I.
When on the previous night Pierre had left the farm-house
where Isabel harbored, it will be remembered that no hour,
either of night or day, no special time at all had been assigned
for a succeeding interview. It was Isabel, who for some doubtlessly
sufficient reason of her own, had, for the first meeting, assigned
the early hour of darkness.
As now, when the full sun was well up the heavens, Pierre
drew near the farm-house of the Ulvers, he described Isabel,
standing without the little dairy-wing, occupied in vertically
arranging numerous glittering shield-like milk-pans on a long
shelf, where they might purifyingly meet the sun. Her back
was toward him. As Pierre passed through the open wicket
and crossed the short soft green sward, he unconsciously muffled
his footsteps, and now standing close behind his sister, touched
her shoulder and stood still.
She started, trembled, turned upon him swiftly, made a low,
strange cry, and then gazed rivetedly and imploringly upon him.
“I look rather queerish, sweet Isabel, do I not?” said Pierre
at last with a writhed and painful smile.
“My brother, my blessed brother!—speak—tell me—what
has happened—what hast thou done? Oh! Oh! I should
have warned thee before, Pierre, Pierre; it is my fault—mine,
mine!”
“What is thy fault, sweet Isabel?”
“Thou hast revealed Isabel to thy mother, Pierre.”
“I have not, Isabel. Mrs. Glendinning knows not thy secret
at all.”
“Mrs. Glendinning?—that's,—that's thine own mother,
Pierre! In heaven's name, my brother, explain thyself. Knows
not my secret, and yet thou here so suddenly, and with such a
fatal aspect? Come, come with me into the house. Quick,
Pierre, why dost thou not stir? Oh, my God! if mad myself
sometimes, I am to make mad him who loves me best, and who,
I fear, has in some way ruined himself for me;—then, let me
no more stand upright on this sod, but fall prone beneath it,
that I may be hidden! Tell me!” catching Pierre's arms in
both her frantic hands—“tell me, do I blast where I look? is
my face Gorgon's?”
“Nay, sweet Isabel; but it hath a more sovereign power;
that turned to stone; thine might turn white marble into
mother's milk.”
“Come with me—come quickly.”
They passed into the dairy, and sat down on a bench by the
honey-suckled casement.
“Pierre, forever fatal and accursed be the day my longing
heart called thee to me, if now, in the very spring-time of our
related love, thou art minded to play deceivingly with me, even
though thou should'st fancy it for my good. Speak to me; oh
speak to me, my brother!”
“Thou hintest of deceiving one for one's good. Now supposing,
sweet Isabel, that in no case would I affirmatively deceive
thee;—in no case whatever;—would'st thou then be willing
for thee and me to piously deceive others, for both their
and our united good?—Thou sayest nothing. Now, then, is
it
my turn, sweet Isabel, to bid thee speak to me, oh speak to
me!”
“That unknown, approaching thing, seemeth ever ill, my
brother, which must have unfrank heralds to go before. Oh,
Pierre, dear, dear Pierre; be very careful with me! This
strange, mysterious, unexampled love between us, makes me all
plastic in thy hand. Be very careful with me. I know little
out of me. The world seems all one unknown India to me.
Look up, look on me, Pierre; say now, thou wilt be very careful;
say so, say so, Pierre!”
“If the most exquisite, and fragile filagree of Genoa be carefully
handled by its artisan; if sacred nature carefully folds, and
warms, and by inconceivable attentivenesses eggs round and
round her minute and marvelous embryoes; then, Isabel, do I
most carefully and most tenderly egg thee, gentlest one, and the
fate of thee! Short of the great God, Isabel, there lives none
who will be more careful with thee, more infinitely considerate
and delicate with thee.”
“From my deepest heart, do I believe thee, Pierre. Yet
thou mayest be very delicate in some point, where delicateness
is not all essential, and in some quick impulsive hour, omit thy
fullest heedfulness somewhere where heedlessness were most
fatal. Nay, nay, my brother; bleach these locks snow-white,
thou sun! if I have any thought to reproach thee, Pierre, or
betray distrust of thee. But earnestness must sometimes seem
suspicious, else it is none. Pierre, Pierre, all thy aspect speaks
eloquently of some already executed resolution, born in suddenness.
Since I last saw thee, Pierre, some deed irrevocable
has been done by thee. My soul is stiff and starched to it;
now tell me what it is?”
“Thou, and I, and Delly Ulver, to-morrow morning depart
this whole neighborhood, and go to the distant city.—That is
it.”
“No more?”
“Is it not enough?”
“There is something more, Pierre.”
“Thou hast not yet answered a question I put to thee but
just now. Bethink thee, Isabel. The deceiving of others by
thee and me, in a thing wholly pertaining to ourselves, for their
and our united good. Wouldst thou?”
“I would do any thing that does not tend to the marring of
thy best lasting fortunes, Pierre. What is it thou wouldst
have thee and me to do together? I wait; I wait!”
“Let us go into the room of the double casement, my sister,”
said Pierre, rising.
“Nay, then; if it can not be said here, then can I not do it
anywhere, my brother; for it would harm thee.”
“Girl!” cried Pierre, sternly, “if for thee I have lost”—but
he checked himself.
“Lost? for me? Now does the very worst blacken on me.
Pierre! Pierre!”
“I was foolish, and sought but to frighten thee, my sister.
It was very foolish. Do thou now go on with thine innocent
work here, and I will come again a few hours hence. Let me
go now.”
He was turning from her, when Isabel sprang forward to him,
caught him with both her arms round him, and held him so
convulsively, that her hair sideways swept over him, and half
concealed him.
“Pierre, if indeed my soul hath cast on thee the same black
shadow that my hair now flings on thee; if thou hast lost
aught for me; then eternally is Isabel lost to Isabel, and Isabel
will not outlive this night. If I am indeed an accursing thing,
I will not act the given part, but cheat the air, and die from it.
See; I let thee go, lest some poison I know not of distill upon
thee from me.”
She slowly drooped, and trembled from him. But Pierre
caught her, and supported her.
“Foolish, foolish one! Behold, in the very bodily act of
loosing hold of me, thou dost reel and fall;—unanswerable
emblem of the indispensable heart-stay, I am to thee, my
sweet, sweet Isabel! Prate not then of parting.”
“What hast thou lost for me? Tell me!”
“A gainful loss, my sister!”
“'Tis mere rhetoric! What hast thou lost?”
“Nothing that my inmost heart would now recall. I have
bought inner love and glory by a price, which, large or small,
I would not now have paid me back, so I must return the
thing I bought.”
“Is love then cold, and glory white? Thy cheek is snowy,
Pierre.”
“It should be, for I believe to God that I am pure, let the
world think how it may.”
“What hast thou lost?”
“Not thee, nor the pride and glory of ever loving thee, and
being a continual brother to thee, my best sister. Nay, why
dost thou now turn thy face from me?”
“With fine words he wheedles me, and coaxes me, not to
know some secret thing. Go, go, Pierre, come to me when
thou wilt. I am steeled now to the worst, aud to the last.
Again I tell thee, I will do any thing—yes, any thing that Pierre
commands—for, though outer ill do lower upon us, still, deep
within, thou wilt be careful, very careful with me, Pierre?”
“Thou art made of that fine, unshared stuff of which God
makes his seraphim. But thy divine devotedness to me, is met
by mine to thee. Well mayest thou trust me, Isabel; and
whatever strangest thing I may yet propose to thee, thy confidence,—will
it not bear me out? Surely thou will not hesitate
to plunge, when I plunge first;—already have I plunged! now
thou canst not stay upon the bank. Hearken, hearken to me.—
I seek not now to gain thy prior assent to a thing as yet undone;
but I call to thee now, Isabel, from the depth of a foregone
act, to ratify it, backward, by thy consent. Look not so
hard upon me. Listen. I will tell all. Isabel, though thou
art all fearfulness to injure any living thing, least of all, thy
brother; still thy true heart foreknoweth not the myriad alliances
and criss-crossings among mankind, the infinite entanglements
of all social things, which forbids that one thread should
fly the general fabric, on some new line of duty, without tearing
itself and tearing others. Listen. All that has happened
up to this moment, and all that may be yet to happen, some
sudden inspiration now assures me, inevitably proceeded from
the first hour I saw thee. Not possibly could it, or can it, be
otherwise. Therefore feel I, that I have some patience. Listen.
Whatever outer things might possibly be mine; whatever
seeming brightest blessings; yet now to live uncomforting and
unloving to thee, Isabel; now to dwell domestically away from
thee; so that only by stealth, and base connivances of the night,
I could come to thee as thy related brother; this would be, and
is, unutterably impossible. In my bosom a secret adder of self-reproach
and self-infamy would never leave off its sting. Listen.
But without gratuitous dishonor to a memory which—for
right cause or wrong—is ever sacred and inviolate to me, I
can not be an open brother to thee, Isabel. But thou wantest
not the openness; for thou dost not pine for empty nominalness,
but for vital realness; what thou wantest, is not the occasional
openness of my brotherly love; but its continual domestic
confidence. Do I not speak thine own hidden heart to thee?
say, Isabel? Well, then, still listen to me. One only way
presents to this; a most strange way, Isabel; to the world, that
never throbbed for thee in love, a most deceitful way; but to
all a harmless way; so harmless in its essence, Isabel, that,
seems to me, Pierre hath consulted heaven itself upon it, and
heaven itself did not say Nay. Still, listen to me; mark me.
As thou knowest that thou wouldst now droop and die without
me; so would I without thee. We are equal there; mark
that, too, Isabel. I do not stoop to thee, nor thou to me; but
we both reach up alike to a glorious ideal! Now the continualness,
the secretness, yet the always present domesticness of
our love; how may we best compass that, without jeopardizing
the ever-sacred memory I hinted of? One way—one way—
only one! A strange way, but most pure. Listen. Brace
thyself: here, let me hold thee now; and then whisper it to
thee, Isabel. Come, I holding thee, thou canst not fall.”
He held her tremblingly; she bent over toward him; his
mouth wet her ear; he whispered it.
The girl moved not; was done with all her tremblings;
leaned closer to him, with an inexpressible strangeness of an
intense love, new and inexplicable. Over the face of Pierre
there shot a terrible self-revelation; he imprinted repeated
burning kisses upon her; pressed hard her hand; would not
let go her sweet and awful passiveness.
Then they changed; they coiled together, and entangledly
stood mute.
