I.
All profound things, and emotions of things are preceded
and attended by Silence. What a silence is that with which
the pale bride precedes the responsive I will, to the priest's
solemn question, Wilt thou have this man for thy husband?
In silence, too, the wedded hands are clasped. Yea, in silence
the child Christ was born into the world. Silence is the general
consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying
on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence
is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all
nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is
the only Voice of our God.
Nor is this so august Silence confined to things simply touching
or grand. Like the air, Silence permeates all things, and
produces its magical power, as well during that peculiar mood
which prevails at a solitary traveler's first setting forth on a
journey, as at the unimaginable time when before the world
was, Silence brooded on the face of the waters.
No word was spoken by its inmates, as the coach bearing
our young Enthusiast, Pierre, and his mournful party, sped
forth through the dim dawn into the deep midnight, which
still occupied, unrepulsed, the hearts of the old woods through
which the road wound, very shortly after quitting the village.
When first entering the coach, Pierre had pressed his hand
upon the cushioned seat to steady his way, some crumpled
leaves of paper had met his fingers. He had instinctively
clutched them; and the same strange clutching mood of his
soul which had prompted that instinctive act, did also prevail
in causing him now to retain the crumpled paper in his hand
for an hour or more of that wonderful intense silence, which
the rapid coach bore through the heart of the general stirless
morning silence of the fields and the woods.
His thoughts were very dark and wild; for a space there
was rebellion and horrid anarchy and infidelity in his soul.
This temporary mood may best be likened to that, which—according
to a singular story once told in the pulpit by a reverend
man of God—invaded the heart of an excellent priest. In the
midst of a solemn cathedral, upon a cloudy Sunday afternoon,
this priest was in the act of publicly administering the bread
at the Holy Sacrament of the Supper, when the Evil One suddenly
propounded to him the possibility of the mere moonshine
of the Christian Religion. Just such now was the mood of
Pierre; to him the Evil One propounded the possibility of the
mere moonshine of all his self-renouncing Enthusiasm. The
Evil One hooted at him, and called him a fool. But by instant
and earnest prayer—closing his two eyes, with his two
hands still holding the sacramental bread—the devout priest
had vanquished the impious Devil. Not so with Pierre. The
imperishable monument of his holy Catholic Church; the imperishable
record of his Holy Bible; the imperishable intuition
of the innate truth of Christianity;—these were the indestructible
anchors which still held the priest to his firm Faith's rock,
when the sudden storm raised by the Evil One assailed him.
But Pierre—where could he find the Church, the monument,
the Bible, which unequivocally said to him—“Go on; thou
art in the Right; I endorse thee all over; go on.”—So the
difference between the Priest and Pierre was herein:—with the
priest it was a matter, whether certain bodiless thoughts of his
were true or not true; but with Pierre it was a question
whether certain vital acts of his were right or wrong. In this
little nut lie germ-like the possible solution of some puzzling
problems; and also the discovery of additional, and still more
profound problems ensuing upon the solution of the former.
For so true is this last, that some men refuse to solve any
present problem, for fear of making still more work for themselves
in that way.
Now, Pierre thought of the magical, mournful letter of Isabel,
he recalled the divine inspiration of that hour when the
heroic words burst from his heart—“Comfort thee, and stand
by thee, and fight for thee, will thy leapingly-acknowledging
brother!” These remembrances unfurled themselves in proud
exultations in his soul; and from before such glorious banners
of Virtue, the club-footed Evil One limped away in dismay.
But now the dread, fateful parting look of his mother came
over him; anew he heard the heart-proscribing words—“Beneath
my roof and at my table, he who was once Pierre Glendinning
no more puts himself;”—swooning in her snow-white
bed, the lifeless Lucy lay before him, wrapt as in the reverberating
echoings of her own agonizing shriek: “My heart! my heart!”
Then how swift the recurrence to Isabel, and the nameless awfulness
of his still imperfectly conscious, incipient, new-mingled
emotion toward this mysterious being. “Lo! I leave corpses
wherever I go!” groaned Pierre to himself—“Can then my conduct
be right? Lo! by my conduct I seem threatened by the
possibility of a sin anomalous and accursed, so anomalous, it
may well be the one for which Scripture says, there is never forgiveness.
Corpses behind me, and the last sin before, how
then can my conduct be right?”
In this mood, the silence accompanied him, and the first visible
rays of the morning sun in this same mood found him and
saluted him. The excitement and the sleepless night just
passed, and the strange narcotic of a quiet, steady anguish, and
the sweet quiescence of the air, and the monotonous cradle-like
motion of the coach over a road made firm and smooth by a
refreshing shower over night; these had wrought their wonted
effect upon Isabel and Delly; with hidden faces they leaned
fast asleep in Pierre's sight. Fast asleep—thus unconscious,
oh sweet Isabel, oh forlorn Delly, your swift destinies I bear in
my own!
Suddenly, as his sad eye fell lower and lower from scanning
their magically quiescent persons, his glance lit upon his own
clutched hand, which rested on his knee. Some paper protruded
from that clutch. He knew not how it had got there,
or whence it had come, though himself had closed his own
gripe upon it. He lifted his hand and slowly unfingered and
unbolted the paper, and unrolled it, and carefully smoothed it,
to see what it might be.
It was a thin, tattered, dried-fish-like thing; printed with
blurred ink upon mean, sleazy paper. It seemed the opening
pages of some ruinous old pamphlet—a pamphlet containing a
chapter or so of some very voluminous disquisition. The conclusion
was gone. It must have been accidentally left there by
some previous traveler, who perhaps in drawing out his handkerchief,
had ignorantly extracted his waste paper.
There is a singular infatuation in most men, which leads
them in odd moments, intermitting between their regular occupations,
and when they find themselves all alone in some quiet
corner or nook, to fasten with unaccountable fondness upon the
merest rag of old printed paper—some shred of a long-exploded
advertisement perhaps—and read it, and study it, and reread
it, and pore over it, and fairly agonize themselves over this
miserable, sleazy paper-rag, which at any other time, or in any
other place, they would hardly touch with St. Dunstan's long
tongs. So now, in a degree, with Pierre. But notwithstanding
that he, with most other human beings, shared in the
strange hallucination above mentioned, yet the first glimpse of
the title of the dried-fish-like, pamphlet-shaped rag, did almost
tempt him to pitch it out of the window. For, be a man's
mood what it may, what sensible and ordinary mortal could
have patience for any considerable period, to knowingly hold in
his conscious hand a printed document (and that too a very
blurred one as to ink, and a very sleazy one as to paper), so
metaphysically and insufferably entitled as this:—“Chronometricals
& Horologicals?”
Doubtless, it was something vastly profound; but it is to be
observed, that when a man is in a really profound mood, then
all merely verbal or written profundities are unspeakably repulsive,
and seem downright childish to him. Nevertheless,
the silence still continued; the road ran through an almost unplowed
and uninhabited region; the slumberers still slumbered
before him; the evil mood was becoming well nigh insupportable
to him; so, more to force his mind away from the
dark realities of things than from any other motive, Pierre
finally tried his best to plunge himself into the pamphlet.
