IV.
Torn into a hundred shreds the painted pages of Hell and
Hamlet lay at his feet, which trampled them, while their vacant
covers mocked him with their idle titles. Dante had made him
fierce, and Hamlet had insinuated that there was none to strike.
Dante had taught him that he had bitter cause of quarrel;
Hamlet taunted him with faltering in the fight. Now he began
to curse anew his fate, for now he began to see that after all he
had been finely juggling with himself, and postponing with himself,
and in meditative sentimentalities wasting the moments
consecrated to instant action.
Eight-and-forty hours and more had passed. Was Isabel
acknowledged? Had she yet hung on his public arm? Who
knew yet of Isabel but Pierre? Like a skulking coward he had
gone prowling in the woods by day, and like a skulking coward
he had stolen to her haunt by night! Like a thief he had sat
and stammered and turned pale before his mother, and in the
cause of Holy Right, permitted a woman to grow tall and hector
over him! Ah! Easy for man to think like a hero; but
hard for man to act like one. All imaginable audacities readily
enter into the soul; few come boldly forth from it.
Did he, or did he not vitally mean to do this thing? Was
the immense stuff to do it his, or was it not his? Why defer?
Why put off? What was there to be gained by deferring and
putting off? His resolution had been taken, why was it not
executed? What more was there to learn? What more which
was essential to the public acknowledgment of Isabel, had remained
to be learned, after his first glance at her first letter?
Had doubts of her identity come over him to stay him?—None
at all. Against the wall of the thick darkness of the mystery
of Isabel, recorded as by some phosphoric finger was the burning
fact, that Isabel was his sister. Why then? How then?
Whence then this utter nothing of his acts? Did he stagger at
the thought, that at the first announcement to his mother concerning
Isabel, and his resolution to own her boldly and lovingly,
his proud mother, spurning the reflection on his father,
would likewise spurn Pierre and Isabel, and denounce both him
and her, and hate them both alike, as unnatural accomplices
against the good name of the purest of husbands and parents?
Not at all. Such a thought was not in him. For had he not
already resolved, that his mother should know nothing of the
fact of Isabel?—But how now? What then? How was Isabel
to be acknowledged to the world, if his mother was to know
nothing of that acknowledgment?—Short-sighted, miserable
palterer and huckster, thou hast been playing a most fond and
foolish game with thyself! Fool and coward! Coward and
fool! Tear thyself open, and read there the confounding story
of thy blind dotishness! Thy two grand resolutions—the public
acknowledgment of Isabel, and the charitable withholding
of her existence from thy own mother,—these are impossible
adjuncts.—Likewise, thy so magnanimous purpose to screen thy
father's honorable memory from reproach, and thy other intention,
the open vindication of thy fraternalness to Isabel,—these
also are impossible adjuncts. And the having individually entertained
four such resolves, without perceiving that once
brought together, they all mutually expire; this, this ineffable
folly, Pierre, brands thee in the forehead for an unaccountable
infatuate!
Well may'st thou distrust thyself, and curse thyself, and tear
thy Hamlet and thy Hell! Oh! fool, blind fool, and a million
times an ass! Go, go, thou poor and feeble one! High deeds
are not for such blind grubs as thou! Quit Isabel, and go to
Lucy! Beg humble pardon of thy mother, and hereafter be a
more obedient and good boy to her, Pierre—Pierre, Pierre,—
infatuate!
Impossible would it be now to tell all the confusion and confoundings
in the soul of Pierre so soon as the above absurdities
in his mind presented themselves first to his combining consciousness.
He would fain have disowned the very memory
and the mind which produced to him such an immense scandal
upon his common sanity. Now indeed did all the fiery
floods in the Inferno, and all the rolling gloom in Hamlet suffocate
him at once in flame and smoke. The cheeks of his soul
collapsed in him: he dashed himself in blind fury and swift
madness against the wall, and fell dabbling in the vomit of his
loathed identity.
