III.
There is a dark, mad mystery in some human hearts, which,
sometimes, during the tyranny of a usurper mood, leads them
to be all eagerness to cast off the most intense beloved bond,
as a hindrance to the attainment of whatever transcendental
object that usurper mood so tyrannically suggests. Then the
beloved bond seems to hold us to no essential good; lifted to
exalted mounts, we can dispense with all the vale; endearments
we spurn; kisses are blisters to us; and forsaking the palpitating
forms of mortal love, we emptily embrace the boundless
and the unbodied air. We think we are not human; we become
as immortal bachelors and gods; but again, like the Greek
gods themselves, prone we descend to earth; glad to be uxorious
once more; glad to hide these god-like heads within the
bosoms made of too-seducing clay.
Weary with the invariable earth, the restless sailor breaks
from every enfolding arm, and puts to sea in height of tempest
that blows off shore. But in long night-watches at the antipodes,
how heavily that ocean gloom lies in vast bales upon the
deck; thinking that that very moment in his deserted hamlet-home
the household sun is high, and many a sun-eyed maiden
meridian as the sun. He curses Fate; himself he curses; his
senseless madness, which is himself. For whoso once has
known this sweet knowledge, and then fled it; in absence, to him
the avenging dream will come.
Pierre was now this vulnerable god; this self-upbraiding
sailor; this dreamer of the avenging dream. Though in some
things he had unjuggled himself, and forced himself to eye the
prospect as it was; yet, so far as Lucy was concerned, he was
at bottom still a juggler. True, in his extraordinary scheme,
Lucy was so intimately interwoven, that it seemed impossible
for him at all to cast his future without some way having that
heart's love in view. But ignorant of its quantity as yet, or
fearful of ascertaining it; like an algebraist, for the real Lucy
he, in his scheming thoughts, had substituted but a sign—some
empty x—and in the ultimate solution of the problem, that
empty x still figured; not the real Lucy.
But now, when risen from the abasement of his chamber-floor,
and risen from the still profounder prostration of his soul,
Pierre had thought that all the horizon of his dark fate was
commanded by him; all his resolutions clearly defined, and immovably
decreed; now finally, to top all, there suddenly slid
into his inmost heart the living and breathing form of Lucy.
His lungs collapsed; his eyeballs glared; for the sweet imagined
form, so long buried alive in him, seemed now as gliding
on him from the grave; and her light hair swept far adown her
shroud.
Then, for the time, all minor things were whelmed in him;
his mother, Isabel, the whole wide world; and one only thing
remained to him;—this all-including query—Lucy or God?
But here we draw a vail. Some nameless struggles of the
soul can not be painted, and some woes will not be told. Let
the ambiguous procession of events reveal their own ambiguousness.
