 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
6. BOOK VI.
ISABEL, AND THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY
OF ISABEL.
I.
Half wishful that the hour would come; half shuddering
that every moment it still came nearer and more near to him;
dry-eyed, but wet with that dark day's rain; at fall of eve,
Pierre emerged from long wanderings in the primeval woods
of Saddle Meadows, and for one instant stood motionless upon
their sloping skirt.
Where he stood was in the rude wood road, only used by
sledges in the time of snow; just where the out-posted trees
formed a narrow arch, and fancied gateway leading upon the
far, wide pastures sweeping down toward the lake. In that
wet and misty eve the scattered, shivering pasture elms seemed
standing in a world inhospitable, yet rooted by inscrutable
sense of duty to their place. Beyond, the lake lay in one
sheet of blankness and of dumbness, unstirred by breeze or
breath; fast bound there it lay, with not life enough to reflect
the smallest shrub or twig. Yet in that lake was seen the
duplicate, stirless sky above. Only in sunshine did that lake
catch gay, green images; and these but displaced the imaged
muteness of the unfeatured heavens.
On both sides, in the remoter distance, and also far beyond
the mild lake's further shore, rose the long, mysterious mountain
nameless, vapory exhalations, and in that dim air black with
dread and gloom. At their base, profoundest forests lay entranced,
and from their far owl-haunted depths of caves and
rotted leaves, and unused and unregarded inland overgrowth
of decaying wood—for smallest sticks of which, in other climes
many a pauper was that moment perishing; from out the infinite
inhumanities of those profoundest forests, came a moaning,
muttering, roaring, intermitted, changeful sound: rain-shakings
of the palsied trees, slidings of rocks undermined,
final crashings of long-riven boughs, and devilish gibberish of
the forest-ghosts.
But more near, on the mild lake's hither shore, where it
formed a long semi-circular and scooped acclivity of corn-fields,
there the small and low red farm-house lay; its ancient roof a
bed of brightest mosses; its north front (from the north the
moss-wind blows), also moss-incrusted, like the north side of
any vast-trunked maple in the groves. At one gabled end, a
tangled arbor claimed support, and paid for it by generous gratuities
of broad-flung verdure, one viny shaft of which pointed
itself upright against the chimney-bricks, as if a waving lightning-rod.
Against the other gable, you saw the lowly dairy-shed;
its sides close netted with traced Madeira vines; and
had you been close enough, peeping through that imprisoning
tracery, and through the light slats barring the little embrasure
of a window, you might have seen the gentle and contented
captives—the pans of milk, and the snow-white Dutch cheeses
in a row, and the molds of golden butter, and the jars of lily
cream. In front, three straight gigantic lindens stood guardians
of this verdant spot. A long way up, almost to the ridgepole
of the house, they showed little foliage; but then, suddenly,
as three huge green balloons, they poised their three
vast, inverted, rounded cones of verdure in the air.
Soon as Pierre's eye rested on the place, a tremor shook him.
cause of two dependent and most strange coincidences which
that day's experience had brought to him. He had gone to
breakfast with his mother, his heart charged to overflowing
with presentiments of what would probably be her haughty
disposition concerning such a being as Isabel, claiming her maternal
love: and lo! the Reverend Mr. Falsgrave enters, and
Ned and Delly are discussed, and that whole sympathetic matter,
which Pierre had despaired of bringing before his mother
in all its ethic bearings, so as absolutely to learn her thoughts
upon it, and thereby test his own conjectures; all that matter
had been fully talked about; so that, through that strange coincidence,
he now perfectly knew his mother's mind, and had
received forewarnings, as if from heaven, not to make any present
disclosure to her. That was in the morning; and now, at
eve catching a glimpse of the house where Isabel was harboring,
at once he recognized it as the rented farm-house of old Walter
Ulver, father to the self-same Delly, forever ruined through the
cruel arts of Ned.
Strangest feelings, almost supernatural, now stole into Pierre.
With little power to touch with awe the souls of less susceptible,
reflective, and poetic beings, such coincidences, however
frequently they may recur, ever fill the finer organization with
sensations which transcend all verbal renderings. They take
hold of life's subtlest problem. With the lightning's flash, the
query is spontaneously propounded—chance, or God? If too,
the mind thus influenced be likewise a prey to any settled grief,
then on all sides the query magnifies, and at last takes in the
all-comprehending round of things. For ever is it seen, that
sincere souls in suffering, then most ponder upon final causes.
The heart, stirred to its depths, finds correlative sympathy in
the head, which likewise is profoundly moved. Before miserable
men, when intellectual, all the ages of the world pass as
the mournful mystery.
Pacing beneath the long-skirting shadows of the elevated
wood, waiting for the appointed hour to come, Pierre strangely
strove to imagine to himself the scene which was destined to
ensue. But imagination utterly failed him here; the reality
was too real for him; only the face, the face alone now visited
him; and so accustomed had he been of late to confound it
with the shapes of air, that he almost trembled when he
thought that face to face, that face must shortly meet his own.
