 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
1. BOOK I.
PIERRE JUST EMERGING FROM HIS TEENS.
I.
There are some strange summer mornings in the country,
when he who is but a sojourner from the city shall early walk
forth into the fields, and be wonder-smitten with the trance-like
aspect of the green and golden world. Not a flower stirs; the
trees forget to wave; the grass itself seems to have ceased to
grow; and all Nature, as if suddenly become conscious of her
own profound mystery, and feeling no refuge from it but silence,
sinks into this wonderful and indescribable repose.
Such was the morning in June, when, issuing from the embowered
and high-gabled old home of his fathers, Pierre, dewily
refreshed and spiritualized by sleep, gayly entered the long,
wide, elm-arched street of the village, and half unconsciously
bent his steps toward a cottage, which peeped into view near
the end of the vista.
The verdant trance lay far and wide; and through it nothing
came but the brindled kine, dreamily wandering to their pastures,
followed, not driven, by ruddy-cheeked, white-footed boys.
As touched and bewitched by the loveliness of this silence,
Pierre neared the cottage, and lifted his eyes, he swiftly paused,
now this impassioned, youthful pause? Why this enkindled
cheek and eye? Upon the sill of the casement, a snow-white
glossy pillow reposes, and a trailing shrub has softly rested a
rich, crimson flower against it.
Well mayst thou seek that pillow, thou odoriferous flower,
thought Pierre; not an hour ago, her own cheek must have
rested there. “Lucy!”
“Pierre!”
As heart rings to heart those voices rang, and for a moment,
in the bright hush of the morning, the two stood silently but
ardently eying each other, beholding mutual reflections of a
boundless admiration and love.
“Nothing but Pierre,” laughed the youth, at last; “thou
hast forgotten to bid me good-morning.”
“That would be little. Good-mornings, good-evenings, good
days, weeks, months, and years to thee, Pierre;—bright Pierre!
—Pierre!”
Truly, thought the youth, with a still gaze of inexpressible
fondness; truly the skies do ope, and this invoking angel looks
down.—“I would return thee thy manifold good-mornings,
Lucy, did not that presume thou had'st lived through a night;
and by Heaven, thou belong'st to the regions of an infinite
day!”
“Fie, now, Pierre; why should ye youths always swear
when ye love?”
“Because in us love is profane, since it mortally reaches toward
the heaven in ye!”
“There thou fly'st again, Pierre; thou art always circumventing
me so. Tell me, why should ye youths ever show so
sweet an expertness in turning all trifles of ours into trophies
of yours?”
“I know not how that is, but ever was it our fashion to do.”
And shaking the casement shrub, he dislodged the flower, and
Lucy; see! under these colors I march.”
“Bravissimo! oh, my only recruit!”
II.
Pierre was the only son of an affluent, and haughty widow;
a lady who externally furnished a singular example of the preservative
and beautifying influences of unfluctuating rank,
health, and wealth, when joined to a fine mind of medium culture,
uncankered by any inconsolable grief, and never worn by
sordid cares. In mature age, the rose still miraculously clung
to her cheek; litheness had not yet completely uncoiled itself
from her waist, nor smoothness unscrolled itself from her brow,
nor diamondness departed from her eyes. So that when lit up
and bediademed by ball-room lights, Mrs. Glendinning still
eclipsed far younger charms, and had she chosen to encourage
them, would have been followed by a train of infatuated suitors,
little less young than her own son Pierre.
But a reverential and devoted son seemed lover enough for
this widow Bloom; and besides all this, Pierre when namelessly
annoyed, and sometimes even jealously transported by
the too ardent admiration of the handsome youths, who now
and then, caught in unintended snares, seemed to entertain
some insane hopes of wedding this unattainable being; Pierre
had more than once, with a playful malice, openly sworn, that
the man—gray-beard, or beardless—who should dare to propose
marriage to his mother, that man would by some peremptory
unrevealed agency immediately disappear from the
earth.
This romantic filial love of Pierre seemed fully returned by
the triumphant maternal pride of the widow, who in the clearcut
strangely translated into the opposite sex. There was a striking
personal resemblance between them; and as the mother
seemed to have long stood still in her beauty, heedless of the
passing years; so Pierre seemed to meet her half-way, and by
a splendid precocity of form and feature, almost advanced himself
to that mature stand-point in Time, where his pedestaled
mother so long had stood. In the playfulness of their unclouded
love, and with that strange license which a perfect confidence
and mutual understanding at all points, had long bred
between them, they were wont to call each other brother and
sister. Both in public and private this was their usage; nor
when thrown among strangers, was this mode of address ever
suspected for a sportful assumption; since the amaranthiness
of Mrs. Glendinning fully sustained this youthful pretension.—
Thus freely and lightsomely for mother and son flowed on the
pure joined current of life. But as yet the fair river had not
borne its waves to those side-ways repelling rocks, where it was
thenceforth destined to be forever divided into two unmixing
streams.
An excellent English author of these times enumerating the
prime advantages of his natal lot, cites foremost, that he first
saw the rural light. So with Pierre. It had been his choice
fate to have been born and nurtured in the country, surrounded
by scenery whose uncommon loveliness was the perfect mould
of a delicate and poetic mind; while the popular names of its
finest features appealed to the proudest patriotic and family associations
of the historic line of Glendinning. On the meadows
which sloped away from the shaded rear of the manorial mansion,
far to the winding river, an Indian battle had been fought,
in the earlier days of the colony, and in that battle the paternal
great-grandfather of Pierre, mortally wounded, had sat unhorsed
on his saddle in the grass, with his dying voice, still
cheering his men in the fray. This was Saddle-Meadows, a
beyond these plains, a day's walk for Pierre, rose the storied
heights, where in the Revolutionary War his grandfather had
for several months defended a rude but all-important stockaded
fort, against the repeated combined assaults of Indians, Tories,
and Regulars. From before that fort, the gentlemanly, but murderous
half-breed, Brandt, had fled, but had survived to dine
with General Glendinning, in the amicable times which followed
that vindictive war. All the associations of Saddle-Meadows
were full of pride to Pierre. The Glendinning deeds
by which their estate had so long been held, bore the cyphers
of three Indian kings, the aboriginal and only conveyancers of
those noble woods and plains. Thus loftily, in the days of his
circumscribed youth, did Pierre glance along the background
of his race; little recking of that maturer and larger interior
development, which should forever deprive these things of their
full power of pride in his soul.
But the breeding of Pierre would have been unwisely contracted,
had his youth been unintermittingly passed in these
rural scenes. At a very early period he had begun to accompany
his father and mother—and afterwards his mother alone
—in their annual visits to the city; where naturally mingling
in a large and polished society, Pierre had insensibly formed
himself in the airier graces of life, without enfeebling the vigor
derived from a martial race, and fostered in the country's clarion
air.
Nor while thus liberally developed in person and manners,
was Pierre deficient in a still better and finer culture. Not in
vain had he spent long summer afternoons in the deep recesses
of his father's fastidiously picked and decorous library; where
the Spenserian nymphs had early led him into many a maze
of all-bewildering beauty. Thus, with a graceful glow on his
limbs, and soft, imaginative flames in his heart, did this Pierre
glide toward maturity, thoughtless of that period of remorseless
frigid to him, and he should madly demand more ardent fires.
Nor had that pride and love which had so bountifully provided
for the youthful nurture of Pierre, neglected his culture
in the deepest element of all. It had been a maxim with the
father of Pierre, that all gentlemanhood was vain; all claims
to it preposterous and absurd, unless the primeval gentleness
and golden humanities of religion had been so thoroughly
wrought into the complete texture of the character, that he
who pronounced himself gentleman, could also rightfully
assume the meek, but kingly style of Christian. At the age
of sixteen, Pierre partook with his mother of the Holy Sacraments.
It were needless, and more difficult, perhaps, to trace out
precisely the absolute motives which prompted these youthful
vows. Enough, that as to Pierre had descended the numerous
other noble qualities of his ancestors; and as he now stood
heir to their forests and farms; so by the same insensible sliding
process, he seemed to have inherited their docile homage
to a venerable Faith, which the first Glendinning had brought
over sea, from beneath the shadow of an English minister.
Thus in Pierre was the complete polished steel of the gentleman,
girded with Religion's silken sash; and his great-grandfather's
soldierly fate had taught him that the generous sash
should, in the last bitter trial, furnish its wearer with Glory's
shroud; so that what through life had been worn for Grace's
sake, in death might safely hold the man. But while thus all
alive to the beauty and poesy of his father's faith, Pierre little
foresaw that this world hath a secret deeper than beauty, and
Life some burdens heavier than death.
So perfect to Pierre had long seemed the illuminated scroll
of his life thus far, that only one hiatus was discoverable by
him in that sweetly-writ manuscript. A sister had been omitted
from the text. He mourned that so delicious a feeling as
title, which he so often lavished upon his mother, at all supply
the absent reality. This emotion was most natural; and the
full cause and reason of it even Pierre did not at that time entirely
appreciate. For surely a gentle sister is the second best
gift to a man; and it is first in point of occurrence; for the
wife comes after. He who is sisterless, is as a bachelor before
his time. For much that goes to make up the deliciousness of
a wife, already lies in the sister.
“Oh, had my father but had a daughter!” cried Pierre;
“some one whom I might love, and protect, and fight for, if
need be. It must be a glorious thing to engage in a mortal
quarrel on a sweet sister's behalf! Now, of all things, would
to heaven, I had a sister!”
Thus, ere entranced in the gentler bonds of a lover; thus
often would Pierre invoke heaven for a sister; but Pierre did
not then know, that if there be any thing a man might well
pray against, that thing is the responsive gratification of some
of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
It may have been that this strange yearning of Pierre for a sister,
had part of its origin in that still stranger feeling of loneliness
he sometimes experienced, as not only the solitary head of his
family, but the only surnamed male Glendinning extant. A
powerful and populous family had by degrees run off into the
female branches; so that Pierre found himself surrounded by
numerous kinsmen and kinswomen, yet companioned by no
surnamed male Glendinning, but the duplicate one reflected to
him in the mirror. But in his more wonted natural mood, this
thought was not wholly sad to him. Nay, sometimes it
mounted into an exultant swell. For in the ruddiness, and
flushfulness, and vaingloriousness of his youthful soul, he
fondly hoped to have a monopoly of glory in capping the
fame-column, whose tall shaft had been erected by his noble
sires.
In all this, how unadmonished was our Pierre by that foreboding
and prophetic lesson taught, not less by Palmyra's
quarries, than by Palmyra's ruins. Among those ruins is a
crumbling, uncompleted shaft, and some leagues off, ages ago
left in the quarry, is the crumbling corresponding capital, also
incomplete. These Time seized and spoiled; these Time
crushed in the egg; and the proud stone that should have
stood among the clouds, Time left abased beneath the soil.
Oh, what quenchless feud is this, that Time hath with the sons
of Men!
III.
It has been said that the beautiful country round about
Pierre appealed to very proud memories. But not only
through the mere chances of things, had that fine country become
ennobled by the deeds of his sires, but in Pierre's eyes,
all its hills and swales seemed as sanctified through their very
long uninterrupted possession by his race.
That fond ideality which, in the eyes of affection, hallows the
least trinket once familiar to the person of a departed love;
with Pierre that talisman touched the whole earthly landscape
about him; for remembering that on those hills his own fine
fathers had gazed; through those woods, over these lawns, by
that stream, along these tangled paths, many a grand-dame
of his had merrily strolled when a girl; vividly recalling these
things, Pierre deemed all that part of the earth a love-token;
so that his very horizon was to him as a memorial ring.
The monarchical world very generally imagines, that in demagoguical
America the sacred Past hath no fixed statues
erected to it, but all things irreverently seethe and boil in the
vulgar caldron of an everlasting uncrystalizing Present. This
conceit would seem peculiarly applicable to the social condition
any family in America imposingly perpetuate itself? Certainly
that common saying among us, which declares, that be a family
conspicuous as it may, a single half-century shall see it abased;
that maxim undoubtedly holds true with the commonalty. In
our cities families rise and burst like bubbles in a vat. For
indeed the democratic element operates as a subtile acid among
us; forever producing new things by corroding the old; as in
the south of France verdigris, the primitive material of one kind
of green paint, is produced by grape-vinegar poured upon copper
plates. Now in general nothing can be more significant of
decay than the idea of corrosion; yet on the other hand,
nothing can more vividly suggest luxuriance of life, than the
idea of green as a color; for green is the peculiar signet of all-fertile
Nature herself. Herein by apt analogy we behold the
marked anomalousness of America; whose character abroad,
we need not be surprised, is misconceived, when we consider
how strangely she contradicts all prior notions of human things;
and how wonderfully to her, Death itself becomes transmuted
into Life. So that political institutions, which in other lands
seem above all things intensely artificial, with America seem
to possess the divine virtue of a natural law; for the most mighty
of nature's laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.
Still, are there things in the visible world, over which evershifting
Nature hath not so unbounded a sway. The grass is
annually changed; but the limbs of the oak, for a long term
of years, defy that annual decree. And if in America the vast
mass of families be as the blades of grass, yet some few there
are that stand as the oak; which, instead of decaying, annually
puts forth new branches; whereby Time, instead of subtracting,
is made to capitulate into a multiple virtue.
In this matter we will—not superciliously, but in fair spirit—
compare pedigrees with England, and strange as it may seem
at the first blush, not without some claim to equality. I dare
standard whereby to judge her; since the compilers of that
work can not be entirely insensible on whose patronage they
most rely; and the common intelligence of our own people
shall suffice to judge us. But the magnificence of names must
not mislead us as to the humility of things. For as the breath
in all our lungs is hereditary, and my present breath at this
moment, is further descended than the body of the present
High Priest of the Jews, so far as he can assuredly trace it; so
mere names, which are also but air, do likewise revel in this
endless descendedness. But if Richmond, and St. Albans, and
Grafton, and Portland, and Buccleugh, be names almost old as
England herself, the present Dukes of those names stop in their
own genuine pedigrees at Charles II., and there find no very
fine fountain; since what we would deem the least glorious
parentage under the sun, is precisely the parentage of a Buccleugh,
for example; whose ancestress could not well avoid
being a mother, it is true, but had accidentally omitted the
preliminary rite. Yet a king was the sire. Then only so much
the worse; for if it be small insult to be struck by a pauper,
but mortal offense to receive a blow from a gentleman, then of
all things the bye-blows of kings must be signally unflattering.
In England the Peerage is kept alive by incessant restorations
and creations. One man, George III., manufactured five hundred
and twenty-two peers. An earldom, in abeyance for five
centuries, has suddenly been assumed by some commoner, to
whom it had not so much descended, as through the art of the
lawyers been made flexibly to bend in that direction. For not
Thames is so sinuous in his natural course, not the Bridgewater
Canal more artificially conducted, than blood in the veins of
that winding or manufactured nobility. Perishable as stubble,
and fungous as the fungi, those grafted families successively
live and die on the eternal soil of a name. In England this
day, twenty-five hundred peerages are extinct; but the names
than a man, or than dynasties of men; the air fills man's lungs
and puts life into a man, but man fills not the air, nor puts life
into that.
All honor to the names then, and all courtesy to the men;
but if St. Albans tell me he is all-honorable and all-eternal, I
must still politely refer him to Nell Gwynne.
Beyond Charles II. very few indeed—hardly worthy of note
—are the present titled English families which can trace any
thing like a direct unvitiated blood-descent from the thief
knights of the Norman. Beyond Charles II. their direct genealogies
seem vain as though some Jew clothesman, with a teacanister
on his head, turned over the first chapter of St.
Matthew to make out his unmingled participation in the blood
of King Saul, who had long died ere the career of the Cæsar
began.
Now, not preliminarily to enlarge upon the fact that, while in
England an immense mass of state-masonry is brought to bear
as a buttress in upholding the hereditary existence of certain
houses, while with us nothing of that kind can possibly be admitted;
and to omit all mention of the hundreds of unobtrusive
families in New England who, nevertheless, might easily trace
their uninterrupted English lineage to a time before Charles
the Blade: not to speak of the old and oriental-like English
planter families of Virginia and the South; the Randolphs for
example, one of whose ancestors, in King James' time, married
Pocahontas the Indian Princess, and in whose blood therefore
an underived aboriginal royalty was flowing over two hundred
years ago; consider those most ancient and magnificent Dutch
Manors at the North, whose perches are miles—whose meadows
overspread adjacent countries—and whose haughty rent-deeds
are held by their thousand farmer tenants, so long as grass
grows and water runs; which hints of a surprising eternity for
a deed, and seem to make lawyer's ink unobliterable as the
present patrons or lords will show you stakes and stones on
their estates put there—the stones at least—before Nell
Gwynne the Duke-mother was born, and genealogies which,
like their own river, Hudson, flow somewhat farther and
straighter than the Serpentine brooklet in Hyde Park.
These far-descended Dutch meadows lie steeped in a Hindooish
haze; an eastern patriarchalness sways its mild crook
over pastures, whose tenant flocks shall there feed, long as their
own grass grows, long as their own water shall run. Such
estates seem to defy Time's tooth, and by conditions which
take hold of the indestructible earth seem to cotemporize
their fee-simples with eternity. Unimaginable audacity of a
worm that but crawls through the soil he so imperially claims!
In midland counties of England they boast of old oaken
dining-halls where three hundred men-at-arms could exercise
of a rainy afternoon, in the reign of the Plantagenets. But
our lords, the Patroons, appeal not to the past, but they point
to the present. One will show you that the public census of a
county, is but part of the roll of his tenants. Ranges of mountains,
high as Ben Nevis or Snowdon, are their walls; and
regular armies, with staffs of officers, crossing rivers with artillery,
and marching through primeval woods, and threading
vast rocky defiles, have been sent out to distrain upon three
thousand farmer-tenants of one landlord, at a blow. A fact
most suggestive two ways; both whereof shall be nameless
here.
But whatever one may think of the existence of such mighty
lordships in the heart of a republic, and however we may wonder
at their thus surviving, like Indian mounds, the Revolutionary
flood; yet survive and exist they do, and are now owned
by their present proprietors, by as good nominal title as any
peasant owns his father's old hat, or any duke his great-uncle's
old coronet.
For all this, then, we shall not err very widely if we humbly
conceive, that—should she choose to glorify herself in that inconsiderable
way—our America will make out a good general
case with England in this short little matter of large estates,
and long pedigrees—pedigrees I mean, wherein is no flaw.
IV.
In general terms we have been thus decided in asserting the
great genealogical and real-estate dignity of some families in
America, because in so doing we poetically establish the richly
aristocratic condition of Master Pierre Glendinning, for whom
we have before claimed some special family distinction. And to
the observant reader the sequel will not fail to show, how important
is this circumstance, considered with reference to the
singularly developed character and most singular life-career of
our hero. Nor will any man dream that the last chapter was
merely intended for a foolish bravado, and not with a solid purpose
in view.
Now Pierre stands on this noble pedestal; we shall see if he
keeps that fine footing; we shall see if Fate hath not just a
little bit of a small word or two to say in this world. But it
is not laid down here that the Glendinnings dated back beyond
Pharaoh, or the deeds of Saddle-Meadows to the Three Magi
in the Gospels. Nevertheless, those deeds, as before hinted, did
indeed date back to three kings—Indian kings—only so much
the finer for that.
But if Pierre did not date back to the Pharaohs, and if the
English farmer Hampdens were somewhat the seniors of even
the oldest Glendinning; and if some American manors boasted
a few additional years and square miles over his, yet think you
that it is at all possible, that a youth of nineteen should—merely
hearth-stone with wheat in the stalk, and there standing in the
chimney thresh out that grain with a flail, whose aerial evolutions
had free play among all that masonry; were it not impossible
for such a flailer so to thresh wheat in his own ancestral
kitchen chimney without feeling just a little twinge or two of
what one might call family pride? I should say not.
Or how think you it would be with this youthful Pierre, if
every day descending to breakfast, he caught sight of an old
tattered British banner or two, hanging over an arched window
in his hall; and those banners captured by his grandfather, the
general, in fair fight? Or how think you it would be if every
time he heard the band of the military company of the village,
he should distinctly recognize the peculiar tap of a British kettle-drum
also captured by his grandfather in fair fight, and afterwards
suitably inscribed on the brass and bestowed upon the
Saddle-Meadows Artillery Corps? Or how think you it would
be, if sometimes of a mild meditative Fourth of July morning
in the country, he carried out with him into the garden by way
of ceremonial cane, a long, majestic, silver-tipped staff, a Major-General's
baton, once wielded on the plume-nodding and musket-flashing
review by the same grandfather several times herein-before
mentioned? I should say that considering Pierre
was quite young and very unphilosophical as yet, and withal
rather high-blooded; and sometimes read the History of the
Revolutionary War, and possessed a mother who very frequently
made remote social allusions to the epaulettes of the
Major-General his grandfather;—I should say that upon all of
these occasions, the way it must have been with him, was a
very proud, elated sort of way. And if this seem but too fond
and foolish in Pierre; and if you tell me that this sort of thing
in him showed him no sterling Democrat, and that a truly noble
man should never brag of any arm but his own; then I
beg you to consider again that this Pierre was but a youngster
Democrat in time; perhaps a little too Radical altogether
to your fancy.
In conclusion, do not blame me if I here make repetition, and
do verbally quote my own words in saying that it had been the
choice fate of Pierre to have been born and bred in the country.
For to a noble American youth this indeed—more than in any
other land—this indeed is a most rare and choice lot. For it
is to be observed, that while in other countries, the finest families
boast of the country as their home; the more prominent
among us, proudly cite the city as their seat. Too often the
American that himself makes his fortune, builds him a great
metropolitan house, in the most metropolitan street of the most
metropolitan town. Whereas a European of the same sort
would thereupon migrate into the country. That herein the
European hath the better of it, no poet, no philosopher, and no
aristocrat will deny. For the country is not only the most poetical
and philosophical, but it is the most aristocratic part of
this earth, for it is the most venerable, and numerous bards
have ennobled it by many fine titles. Whereas the town is the
more plebeian portion: which, besides many other things, is
plainly evinced by the dirty unwashed face perpetually worn
by the town; but the country, like any Queen, is ever attended
by scrupulous lady's maids in the guise of the seasons, and the
town hath but one dress of brick turned up with stone; but the
country hath a brave dress for every week in the year; sometimes
she changes her dress twenty-four times in the twenty-four
hours; and the country weareth her sun by day as a diamond
on a Queen's brow; and the stars by night as necklaces
of gold beads; whereas the town's sun is smoky paste, and no
diamond, and the town's stars are pinchbeck and not gold.
In the country then Nature planted our Pierre; because
Nature intended a rare and original development in Pierre.
Never mind if hereby she proved ambiguous to him in the end;
wind-clarion from the blue hills, and Pierre neighed out lyrical
thoughts, as at the trumpet-blast, a war-horse paws himself
into a lyric of foam. She whispered through her deep groves
at eve, and gentle whispers of humanness, and sweet whispers
of love, ran through Pierre's thought-veins, musical as water
over pebbles. She lifted her spangled crest of a thickly-starred
night, and forth at that glimpse of their divine Captain and
Lord, ten thousand mailed thoughts of heroicness started up
in Pierre's soul, and glared round for some insulted good cause
to defend.
So the country was a glorious benediction to young Pierre;
we shall see if that blessing pass from him as did the divine
blessing from the Hebrews; we shall yet see again, I say,
whether Fate hath not just a little bit of a word or two to say
in this world; we shall see whether this wee little bit scrap of
latinity be very far out of the way—Nemo contra Deum nisi
Deus ipse.
V.
“Sister Mary,” said Pierre, returned from his sunrise stroll,
and tapping at his mother's chamber door:—“do you know,
sister Mary, that the trees which have been up all night, are all
abroad again this morning before you?—Do you not smell
something like coffee, my sister?”
A light step moved from within toward the door; which
opened, showing Mrs. Glendinning, in a resplendently cheerful
morning robe, and holding a gay wide ribbon in her hand.
“Good morning, madam,” said Pierre, slowly, and with a
bow, whose genuine and spontaneous reverence amusingly contrasted
with the sportive manner that had preceded it. For
bottomed on the profoundest filial respect.
“Good afternoon to you, Pierre, for I suppose it is afternoon.
But come, you shall finish my toilette;—here, brother—”
reaching the ribbon—“now acquit yourself bravely—” and
seating herself away from the glass, she awaited the good offices
of Pierre.
“First Lady in waiting to the Dowager Duchess Glendinning,”
laughed Pierre, as bowing over before his mother, he
gracefully passed the ribbon round her neck, simply crossing
the ends in front.
“Well, what is to hold it there, Pierre?”
“I am going to try and tack it with a kiss, sister,—there!—
oh, what a pity that sort of fastening won't always hold!—
where's the cameo with the fawns, I gave you last night?—
Ah! on the slab—you were going to wear it then?—Thank
you, my considerate and most politic sister—there!—but stop
—here's a ringlet gone romping—so now, dear sister, give that
Assyrian toss to your head.”
The haughtily happy mother rose to her feet, and as she
stood before the mirror to criticize her son's adornings, Pierre,
noticing the straggling tie of her slipper, knelt down and
secured it. “And now for the urn,” he cried, “madam!” and
with a humorous gallantry, offering his arm to his mother, the
pair descended to breakfast.
With Mrs. Glendinning it was one of those spontaneous
maxims, which women sometimes act upon without ever
thinking of, never to appear in the presence of her son in any
dishabille that was not eminently becoming. Her own independent
observation of things, had revealed to her many very
common maxims, which often become operatively lifeless from a
vicarious reception of them. She was vividly aware how immense
was that influence, which, even in the closest ties of the
heart, the merest appearances make upon the mind. And as
her highest joy in life; so she omitted no slightest trifle which
could possibly contribute to the preservation of so sweet and
flattering a thing.
Besides all this, Mary Glendinning was a woman, and with
more than the ordinary vanity of women—if vanity it can be
called—which in a life of nearly fifty years had never betrayed
her into a single published impropriety, or caused her one
known pang at the heart. Moreover, she had never yearned
for admiration; because that was her birthright by the eternal
privilege of beauty; she had always possessed it; she had not
to turn her head for it, since spontaneously it always encompassed
her. Vanity, which in so many women approaches to a
spiritual vice, and therefore to a visible blemish; in her peculiar
case—and though possessed in a transcendent degree—
was still the token of the highest health; inasmuch as never
knowing what it was to yearn for its gratification, she was
almost entirely unconscious of possessing it at all. Many
women carry this light of their lives flaming on their foreheads;
but Mary Glendinning unknowingly bore hers within.
Through all the infinite traceries of feminine art, she evenly
glowed like a vase which, internally illuminated, gives no outward
sign of the lighting flame, but seems to shine by the very
virtue of the exquisite marble itself. But that bluff corporeal
admiration, with which some ball-room women are content,
was no admiration to the mother of Pierre. Not the general
homage of men, but the selected homage of the noblest men,
was what she felt to be her appropriate right. And as her
own maternal partialities were added to, and glorified the rare
and absolute merits of Pierre; she considered the voluntary
allegiance of his affectionate soul, the representative fealty of
the choicest guild of his race. Thus, though replenished
through all her veins with the subtlest vanity, with the homage
of Pierre alone she was content.
But as to a woman of sense and spirit, the admiration of
even the noblest and most gifted man, is esteemed as nothing,
so long as she remains conscious of possessing no directly influencing
and practical sorcery over his soul; and as notwithstanding
all his intellectual superiority to his mother, Pierre,
through the unavoidable weakness of inexperienced and unexpanded
youth, was strangely docile to the maternal tuitions in
nearly all the things which thus far had any ways interested or
affected him; therefore it was, that to Mary Glendinning this
reverence of Pierre was invested with all the proudest delights
and witcheries of self-complacency, which it is possible for the
most conquering virgin to feel. Still more. That nameless
and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness
which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is
cotemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns
and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German
wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to
drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and
nights; this highest and airiest thing in the whole compass of
the experience of our mortal life; this heavenly evanescence—
still further etherealized in the filial breast—was for Mary
Glendinning, now not very far from her grand climacteric,
miraculously revived in the courteous lover-like adoration of
Pierre.
Altogether having its origin in a wonderful but purely fortuitous
combination of the happiest and rarest accidents of
earth; and not to be limited in duration by that climax which
is so fatal to ordinary love; this softened spell which still
wheeled the mother and son in one orbit of joy, seemed a
glimpse of the glorious possibility, that the divinest of those
emotions, which are incident to the sweetest season of love, is
capable of an indefinite translation into many of the less signal
relations of our many chequered life. In a detached and individual
way, it seemed almost to realize here below the sweet
to come, when etherealized from all drosses and stains, the
holiest passion of man shall unite all kindreds and climes in one
circle of pure and unimpairable delight.
VI.
There was one little uncelestial trait, which, in the opinion
of some, may mar the romantic merits of the gentlemanly
Pierre Glendinning. He always had an excellent appetite, and
especially for his breakfast. But when we consider that though
Pierre's hands were small, and his ruffles white, yet his arm
was by no means dainty, and his complexion inclined to brown;
and that he generally rose with the sun, and could not sleep
without riding his twenty, or walking his twelve miles a day,
or felling a fair-sized hemlock in the forest, or boxing, or fencing,
or boating, or performing some other gymnastical feat;
when we consider these athletic habitudes of Pierre, and the
great fullness of brawn and muscle they built round about him;
all of which manly brawn and muscle, three times a day loudly
clamored for attention; we shall very soon perceive that to
have a bountiful appetite, was not only no vulgar reproach, but
a right royal grace and honor to Pierre; attesting him a man
and a gentleman; for a thoroughly developed gentleman is
always robust and healthy; and Robustness and Health are
great trencher-men.
So when Pierre and his mother descended to breakfast, and
Pierre had scrupulously seen her supplied with whatever little
things were convenient to her; and had twice or thrice ordered
the respectable and immemorial Dates, the servitor, to adjust
and re-adjust the window-sashes, so that no unkind current of
air should take undue liberties with his mother's neck; after
and also after directing the unruffled Dates, to swing out, horizontally
into a particular light, a fine joyous painting, in the
good-fellow, Flemish style (which painting was so attached to
the wall as to be capable of that mode of adjusting), and furthermore
after darting from where he sat a few invigorating
glances over the river-meadows to the blue mountains beyond;
Pierre made a masonic sort of mysterious motion to the excellent
Dates, who in automaton obedience thereto, brought from
a certain agreeable little side-stand, a very prominent-looking
cold pasty; which, on careful inspection with the knife, proved
to be the embossed savory nest of a few uncommonly tender
pigeons of Pierre's own shooting.
“Sister Mary,” said he, lifting on his silver trident one of the
choicest of the many fine pigeon morsels; “Sister Mary,” said
he, “in shooting these pigeons, I was very careful to bring
down one in such a manner that the breast is entirely unmarred.
It was intended for you! and here it is. Now Sergeant
Dates, help hither your mistress' plate. No?—nothing but the
crumbs of French rolls, and a few peeps into a coffee-cup—is
that a breakfast for the daughter of yonder bold General?”—
pointing to a full-length of his gold-laced grandfather on the
opposite wall. “Well, pitiable is my case when I have to
breakfast for two. Dates!”
“Sir.”
“Remove that toast-rack, Dates; and this plate of tongue,
and bring the rolls nearer, and wheel the stand farther off,
good Dates.”
Having thus made generous room for himself, Pierre commenced
operations, interrupting his mouthfuls by many sallies
of mirthfulness.
“You seem to be in prodigious fine spirits this morning,
brother Pierre,” said his mother.
“Yes, very tolerable; at least I can't say, that I am low-spirited
three bowls of milk.”
“One bowl, sir, you mean,” said Dates, gravely and imperturbably.
As the servitor left the room, Mrs. Glendinning spoke. “My
dear Pierre, how often have I begged you never to permit your
hilariousness to betray you into overstepping the exact line of
propriety in your intercourse with servants. Dates' look was
a respectful reproof to you just now. You must not call
Dates, My fine fellow. He is a fine fellow, a very fine fellow,
indeed; but there is no need of telling him so at my table. It
is very easy to be entirely kind and pleasant to servants, without
the least touch of any shade of transient good-fellowship
with them.”
“Well, sister, no doubt you are altogether right; after this I
shall drop the fine, and call Dates nothing but fellow;—Fellow,
come here!—how will that answer?”
“Not at all, Pierre—but you are a Romeo, you know, and
so for the present I pass over your nonsense.”
“Romeo! oh, no. I am far from being Romeo—” sighed
Pierre. “I laugh, but he cried; poor Romeo! alas Romeo!
woe is me, Romeo! he came to a very deplorable end, did
Romeo, sister Mary.”
“It was his own fault though.”
“Poor Romeo!”
“He was disobedient to his parents.”
“Alas Romeo!”
“He married against their particular wishes.”
“Woe is me, Romeo!”
“But you, Pierre, are going to be married before long, I
trust, not to a Capulet, but to one of our own Montagues; and
so Romeo's evil fortune will hardly be yours. You will be
happy.”
“The more miserable Romeo!”
“Don't be so ridiculous, brother Pierre; so you are going to
take Lucy that long ride among the hills this morning? She
is a sweet girl; a most lovely girl.”
“Yes, that is rather my opinion, sister Mary.—By heavens,
mother, the five zones hold not such another! She is—yes—
though I say it—Dates!—he's a precious long time getting
that milk!”
“Let him stay.—Don't be a milk-sop, Pierre!”
“Ha! my sister is a little satirical this morning. I comprehend.”
“Never rave, Pierre; and never rant. Your father never
did either; nor is it written of Socrates; and both were very
wise men. Your father was profoundly in love—that I know
to my certain knowledge—but I never heard him rant about it.
He was always exceedingly gentlemanly: and gentlemen never
rant. Milk-sops and Muggletonians rant, but gentlemen never.”
“Thank you, sister.—There, put it down, Dates; are the
horses ready?”
“Just driving round, sir, I believe.”
“Why, Pierre,” said his mother, glancing out at the window,
“are you going to Santa Fe De Bogota with that enormous old
phaeton;—what do you take that Juggernaut out for?”
“Humor, sister, humor; I like it because it's old-fashioned,
and because the seat is such a wide sofa of a seat, and finally
because a young lady by the name of Lucy Tartan cherishes a
high regard for it. She vows she would like to be married in
it.”
“Well, Pierre, all I have to say, is, be sure that Christopher
puts the coach-hammer and nails, and plenty of cords and
screws into the box. And you had better let him follow you in
one of the farm wagons, with a spare axle and some boards.”
“No fear, sister; no fear;—I shall take the best of care of
the old phaeton. The quaint old arms on the panel, always
remind me who it was that first rode in it.”
“I am glad you have that memory, brother Pierre.”
“And who it was that next rode in it.”
“Bless you!—God bless you, my dear son!—always think
of him and you can never err; yes, always think of your dear
perfect father, Pierre.”
“Well, kiss me now, dear sister, for I must go.”
“There; this is my cheek, and the other is Lucy's; though
now that I look at them both, I think that hers is getting to
be the most blooming; sweeter dews fall on that one, I suppose.”
Pierre laughed, and ran out of the room, for old Christopher
was getting impatient. His mother went to the window and
stood there.
“A noble boy, and docile”—she murmured—“he has all the
frolicsomeness of youth, with little of its giddiness. And he
does not grow vain-glorious in sophomorean wisdom. I thank
heaven I sent him not to college. A noble boy, and docile. A
fine, proud, loving, docile, vigorous boy. Pray God, he never
becomes otherwise to me. His little wife, that is to be, will not
estrange him from me; for she too is docile,—beautiful, and
reverential, and most docile. Seldom yet have I known such
blue eyes as hers, that were not docile, and would not follow a
bold black one, as two meek blue-ribboned ewes, follow their
martial leader. How glad am I that Pierre loves her so, and
not some dark-eyed haughtiness, with whom I could never live
in peace; but who would be ever setting her young married
state before my elderly widowed one, and claiming all the homage
of my dear boy—the fine, proud, loving, docile, vigorous
boy!—the lofty-minded, well-born, noble boy; and with such
sweet docilities! See his hair! He does in truth illustrate
that fine saying of his father's, that as the noblest colts, in three
points—abundant hair, swelling chest, and sweet docility—
should resemble a fine woman, so should a noble youth. Well,
good-bye, Pierre, and a merry morning to ye!”
So saying she crossed the room, and—resting in a corner—
her glad proud eye met the old General's baton, which the day
before in one of his frolic moods Pierre had taken from its accustomed
place in the pictured-bannered hall. She lifted it, and
musingly swayed it to and fro; then paused, and staff-wise
rested with it in her hand. Her stately beauty had ever somewhat
martial in it; and now she looked the daughter of a
General, as she was; for Pierre's was a double revolutionary
descent. On both sides he sprung from heroes.
“This is his inheritance—this symbol of command! and I
swell out to think it. Yet but just now I fondled the conceit
that Pierre was so sweetly docile! Here sure is a most strange
inconsistency! For is sweet docility a general's badge? and is
this baton but a distaff then?—Here's something widely wrong.
Now I almost wish him otherwise than sweet and docile to me,
seeing that it must be hard for man to be an uncompromising
hero and a commander among his race, and yet never ruffle
any domestic brow. Pray heaven he show his heroicness in
some smooth way of favoring fortune, not be called out to be a
hero of some dark hope forlorn;—of some dark hope forlorn,
whose cruelness makes a savage of a man. Give him, O God,
regardful gales! Fan him with unwavering prosperities! So
shall he remain all docility to me, and yet prove a haughty
hero to the world!”
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |