University of Virginia Library

5. BOOK V.
MISGIVINGS AND PREPARATIONS.

I.

It was long after midnight when Pierre returned to the
house. He had rushed forth in that complete abandonment
of soul, which, in so ardent a temperament, attends the first
stages of any sudden and tremendous affliction; but now he
returned in pallid composure, for the calm spirit of the night,
and the then risen moon, and the late revealed stars, had all at
last become as a strange subduing melody to him, which,
though at first trampled and scorned, yet by degrees had stolen
into the windings of his heart, and so shed abroad its own quietude
in him. Now, from his height of composure, he firmly
gazed abroad upon the charred landscape within him; as the
timber man of Canada, forced to fly from the conflagration of
his forests, comes back again when the fires have waned, and
unblinkingly eyes the immeasurable fields of fire-brands that
here and there glow beneath the wide canopy of smoke.

It has been said, that always when Pierre would seek solitude
in its material shelter and walled isolation, then the closet communicating
with his chamber was his elected haunt. So, going
to his room, he took up the now dim-burning lamp he had left
there, and instinctively entered that retreat, seating himself,
with folded arms and bowed head, in the accustomed dragon-footed
old chair. With leaden feet, and heart now changing

from iciness to a strange sort of indifference, and a numbing
sensation stealing over him, he sat there awhile, till, like the
resting traveler in snows, he began to struggle against this inertness
as the most treacherous and deadliest of symptoms.
He looked up, and found himself fronted by the no longer
wholly enigmatical, but still ambiguously smiling picture of his
father. Instantly all his consciousness and his anguish returned,
but still without power to shake the grim tranquillity which
possessed him. Yet endure the smiling portrait he could not;
and obeying an irresistible nameless impulse, he rose, and without
unhanging it, reversed the picture on the wall.

This brought to sight the defaced and dusty back, with some
wrinkled, tattered paper over the joints, which had become
loosened from the paste. “Oh, symbol of thy reversed idea in
my soul,” groaned Pierre; “thou shalt not hang thus. Rather
cast thee utterly out, than conspicuously insult thee so. I will
no more have a father.” He removed the picture wholly from
the wall, and the closet; and concealed it in a large chest, covered
with blue chintz, and locked it up there. But still, in a
square space of slightly discolored wall, the picture still left its
shadowy, but vacant and desolate trace. He now strove to
banish the least trace of his altered father, as fearful that at
present all thoughts concerning him were not only entirely vain,
but would prove fatally distracting and incapacitating to a mind,
which was now loudly called upon, not only to endure a signal
grief, but immediately to act upon it. Wild and cruel case,
youth ever thinks; but mistakenly; for Experience well knows,
that action, though it seems an aggravation of woe, is really an
alleviative; though permanently to alleviate pain, we must
first dart some added pangs.

Nor now, though profoundly sensible that his whole previous
moral being was overturned, and that for him the fair structure
of the world must, in some then unknown way, be entirely rebuilded
again, from the lowermost corner stone up; nor now

did Pierre torment himself with the thought of that last desoation;
and how the desolate place was to be made flourishing
again. He seemed to feel that in his deepest soul, lurked an
indefinite but potential faith, which could rule in the interregnum
of all hereditary beliefs, and circumstantial persuasions;
not wholly, he felt, was his soul in anarchy. The indefinite
regent had assumed the scepter as its right; and Pierre was not
entirely given up to his grief's utter pillage and sack.

To a less enthusiastic heart than Pierre's the foremost question
in respect to Isabel which would have presented itself,
would have been, What must I do? But such a question never
presented itself to Pierre; the spontaneous responsiveness of
his being left no shadow of dubiousness as to the direct point
he must aim at. But if the object was plain, not so the path
to it. How must I do it? was a problem for which at first
there seemed no chance of solution. But without being entirely
aware of it himself, Pierre was one of those spirits, which
not in a determinate and sordid scrutiny of small pros and cons
—but in an impulsive subservience to the god-like dictation of
events themselves, find at length the surest solution of perplexities,
and the brightest prerogative of command. And as for
him, What must I do? was a question already answered by
the inspiration of the difficulty itself; so now he, as it were, unconsciously
discharged his mind, for the present, of all distracting
considerations concerning How he should do it; assured
that the coming interview with Isabel could not but unerringly
inspire him there. Still, the inspiration which had
thus far directed him had not been entirely mute and undivulging
as to many very bitter things which Pierre foresaw in the
wide sea of trouble into which he was plunged.

If it be the sacred province and—by the wisest, deemed—
the inestimable compensation of the heavier woes, that they
both purge the soul of gay-hearted errors and replenish it with
a saddened truth; that holy office is not so much accomplished

by any covertly inductive reasoning process, whose original
motive is received from the particular affliction; as it is the
magical effect of the admission into man's inmost spirit of a
before unexperienced and wholly inexplicable element, which
like electricity suddenly received into any sultry atmosphere of
the dark, in all directions splits itself into nimble lances of purifying
light; which at one and the same instant discharge all
the air of sluggishness and inform it with an illuminating property;
so that objects which before, in the uncertainty of the
dark, assumed shadowy and romantic outlines, now are lighted
up in their substantial realities; so that in these flashing revelations
of grief's wonderful fire, we see all things as they are;
and though, when the electric element is gone, the shadows
once more descend, and the false outlines of objects again return;
yet not with their former power to deceive; for now,
even in the presence of the falsest aspects, we still retain the
impressions of their immovable true ones, though, indeed, once
more concealed.

Thus with Pierre. In the joyous young times, ere his great
grief came upon him, all the objects which surrounded him
were concealingly deceptive. Not only was the long-cherished
image of his father now transfigured before him from a green
foliaged tree into a blasted trunk, but every other image in his
mind attested the universality of that electral light which had
darted into his soul. Not even his lovely, immaculate mother,
remained entirely untouched, unaltered by the shock. At her
changed aspect, when first revealed to him, Pierre had gazed in
a panic; and now, when the electrical storm had gone by, he
retained in his mind, that so suddenly revealed image, with an
infinite mournfulness. She, who in her less splendid but finer
and more spiritual part, had ever seemed to Pierre not only as
a beautiful saint before whom to offer up his daily orisons, but
also as a gentle lady-counsellor and confessor, and her revered
chamber as a soft satin-hung cabinet and confessional;—his

mother was no longer this all-alluring thing; no more, he too
keenly felt, could he go to his mother, as to one who entirely
sympathized with him; as to one before whom he could almost
unreservedly unbosom himself; as to one capable of pointing
out to him the true path where he seemed most beset. Wonderful,
indeed, was that electric insight which Fate had now
given him into the vital character of his mother. She well
might have stood all ordinary tests; but when Pierre thought
of the touchstone of his immense strait applied to her spirit; he
felt profoundly assured that she would crumble into nothing
before it.

She was a noble creature, but formed chiefly for the gilded
prosperities of life, and hitherto mostly used to its unruffled serenities;
bred and expanded, in all developments, under the
sole influence of hereditary forms and world-usages. Not his
refined, courtly, loving, equable mother, Pierre felt, could unreservedly,
and like a heaven's heroine, meet the shock of his extraordinary
emergency, and applaud, to his heart's echo, a sublime
resolve, whose execution should call down the astonishment
and the jeers of the world.

My mother!—dearest mother!—God hath given me a sister,
and unto thee a daughter, and covered her with the world's
extremest infamy and scorn, that so I and thou—thou, my
mother, mightest gloriously own her, and acknowledge her,
and,—Nay, nay, groaned Pierre, never, never, could such
sylables be one instant tolerated by her. Then, high-up, and
towering, and all-forbidding before Pierre grew the before unthought
of wonderful edifice of his mother's immense pride;—
her pride of birth, her pride of affluence, her pride of purity,
and all the pride of high-born, refined, and wealthy Life, and
all the Semiramian pride of woman. Then he staggered back
upon himself, and only found support in himself. Then Pierre
felt that deep in him lurked a divine unidentifiableness, that
owned no earthly kith or kin. Yet was this feeling entirely

lonesome, and orphan-like. Fain, then, for one moment, would
he have recalled the thousand sweet illusions of Life; tho'
purchased at the price of Life's Truth; so that once more he
might not feel himself driven out an infant Ishmael into the
desert, with no maternal Hagar to accompany and comfort
him.

Still, were these emotions without prejudice to his own love
for his mother, and without the slightest bitterness respecting
her; and, least of all, there was no shallow disdain toward
her of superior virtue. He too plainly saw, that not his mother
had made his mother; but the Infinite Haughtiness had first
fashioned her; and then the haughty world had further
molded her; nor had a haughty Ritual omitted to finish her.

Wonderful, indeed, we repeat it, was the electrical insight
which Pierre now had into the character of his mother, for not
even the vivid recalling of her lavish love for him could suffice
to gainsay his sudden persuasion. Love me she doth, thought
Pierre, but how? Loveth she me with the love past all understanding?
that love, which in the loved one's behalf, would still
calmly confront all hate? whose most triumphing hymn,
triumphs only by swelling above all opposing taunts and despite?—Loving
mother, here have I a loved, but world-infamous
sister to own;—and if thou lovest me, mother, thy love will
love her, too, and in the proudest drawing-room take her so
much the more proudly by the hand.—And as Pierre thus in
fancy led Isabel before his mother; and in fancy led her away,
and felt his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth, with her
transfixing look of incredulous, scornful horror; then Pierre's
enthusiastic heart sunk in and in, and caved clean away in him,
as he so poignantly felt his first feeling of the dreary heart-vacancies
of the conventional life. Oh heartless, proud, ice-gilded
world, how I hate thee, he thought, that thy tyrannous,
insatiate grasp, thus now in my bitterest need—thus doth rob
me even of my mother; thus doth make me now doubly an

orphan, without a green grave to bedew. My tears,—could I
weep them,—must now be wept in the desolate places; now
to me is it, as though both father and mother had gone on
distant voyages, and, returning, died in unknown seas.

She loveth me, ay;—but why? Had I been cast in a
cripple's mold, how then? Now, do I remember that in her
most caressing love, there ever gleamed some scaly, glittering
folds of pride. Me she loveth with pride's love; in me she
thinks she seeth her own curled and haughty beauty; before
my glass she stands,—pride's priestess—and to her mirrored
image, not to me, she offers up her offerings of kisses. Oh,
small thanks I owe thee, Favorable Goddess, that didst clothe
this form with all the beauty of a man, that so thou mightest
hide from me all the truth of a man. Now I see that in his
beauty a man is snared, and made stone-blind, as the worm
within its silk. Welcome then be Ugliness and Poverty and
Infamy, and all ye other crafty ministers of Truth, that beneath
the hoods and rags of beggars hide yet the belts and crowns of
kings. And dimmed be all beauty that must own the clay;
and dimmed be all wealth, and all delight, and all the annual
prosperities of earth, that but gild the links, and stud with
diamonds the base rivets and the chains of Lies. Oh, now methinks
I a little see why of old the men of Truth went barefoot,
girded with a rope, and ever moving under mournfulness as
underneath a canopy. I remember now those first wise words,
wherewith our Savior Christ first spoke in his first speech to
men:—`Blessed are the poor in spirit, and blessed they that
mourn.' Oh, hitherto I have but piled up words; bought
books, and bought some small experiences, and builded me in
libraries; now I sit down and read. Oh, now I know the night,
and comprehend the sorceries of the moon, and all the dark
persuadings that have their birth in storms and winds. Oh,
not long will Joy abide, when Truth doth come; nor Grief her
laggard be. Well may this head hang on my breast,—it holds

too much; well may my heart knock at my ribs,—prisoner
impatient of his iron bars. Oh, men are jailers all; jailers of
themselves; and in Opinion's world ignorantly hold their
noblest part a captive to their vilest; as disguised royal Charles
when caught by peasants. The heart! the heart! 'tis God's
anointed; let me pursue the heart!

II.

But if the presentiment in Pierre of his mother's pride, as
bigotedly hostile to the noble design he cherished; if this feeling
was so wretched to him; far more so was the thought of
another and a deeper hostility, arising from her more spiritual
part. For her pride would not be so scornful, as her wedded
memories reject with horror, the unmentionable imputation involved
in the mere fact of Isabel's existence. In what galleries
of conjecture, among what horrible haunting toads and scorpions,
would such a revelation lead her? When Pierre thought
of this, the idea of at all divulging his secret to his mother, not
only was made repelling by its hopelessnes, as an infirm attack
upon her citadel of pride, but was made in the last degree inhuman,
as torturing her in her tenderest recollections, and desecrating
the whitest altar in her sanctuary.

Though the conviction that he must never disclose his secret
to his mother was originally an unmeditated, and as it were, an
inspired one; yet now he was almost pains-taking in scrutinizing
the entire circumstances of the matter, in order that nothing
might be overlooked. For already he vaguely felt, that upon
the concealment, or the disclosure of this thing, with reference
to his mother, hinged his whole future course of conduct, his
whole earthly weal, and Isabel's. But the more and the more
that he pondered upon it, the more and the more fixed became

his original conviction. He considered that in the case of a
disclosure, all human probability pointed to his mother's scornful
rejection of his suit as a pleader for Isabel's honorable admission
into the honorable mansion of the Glendinnings. Then
in that case, unconsciously thought Pierre, I shall have given
the deep poison of a miserable truth to my mother, without
benefit to any, and positive harm to all. And through Pierre's
mind there then darted a baleful thought; how that the truth
should not always be paraded; how that sometimes a lie is
heavenly, and truth infernal. Filially infernal, truly, thought
Pierre, if I should by one vile breath of truth, blast my father's
blessed memory in the bosom of my mother, and plant the
sharpest dagger of grief in her soul. I will not do it!

But as this resolution in him opened up so dark and wretched
a background to his view, he strove to think no more of it
now, but postpone it until the interview with Isabel should
have in some way more definitely shaped his purposes. For,
when suddenly encountering the shock of new and unanswerable
revelations, which he feels must revolutionize all the circumstances
of his life, man, at first, ever seeks to shun all conscious
definitiveness in his thoughts and purposes; as assured,
that the lines that shall precisely define his present misery, and
thereby lay out his future path; these can only be defined by
sharp stakes that cut into his heart.

III.

Most melancholy of all the hours of earth, is that one long,
gray hour, which to the watcher by the lamp intervenes between
the night and day; when both lamp and watcher, overtasked,
grow sickly in the pallid light; and the watcher, seeking
for no gladness in the dawn, sees naught but garish vapors

there; and almost invokes a curse upon the public day, that
shall invade his lonely night of sufferance.

The one small window of his closet looked forth upon the
meadow, and across the river, and far away to the distant
heights, storied with the great deeds of the Glendinnings.
Many a time had Pierre sought this window before sunrise, to
behold the blood-red, out-flinging dawn, that would wrap those
purple hills as with a banner. But now the morning dawned
in mist and rain, and came drizzlingly upon his heart. Yet as
the day advanced, and once more showed to him the accustomed
features of his room by that natural light, which, till
this very moment, had never lighted him but to his joy; now
that the day, and not the night, was witness to his woe; now
first the dread reality came appallingly upon him. A sense of
horrible forlornness, feebleness, impotence, and infinite, eternal
desolation possessed him. It was not merely mental, but corporeal
also. He could not stand; and when he tried to sit, his
arms fell floorwards as tied to leaden weights. Dragging his
ball and chain, he fell upon his bed; for when the mind is cast
down, only in sympathetic proneness can the body rest; whence
the bed is often Grief's first refuge. Half stupefied, as with
opium, he fell into the profoundest sleep.

In an hour he awoke, instantly recalling all the previous
night; and now finding himself a little strenghtened, and lying so
quietly and silently there, almost without bodily consciousness,
but his soul unobtrusively alert; careful not to break the spell by
the least movement of a limb, or the least turning of his head.
Pierre steadfastly faced his grief, and looked deep down into
its eyes; and thoroughly, and calmly, and summarily comprehended
it now—so at least he thought—and what it demanded
from him; and what he must quickly do in its more immediate
sequences; and what that course of conduct was, which
he must pursue in the coming unevadable breakfast interview
with his mother; and what, for the present must be his plan

with Lucy. His time of thought was brief. Rising from his
bed, he steadied himself upright a moment; and then going
to his writing-desk, in a few at first faltering, but at length unlagging
lines, traced the following note:

“I must ask pardon of you, Lucy, for so strangely absenting
myself last night. But you know me well enough to be very
sure that I would not have done so without important cause.
I was in the street approaching your cottage, when a message
reached me, imperatively calling me away. It is a matter
which will take up all my time and attention for, possibly, two
or three days. I tell you this, now, that you may be prepared
for it. And I know that however unwelcome this may
be to you, you will yet bear with it for my sake; for, indeed,
and indeed, Lucy dear, I would not dream of staying from you
so long, unless irresistibly coerced to it. Do not come to the
mansion until I come to you; and do not manifest any curiosity
or anxiety about me, should you chance in the interval
to see my mother in any other place. Keep just as cheerful as
if I were by you all the time. Do this, now, I conjure you;
and so farewell!”

He folded the note, and was about sealing it, when he hesitated
a moment, and instantly unfolding it, read it to himself.
But he could not adequately comprehend his own writing, for
a sudden cloud came over him. This passed; and taking his
pen hurriedly again, he added the following postscript:

“Lucy, this note may seem mysterious; but if it shall, I
did not mean to make it so; nor do I know that I could have
helped it. But the only reason is this, Lucy: the matter
which I have alluded to, is of such a nature, that, for the present
I stand virtually pledged not to disclose it to any person
but those more directly involved in it. But where one can not

reveal the thing itself, it only makes it the more mysterious to
write round it this way. So merely know me entirely unmenaced
in person, and eternally faithful to you; and so be at rest
till I see you.”

Then sealing the note, and ringing the bell, he gave it in
strict charge to a servant, with directions to deliver it at the
earliest practicable moment, and not wait for any answer. But
as the messenger was departing the chamber, he called him
back, and taking the sealed note again, and hollowing it in his
hand, scrawled inside of it in pencil the following words:
“Don't write me; don't inquire for me;” and then returned it
to the man, who quitted him, leaving Pierre rooted in thought
in the middle of the room.

But he soon roused himself, and left the mansion; and
seeking the cool, refreshing meadow stream, where it formed
a deep and shady pool, he bathed; and returning invigorated
to his chamber, changed his entire dress; in the little trifling
concernments of his toilette, striving utterly to banish all
thought of that weight upon his soul. Never did he array
himself with more solicitude for effect. It was one of his fond
mother's whims to perfume the lighter contents of his wardrobe;
and it was one of his own little femininenesses—of the
sort sometimes curiously observable in very robust-bodied and
big-souled men, as Mohammed, for example—to be very partial
to all pleasant essences. So that when once more he left the
mansion in order to freshen his cheek anew to meet the keen
glance of his mother—to whom the secret of his possible pallor
could not be divulged; Pierre went forth all redolent; but
alas! his body only the embalming cerements of his buried
dead within.

IV

His stroll was longer than he meant; and when he returned
up the Linden walk leading to the breakfast-room, and
ascended the piazza steps, and glanced into the wide window
there, he saw his mother seated not far from the table; her
face turned toward his own; and heard her gay voice, and peculiarly
light and buoyant laugh, accusing him, and not her, of
being the morning's laggard now. Dates was busy among some
spoons and napkins at a side-stand.

Summoning all possible cheerfulness to his face, Pierre entered
the room. Remembering his carefulness in bathing and
dressing; and knowing that there is no air so calculated to give
bloom to the cheek as that of a damply fresh, cool, and misty
morning, Pierre persuaded himself that small trace would now
be found on him of his long night of watching.

“Good morning sister;—Such a famous stroll! I have
been all the way to”—

“Where? good heavens! where? for such a look as that!
—why, Pierre, Pierre? what ails thee? Dates, I will touch
the bell presently.”

As the good servitor fumbled for a moment among the napkins,
as if unwilling to stir so summarily from his accustomed
duty, and not without some of a well and long-tried old domestic's
vague, intermitted murmuring, at being wholly excluded
from a matter of family interest; Mrs. Glendinning kept her
fixed eye on Pierre, who, unmindful that the breakfast was not
yet entirely ready, seating himself at the table, began helping
himself—though but nervously enough—to the cream and
sugar. The moment the door closed on Dates, the mother
sprang to her feet, and threw her arms around her son; but in
that embrace, Pierre miserably felt that their two hearts beat
not together in such unison as before.

“What haggard thing possesses thee, my son? Speak, this
is incomprehensible! Lucy;—fie!—not she?—no love-quarrel
there;—speak, speak, my darling boy!”

“My dear sister,” began Pierre.

“Sister me not, now, Pierre;—I am thy mother.”

“Well, then, dear mother, thou art quite as incomprehensible
to me as I to”—

“Talk faster, Pierre—this calmness freezes me. Tell me;
for, by my soul, something most wonderful must have happened
to thee. Thou art my son, and I command thee. It is
not Lucy; it is something else. Tell me.”

“My dear mother,” said Pierre, impulsively moving his chair
backward from the table, “if thou wouldst only believe me
when I say it, I have really nothing to tell thee. Thou knowest
that sometimes, when I happen to feel very foolishly studious and
philosophical, I sit up late in my chamber; and then, regardless
of the hour, foolishly run out into the air, for a long stroll
across the meadows. I took such a stroll last night; and had
but little time left for napping afterward; and what nap I had
I was none the better for. But I won't be so silly again, soon;
so do, dearest mother, stop looking at me, and let us to breakfast.—Dates!
Touch the bell there, sister.”

“Stay, Pierre!—There is a heaviness in this hour. I feel, I
know, that thou art deceiving me;—perhaps I erred in seeking
to wrest thy secret from thee; but believe me, my son, I never
thought thou hadst any secret thing from me, except thy first
love for Lucy—and that, my own womanhood tells me, was
most pardonable and right. But now, what can it be? Pierre,
Pierre! consider well before thou determinest upon withholding
confidence from me. I am thy mother. It may prove a fatal
thing. Can that be good and virtuous, Pierre, which shrinks
from a mother's knowledge? Let us not loose hands so, Pierre;
thy confidence from me, mine goes from thee. Now, shall I
touch the bell?”

Pierre, who had thus far been vainly seeking to occupy his
hands with his cup and spoon; he now paused, and unconsciously
fastened a speechless glance of mournfulness upon his mother.
Again he felt presentiments of his mother's newly-revealed
character. He foresaw the supposed indignation of her wounded
pride; her gradually estranged affections thereupon; he
knew her firmness, and her exaggerated ideas of the inalienable
allegiance of a son. He trembled to think, that now indeed
was come the first initial moment of his heavy trial. But
though he knew all the significance of his mother's attitude, as
she stood before him, intently eying him, with one hand upon
the bell-cord; and though he felt that the same opening of the
door that should now admit Dates, could not but give eternal
exit to all confidence between him and his mother; and though
he felt, too, that this was his mother's latent thought; nevertheless,
he was girded up in his well-considered resolution.

“Pierre, Pierre! shall I touch the bell?”

“Mother, stay!—yes do, sister.”

The bell was rung; and at the summons Dates entered;
and looking with some significance at Mrs. Glendinning, said,
—“His Reverence has come, my mistress, and is now in the
west parlor.”

“Show Mr. Falsgrave in here immediately; and bring up
the coffee; did I not tell you I expected him to breakfast this
morning?”

“Yes, my mistress; but I thought that—that—just then”
—glancing alarmedly from mother to son.

“Oh, my good Dates, nothing has happened,” cried Mrs.
Glendinning, lightly, and with a bitter smile, looking toward
her son,—“show Mr. Falsgrave in. Pierre, I did not see thee,
to tell thee, last night; but Mr. Falsgrave breakfasts with us
by invitation. I was at the parsonage yesterday, to see him
about that wretched affair of Delly, and we are finally to settle
upon what is to be done this morning. But my mind is made

up concerning Ned; no such profligate shall pollute this place;
nor shall the disgraceful Delly.”

Fortunately, the abrupt entrance of the clergyman, here
turned away attention from the sudden pallor of Pierre's countenance,
and afforded him time to rally.

“Good morning, madam; good morning, sir;” said Mr.
Falsgrave, in a singularly mild, flute-like voice, turning to
Mrs. Glendinning and her son; the lady receiving him with
answering cordiality, but Pierre too embarrassed just then to be
equally polite. As for one brief moment Mr. Falsgrave stood
before the pair, ere taking the offered chair from Dates, his aspect
was eminently attractive.

There are certain ever-to-be-cherished moments in the life
of almost any man, when a variety of little foregoing circumstances
all unite to make him temporarily oblivious of whatever
may be hard and bitter in his life, and also to make him most
amiably and ruddily disposed; when the scene and company
immediately before him are highly agreeable; and if at such
a time he chance involuntarily to put himself into a scenically
favorable bodily posture; then, in that posture, however transient,
thou shalt catch the noble stature of his Better Angel;
catch a heavenly glimpse of the latent heavenliness of man.
It was so with Mr. Falsgrave now. Not a house within a
circuit of fifty miles that he preferred entering before the
mansion-house of Saddle Meadows; and though the business
upon which he had that morning come, was any thing but
relishable to him, yet that subject was not in his memory
then. Before him stood united in one person, the most exalted
lady and the most storied beauty of all the country
round; and the finest, most intellectual, and most congenial
youth he knew. Before him also, stood the generous foundress
and the untiring patroness of the beautiful little marble
church, consecrated by the good Bishop, not four years gone
by. Before him also, stood—though in polite disguise—the

same untiring benefactress, from whose purse, he could not
help suspecting, came a great part of his salary, nominally supplied
by the rental of the pews. He had been invited to
breakfast; a meal, which, in a well-appointed country family,
is the most cheerful circumstance of daily life; he smelt all
Java's spices in the aroma from the silver coffee-urn; and well
he knew, what liquid deliciousness would soon come from it.
Besides all this, and many more minutenesses of the kind, he
was conscious that Mrs. Gendinning entertained a particular
partiality for him (though not enough to marry him, as he ten
times knew by very bitter experience), and that Pierre was not
behindhand in his esteem.

And the clergyman was well worthy of it. Nature had
been royally bountiful to him in his person. In his happier
moments, as the present, his face was radiant with a courtly,
but mild benevolence; his person was nobly robust and dignified;
while the remarkable smallness of his feet, and the almost
infantile delicacy, and vivid whiteness and purity of his hands,
strikingly contrasted with his fine girth and stature. For in
countries like America, where there is no distinct hereditary
caste of gentlemen, whose order is factitiously perpetuated as
race-horses and lords are in kingly lands; and especially, in
those agricultural districts, where, of a hundred hands, that drop
a ballot for the Presidency, ninety-nine shall be of the brownest
and the brawniest; in such districts, this daintiness of the
fingers, when united with a generally manly aspect, assumes a
remarkableness unknown in European nations.

This most prepossessing form of the clergyman lost nothing
by the character of his manners, which were polished and unobtrusive,
but peculiarly insinuating, without the least appearance
of craftiness or affectation. Heaven had given him his
fine, silver-keyed person for a flute to play on in this world;
and he was nearly the perfect master of it. His graceful
motions had the undulatoriness of melodious sounds. You

almost thought you heard, not saw him. So much the wonderful,
yet natural gentleman he seemed, that more than once
Mrs. Glendinning had held him up to Pierre as a splendid
example of the polishing and gentlemanizing influences of
Christianity upon the mind and manners; declaring, that extravagant
as it might seem, she had always been of his father's
fancy,—that no man could be a complete gentleman, and preside
with dignity at his own table, unless he partook of the
church's sacraments. Nor in Mr. Falsgrave's case was this
maxim entirely absurd. The child of a poor northern farmer
who had wedded a pretty sempstress, the clergyman had no
heraldic line of ancestry to show, as warrant and explanation
of his handsome person and gentle manners; the first, being
the willful partiality of nature; and the second, the consequence
of a scholastic life, attempered by a taste for the choicest female
society, however small, which he had always regarded as
the best relish of existence. If now his manners thus responded
to his person, his mind answered to them both, and was their
finest illustration. Besides his eloquent persuasiveness in the
pulpit, various fugitive papers upon subjects of nature, art, and
literature, attested not only his refined affinity to all beautiful
things, visible or invisible; but likewise that he possessed a
genius for celebrating such things, which in a less indolent and
more ambitious nature, would have been sure to have gained a
fair poet's name ere now. For this Mr. Falsgrave was just
hovering upon his prime of years; a period which, in such a
man, is the sweetest, and, to a mature woman, by far the most
attractive of manly life. Youth has not yet completely gone
with its beauty, grace, and strength; nor has age at all come
with its decrepitudes; though the finest undrossed parts of it—
its mildness and its wisdom—have gone on before, as decorous
chamberlains precede the sedan of some crutched king.

Such was this Mr. Falsgrave, who now sat at Mrs. Glendinning's
breakfast table, a corner of one of that lady's generous

napkins so inserted into his snowy bosom, that its folds almost
invested him as far down as the table's edge; and he seemed a
sacred priest, indeed, breakfasting in his surplice.

“Pray, Mr. Falsgrave,” said Mrs. Glendinning, “break me
off a bit of that roll.”

Whether or not his sacerdotal experiences had strangely refined
and spiritualized so simple a process as breaking bread;
or whether it was from the spotless aspect of his hands: certain
it is that Mr. Falsgrave acquitted himself on this little occasion,
in a manner that beheld of old by Leonardo, might have given
that artist no despicable hint touching his celestial painting.
As Pierre regarded him, sitting there so mild and meek; such
an image of white-browed and white-handed, and napkined
immaculateness; and as he felt the gentle humane radiations
which came from the clergyman's manly and rounded beautifulness;
and as he remembered all the good that he knew of
this man, and all the good that he had heard of him, and could
recall no blemish in his character; and as in his own concealed
misery and forlornness, he contemplated the open benevolence,
and beaming excellent-heartedness of Mr. Falsgrave,
the thought darted through his mind, that if any living being
was capable of giving him worthy counsel in his strait; and if
to any one he could go with Christian propriety and some
small hopefulness, that person was the one before him.

“Pray, Mr. Glendinning,” said the clergyman, pleasantly, as
Pierre was silently offering to help him to some tongue—“don't
let me rob you of it—pardon me, but you seem to have very
little yourself this morning, I think. An execrable pun, I know:
but”—turning toward Mrs. Glendinning—“when one is made
to feel very happy, one is somehow apt to say very silly things.
Happiness and silliness—ah, it's a suspicious coincidence.”

“Mr. Falsgrave,” said the hostess—“Your cup is empty.
Dates!—We were talking yesterday, Mr. Falsgrave, concerning
that vile fellow, Ned.”

“Well, Madam,” responded the gentleman, a very little uneasily.

“He shall not stay on any ground of mine; my mind is
made up, sir. Infamous man!—did he not have a wife as
virtuous and beautiful now, as when I first gave her away at
your altar?—It was the sheerest and most gratuitous profligacy.”

The clergyman mournfully and assentingly moved his head.

“Such men,” continued the lady, flushing with the sincerest
indignation—“are to my way of thinking more detestable than
murderers.”

“That is being a little hard upon them, my dear Madam,”
said Mr. Falsgrave, mildly.

“Do you not think so, Pierre”—now, said the lady, turning
earnestly upon her son—“is not the man, who has sinned like
that Ned, worse than a murderer? Has he not sacrificed one
woman completely, and given infamy to another—to both of
them—for their portion. If his own legitimate boy should now
hate him, I could hardly blame him.”

“My dear Madam,” said the clergyman, whose eyes having
followed Mrs. Glendinning's to her son's countenance, and
marking a strange trepidation there, had thus far been earnestly
scrutinizing Pierre's not wholly repressible emotion;—“My dear
Madam,” he said, slightly bending over his stately episcopallooking
person—“Virtue has, perhaps, an over-ardent champion
in you; you grow too warm; but Mr. Glendinning, here,
he seems to grow too cold. Pray, favor us with your views,
Mr. Glendinning?”

“I will not think now of the man,” said Pierre, slowly, and
looking away from both his auditors—“let us speak of Delly
and her infant—she has, or had one, I have loosely heard;—
their case is miserable indeed.”

“The mother deserves it,” said the lady, inflexibly—“and
the child—Reverend sir, what are the words of the Bible?”

“`The sins of the father shall be visited upon the children to
the third generation,'” said Mr. Falsgrave, with some slight reluctance
in his tones. “But Madam, that does not mean, that
the community is in any way to take the infamy of the children
into their own voluntary hands, as the conscious delegated
stewards of God's inscrutable dispensations. Because it is declared
that the infamous consequences of sin shall be hereditary,
it does not follow that our personal and active loathing of sin,
should descend from the sinful sinner to his sinless child.”

“I understand you, sir,” said Mrs. Glendinning, coloring
slightly, “you think me too censorious. But if we entirely forget
the parentage of the child, and every way receive the child
as we would any other, feel for it in all respects the same, and
attach no sign of ignominy to it—how then is the Bible dispensation
to be fulfilled? Do we not then put ourselves in the
way of its fulfilment, and is that wholly free from impiety?”

Here it was the clergyman's turn to color a little, and there
was a just perceptible tremor of the under lip.

“Pardon me,” continued the lady, courteously, “but if there
is any one blemish in the character of the Reverend Mr. Falsgrave,
it is that the benevolence of his heart, too much warps
in him the holy rigor of our Church's doctrines. For my part,
as I loathe the man, I loathe the woman, and never desire to
behold the child.”

A pause ensued, during which it was fortunate for Pierre,
that by the social sorcery of such occasions as the present, the
eyes of all three were intent upon the cloth; all three for the
moment, giving loose to their own distressful meditations upon
the subject in debate, and Mr. Falsgrave vexedly thinking that
the scene was becoming a little embarrassing.

Pierre was the first who spoke; as before, he steadfastly
kept his eyes away from both his auditors; but though he did
not designate his mother, something in the tone of his voice
showed that what he said was addressed more particularly to her.

“Since we seem to have been strangely drawn into the ethical
aspect of this melancholy matter,” said he, “suppose we go
further in it; and let me ask, how it should be between the
legitimate and the illegitimate child—children of one father—
when they shall have passed their childhood?”

Here the clergyman quickly raising his eyes, looked as surprised
and searchingly at Pierre, as his politeness would permit.

“Upon my word”—said Mrs. Glendinning, hardly less surprised,
and making no attempt at disguising it—“this is an
odd question you put; you have been more attentive to the
subject than I had fancied. But what do you mean, Pierre?
I did not entirely understand you.”

“Should the legitimate child shun the illegitimate, when one
father is father to both?” rejoined Pierre, bending his head still
further over his plate.

The clergyman looked a little down again, and was silent;
but still turned his head slightly sideways toward his hostess,
as if awaiting some reply to Pierre from her.

“Ask the world, Pierre”—said Mrs. Glendinning warmly—
“and ask your own heart.”

“My own heart? I will, Madam”—said Pierre, now looking
up steadfastly; “but what do you think, Mr. Falsgrave?” letting
his glance drop again—“should the one shun the other?
should the one refuse his highest sympathy and perfect love for
the other, especially if that other be deserted by all the rest of
the world? What think you would have been our blessed
Savior's thoughts on such a matter? And what was that he
so mildly said to the adulteress?”

A swift color passed over the clergyman's countenance, suffusing
even his expanded brow; he slightly moved in his chair,
and looked uncertainly from Pierre to his mother. He seemed
as a shrewd, benevolent-minded man, placed between opposite
opinions—merely opinions—who, with a full, and doubly-differing
persuasion in himself, still refrains from uttering it, because

of an irresistible dislike to manifesting an absolute dissent
from the honest convictions of any person, whom he both socially
and morally esteems.

“Well, what do you reply to my son?”—said Mrs. Glendinning
at last.

“Madam and sir”—said the clergyman, now regaining his
entire self-possession. “It is one of the social disadvantages
which we of the pulpit labor under, that we are supposed to
know more of the moral obligations of humanity than other
people. And it is a still more serious disadvantage to the
world, that our unconsidered, conversational opinions on the
most complex problems of ethics, are too apt to be considered
authoritative, as indirectly proceeding from the church itself.
Now, nothing can be more erroneous than such notions; and
nothing so embarrasses me, and deprives me of that entire
serenity, which is indispensable to the delivery of a careful
opinion on moral subjects, than when sudden questions of this
sort are put to me in company. Pardon this long preamble,
for I have little more to say. It is not every question, however
direct, Mr. Glendinning, which can be conscientiously answered
with a yes or no. Millions of circumstances modify all moral
questions; so that though conscience may possibly dictate freely
in any known special case; yet, by one universal maxim, to
embrace all moral contingencies,—this is not only impossible,
but the attempt, to me, seems foolish.”

At this instant, the surplice-like napkin dropped from the
clergyman's bosom, showing a minute but exquisitely cut cameo
brooch, representing the allegorical union of the serpent and
dove. It had been the gift of an appreciative friend, and was
sometimes worn on secular occasions like the present.

“I agree with you, sir”—said Pierre, bowing. “I fully agree
with you. And now, madam, let us talk of something else.”

“You madam me very punctiliously this morning, Mr.
Glendinning”—said his mother, half-bitterly smiling, and half-openly

offended, but still more surprised at Pierre's frigid demeanor.

“`Honor thy father and mother;'” said Pierre—“both
father and mother,” he unconsciously added. “And now that
it strikes me, Mr. Falsgrave, and now that we have become so
strangely polemical this morning, let me say, that as that command
is justly said to be the only one with a promise, so it
seems to be without any contingency in the application. It
would seem—would it not, sir?—that the most deceitful and
hypocritical of fathers should be equally honored by the son, as
the purest.”

“So it would certainly seem, according to the strict letter of
the Decalogue—certainly.”

“And do you think, sir, that it should be so held, and so
applied in actual life? For instance, should I honor my father,
if I knew him to be a seducer?”

“Pierre! Pierre!” said his mother, profoundly coloring, and
half rising; “there is no need of these argumentative assumptions.
You very immensely forget yourself this morning.”

“It is merely the interest of the general question, Madam,”
returned Pierre, coldly. “I am sorry. If your former objection
does not apply here, Mr. Falsgrave, will you favor me with
an answer to my question?”

“There you are again, Mr. Glendinning,” said the clergyman,
thankful for Pierre's hint; “that is another question in morals
absolutely incapable of a definite answer, which shall be universally
applicable.” Again the surplice-like napkin chanced
to drop.

“I am tacitly rebuked again then, sir,” said Pierre, slowly;
“but I admit that perhaps you are again in the right. And
now, Madam, since Mr. Falsgrave and yourself have a little
business together, to which my presence is not necessary, and
may possibly prove quite dispensable, permit me to leave you.
I am going off on a long ramble, so you need not wait dinner

for me. Good morning, Mr. Falsgrave; good morning, Madam,”
looking toward his mother.

As the door closed upon him, Mr. Falsgrave spoke—“Mr.
Glendinning looks a little pale to-day: has he been ill?”

“Not that I know of,” answered the lady, indifferently, “but
did you ever see young gentleman so stately as he was? Extraordinary!”
she murmured; “what can this mean—Madam
—Madam? But your cup is empty again, sir”—reaching forth
her hand.

“No more, no more, Madam,” said the clergyman.

“Madam? pray don't Madam me any more, Mr. Falsgrave;
I have taken a sudden hatred to that title.”

“Shall it be Your Majesty, then?” said the clergyman, gallantly;
“the May Queens are so styled, and so should be the
Queens of October.”

Here the lady laughed. “Come,” said she, “let us go into
another room, and settle the affair of that infamous Ned and
that miserable Delly.”

V.

The swiftness and unrepellableness of the billow which, with
its first shock, had so profoundly whelmed Pierre, had not only
poured into his soul a tumult of entirely new images and emotions,
but, for the time, it almost entirely drove out of him all
previous ones. The things that any way bore directly upon the
pregnant fact of Isabel, these things were all animate and vividly
present to him; but the things which bore more upon himself,
and his own personal condition, as now forever involved
with his sister's, these things were not so animate and present
to him. The conjectured past of Isabel took mysterious hold
of his father; therefore, the idea of his father tyrannized over

his imagination; and the possible future of Isabel, as so essentially
though indirectly compromisable by whatever course
of conduct his mother might hereafter ignorantly pursue with
regard to himself, as henceforth, through Isabel, forever altered
to her; these considerations brought his mother with blazing
prominence before him.

Heaven, after all, hath been a little merciful to the miserable
man; not entirely untempered to human nature are the most
direful blasts of Fate. When on all sides assailed by prospects
of disaster, whose final ends are in terror hidden from it, the
soul of man—either, as instinctively convinced that it can not
battle with the whole host at once; or else, benevolently blinded
to the larger arc of the circle which menacingly hems it in;
—whichever be the truth, the soul of man, thus surrounded,
can not, and does never intelligently confront the totality of its
wretchedness. The bitter drug is divided into separate draughts
for him: to-day he takes one part of his woe; to-morrow he
takes more; and so on, till the last drop is drunk.

Not that in the despotism of other things, the thought of
Lucy, and the unconjecturable suffering into which she might
so soon be plunged, owing to the threatening uncertainty of the
state of his own future, as now in great part and at all hazards
dedicated to Isabel; not that this thought had thus far been
alien to him. Icy-cold, and serpent-like, it had overlayingly
crawled in upon his other shuddering imaginings; but those
other thoughts would as often upheaven again, and absorb it
into themselves, so that it would in that way soon disappear
from his contemporary apprehension. The pervailing thoughts
connected with Isabel he now could front with prepared and
open eyes; but the occasional thought of Lucy, when that
started up before him, he could only cover his bewildered eyes
with his bewildered hands. Nor was this the cowardice of
selfishness, but the infinite sensitiveness of his soul. He could
bear the agonizing thought of Isabel, because he was immediately

resolved to help her, and to assuage a fellow-being's grief;
but, as yet, he could not bear the thought of Lucy, because the
very resolution that promised balm to Isabel obscurely involved
the everlasting peace of Lucy, and therefore aggravatingly
threatened a far more than fellow-being's happiness.

Well for Pierre it was, that the penciling presentiments of
his mind concerning Lucy as quickly erased as painted their
tormenting images. Standing half-befogged upon the mountain
of his Fate, all that part of the wide panorama was
wrapped in clouds to him; but anon those concealings slid
aside, or rather, a quick rent was made in them; disclosing far
below, half-vailed in the lower mist, the winding tranquil vale
and stream of Lucy's previous happy life; through the swift cloudrent
he caught one glimpse of her expectant and angelic face peeping
from the honey-suckled window of her cottage; and the next
instant the stormy pinions of the clouds locked themselves over it
again; and all was hidden as before; and all went confused in
whirling rack and vapor as before. Only by unconscious inspiration,
caught from the agencies invisible to man, had he
been enabled to write that first obscurely announcing note to
Lucy; wherein the collectedness, and the mildness, and the
calmness, were but the natural though insidious precursors of the
stunning bolts on bolts to follow.

But, while thus, for the most part wrapped from his consciousness
and vision, still, the condition of his Lucy, as so
deeply affected now, was still more and more disentangling
and defining itself from out its nearer mist, and even beneath
the general upper fog. For when unfathomably stirred, the
subtler elements of man do not always reveal themselves in
the concocting act; but, as with all other potencies, show
themselves chiefly in their ultimate resolvings and results.
Strange wild work, and awfully symmetrical and reciprocal,
was that now going on within the self-apparently chaotic breast
of Pierre. As in his own conscious determinations, the mournful

Isabel was being snatched from her captivity of world-wide
abandonment; so, deeper down in the more secret chambers
of his unsuspecting soul, the smiling Lucy, now as dead and
ashy pale, was being bound a ransom for Isabel's salvation.
Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. Eternally inexorable and unconcerned
is Fate, a mere heartless trader in men's joys and
woes.

Nor was this general and spontaneous self-concealment of
all the most momentous interests of his love, as irretrievably
involved with Isabel and his resolution respecting her; nor was
this unbidden thing in him unseconded by the prompting of
his own conscious judgment, when in the tyranny of the masterevent
itself, that judgment was permitted some infrequent play.
He could not but be aware, that all meditation on Lucy now
was worse than useless. How could he now map out his and
her young life-chart, when all was yet misty-white with creamy
breakers! Still more: divinely dedicated as he felt himself to
be; with divine commands upon him to befriend and champion
Isabel, through all conceivable contingencies of Time and
Chance; how could he insure himself against the insidious inroads
of self-interest, and hold intact all his unselfish magnanimities,
if once he should permit the distracting thought
of Lucy to dispute with Isabel's the pervading possession of
his soul?

And if—though but unconsciously as yet—he was almost
superhumanly prepared to make a sacrifice of all objects dearest
to him, and cut himself away from his last hopes of common
happiness, should they cross his grand enthusiast resolution;—
if this was so with him; then, how light as gossamer, and
thinner and more impalpable than airiest threads of gauze, did
he hold all common conventional regardings;—his hereditary
duty to his mother, his pledged worldly faith and honor to the
hand and seal of his affiancement?

Not that at present all these things did thus present themselves

to Pierre; but these things were fœtally forming in
him. Impregnations from high enthusiasms he had received;
and the now incipient offspring which so stirred, with such
painful, vague vibrations in his soul; this, in its mature development,
when it should at last come forth in living deeds,
would scorn all personal relationship with Pierre, and hold his
heart's dearest interests for naught.

Thus, in the Enthusiast to Duty, the heaven-begotten Christ
is born; and will not own a mortal parent, and spurns and
rends all mortal bonds.

VI.

One night, one day, and a small part of the one ensuing
evening had been given to Pierre to prepare for the momentous
interview with Isabel.

Now, thank God, thought Pierre, the night is past,—the
night of Chaos and of Doom; the day only, and the skirt of
evening now remain. May heaven new-string my soul, and
confirm me in the Christ-like feeling I first felt. May I, in all
my least shapeful thoughts still square myself by the inflexible
rule of holy right. Let no unmanly, mean temptation cross my
path this day; let no base stone lie in it. This day I will forsake
the censuses of men, and seek the suffrages of the god-like
population of the trees, which now seem to me a nobler race
than man. Their high foliage shall drop heavenliness upon me;
my feet in contact with their mighty roots, immortal vigor shall
so steal into me. Guide me, gird me, guard me, this day, ye
sovereign powers! Bind me in bonds I can not break; remove
all sinister allurings from me; eternally this day deface in me
the detested and distorted images of all the convenient lies and
duty-subterfuges of the diving and ducking moralities of this

earth. Fill me with consuming fire for them; to my life's
muzzle, cram me with your own intent. Let no world-syren
come to sing to me this day, and wheedle from me my undauntedness.
I cast my eternal die this day, ye powers. On
my strong faith in ye Invisibles, I stake three whole felicities,
and three whole lives this day. If ye forsake me now,—farewell
to Faith, farewell to Truth, farewell to God; exiled for
aye from God and man, I shall declare myself an equal power
with both; free to make war on Night and Day, and all
thoughts and things of mind and matter, which the upper and
the nether firmaments do clasp!

VII.

But Pierre, though charged with the fire of all divineness,
his containing thing was made of clay. Ah, muskets the gods
have made to carry infinite combustions, and yet made them of
clay!

Save me from being bound to Truth, liege lord, as I am now.
How shall I steal yet further into Pierre, and show how this
heavenly fire was helped to be contained in him, by mere contingent
things, and things that he knew not. But I shall follow
the endless, winding way,—the flowing river in the cave of
man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.

Was not the face—though mutely mournful—beautiful, bewitchingly?
How unfathomable those most wondrous eyes
of supernatural light! In those charmed depths, Grief and
Beauty plunged and dived together. So beautiful, so mystical,
so bewilderingly alluring; speaking of a mournfulness infinitely
sweeter and more attractive than all mirthfulness; that face of
glorious suffering; that face of touching loveliness; that face
was Pierre's own sister's; that face was Isabel's; that face

Pierre had visibly seen; into those same supernatural eyes our
Pierre had looked. Thus, already, and ere the proposed encounter,
he was assured that, in a transcendent degree, womanly
beauty, and not womanly ugliness, invited him to champion
the right. Be naught concealed in this book of sacred truth.
How, if accosted in some squalid lane, a humped, and crippled,
hideous girl should have snatched his garment's hem, with—
“Save me, Pierre—love me, own me, brother; I am thy sister!”—Ah,
if man where wholly made in heaven, why catch we
hell-glimpses? Why in the noblest marble pillar that stands
beneath the all-comprising vault, ever should we descry the
sinister vein? We lie in nature very close to God; and
though, further on, the stream may be corrupted by the banks
it flows through; yet at the fountain's rim, where mankind
stand, there the stream infallibly bespeaks the fountain.

So let no censorious word be here hinted of mortal Pierre.
Easy for me to slyly hide these things, and always put him before
the eye as perfect as immaculate; unsusceptible to the
inevitable nature and the lot of common men. I am more
frank with Pierre than the best men are with themselves. I
am all unguarded and magnanimous with Pierre; therefore you
see his weakness, and therefore only. In reserves men build
imposing characters; not in revelations. He who shall be
wholly honest, though nobler than Ethan Allen; that man
shall stand in danger of the meanest mortal's scorn.