And now the thicker shadows begin to fall; the place is lost
to him; only the three dim, tall lindens pilot him as he descends
the hill, hovering upon the house. He knows it not,
but his meditative route is sinuous; as if that moment his
thought's stream was likewise serpentining: laterally obstructed
by insinuated misgivings as to the ultimate utilitarian advisability
of the enthusiast resolution that was his. His steps
decrease in quickness as he comes more nigh, and sees one feeble
light struggling in the rustic double-casement. Infallibly
he knows that his own voluntary steps are taking him forever
from the brilliant chandeliers of the mansion of Saddle Meadows,
to join company with the wretched rush-lights of poverty
and woe. But his sublime intuitiveness also paints to him the
sun-like glories of god-like truth and virtue; which though
ever obscured by the dense fogs of earth, still shall shine eventually
in unclouded radiance, casting illustrative light upon the
sapphire throne of God.
II.
He stands before the door; the house is steeped in silence;
he knocks; the casement light flickers for a moment, and then
moves away; within, he hears a door creak on its hinges; then
his whole heart beats wildly as the outer latch is lifted; and
holding the light above her supernatural head, Isabel stands
before him. It is herself. No word is spoken; no other soul
is seen. They enter the room of the double casement; and
Pierre sits down, overpowered with bodily faintness and spiritual
awe. He lifts his eyes to Isabel's gaze of loveliness and
loneliness; and then a low, sweet, half-sobbing voice of more
than natural musicalness is heard:—
“And so, thou art my brother;—shall I call thee Pierre?”
Steadfastly, with his one first and last fraternal inquisition of
the person of the mystic girl, Pierre now for an instant eyes
her; and in that one instant sees in the imploring face, not only
the nameless touchingness of that of the sewing-girl, but also the
subtler expression of the portrait of his then youthful father,
strangely translated, and intermarryingly blended with some
before unknown, foreign feminineness. In one breath, Memory
and Prophecy, and Intuition tell him—“Pierre, have no reserves;
no minutest possible doubt;—this being is thy sister;
thou gazest on thy father's flesh.”
“And so thou art my brother?—shall I call thee Pierre?”
He sprang to his feet, and caught her in his undoubting
arms.
“Thou art! thou art!”
He felt a faint struggling within his clasp; her head drooped
against him; his whole form was bathed in the flowing glossiness
of her long and unimprisoned hair. Brushing the locks
aside, he now gazed upon the death-like beauty of the face, and
caught immortal sadness from it. She seemed as dead; as
tranquillities and sweetnesses of the human countenance.
He would have called aloud for succor; but the slow eyes
opened upon him; and slowly he felt the girl's supineness
leaving her; and now she recovers herself a little,—and again
he feels her faintly struggling in his arms, as if somehow
abashed, and incredulous of mortal right to hold her so. Now
Pierre repents his overardent and incautious warmth, and feels
himself all reverence for her. Tenderly he leads her to a bench
within the double casement; and sits beside her; and waits in
silence, till the first shock of this encounter shall have left her
more composed and more prepared to hold communion with
him.
“How feel'st thou now, my sister?”
“Bless thee! bless thee!”
Again the sweet, wild power of the musicalness of the voice,
and some soft, strange touch of foreignness in the accent,—so
it fancifully seemed to Pierre, thrills through and through his
soul. He bent and kissed her brow; and then feels her hand
seeking his, and then clasping it without one uttered word.
All his being is now condensed in that one sensation of the
clasping hand. He feels it as very small and smooth, but
strangely hard. Then he knew that by the lonely labor of her
hands, his own father's daughter had earned her living in the
same world, where he himself, her own brother, had so idly
dwelled. Once more he reverently kissed her brow, and his
warm breath against it murmured with a prayer to heaven.
“I have no tongue to speak to thee, Pierre, my brother.
My whole being, all my life's thoughts and longings are in endless
arrears to thee; then how can I speak to thee? Were it
God's will, Pierre, my utmost blessing now, were to lie down
and die. Then should I be at peace. Bear with me, Pierre.”
“Eternally will I do that, my beloved Isabel! Speak not to
me yet awhile, if that seemeth best to thee, if that only is possible
thy tongue to me.”
“I know not where to begin to speak to thee, Pierre; and
yet my soul o'erbrims in me.”
“From my heart's depths, I love and reverence thee; and
feel for thee, backward and forward, through all eternity!”
“Oh, Pierre, can'st thou not cure in me this dreaminess,
this bewilderingness I feel? My poor head swims and swims,
and will not pause. My life can not last long thus; I am too
full without discharge. Conjure tears for me, Pierre; that my
heart may not break with the present feeling,—more death-like
to me than all my grief gone by!”
“Ye thirst-slaking evening skies, ye hilly dews and mists,
distil your moisture here! The bolt hath passed; why comes
not the following shower?—Make her to weep!”
Then her head sought his support; and big drops fell on
him; and anon, Isabel gently slid her head from him, and sat
a little composedly beside him.
“If thou feelest in endless arrears of thought to me, my
sister; so do I feel toward thee. I too, scarce know what I
should speak to thee. But when thou lookest on me, my sister,
thou beholdest one, who in his soul hath taken vows immutable,
to be to thee, in all respects, and to the uttermost bounds
and possibilities of Fate, thy protecting and all-acknowledging
brother!”
“Not mere sounds of common words, but inmost tones of
my heart's deepest melodies should now be audible to thee.
Thou speakest to a human thing, but something heavenly
should answer thee;—some flute heard in the air should answer
thee; for sure thy most undreamed-of accents, Pierre, sure
they have not been unheard on high. Blessings that are
imageless to all mortal fancyings, these shall be thine for this.”
“Blessing like to thine, doth but recoil and bless homeward
to the heart that uttered it. I can not bless thee, my sister,
Isabel, by still keeping present the first wonder of our meeting,
we shall make our hearts all feebleness. Let me then rehearse
to thee what Pierre is; what life hitherto he hath been leading;
and what hereafter he shall lead;—so thou wilt be prepared.”
“Nay, Pierre, that is my office; thou art first entitled to my
tale, then, if it suit thee, thou shalt make me the unentitled
gift of thine. Listen to me, now. The invisible things will
give me strength;—it is not much, Pierre;—nor aught very
marvelous. Listen then;—I feel soothed down to utterance
now.”
During some brief, interluding, silent pauses in their interview
thus far, Pierre had heard a soft, slow, sad, to-and-fro,
meditative stepping on the floor above; and in the frequent
pauses that intermitted the strange story in the following chapter,
that same soft, slow, sad, to-and-fro, meditative, and most
melancholy stepping, was again and again audible in the silent
room.
III.
“I never knew a mortal mother. The farthest stretch of
my life's memory can not recall one single feature of such a face.
If, indeed, mother of mine hath lived, she is long gone, and cast
no shadow on the ground she trod. Pierre, the lips that do now
speak to thee, never touched a woman's breast; I seem not of
woman born. My first dim life-thoughts cluster round an old,
half-ruinous house in some region, for which I now have no chart
to seek it out. If such a spot did ever really exist, that too
seems to have been withdrawn from all the remainder of the
earth. It was a wild, dark house, planted in the midst of a
round, cleared, deeply-sloping space, scooped out of the middle
peeping out of my window, lest the ghostly pines should steal
near to me, and reach out their grim arms to snatch me into
their horrid shadows. In summer the forest unceasingly
hummed with unconjecturable voices of unknown birds and
beasts. In winter its deep snows were traced like any paper
map, with dotting night-tracks of four-footed creatures, that,
even to the sun, were never visible, and never were seen by man
at all. In the round open space the dark house stood, without
one single green twig or leaf to shelter it; shadeless and shelterless
in the heart of shade and shelter. Some of the windows
were rudely boarded up, with boards nailed straight up and
down; and those rooms were utterly empty, and never were
entered, though they were doorless. But often, from the echoing
corridor, I gazed into them with fear; for the great fire-places
were all in ruins; the lower tier of back-stones were
burnt into one white, common crumbling; and the black bricks
above had fallen upon the hearths, heaped here and there with
the still falling soot of long-extinguished fires. Every hearth-stone
in that house had one long crack through it; every floor
drooped at the corners; and outside, the whole base of the
house, where it rested on the low foundation of greenish stones,
was strewn with dull, yellow molderings of the rotting sills.
No name; no scrawled or written thing; no book, was in the
house; no one memorial speaking of its former occupants. It
was dumb as death. No grave-stone, or mound, or any little
hillock around the house, betrayed any past burials of man or
child. And thus, with no trace then to me of its past history,
thus it hath now entirely departed and perished from my slightest
knowledge as to where that house so stood, or in what region
it so stood. None other house like it have I ever seen.
But once I saw plates of the outside of French chateaux which
powerfully recalled its dim image to me, especially the two
rows of small dormer windows projecting from the inverted
Still, sometimes I think that house was not in this country, but
somewhere in Europe; perhaps in France; but it is all bewildering
to me; and so you must not start at me, for I can not
but talk wildly upon so wild a theme.
“In this house I never saw any living human soul, but an
old man and woman. The old man's face was almost black
with age, and was one purse of wrinkles, his hoary beard always
tangled, streaked with dust and earthy crumbs. I think
in summer he toiled a little in the garden, or some spot like
that, which lay on one side of the house. All my ideas are in
uncertainty and confusion here. But the old man and the old
woman seem to have fastened themselves indelibly upon my
memory. I suppose their being the only human things around
me then, that caused the hold they took upon me. They seldom
spoke to me; but would sometimes, of dark, gusty nights,
sit by the fire and stare at me, and then mumble to each other,
and then stare at me again. They were not entirely unkind to
me; but, I repeat, they seldom or never spoke to me. What
words or language they used to each other, this it is impossible
for me to recall. I have often wished to; for then I might at
least have some additional idea whether the house was in this
country or somewhere beyond the sea. And here I ought to
say, that sometimes I have, I know not what sort of vague remembrances
of at one time—shortly after the period I now
speak of—chattering in two different childish languages; one
of which waned in me as the other and latter grew. But more
of this anon. It was the woman that gave me my meals; for
I did not eat with them. Once they sat by the fire with a loaf
between them, and a bottle of some thin sort of reddish wine;
and I went up to them, and asked to eat with them, and
touched the loaf. But instantly the old man made a motion
as if to strike me, but did not, and the woman, glaring at me,
snatched the loaf and threw it into the fire before them. I
often tried to coax into some intimacy, but, for some strange
cause, without success. But in my frightened loneliness, then,
I sought the cat again, and found her up-stairs, softly scratching
for some hidden thing among the litter of the abandoned
fire-places. I called to her, for I dared not go into the haunted
chamber; but she only gazed sideways and unintelligently toward
me; and continued her noiseless searchings. I called
again, and then she turned round and hissed at me; and I ran
down stairs, still stung with the thought of having been driven
away there, too. I now knew not where to go to rid myself of
my loneliness. At last I went outside of the house, and sat down
on a stone, but its coldness went up to my heart, and I rose
and stood on my feet. But my head was dizzy; I could not
stand; I fell, and knew no more. But next morning I found
myself in bed in my uncheerable room, and some dark bread
and a cup of water by me.
“It has only been by chance that I have told thee this one
particular reminiscence of my early life in that house. I could
tell many more like it, but this is enough to show what manner
of life I led at that time. Every day that I then lived, I felt all
visible sights and all audible sounds growing stranger and
stranger, and fearful and more fearful to me. To me the man
and the woman were just like the cat; none of them would
speak to me; none of them were comprehensible to me. And
the man, and the woman, and the cat, were just like the green
foundation stones of the house to me; I knew not whence they
came, or what cause they had for being there. I say again,
no living human soul came to the house but the man and the
woman; but sometimes the old man early trudged away to a
road that led through the woods, and would not come back till
late in the evening; he brought the dark bread, and the thin,
reddish wine with him. Though the entrance to the wood
was not so very far from the door, yet he came so slowly and
hours on hours between my first descrying him among the
trees, and his crossing the splintered threshold.
“Now the wide and vacant blurrings of my early life
thicken in my mind. All goes wholly memoryless to me
now. It may have been that about that time I grew sick with
some fever, in which for a long interval I lost myself. Or it
may be true, which I have heard, that after the period of our
very earliest recollections, then a space intervenes of entire unknowingness,
followed again by the first dim glimpses of the
succeeding memory, more or less distinctly embracing all our
past up to that one early gap in it.
“However this may be, nothing more can I recall of the
house in the wide open space; nothing of how at last I came
to leave it; but I must have been still extremely young then.
But some uncertain, tossing memory have I of being at last in
another round, open space, but immensely larger than the
first one, and with no encircling belt of woods. Yet often it
seems to me that there were three tall, straight things like pinetrees
somewhere there nigh to me at times; and that they
fearfully shook and snapt as the old trees used to in the mountain
storms. And the floors seemed sometimes to droop at the
corners still more steeply than the old floors did; and changefully
drooped too, so that I would even seem to feel them
drooping under me.
“Now, too, it was that, as it sometimes seems to me, I first
and last chattered in the two childish languages I spoke of a
little time ago. There seemed people about me, some of
whom talked one, and some the other; but I talked both; yet
one not so readily as the other; and but beginningly as it
were; still this other was the one which was gradually displacing
the former. The men who—as it sometimes dreamily
seems to me at times—often climbed the three strange treelike
things, they talked—I needs must think—if indeed I have
talked the language which I speak of as at this time gradually
waning in me. It was a bonny tongue; oh, seems to me so
sparkling-gay and lightsome; just the tongue for a child like
me, if the child had not been so sad always. It was pure
children's language, Pierre; so twittering—such a chirp.
“In thy own mind, thou must now perceive, that most of these
dim remembrances in me, hint vaguely of a ship at sea. But
all is dim and vague to me. Scarce know I at any time
whether I tell you real things, or the unrealest dreams. Always
in me, the solidest things melt into dreams, and dreams
into solidities. Never have I wholly recovered from the effects
of my strange early life. This it is, that even now—this moment—surrounds
thy visible form, my brother, with a mysterious
mistiness; so that a second face, and a third face, and a
fourth face peep at me from within thy own. Now dim, and
more dim, grows in me all the memory of how thou and I did
come to meet. I go groping again amid all sorts of shapes,
which part to me; so that I seem to advance through the
shapes; and yet the shapes have eyes that look at me. I turn
round, and they look at me; I step forward, and they look at
me.—Let me be silent now; do not speak to me.”
IV.
Filled with nameless wonderings at this strange being, Pierre
sat mute, intensely regarding her half-averted aspect. Her immense
soft tresses of the jettiest hair had slantingly fallen over
her as though a curtain were half drawn from before some saint
enshrined. To Pierre, she seemed half unearthly; but this
unearthliness was only her mysteriousness, not any thing that
was repelling or menacing to him. And still, the low melodies
and were trodden upon, and pressed like gushing grapes, by
the steady invisible pacing on the floor above.
She moved a little now, and after some strange wanderings
more coherently continued.
“My next memory which I think I can in some degree rely
upon, was yet another house, also situated away from human
haunts, in the heart of a not entirely silent country. Through
this country, and by the house, wound a green and lagging
river. That house must have been in some lowland; for the
first house I spoke of seems to me to have been somewhere
among mountains, or near to mountains;—the sounds of the
far waterfalls,—I seem to hear them now; the steady up-pointed
cloud-shapes behind the house in the sunset sky—I seem to
see them now. But this other house, this second one, or third
one, I know not which, I say again it was in some lowland.
There were no pines around it; few trees of any sort; the
ground did not slope so steeply as around the first house.
There were cultivated fields about it, and in the distance farm-houses
and out-houses, and cattle, and fowls, and many objects
of that familiar sort. This house I am persuaded was in this
country; on this side of the sea. It was a very large house,
and full of people; but for the most part they lived separately.
There were some old people in it, and there were young
men, and young women in it,—some very handsome; and
there were children in it. It seemed a happy place to some of
these people; many of them were always laughing; but it was
not a happy place for me.
“But here I may err, because of my own consciousness I
can not identify in myself—I mean in the memory of my
whole foregoing life,—I say, I can not identify that thing which
is called happiness; that thing whose token is a laugh, or a
smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy,
but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a
different food from happiness; for I think I have a suspicion of
what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of
the absence of happiness, and without praying for happiness. I
pray for peace—for motionlessness—for the feeling of myself, as
of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it, and existing
without individual sensation. I feel that there can be no perfect
peace in individualness. Therefore I hope one day to feel
myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating all things.
I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying.—Yes; in thy
speech, thou smilest.—But let me be silent again. Do not
answer me. When I resume, I will not wander so, but make
short end.”
Reverently resolved not to offer the slightest let or hinting
hindrance to the singular tale rehearsing to him, but to sit
passively and receive its marvelous droppings into his soul,
however long the pauses; and as touching less mystical considerations,
persuaded that by so doing he should ultimately derive
the least nebulous and imperfect account of Isabel's history;
Pierre still sat waiting her resuming, his eyes fixed upon
the girl's wonderfully beautiful ear, which chancing to peep
forth from among her abundant tresses, nestled in that blackness
like a transparent sea-shell of pearl.
She moved a little now; and after some strange wanderings
more coherently continued; while the sound of the stepping
on the floor above—it seemed to cease.
“I have spoken of the second or rather the third spot in my
memory of the past, as it first appeared to me; I mean, I have
spoken of the people in the house, according to my very earliest
recallable impression of them. But I stayed in that house for
several years—five, six, perhaps, seven years—and during that
interval of my stay, all things changed to me, because I learned
more, though always dimly. Some of its occupants departed;
some changed from smiles to tears; some went moping all the
below by dumb-like men into deep places, that I knew nothing
of, but dismal sounds came through the lower floor, groans
and clanking fallings, as of iron in straw. Now and then, I
saw coffins silently at noon-day carried into the house, and in
five minutes' time emerge again, seemingly heavier than they
entered; but I saw not who was in them. Once, I saw an
immense-sized coffin, endwise pushed through a lower window
by three men who did not speak; and watching, I saw it
pushed out again, and they drove off with it. But the numbers
of those invisible persons who thus departed from the
house, were made good by other invisible persons arriving in
close carriages. Some in rags and tatters came on foot, or
rather were driven on foot. Once I heard horrible outcries,
and peeping from my window, saw a robust but squalid and
distorted man, seemingly a peasant, tied by cords with four
long ends to them, held behind by as many ignorant-looking
men who with a lash drove the wild squalid being that way
toward the house. Then I heard answering hand-clappings,
shrieks, howls, laughter, blessings, prayers, oaths, hymns, and all
audible confusions issuing from all the chambers of the house.
“Sometimes there entered the house—though only transiently,
departing within the hour they came—people of a then remarkable
aspect to me. They were very composed of countenance;
did not laugh; did not groan; did not weep; did
not make strange faces; did not look endlessly fatigued; were
not strangely and fantastically dressed; in short, did not at
all resemble any people I had ever seen before, except a little
like some few of the persons of the house, who seemed to
have authority over the rest. These people of a remarkable
aspect to me, I thought they were strangely demented people;
—composed of countenance, but wandering of mind; soul-composed
and bodily-wandering, and strangely demented
people.
“By-and-by, the house seemed to change again, or else my
mind took in more, and modified its first impressions. I was
lodged up-stairs in a little room; there was hardly any furniture
in the room; sometimes I wished to go out of it; but
the door was locked. Sometimes the people came and took
me out of the room, into a much larger and very long room,
and here I would collectively see many of the other people of
the house, who seemed likewise brought from distant and separate
chambers. In this long room they would vacantly roam
about, and talk vacant talk to each other. Some would stand
in the middle of the room gazing steadily on the floor for
hours together, and never stirred, but only breathed and gazed
upon the floor. Some would sit crouching in the corner, and
sit crouching there, and only breathe and crouch in the corners.
Some kept their hands tight on their hearts, and went
slowly promenading up and down, moaning and moaning to
themselves. One would say to another—“Feel of it—here,
put thy hand in the break.” Another would mutter—“Broken,
broken, broken”—and would mutter nothing but that one word
broken. But most of them were dumb, and could not, or
would not speak, or had forgotten how to speak. They were
nearly all pale people. Some had hair white as snow, and
yet were quite young people. Some were always talking
about Hell, Eternity, and God; and some of all things as
fixedly decreed; others would say nay to this, and then they
would argue, but without much conviction either way. But
once nearly all the people present—even the dumb moping
people, and the sluggish persons crouching in the corners—
nearly all of them laughed once, when after a whole day's
loud babbling, two of these predestinarian opponents, said each
to the other—`Thou hast convinced me, friend; but we are
quits; for so also, have I convinced thee, the other way; now
then, let's argue it all over again; for still, though mutually
converted, we are still at odds.' Some harangued the wall;
lolled their tongues out at the air; some struck the air; some
made motions, as if wrestling with the air, and fell out of the
arms of the air, panting from the invisible hug.
“Now, as in the former thing, thou must, ere this, have suspected
what manner of place this second or third house was,
that I then lived in. But do not speak the word to me. That
word has never passed my lips; even now, when I hear the
word, I run from it; when I see it printed in a book, I run
from the book. The word is wholly unendurable to me. Who
brought me to the house; how I came there, I do not know. I
lived a long time in the house; that alone I know; I say I
know, but still I am uncertain; still Pierre, still the—oh the
dreaminess, the bewilderingness—it never entirely leaves me.
Let me be still again.”
She leaned away from him; she put her small hard hand to
her forehead; then moved it down, very slowly, but still hardly
over her eyes, and kept it there, making no other sign, and
still as death. Then she moved and continued her vague tale
of terribleness.
“I must be shorter; I did not mean to turn off into the mere
offshootings of my story, here and there; but the dreaminess I
speak of leads me sometimes; and I, as impotent then, obey
the dreamy prompting. Bear with me; now I will be briefer.”
“It came to pass, at last, that there was a contention about
me in the house; some contention which I heard in the after
rumor only, not at the actual time. Some strangers had arrived;
or had come in haste, being sent for to the house. Next
day they dressed me in new and pretty, but still plain clothes,
and they took me down stairs, and out into the air, and into a
carriage with a pleasant-looking woman, a stranger to me; and
I was driven off a good way, two days nearly we drove away,
stopping somewhere over-night; and on the evening of the
stayed there.
“This house was a much smaller one than the other, and
seemed sweetly quiet to me after that. There was a beautiful
infant in it; and this beautiful infant always archly and innocently
smiling on me, and strangely beckoning me to come and
play with it, and be glad with it; and be thoughtless, and be
glad and gleeful with it; this beautiful infant first brought me
to my own mind, as it were; first made me sensible that I was
something different from stones, trees, cats; first undid in me
the fancy that all people were as stones, trees, cats; first filled
me with the sweet idea of humanness; first made me aware of
the infinite mercifulness, and tenderness, and beautifulness of
humanness; and this beautiful infant first filled me with the
dim thought of Beauty; and equally, and at the same time,
with the feeling of the Sadness; of the immortalness and universalness
of the Sadness. I now feel that I should soon have
gone, — stop me now; do not let me go that way. I
owe all things to that beautiful infant. Oh, how I envied it,
lying in its happy mother's breast, and drawing life and gladness,
and all its perpetual smilingness from that white and
smiling breast. That infant saved me; but still gave me vague
desirings. Now I first began to reflect in my mind; to endeavor
after the recalling past things; but try as I would, little
could I recall, but the bewilderingness;—and the stupor, and
the torpor, and the blankness, and the dimness, and the vacant
whirlingness of the bewilderingness. Let me be still again.”
And the stepping on the floor above,—it then resumed.
V.
“I must have been nine, or ten, or eleven years old, when
the pleasant-looking woman carried me away from the large
house. She was a farmer's wife; and now that was my residence,
the farm-house. They taught me to sew, and work
with wool, and spin the wool; I was nearly always busy now.
This being busy, too, this it must have been, which partly
brought to me the power of being sensible of myself as something
human. Now I began to feel strange differences. When
I saw a snake trailing through the grass, and darting out the
fire-fork from its mouth, I said to myself, That thing is not human,
but I am human. When the lightning flashed, and split
some beautiful tree, and left it to rot from all its greenness, I
said, That lightning is not human, but I am human. And so
with all other things. I can not speak coherently here; but
somehow I felt that all good, harmless men and women were
human things, placed at cross-purposes, in a world of snakes
and lightnings, in a world of horrible and inscrutable inhumanities.
I have had no training of any sort. All my thoughts
well up in me; I know not whether they pertain to the old
bewilderings or not; but as they are, they are, and I can not
alter them, for I had nothing to do with putting them in my
mind, and I never affect any thoughts, and I never adulterate
any thoughts; but when I speak, think forth from the tongue,
speech being sometimes before the thought; so, often, my own
tongue teaches me new things.
“Now as yet I never had questioned the woman, or her husband,
or the young girls, their children, why I had been
brought to the house, or how long I was to stay in the house.
There I was; just as I found myself in the world; there I was;
for what cause I had been brought into the world, would have
been no stranger question to me, than for what cause I had
thing pertaining to myself; I felt my pulse, my thought; but
other things I was ignorant of, except the general feeling of my
humanness among the inhumanities. But as I grew older, I
expanded in my mind. I began to learn things out of me; to
see still stranger, and minuter differences. I called the woman
mother, and so did the other girls; yet the woman often kissed
them, but seldom me. She always helped them first at table.
The farmer scarcely ever spoke to me. Now months, years
rolled on, and the young girls began to stare at me. Then the
bewilderingness of the old starings of the solitary old man and
old woman, by the cracked hearth-stone of the desolate old
house, in the desolate, round, open space; the bewilderingness
of those old starings now returned to me; and the green starings,
and the serpent hissings of the uncompanionable cat, recurred
to me, and the feeling of the infinite forlornness of my
life rolled over me. But the woman was very kind to me;
she taught the girls not to be cruel to me; she would call me
to her, and speak cheerfully to me, and I thanked—not God,
for I had been taught no God—I thanked the bright human
summer, and the joyful human sun in the sky; I thanked the
human summer and the sun, that they had given me the
woman; and I would sometimes steal away into the beautiful
grass, and worship the kind summer and the sun; and often
say over to myself the soft words, summer and the sun.
“Still, weeks and years ran on, and my hair began to vail
me with its fullness and its length; and now often I heard the
word beautiful, spoken of my hair, and beautiful, spoken of myself.
They would not say the word openly to me, but I would
by chance overhear them whispering it. The word joyed me
with the human feeling of it. They were wrong not to say it
openly to me; my joy would have been so much the more assured
for the openness of their saying beautiful, to me; and I
know it would have filled me with all conceivable kindness
now and then, for some months, when a new being
came to the house; they called him gentleman. His face was
wonderful to me. Something strangely like it, and yet again
unlike it, I had seen before, but where, I could not tell. But
one day, looking into the smooth water behind the house, there
I saw the likeness—something strangely like, and yet unlike,
the likeness of his face. This filled me with puzzlings. The
new being, the gentleman, he was very gracious to me; he
seemed astonished, confounded at me; he looked at me, then
at a very little, round picture—so it seemed—which he took
from his pocket, and yet concealed from me. Then he kissed
me, and looked with tenderness and grief upon me; and I felt
a tear fall on me from him. Then he whispered a word into
my ear. `Father,' was the word he whispered; the same
word by which the young girls called the farmer. Then I
knew it was the word of kindness and of kisses. I kissed the
gentleman.
“When he left the house I wept for him to come again.
And he did come again. All called him my father now. He
came to see me once every month or two; till at last he came
not at all; and when I wept and asked for him, they said the
word Dead to me. Then the bewilderings of the comings
and the goings of the coffins at the large and populous house;
these bewilderings came over me. What was it to be dead?
What is it to be living? Wherein is the difference between
the words Death and Life? Had I been ever dead? Was I
living? Let me be still again. Do not speak to me.”
And the stepping on the floor above; again it did resume.
“Months ran on; and now I somehow learned that my
father had every now and then sent money to the woman to
keep me with her in the house; and that no more money had
come to her after he was dead; the last penny of the former
money was now gone. Now the farmer's wife looked troubledly
and impatiently at me. I felt that something was miserably
wrong; I said to myself, I am one too many; I must go away
from the pleasant house. Then the bewilderings of all the loneliness
and forlornness of all my forlorn and lonely life; all these
bewilderings and the whelmings of the bewilderings rolled over
me; and I sat down without the house, but could not weep.
“But I was strong, and I was a grown girl now. I said to
the woman—Keep me hard at work; let me work all the time,
but let me stay with thee. But the other girls were sufficient
to do the work; me they wanted not. The farmer looked out
of his eyes at me, and the out-lookings of his eyes said plainly
to me—Thee we do not want; go from us; thou art one too
many; and thou art more than one too many. Then I said
to the woman—Hire me out to some one; let me work for
some one.—But I spread too wide my little story. I must
make an end.
“The woman listened to me, and through her means I went
to live at another house, and earned wages there. My work
was milking the cows, and making butter, and spinning wool,
and weaving carpets of thin strips of cloth. One day there
came to this house a pedler. In his wagon he had a guitar,
an old guitar, yet a very pretty one, but with broken strings.
He had got it slyly in part exchange from the servants of a
grand house some distance off. Spite of the broken strings,
the thing looked very graceful and beautiful to me; and I
knew there was melodiousness lurking in the thing, though I
had never seen a guitar before, nor heard of one; but there
was a strange humming in my heart that seemed to prophesy
of the hummings of the guitar. Intuitively, I knew that the
strings were not as they should be. I said to the man—I will
buy of thee the thing thou callest a guitar. But thou must
put new strings to it. So he went to search for them;
and brought the strings, and restringing the guitar, tuned it
Straightway I took it to my little chamber in the gable, and
softly laid it on my bed. Then I murmured; sung and murmured
to it; very lowly, very softly; I could hardly hear myself.
And I changed the modulations of my singings and my
murmurings; and still sung, and murmured, lowly, softly,—
more and more; and presently I heard a sudden sound: sweet
and low beyond all telling was the sweet and sudden sound.
I clapt my hands; the guitar was speaking to me; the dear
guitar was singing to me; murmuring and singing to me, the
guitar. Then I sung and murmured to it with a still different
modulation; and once more it answered me from a different
string; and once more it murmured to me, and it answered to
me with a different string. The guitar was human; the guitar
taught me the secret of the guitar; the guitar learned me to
play on the guitar. No music-master have I ever had but the
guitar. I made a loving friend of it; a heart friend of it. It
sings to me as I to it. Love is not all on one side with my
guitar. All the wonders that are unimaginable and unspeakable;
all these wonders are translated in the mysterious melodiousness
of the guitar. It knows all my past history. Sometimes
it plays to me the mystic visions of the confused large
house I never name. Sometimes it brings to me the bird-twitterings
in the air; and sometimes it strikes up in me rapturous
pulsations of legendary delights eternally unexperienced and
unknown to me. Bring me the guitar.”
VI.
Entranced, lost, as one wandering bedazzled and amazed
among innumerable dancing lights, Pierre had motionlessly
listened to this abundant-haired, and large-eyed girl of mystery.
“Bring me the guitar!”
Starting from his enchantment, Pierre gazed round the room,
and saw the instrument leaning against a corner. Silently he
brought it to the girl, and silently sat down again.
“Now listen to the guitar; and the guitar shall sing to thee
the sequel of my story; for not in words can it be spoken. So
listen to the guitar.”
Instantly the room was populous with sounds of melodiousness,
and mournfulness, and wonderfulness; the room swarmed
with the unintelligible but delicious sounds. The sounds
seemed waltzing in the room; the sounds hung pendulous like
glittering icicles from the corners of the room; and fell upon
him with a ringing silveryness; and were drawn up again to
the ceiling, and hung pendulous again, and dropt down upon
him again with the ringing silveryness. Fire-flies seemed buzzing
in the sounds; summer-lightnings seemed vividly yet
softly audible in the sounds.
And still the wild girl played on the guitar; and her long
dark shower of curls fell over it, and vailed it; and still, out
from the vail came the swarming sweetness, and the utter unintelligibleness,
but the infinite significancies of the sounds of
the guitar.
“Girl of all-bewildering mystery!” cried Pierre—“Speak to
me;—sister, if thou indeed canst be a thing that's mortal—
speak to me, if thou be Isabel!”
Mystery of Isabel!
Mystery! Mystery!
Isabel and Mystery!”
Among the waltzings, and the droppings, and the swarmings
of the sounds, Pierre now heard the tones above deftly stealing
and winding among the myriad serpentinings of the other melody:—deftly
stealing and winding as respected the instrumental
sounds, but in themselves wonderfully and abandonedly free
and bold—bounding and rebounding as from multitudinous
reciprocal walls; while with every syllable the hair-shrouded
form of Isabel swayed to and fro with a like abandonment, and
suddenness, and wantonness:—then it seemed not like any
song; seemed not issuing from any mouth; but it came forth
from beneath the same vail concealing the guitar.
Now a strange wild heat burned upon his brow; he put his
hand to it. Instantly the music changed; and drooped and
changed; and changed and changed; and lingeringly retreated
as it changed; and at last was wholly gone.
Pierre was the first to break the silence.
“Isabel, thou hast filled me with such wonderings; I am so
distraught with thee, that the particular things I had to tell to
thee, when I hither came; these things I can not now recall, to
speak them to thee:—I feel that something is still unsaid by
thee, which at some other time thou wilt reveal. But now I
can stay no longer with thee. Know me eternally as thy loving,
revering, and most marveling brother, who will never desert
thee, Isabel. Now let me kiss thee and depart, till to-morrow
night; when I shall open to thee all my mind, and all my
plans concerning me and thee. Let me kiss thee, and adieu!”
As full of unquestioning and unfaltering faith in him, the
girl sat motionless and heard him out. Then silently rose, and
turned her boundlessly confiding brow to him. He kissed it
thrice, and without another syllable left the place.
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |