does not that involve for thee unending
misery? And my truthful soul would echo—Unending
misery! Nay, nay, nay. Thou art my sister and I am thy
brother; and that part of the world which knows me, shall
acknowledge thee; or by heaven I will crush the disdainful
world down on its knees to thee, my sweet Isabel!”
“The menacings in thy eyes are dear delights to me; I grow
up with thy own glorious stature; and in thee, my brother, I
see God's indignant embassador to me, saying—Up, up, Isabel,
and take no terms from the common world, but do thou make
terms to it, and grind thy fierce rights out of it! Thy catching
nobleness unsexes me, my brother; and now I know that
in her most exalted moment, then woman no more feels the
twin-born softness of her breasts, but feels chain-armor palpitating
there!”
Her changed attitude of beautiful audacity; her long scornful
hair, that trailed out a disheveled banner; her wonderful
transfigured eyes, in which some meteors seemed playing up;
all this now seemed to Pierre the work of an invisible enchanter.
Transformed she stood before him; and Pierre, bowing
low over to her, owned that irrespective, darting majesty of humanity,
which can be majestical and menacing in woman as
in man.
But her gentler sex returned to Isabel at last; and she sat
silent in the casement's niche, looking out upon the soft ground-lightnings
of the electric summer night.
