 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
4. BOOK IV.
RETROSPECTIVE.
I.
In their precise tracings-out and subtile causations, the strongest
and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight. We
see the cloud, and feel its bolt; but meteorology only idly essays
a critical scrutiny as to how that cloud became charged,
and how this bolt so stuns. The metaphysical writers confess,
that the most impressive, sudden, and overwhelming event, as
well as the minutest, is but the product of an infinite series of
infinitely involved and untraceable foregoing occurrences. Just
so with every motion of the heart. Why this cheek kindles
with a noble enthusiasm; why that lip curls in scorn; these
are things not wholly imputable to the immediate apparent
cause, which is only one link in the chain; but to a long line
of dependencies whose further part is lost in the mid-regions of
the impalpable air.
Idle then would it be to attempt by any winding way so to
penetrate into the heart, and memory, and inmost life, and nature
of Pierre, as to show why it was that a piece of intelligence
which, in the natural course of things, many amiable
gentlemen, both young and old, have been known to receive
with a momentary feeling of surprise, and then a little curiosity
to know more, and at last an entire unconcern; idle would it
be, to attempt to show how to Pierre it rolled down on his soul
all his subsequent endeavors never restored the original temples
to the soil, nor all his culture completely revived its buried
bloom.
But some random hints may suffice to deprive a little of its
strangeness, that tumultuous mood, into which so small a note
had thrown him.
There had long stood a shrine in the fresh-foliaged heart of
Pierre, up to which he ascended by many tableted steps of remembrance;
and around which annually he had hung fresh
wreaths of a sweet and holy affection. Made one green bower
of at last, by such successive votive offerings of his being; this
shrine seemed, and was indeed, a place for the celebration of a
chastened joy, rather than for any melancholy rites. But
though thus mantled, and tangled with garlands, this shrine
was of marble—a niched pillar, deemed solid and eternal, and
from whose top radiated all those innumerable sculptured scrolls
and branches, which supported the entire one-pillared temple
of his moral life; as in some beautiful gothic oratories, one central
pillar, trunk-like, upholds the roof. In this shrine, in this
niche of this pillar, stood the perfect marble form of his departed
father; without blemish, unclouded, snow-white, and serene;
Pierre's fond personification of perfect human goodness and virtue.
Before this shrine, Pierre poured out the fullness of all
young life's most reverential thoughts and beliefs. Not to God
had Pierre ever gone in his heart, unless by ascending the steps
of that shrine, and so making it the vestibule of his abstractest
religion.
Blessed and glorified in his tomb beyond Prince Mausolus is
that mortal sire, who, after an honorable, pure course of life,
dies, and is buried, as in a choice fountain, in the filial breast of
a tender-hearted and intellectually appreciative child. For at
that period, the Solomonic insights have not poured their turbid
tributaries into the pure-flowing well of the childish life. Rare
into that fountain, all sweet recollections become marbleized;
so that things which in themselves were evanescent, thus became
unchangeable and eternal. So, some rare waters in Derbyshire
will petrify birds'-nests. But if fate preserves the father
to a later time, too often the filial obsequies are less profound;
the canonization less ethereal. The eye-expanded boy perceives,
or vaguely thinks he perceives, slight specks and flaws in the
character he once so wholly reverenced.
When Pierre was twelve years old, his father had died, leaving
behind him, in the general voice of the world, a marked
reputation as a gentleman and a Christian; in the heart of his
wife, a green memory of many healthy days of unclouded and
joyful wedded life, and in the inmost soul of Pierre, the impression
of a bodily form of rare manly beauty and benignity,
only rivaled by the supposed perfect mould in which his virtuous
heart had been cast. Of pensive evenings, by the wide
winter fire, or in summer, in the southern piazza, when that
mystical night-silence so peculiar to the country would summon
up in the minds of Pierre and his mother, long trains of the
images of the past; leading all that spiritual procession, majestically
and holily walked the venerated form of the departed
husband and father. Then their talk would be reminiscent and
serious, but sweet; and again, and again, still deep and deeper,
was stamped in Pierre's soul the cherished conceit, that his virtuous
father, so beautiful on earth, was now uncorruptibly
sainted in heaven. So choicely, and in some degree, secludedly
nurtured, Pierre, though now arrived at the age of nineteen,
had never yet become so thoroughly initiated into that darker,
though truer aspect of things, which an entire residence in the
city from the earliest period of life, almost inevitably engraves
upon the mind of any keenly observant and reflective youth of
Pierre's present years. So that up to this period, in his breast,
all remained as it had been; and to Pierre, his father's shrine
of Arimathea.
Judge, then, how all-desolating and withering the blast, that
for Pierre, in one night, stripped his holiest shrine of all over-laid
bloom, and buried the mild statue of the saint beneath the
prostrated ruins of the soul's temple itself.
II.
As the vine flourishes, and the grape empurples close up to
the very walls and muzzles of cannoned Ehrenbreiitstein; so do
the sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.
But is life, indeed, a thing for all infidel levities, and we, its
misdeemed beneficiaries, so utterly fools and infatuate, that
what we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands
at the caprice of the minutest event—the falling of a leaf, the
hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper
scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened
feather? Are we so entirely insecure, that that casket, wherein
we have placed our holiest and most final joy, and which we
have secured by a lock of infinite deftness; can that casket be
picked and desecrated at the merest stranger's touch, when we
think that we alone hold the only and chosen key?
Pierre! thou art foolish; rebuild—no, not that, for thy
shrine still stands; it stands, Pierre, firmly stands; smellest
thou not its yet undeparted, embowering bloom? Such a note
as thine can be easily enough written, Pierre; impostors are
not unknown in this curious world; or the brisk novelist,
Pierre, will write thee fifty such notes, and so steal gushing
tears from his reader's eyes; even as thy note so strangely
made thine own manly eyes so arid; so glazed, and so arid,
Pierre—foolish Pierre!
Oh! mock not the poniarded heart. The stabbed man
knows the steel; prate not to him that it is only a tickling
feather. Feels he not the interior gash? What does this
blood on my vesture? and what does this pang in my soul?
And here again, not unreasonably, might invocations go up
to those Three Weird Ones, that tend Life's loom. Again we
might ask them, What threads were those, oh, ye Weird Ones,
that ye wove in the years foregone; that now to Pierre, they so
unerringly conduct electric presentiments, that his woe is woe,
his father no more a saint, and Isabel a sister indeed?
Ah, fathers and mothers! all the world round, be heedful,—
give heed! Thy little one may not now comprehend the
meaning of those words and those signs, by which, in its innocent
presence, thou thinkest to disguise the sinister thing ye
would hint. Not now he knows; not very much even of the
externals he consciously remarks; but if, in after-life, Fate puts
the chemic key of the cipher into his hands; then how swiftly
and how wonderfully, he reads all the obscurest and most obliterate
inscriptions he finds in his memory; yea, and rummages
himself all over, for still hidden writings to read. Oh,
darkest lessons of Life have thus been read; all faith in Virtue
been murdered, and youth gives itself up to an infidel scorn.
But not thus, altogether, was it now with Pierre; yet so
like, in some points, that the above true warning may not misplacedly
stand.
His father had died of a fever; and, as is not uncommon
in such maladies, toward his end, he at intervals lowly wandered
in his mind. At such times, by unobserved, but subtle
arts, the devoted family attendants, had restrained his wife from
being present at his side. But little Pierre, whose fond, filial
love drew him ever to that bed; they heeded not innocent
little Pierre, when his father was delirious; and so, one evening,
when the shadows intermingled with the curtains; and all the
chamber was hushed; and Pierre but dimly saw his father's
wonderful coals; then a strange, plaintive, infinitely pitiable,
low voice, stole forth from the testered bed; and Pierre heard,
—“My daughter! my daughter!”
“He wanders again,” said the nurse.
“Dear, dear father!” sobbed the child—“thou hast not a
daughter, but here is thy own little Pierre.”
But again the unregardful voice in the bed was heard; and
now in a sudden, pealing wail,—“My daughter!—God! God!
—my daughter!”
The child snatched the dying man's hand; it faintly grew
to his grasp; but on the other side of the bed, the other hand
now also emptily lifted itself, and emptily caught, as if at some
other childish fingers. Then both hands dropped on the sheet;
and in the twinkling shadows of the evening little Pierre
seemed to see, that while the hand which he held wore a faint,
feverish flush, the other empty one was ashy white as a
leper's.
“It is past,” whispered the nurse, “he will wander so no more
now till midnight,—that is his wont.” And then, in her heart,
she wondered how it was, that so excellent a gentleman, and
so thoroughly good a man, should wander so ambiguously in
his mind; and trembled to think of that mysterious thing in
the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction,
but in spite of the individual's own innocent self, will still
dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts;
and into Pierre's awe-stricken, childish soul, there entered a
kindred, though still more nebulous conceit. But it belonged
to the spheres of the impalpable ether; and the child soon
threw other and sweeter remembrances over it, and covered it
up; and at last, it was blended with all other dim things, and
imaginings of dimness; and so, seemed to survive to no real
life in Pierre. But though through many long years the henbane
showed no leaves in his soul; yet the sunken seed was
spring forth, as by magic. Then, again, the long-hushed, plaintive
and infinitely pitiable voice was heard,—“My daughter!
my daughter!” followed by the compunctious “God! God!”
And to Pierre, once again the empty hand lifted itself, and
once again the ashy hand fell.
III.
In the cold courts of justice the dull head demands oaths,
and holy writ proofs; but in the warm halls of the heart one
single, untestified memory's spark shall suffice to enkindle such
a blaze of evidence, that all the corners of conviction are as
suddenly lighted up as a midnight city by a burning building,
which on every side whirls its reddened brands.
In a locked, round-windowed closet connecting with the
chamber of Pierre, and whither he had always been wont to go,
in those sweetly awful hours, when the spirit crieth to the
spirit, Come into solitude with me, twin-brother; come away:
a secret have I; let me whisper it to thee aside; in this closet,
sacred to the Tadmore privacies and repose of the sometimes
solitary Pierre, there hung, by long cords from the cornice, a
small portrait in oil, before which Pierre had many a time
trancedly stood. Had this painting hung in any annual public
exhibition, and in its turn been described in print by the casual
glancing critics, they would probably have described it thus,
and truthfully: “An impromptu portrait of a fine-looking, gay-hearted,
youthful gentleman. He is lightly, and, as it were,
airily and but grazingly seated in, or rather flittingly tenanting
an old-fashioned chair of Malacca. One arm confining his hat
and came is loungingly thrown over the back of the chair, while
the fingers of the other hand play with his gold watch-seal
peculiarly bright, and care-free, morning expression. He seems
as if just dropped in for a visit upon some familiar acquaintance.
Altogether, the painting is exceedingly clever and cheerful;
with a fine, off-handed expression about it. Undoubtedly
a portrait, and no fancy-piece; and, to hazard a vague conjecture,
by an amateur.”
So bright, and so cheerful then; so trim, and so young; so
singularly healthful, and handsome; what subtile element
could so steep this whole portrait, that, to the wife of the original,
it was namelessly unpleasant and repelling? The mother
of Pierre could never abide this picture which she had always
asserted did signally belie her husband. Her fond memories
of the departed refused to hang one single wreath around it.
It is not he, she would emphatically and almost indignantly
exclaim, when more urgently besought to reveal the cause for
so unreasonable a dissent from the opinion of nearly all the
other connections and relatives of the deceased. But the portrait
which she held to do justice to her husband, correctly to
convey his features in detail, and more especially their truest,
and finest, and noblest combined expression; this portrait was
a much larger one, and in the great drawing-room below occupied
the most conspicuous and honorable place on the wall.
Even to Pierre these two paintings had always seemed
strangely dissimilar. And as the larger one had been painted
many years after the other, and therefore brought the original
pretty nearly within his own childish recollections; therefore,
he himself could not but deem it by far the more truthful and
life-like presentation of his father. So that the mere preference
of his mother, however strong, was not at all surprising
to him, but rather coincided with his own conceit. Yet not
for this, must the other portrait be so decidedly rejected. Because,
in the first place, there was a difference in time, and
some difference of costume to be considered, and the wide
difference of those respective, semi-reflected, ideal faces, which,
even in the presence of the original, a spiritual artist will
rather choose to draw from than from the fleshy face, however
brilliant and fine. Moreover, while the larger portrait was that
of a middle-aged, married man, and seemed to possess all the
nameless and slightly portly tranquillities, incident to that condition
when a felicitous one; the smaller portrait painted a brisk,
unentangled, young bachelor, gayly ranging up and down in
the world; light-hearted, and a very little bladish perhaps;
and charged to the lips with the first uncloying morning fullness
and freshness of life. Here, certainly, large allowance was
to be made in any careful, candid estimation of these portraits.
To Pierre this conclusion had become well-nigh irresistible,
when he placed side by side two portraits of himself;
one taken in his early childhood, a frocked and belted boy of
four years old; and the other, a grown youth of sixteen. Except
an indestructible, all-surviving something in the eyes and
on the temples, Pierre could hardly recognize the loud-laughing
boy in the tall, and pensively smiling youth. If a few
years, then, can have in me made all this difference, why not
in my father? thought Pierre.
Besides all this, Pierre considered the history, and, so to
speak, the family legend of the smaller painting. In his fifteenth
year, it was made a present to him by an old maiden
aunt, who resided in the city, and who cherished the memory
of Pierre's father, with all that wonderful amaranthine devotion
which an advanced maiden sister ever feels for the idea of a beloved
younger brother, now dead and irrevocably gone. As
the only child of that brother, Pierre was an object of the
warmest and most extravagant attachment on the part of this
lonely aunt, who seemed to see, transformed into youth once
again, the likeness, and very soul of her brother, in the fair, inheriting
brow of Pierre. Though the portrait we speak of was
romantic and imaginative love asserted the portrait to be
Pierre's—for Pierre was not only his father's only child, but his
namesake—so soon as Pierre should be old enough to value
aright so holy and inestimable a treasure. She had accordingly
sent it to him, trebly boxed, and finally covered with a
water-proof cloth; and it was delivered at Saddle Meadows, by
an express, confidential messenger, an old gentleman of leisure,
once her forlorn, because rejected gallant, but now her contented,
and chatty neighbor. Henceforth, before a gold-framed
and gold-lidded ivory miniature,—a fraternal gift—aunt Dorothea
now offered up her morning and her evening rites, to the
memory of the noblest and handsomest of brothers. Yet an
annual visit to the far closet of Pierre—no slight undertaking
now for one so stricken in years, and every way infirm—attested
the earnestness of that strong sense of duty, that painful
renunciation of self, which had induced her voluntarily to part
with the precious memorial.
IV.
“Tell me, aunt,” the child Pierre had early said to her,
long before the portrait became his—“tell me, aunt, how this
chair-portrait, as you call it, was painted;—who painted it?—
whose chair was this?—have you the chair now?—I don't see
it in your room here;—what is papa looking at so strangely?—
I should like to know now, what papa was thinking of, then.
Do, now, dear aunt, tell me all about this picture, so that when
it is mine, as you promise me, I shall know its whole history.”
“Sit down, then, and be very still and attentive, my dear
child,” said aunt Dorothea; while she a little averted her head,
and tremulously and inaccurately sought her pocket, till little
any little book, is it, that you are going to take out and read
to me?”
“My handkerchief, my child.”
“Why, aunt, here it is, at your elbow; here, on the table;
here, aunt; take it, do; Oh, don't tell me any thing about the
picture, now; I won't hear it.”
“Be still, my darling Pierre,” said his aunt, taking the handkerchief,
“draw the curtain a little, dearest; the light hurts my
eyes. Now, go into the closet, and bring me my dark shawl;
—take your time.—There; thank you, Pierre; now sit down
again, and I will begin.—The picture was painted long ago,
my child; you were not born then.”
“Not born?” cried little Pierre.
“Not born,” said his aunt.
“Well, go on, aunt; but don't tell me again that once upon
a time I was not little Pierre at all, and yet my father was
alive. Go on, aunt,—do, do!”
“Why, how nervous you are getting, my child;—Be patient;
I am very old, Pierre; and old people never like to be hurried.”
“Now, my own dear Aunt Dorothea, do forgive me this
once, and go on with your story.”
“When your poor father was quite a young man, my child,
and was on one of his long autumnal visits to his friends in this
city, he was rather intimate at times with a cousin of his, Ralph
Winwood, who was about his own age,—a fine youth he was,
too, Pierre.”
“I never saw him, aunt; pray, where is he now?” interrupted
Pierre;—“does he live in the country, now, as mother
and I do?”
“Yes, my child; but a far-away, beautiful country, I hope;—
he's in heaven, I trust.”
“Dead,” sighed little Pierre—“go on, aunt.”
“Now, cousin Ralph had a great love for painting, my child;
and portraits; and there he had his easel and brushes;
and much liked to paint his friends, and hang their faces on his
walls; so that when all alone by himself, he yet had plenty of
company, who always wore their best expressions to him, and
never once ruffled him, by ever getting cross or ill-natured, little
Pierre. Often, he had besought your father to sit to him;
saying, that his silent circle of friends would never be complete,
till your father consented to join them. But in those days, my
child, your father was always in motion. It was hard for me to
get him to stand still, while I tied his cravat; for he never
came to any one but me for that. So he was always putting
off, and putting off cousin Ralph. `Some other time, cousin;
not to-day;—to-morrow, perhaps;—or next week;'—and so,
at last cousin Ralph began to despair. But I'll catch him yet,
cried sly cousin Ralph. So now he said nothing more to your
father about the matter of painting him; but every pleasant
morning kept his easel and brushes and every thing in readiness;
so as to be ready the first moment your father should
chance to drop in upon him from his long strolls; for it was
now and then your father's wont to pay flying little visits to
cousin Ralph in his painting-room.—But, my child, you may
draw back the curtain now—it's getting very dim here, seems
to me.”
“Well, I thought so all along, aunt,” said little Pierre, obeying;
“but didn't you say the light hurt your eyes.”
“But it does not now, little Pierre.”
“Well, well; go on, go on, aunt; you can't think how interested
I am,” said little Pierre, drawing his stool close up to the
quilted satin hem of his good Aunt Dorothea's dress.
“I will, my child. But first let me tell you, that about this
time there arrived in the port, a cabin-full of French emigrants
of quality;—poor people, Pierre, who were forced to fly from
their native land, because of the cruel, blood-shedding times
you, a good while ago.”
“I know all about it;—the French Revolution,” said little
Pierre.
“What a famous little scholar you are, my dear child,”—
said Aunt Dorothea, faintly smiling—“among those poor, but
noble emigrants, there was a beautiful young girl, whose sad
fate afterward made a great noise in the city, and made many
eyes to weep, but in vain, for she never was heard of any more.”
“How? how? aunt;—I don't understand;—did she disappear
then, aunt?”
“I was a little before my story, child. Yes, she did disappear,
and never was heard of again; but that was afterward,
some time afterward, my child. I am very sure it was; I
could take my oath of that, Pierre.”
“Why, dear aunt,” said little Pierre, “how earnestly you talk
—after what? your voice is getting very strange; do now;—
don't talk that way; you frighten me so, aunt.”
“Perhaps it is this bad cold I have to-day; it makes my
voice a little hoarse, I fear, Pierre. But I will try and not talk
so hoarsely again. Well, my child, some time before this beautiful
young lady disappeared, indeed it was only shortly after
the poor emigrants landed, your father made her acquaintance;
and with many other humane gentlemen of the city, provided
for the wants of the strangers, for they were very poor indeed,
having been stripped of every thing, save a little trifling jewelry,
which could not go very far. At last, the friends of your father
endeavored to dissuade him from visiting these people so
much; they were fearful that as the young lady was so very
beautiful, and a little inclined to be intriguing—so some said—
your father might be tempted to marry her; which would not
have been a wise thing in him; for though the young lady
might have been very beautiful, and good-hearted, yet no one
on this side the water certainly knew her history; and she was
a match for your father as your dear mother afterward did, my
child. But, for myself, I—who always knew your father very
well in all his intentions, and he was very confidential with me,
too—I, for my part, never credited that he would do so unwise
a thing as marry the strange young lady. At any rate, he at
last discontinued his visits to the emigrants; and it was after
this that the young lady disappeared. Some said that she
must have voluntarily but secretly returned into her own country;
and others declared that she must have been kidnapped
by French emissaries; for, after her disappearance, rumor began
to hint that she was of the noblest birth, and some ways allied
to the royal family; and then, again, there were some who
shook their heads darkly, and muttered of drownings, and other
dark things; which one always hears hinted when people
disappear, and no one can find them. But though your father
and many other gentlemen moved heaven and earth to find
trace of her, yet, as I said before, my child, she never re-appeared.”
“The poor French lady!” sighed little Pierre. “Aunt, I'm
afraid she was murdered.”
“Poor lady, there is no telling,” said his aunt. “But listen,
for I am coming to the picture again. Now, at the time your
father was so often visiting the emigrants, my child, cousin
Ralph was one of those who a little fancied that your father
was courting her; but cousin Ralph being a quiet young man,
and a scholar, not well acquainted with what is wise, or what
is foolish in the great world; cousin Ralph would not have
been at all mortified had your father really wedded with the
refugee young lady. So vainly thinking, as I told you, that
your father was courting her, he fancied it would be a very fine
thing if he could paint your father as her wooer; that is, paint
him just after his coming from his daily visits to the emigrants.
So he watched his chance; every thing being ready in his painting-room,
in dropt your father from his walk. But before he came into
the room, cousin Ralph had spied him from the window; and
when your father entered, cousin Ralph had the sitting-chair
ready drawn out, back of his easel, but still fronting toward
him, and pretended to be very busy painting. He said to your
father—`Glad to see you, cousin Pierre; I am just about
something here; sit right down there now, and tell me the
news; and I'll sally out with you presently. And tell us somethings
of the emigrants, cousin Pierre,' he slyly added—wishing,
you see, to get your father's thoughts running that supposed
wooing way, so that he might catch some sort of corresponding
expression you see, little Pierre.”
“I don't know that I precisely understand, aunt; but go on,
I am so interested; do go on, dear aunt.”
“Well, by many little cunning shifts and contrivances, cousin
Ralph kept your father there sitting, and sitting in the chair,
rattling and rattling away, and so self-forgetful too, that he
never heeded that all the while sly cousin Ralph was painting
and painting just as fast as ever he could; and only making believe
laugh at your father's wit; in short, cousin Ralph was
stealing his portrait, my child.”
“Not stealing it, I hope,” said Pierre, “that would be very
wicked.”
“Well, then, we won't call it stealing, since I am sure that
cousin Ralph kept your father all the time off from him, and
so, could not have possibly picked his pocket, though indeed,
he slyly picked his portrait, so to speak. And if indeed it was
stealing, or any thing of that sort; yet seeing how much comfort
that portrait has been to me, Pierre, and how much it will
yet be to you, I hope; I think we must very heartily forgive
cousin Ralph, for what he then did.”
“Yes, I think we must indeed,” chimed in little Pierre, now
the mantle.
“Well, by catching your father two or three times more in
that way, cousin Ralph at last finished the painting; and when
it was all framed, and every way completed, he would have
surprised your father by hanging it boldly up in his room
among his other portraits, had not your father one morning
suddenly come to him—while, indeed, the very picture itself
was placed face down on a table and cousin Ralph fixing the
cord to it—came to him, and frightened cousin Ralph by
quietly saying, that now that he thought of it, it seemed to
him that cousin Ralph had been playing tricks with him; but
he hoped it was not so. `What do you mean?' said cousin
Ralph, a little flurried. `You have not been hanging my
portrait up here, have you, cousin Ralph?' said your father,
glancing along the walls. `I'm glad I don't see it. It is my
whim, cousin Ralph,—and perhaps it is a very silly one,—but
if you have been lately painting my portrait, I want you to
destory it; at any rate, don't show it to any one, keep it out
of sight. What's that you have there, cousin Ralph?'
“Cousin Ralph was now more and more fluttered; not
knowing what to make—as indeed, to this day, I don't completely
myself—of your father's strange manner. But he rallied,
and said—`This, cousin Pierre, is a secret portrait I have
here; you must be aware that we portrait-painters are sometimes
called upon to paint such. I, therefore, can not show it
to you, or tell you any thing about it.'
“`Have you been painting my portrait or not, cousin
Ralph?' said your father, very suddenly and pointedly.
“`I have painted nothing that looks as you there look,'
said cousin Ralph, evasively, observing in your father's face a
fierce-like expression, which he had never seen there before.
And more than that, your father could not get from him.”
“And what then?” said little Pierre.
“Why not much, my child; only your father never so
much as caught one glimpse of that picture; indeed, never
knew for certain, whether there was such a painting in the
world. Cousin Ralph secretly gave it to me, knowing how
tenderly I loved your father; making me solemnly promise
never to expose it anywhere where your father could ever see
it, or any way hear of it. This promise I faithfully kept; and
it was only after your dear father's death, that I hung it in my
chamber. There, Pierre, you now have the story of the chair-portrait.”
“And a very strange one it is,” said Pierre—“and so interesting,
I shall never forget it, aunt.”
“I hope you never will, my child. Now ring the bell, and
we will have a little fruit-cake, and I will take a glass of wine,
Pierre;—do you hear, my child?—the bell—ring it. Why,
what do you do standing there, Pierre?”
“Why did'nt papa want to have cousin Ralph paint his picture,
aunt?”
“How these children's minds do run!” exclaimed old aunt
Dorothea staring at little Pierre in amazement—“That indeed
is more than I can tell you, little Pierre. But cousin Ralph
had a foolish fancy about it. He used to tell me, that being in
your father's room some few days after the last scene I described,
he noticed there a very wonderful work on Physiognomy,
as they call it, in which the strangest and shadowiest
rules were laid down for detecting people's innermost secrets by
studying their faces. And so, foolish cousin Ralph always
flattered himself, that the reason your father did not want his
portrait taken was, because he was secretly in love with the
French young lady, and did not want his secret published in a
portrait; since the wonderful work on Physiognomy had, as it
were, indirectly warned him against running that risk. But
cousin Ralph being such a retired and solitary sort of a youth,
he always had such curious whimsies about things. For my
ideas on the subject. To be sure, I myself can not tell you why
he did not want his picture taken; but when you get to be as
old as I am, little Pierre, you will find that every one, even the
best of us, at times, is apt to act very queerly and unaccountably;
indeed some things we do, we can not entirely explain the
reason of, even to ourselves, little Pierre. But you will know
all about these strange matters by and by.”
“I hope I shall, aunt,” said little Pierre—“But, dear aunt, I
thought Marten was to bring in some fruit-cake?”
“Ring the bell for him, then, my child.”
“Oh! I forgot,” said little Pierre, doing her bidding.
By-and-by, while the aunt was sipping her wine; and the
boy eating his cake, and both their eyes were fixed on the portrait
in question; little Pierre, pushing his stool nearer the picture
exclaimed—“Now, aunt, did papa really look exactly like
that? Did you ever see him in that same buff vest, and huge-figured
neckcloth? I remember the seal and key, pretty well;
and it was only a week ago that I saw mamma take them out of
a little locked drawer in her wardrobe—but I don't remember
the queer whiskers; nor the buff vest; nor the huge white-figured
neckcloth; did you ever see papa in that very neckcloth,
aunt?”
“My child, it was I that chose the stuff for that neckcloth;
yes, and hemmed it for him, and worked P. G. in one corner;
but that aint in the picture. It is an excellent likeness, my
child, neckcloth and all; as he looked at that time. Why,
little Pierre, sometimes I sit here all alone by myself, gazing,
and gazing, and gazing at that face, till I begin to think your
father is looking at me, and smiling at me, and nodding at me,
and saying—Dorothea! Dorothea!”
“How strange,” said little Pierre, “I think it begins to look
at me now, aunt. Hark! aunt, it's so silent all round in this
old-fashioned room, that I think I hear a little jingling in the
Hark! aunt.”
“Bless me, don't talk so strangely, my child.”
“I heard mamma say once—but she did not say so to me—
that, for her part, she did not like aunt Dorothea's picture; it
was not a good likeness, so she said. Why don't mamma like
the picture, aunt?”
“My child, you ask very queer questions. If your mamma
don't like the picture, it is for a very plain reason. She has a
much larger and finer one at home, which she had painted for
herself; yes, and paid I don't know how many hundred dollars
for it; and that, too, is an excellent likeness, that must be the
reason, little Pierre.”
And thus the old aunt and the little child ran on; each
thinking the other very strange; and both thinking the picture
still stranger; and the face in the picture still looked at them
frankly, and cheerfully, as if there was nothing kept concealed;
and yet again, a little ambiguously and mockingly, as if slyly
winking to some other picture, to mark what a very foolish old
sister, and what a very silly little son, were growing so monstrously
grave and speculative about a huge white-figured neckcloth,
a buff vest, and a very gentleman-like and amiable countenance.
And so, after this scene, as usual, one by one, the fleet years
ran on; till the little child Pierre had grown up to be the tall
Master Pierre, and could call the picture his own; and now, in
the privacy of his own little closet, could stand, or lean, or sit
before it all day long, if he pleased, and keep thinking, and
thinking, and thinking, and thinking, till by-and-by all thoughts
were blurred, and at last there were no thoughts at all.
Before the picture was sent to him, in his fifteenth year, it
had been only through the inadvertence of his mother, or
rather through a casual passing into a parlor by Pierre, that he
had any way learned that his mother did not approve of the
was the picture of his father, and the cherished property of
a most excellent, and dearly-beloved, affectionate aunt; therefore
the mother, with an intuitive delicacy, had refrained from knowingly
expressing her peculiar opinion in the presence of little
Pierre. And this judicious, though half-unconscious delicacy
in the mother, had been perhaps somewhat singularly answered
by a like nicety of sentiment in the child; for children of a
naturally refined organization, and a gentle nurture, sometimes
possess a wonderful, and often undreamed of, daintiness of propriety,
and thoughtfulness, and forbearance, in matters esteemed
a little subtile even by their elders, aud self-elected betters. The
little Pierre never disclosed to his mother that he had, through
another person, become aware of her thoughts concerning Aunt
Dorothea's portrait; he seemed to possess an intuitive knowledge
of the circumstance, that from the difference of their relationship
to his father, and for other minute reasons, he could in
some things, with the greater propriety, be more inquisitive
concerning him, with his aunt, than with his mother, especially
touching the matter of the chair-portrait. And Aunt Dorothea's
reasons accounting for his mother's distaste, long continued
satisfactory, or at least not unsufficiently explanatory.
And when the portrait arrived at the Meadows, it so chanced
that his mother was abroad; and so Pierre silently hung it up
in his closet; and when after a day or two his mother returned,
he said nothing to her about its arrival, being still strangely
alive to that certain mild mystery which invested it, and whose
sacredness now he was fearful of violating, by provoking any
discussion with his mother about Aunt Dorothea's gift, or by
permitting himself to be improperly curious concerning the reasons
of his mother's private and self-reserved opinions of it.
But the first time—and it was not long after the arrival of the
portrait—that he knew of his mother's having entered his
what she should voluntarily say about the late addition to its
embellishments; but as she omitted all mention of any thing
of that sort, he unobtrusively scanned her countenance, to mark
whether any little clouding emotion might be discoverable there.
But he could discern none. And as all genuine delicacies are
by their nature accumulative; therefore this reverential, mutual,
but only tacit forbearance of the mother and son, ever
after continued uninvaded. And it was another sweet, and
sanctified, and sanctifying bond between them. For, whatever
some lovers may sometimes say, love does not always abhor a
secret, as nature is said to abhor a vacuum. Love is built
upon secrets, as lovely Venice upon invisible and incorruptible
piles in the sea. Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to
the transcendent and the infinite; and so they are as airy
bridges, by which our further shadows pass over into the regions
of the golden mists and exhalations; whence all poetical,
lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though
pearls should drop from rainbows.
As time went on, the chasteness and pure virginity of this
mutual reservation, only served to dress the portrait in sweeter,
because still more mysterious attractions; and to fling, as it
were, fresh fennel and rosemary around the revered memory of
the father. Though, indeed, as previously recounted, Pierre
now and then loved to present to himself for some fanciful
solution the penultimate secret of the portrait, in so far, as that
involved his mother's distaste; yet the cunning analysis in which
such a mental procedure would involve him, never voluntarily
transgressed that sacred limit, where his mother's peculiar repugnance
began to shade off into ambiguous considerations,
touching any unknown possibilities in the character and early
life of the original. Not, that he had altogether forbidden his
fancy to range in such fields of speculation; but all such imaginings
father, which, in his soul, was based upon the known acknowledged
facts of his father's life.
V.
If, when the mind roams up and down in the ever-elastic
regions of evanescent invention, any definite form or feature can
be assigned to the multitudinous shapes it creates out of the
incessant dissolvings of its own prior creations; then might we
here attempt to hold and define the least shadowy of those
reasons, which about the period of adolescence we now treat of,
more frequently occurred to Pierre, whenever he essayed to account
for his mother's remarkable distaste for the portrait. Yet
will we venture one sketch.
Yes—sometimes dimly thought Pierre—who knows but
cousin Ralph, after all, may have been not so very far from
the truth, when he surmised that at one time my father did
indeed cherish some passing emotion for the beautiful young
Frenchwoman. And this portrait being painted at that precise
time, and indeed with the precise purpose of perpetuating
some shadowy testification of the fact in the countenance of
the original: therefore, its expression is not congenial, is not
familiar, is not altogether agreeable to my mother: because,
not only did my father's features never look so to her (since it
was afterward that she first became acquainted with him), but
also, that certain womanliness of women; that thing I should
perhaps call a tender jealousy, a fastidious vanity, in any other
lady, enables her to perceive that the glance of the face in the
portrait, is not, in some nameless way, dedicated to herself, but
to some other and unknown object; and therefore, is she impatient
of it, and it is repelling to her; for she must naturally
is not in some way connected with her own recollections of
him.
Whereas, the larger and more expansive portrait in the
great drawing-room, taken in the prime of life; during the
best and rosiest days of their wedded union; at the particular
desire of my mother; and by a celebrated artist of her own
election, and costumed after her own taste; and on all hands
considered to be, by those who know, a singularly happy likeness
at the period; a belief spiritually reinforced by my own
dim infantile remembrances; for all these reasons, this drawing-room
portrait possesses an inestimable charm to her; there,
she indeed beholds her husband as he had really appeared to
her; she does not vacantly gaze upon an unfamiliar phantom
called up from the distant, and, to her, well-nigh fabulous days
of my father's bachelor life. But in that other portrait, she
sees rehearsed to her fond eyes, the latter tales and legends of
his devoted wedded love. Yes, I think now that I plainly see
it must be so. And yet, ever new conceits come vaporing up
in me, as I look on the strange chair-portrait: which, though
so very much more unfamiliar to me, than it can possibly be
to my mother, still sometimes seems to say—Pierre, believe
not the drawing-room painting; that is not thy father; or, at
least, is not all of thy father. Consider in thy mind, Pierre,
whether we two paintings may not make only one. Faithful
wives are ever over-fond to a certain imaginary image of their
husbands; and faithful widows are ever over-reverential to a
certain imagined ghost of that same imagined image, Pierre.
Look again, I am thy father as he more truly was. In mature
life, the world overlays and varnishes us, Pierre; the thousand
proprieties and polished finenesses and grimaces intervene,
Pierre; then, we, as it were, abdicate ourselves, and take unto
us another self, Pierre; in youth we are, Pierre, but in age we
seem. Look again. I am thy real father, so much the more
their young children, fathers are not wont to unfold themselves
entirely, Pierre. There are a thousand and one odd little
youthful peccadilloes, that we think we may as well not divulge
to them, Pierre. Consider this strange, ambiguous smile,
Pierre; more narrowly regard this mouth. Behold, what is
this too ardent and, as it were, unchastened light in these eyes,
Pierre? I am thy father, boy. There was once a certain, oh,
but too lovely young Frenchwoman, Pierre. Youth is hot,
and temptation strong, Pierre; and in the minutest moment
momentous things are irrevocably done, Pierre; and Time
sweeps on, and the thing is not always carried down by its
stream, but may be left stranded on its bank; away beyond,
in the young, green countries, Pierre. Look again. Doth thy
mother dislike me for naught? Consider. Do not all her
spontaneous, loving impressions, ever strive to magnify, and
spiritualize, and deify, her husband's memory, Pierre? Then
why doth she cast despite upon me; and never speak to thee
of me; and why dost thou thyself keep silence before her,
Pierre? Consider. Is there no little mystery here? Probe
a little, Pierre. Never fear, never fear. No matter for thy
father now. Look, do I not smile?—yes, and with an unchangeable
smile; and thus have I unchangeably smiled for
many long years gone by, Pierre. Oh, it is a permanent
smile! Thus I smiled to cousin Ralph; and thus in thy dear
old Aunt Dorothea's parlor, Pierre; and just so, I smile here to
thee, and even thus in thy father's later life, when his body
may have been in grief, still—hidden away in Aunt Dorothea's
secretary—I thus smiled as before; and just so I'd smile were
I now hung up in the deepest dungeon of the Spanish Inquisition,
Pierre; though suspended in outer darkness, still would
I smile with this smile, though then not a soul should be near.
Consider; for a smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities,
Pierre. When we would deceive, we smile; when we are
gratifying our own sweet little appetites, Pierre; then watch
us, and out comes the odd little smile. Once upon a time,
there was a lovely young Frenchwoman, Pierre. Have you
carefully, and analytically, and psychologically, and metaphysically,
considered her belongings and surroundings, and all her
incidentals, Pierre? Oh, a strange sort of story, that, thy dear
old Aunt Dorothea once told thee, Pierre. I once knew a
credulous old soul, Pierre. Probe, probe a little—see—there
seems one little crack there, Pierre—a wedge, a wedge. Something
ever comes of all persistent inquiry; we are not so continually
curious for nothing, Pierre; not for nothing, do we so
intrigue and become wily diplomatists, and glozers with our
own minds, Pierre; and afraid of following the Indian trail
from the open plain into the dark thickets, Pierre; but enough;
a word to the wise.
Thus sometimes in the mystical, outer quietude of the long
country nights; either when the hushed mansion was banked
round by the thick-fallen December snows, or banked round
by the immovable white August moonlight; in the haunted
repose of a wide story, tenanted only by himself; and sentineling
his own little closet; and standing guard, as it were,
before the mystical tent of the picture; and ever watching the
strangely concealed lights of the meanings that so mysteriously
moved to and fro within; thus sometimes stood Pierre before
the portrait of his father, unconsciously throwing himself open
to all those ineffable hints and ambiguities, and undefined half-suggestions,
which now and then people the soul's atmosphere,
as thickly as in a soft, steady snow-storm, the snow-flakes
people the air. Yet as often starting from these reveries and
trances, Pierre would regain the assured element of consciously
bidden and self-propelled thought; and then in a moment the
air all cleared, not a snow-flake descended, and Pierre, upbraiding
himself for his self-indulgent infatuation, would promise
of his father. Nor did the streams of these reveries seem
to leave any conscious sediment in his mind; they were so
light and so rapid, that they rolled their own alluvial along;
and seemed to leave all Pierre's thought-channels as clean
and dry as though never any alluvial stream had rolled there
at all.
And so still in his sober, cherishing memories, his father's
beatification remained untouched; and all the strangeness of
the portrait only served to invest his idea with a fine, legendary
romance; the essence whereof was that very mystery,
which at other times was so subtly and evilly significant.
But now, now!—Isabel's letter read: swift as the first light
that slides from the sun, Pierre saw all preceding ambiguities,
all mysteries ripped open as if with a keen sword, and forth
trooped thickening phantoms of an infinite gloom. Now his
remotest infantile reminiscences—the wandering mind of his
father—the empty hand, and the ashen—the strange story of
Aunt Dorothea—the mystical midnight suggestions of the portrait
itself; and, above all, his mother's intuitive aversion, all,
all overwhelmed him with reciprocal testimonies.
And now, by irresistible intuitions, all that had been inexplicably
mysterious to him in the portrait, and all that
had been inexplicably familiar in the face, most magically
these now coincided; the merriness of the one not inharmonious
with the mournfulness of the other, but by some ineffable
correlativeness, they reciprocally identified each other,
and, as it were, melted into each other, and thus interpenetratingly
uniting, presented lineaments of an added supernaturalness.
On all sides, the physical world of solid objects now slidingly
displaced itself from around him, and he floated into an
ether of visions; and, starting to his feet with clenched hands
and outstaring eyes at the transfixed face in the air, he ejaculated
mutually absorbing shapes in the Inferno:
Agnello! See! thou art not double now,
Nor only one!”
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |