 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
II.
If next to that resolve concerning his lasting fraternal succor
to Isabel, there was at this present time any determination in
Pierre absolutely inflexible, and partaking at once of the sacredness
and the indissolubleness of the most solemn oath, it was
the enthusiastic, and apparently wholly supererogatory resolution
to hold his father's memory untouched; nor to one single
being in the world reveal the paternity of Isabel. Unrecallably
dead and gone from out the living world, again returned
to utter helplessness, so far as this world went; his perished
father seemed to appeal to the dutifulness and mercifulness of
Pierre, in terms far more moving than though the accents proceeded
from his mortal mouth. And what though not through
the sin of Pierre, but through his father's sin, that father's fair
fame now lay at the mercy of the son, and could only be kept
inviolate by the son's free sacrifice of all earthly felicity;—
what if this were so? It but struck a still loftier chord in the
bosom of the son, and filled him with infinite magnanimities.
Never had the generous Pierre cherished the heathenish conceit,
that even in the general world, Sin is a fair object to be
stretched on the cruelest racks by self-complacent Virtue, that
self-complacent Virtue may feed her lily-liveredness on the
pallor of Sin's anguish. For perfect Virtue does not more
loudly claim our approbation, than repented Sin in its concludedness
does demand our utmost tenderness and concern. And
as the more immense the Virtue, so should be the more immense
our approbation; likewise the more immense the Sin,
the more infinite our pity. In some sort, Sin hath its sacredness,
not less than holiness. And great Sin calls forth more
magnanimity than small Virtue. What man, who is a man,
does not feel livelier and more generous emotions toward the
great god of Sin—Satan,—than toward yonder haberdasher,
trade?
Though Pierre profoundly shuddered at that impenetrable
yet blackly significant nebulousness, which the wild story of
Isabel threw around the early life of his father; yet as he recalled
the dumb anguish of the invocation of the empty and
the ashy hand uplifted from his father's death-bed, he most
keenly felt that of whatsoever unknown shade his father's guilt
might be, yet in the final hour of death it had been most dismally
repented of; by a repentance only the more full of utter
wretchedness, that it was a consuming secret in him. Mince
the matter how his family would, had not his father died a
raver? Whence that raving, following so prosperous a life?
Whence, but from the cruelest compunctions?
Touched thus, and strung in all his sinews and his nerves to
the holding of his father's memory intact,—Pierre turned his
confronting and unfrightened face toward Lucy Tartan, and
stilly vowed that not even she should know the whole; no, not
know the least.
There is an inevitable keen cruelty in the loftier heroism. It
is not heroism only to stand unflinched ourselves in the hour of
suffering; but it is heroism to stand unflinched both at our own
and at some loved one's united suffering; a united suffering, which
we could put an instant period to, if we would but renounce the
glorious cause for which ourselves do bleed, and see our most
loved one bleed. If he would not reveal his father's shame to
the common world, whose favorable opinion for himself, Pierre
now despised; how then reveal it to the woman he adored?
To her, above all others, would he now uncover his father's
tomb, and bid her behold from what vile attaintings he himself
had sprung? So Pierre turned round and tied Lucy to the
same stake which must hold himself, for he too plainly saw,
that it could not be, but that both their hearts must burn.
Yes, his resolve concerning his father's memory involved the
Here he could not explain himself, even to her. This would
aggravate the sharp pang of parting, by self-suggested, though
wholly groundless surmising in Lucy's mind, in the most miserable
degree contaminating to her idea of him. But on this
point, he still fondly trusted that without at all marring his
filial bond, he would be enabled by some significant intimations
to arrest in Lucy's mind those darker imaginings which might
find entrance there; and if he could not set her wholly right,
yet prevent her from going wildly wrong.
For his mother Pierre was more prepared. He considered
that by an inscrutable decree, which it was but foolishness to
try to evade, or shun, or deny existence to, since he felt it so
profoundly pressing on his inmost soul; the family of the Glendinnings
was imperiously called upon to offer up a victim to the
gods of woe; one grand victim at the least; and that grand
victim must be his mother, or himself. If he disclosed his
secret to the world, then his mother was made the victim; if at
all hazards he kept it to himself, then himself would be the victim.
A victim as respecting his mother, because under the peculiar
circumstances of the case, the non-disclosure of the secret
involved her entire and infamy-engendering misconception of
himself. But to this he bowed submissive.
One other thing—and the last to be here named, because the
very least in the conscious thoughts of Pierre; one other thing
remained to menace him with assured disastrousness. This
thing it was, which though but dimly hinted of as yet, still in
the apprehension must have exerted a powerful influence upon
Pierre, in preparing him for the worst.
His father's last and fatal sickness had seized him suddenly.
Both the probable concealed distraction of his mind with
reference to his early life as recalled to him in an evil hour,
and his consequent mental wanderings; these, with other
reasons, had prevented him from framing a new will to supersede
born. By that will which as yet had never been dragged into
the courts of law; and which, in the fancied security of her
own and her son's congenial and loving future, Mrs. Glendinning
had never but once, and then inconclusively, offered to
discuss, with a view to a better and more appropriate ordering
of things to meet circumstances non-existent at the period the
testament was framed; by that will, all the Glendinning property
was declared his mother's.
Acutely sensible to those prophetic intimations in him, which
painted in advance the haughty temper of his offended mother,
as all bitterness and scorn toward a son, once the object of her
proudest joy, but now become a deep reproach, as not only rebellious
to her, but glaringly dishonorable before the world;
Pierre distinctly foresaw, that as she never would have permitted
Isabel Banford in her true character to cross her threshold;
neither would she now permit Isabel Banford to cross her
threshold in any other, and disguised character; least of all, as
that unknown and insidious girl, who by some pernicious arts
had lured her only son from honor into infamy. But not to
admit Isabel, was now to exclude Pierre, if indeed on independent
grounds of exasperation against himself, his mother would
not cast him out.
Nor did the same interior intimations in him which forepainted
the above bearing of his mother, abstain to trace he
whole haughty heart as so unrelentingly set against him, that
while she would close her doors against both him and his fictitious
wife, so also she would not willingly contribute one copper
to support them in a supposed union so entirely abhorrent
to her. And though Pierre was not so familiar with the science
of the law, as to be quite certain what the law, if appealed to
concerning the provisions of his father's will, would decree concerning
any possible claims of the son to share with the mother
in the property of the sire; yet he prospectively felt an invincible
into open Court, and fighting over them with a base mercenary
motive, and with his own mother for the antagonist. For so
thoroughly did his infallible presentiments paint his mother's
character to him, as operated upon and disclosed in all those
fiercer traits,—hitherto held in abeyance by the mere chance
and felicity of circumstances,—that he felt assured that her exasperation
against him would even meet the test of a public
legal contention concerning the Glendinning property. For
indeed there was a reserved strength and masculineness in the
character of his mother, from which on all these points Pierre
had every thing to dread. Besides, will the matter how he
would, Pierre for nearly two whole years to come, would still
remain a minor, an infant in the eye of the law, incapable of
personally asserting any legal claim; and though he might sue
by his next friend, yet who would be his voluntary next friend,
when the execution of his great resolve would, for him, depopulate
all the world of friends?
Now to all these things, and many more, seemed the soul of
this infatuated young enthusiast braced.
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |