 | Pierre, or, The ambiguities |  |
15. BOOK XV.
THE COUSINS.
I.
Though resolved to face all out to the last, at whatever desperate
hazard, Pierre had not started for the city without some
reasonable plans, both with reference to his more immediate
circumstances, and his ulterior condition.
There resided in the city a cousin of his, Glendinning Stanly,
better known in the general family as Glen Stanly, and by
Pierre, as Cousin Glen. Like Pierre, he was an only son; his
parents had died in his early childhood; and within the present
year he had returned from a protracted sojourn in Europe,
to enter, at the age of twenty-one, into the untrammeled possession
of a noble property, which in the hands of faithful guardians,
had largely accumulated.
In their boyhood and earlier adolescence, Pierre and Glen
had cherished a much more than cousinly attachment. At the
age of ten, they had furnished an example of the truth, that
the friendship of fine-hearted, generous boys, nurtured amid the
romance-engendering comforts and elegancies of life, sometimes
transcends the bounds of mere boyishness, and revels for a
while in the empyrean of a love which only comes short, by one
degree, of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes.
Nor is this boy-love without the occasional fillips and spicinesses,
permanent delights of those more advanced lovers who love beneath
the cestus of Venus. Jealousies are felt. The sight of
another lad too much consorting with the boy's beloved object,
shall fill him with emotions akin to those of Othello's; a fancied
slight, or lessening of the every-day indications of warm
feelings, shall prompt him to bitter upbraidings and reproaches;
or shall plunge him into evil moods, for which grim solitude
only is congenial.
Nor are the letters of Aphroditean devotees more charged
with headlong vows and protestations, more cross-written and
crammed with discursive sentimentalities, more undeviating in
their semi-weekliness, or dayliness, as the case may be, than
are the love-friendship missives of boys. Among those bundles
of papers which Pierre, in an ill hour, so frantically destroyed
in the chamber of the inn, were two large packages of
letters, densely written, and in many cases inscribed crosswise
throughout with red ink upon black; so that the love in those
letters was two layers deep, and one pen and one pigment
were insufficient to paint it. The first package contained the
letters of Glen to Pierre, the other those of Pierre to Glen,
which, just prior to Glen's departure for Europe, Pierre had
obtained from him, in order to re-read them in his absence,
and so fortify himself the more in his affection, by reviving
reference to the young, ardent hours of its earliest manifestations.
But as the advancing fruit itself extrudes the beautiful blossom,
so in many cases, does the eventual love for the other sex
forever dismiss the preliminary love-friendship of boys. The
mere outer friendship may in some degree—greater or less—
survive; but the singular love in it has perishingly dropped
away.
If in the eye of unyielding reality and truth, the earthly
heart of man do indeed ever fix upon some one woman, to
single shadow of the misgiving of its faith; and who, to him,
does perfectly embody his finest, loftiest dream of feminine loveliness,
if this indeed be so—and may Heaven grant that it be
—nevertheless, in metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed
lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate
settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one
specific object; as admonished, that the wonderful scope and
variety of female loveliness, if too long suffered to sway us without
decision, shall finally confound all power of selection. The
confirmed bachelor is, in America, at least, quite as often the
victim of a too profound appreciation of the infinite charmingness
of woman, as made solitary for life by the legitimate empire
of a cold and tasteless temperament.
Though the peculiar heart-longings pertaining to his age,
had at last found their glowing response in the bosom of Lucy;
yet for some period prior to that, Pierre had not been insensible
to the miscellaneous promptings of the passion. So that
even before he became a declarative lover, Love had yet made
him her general votary; and so already there had gradually
come a cooling over that ardent sentiment which in earlier
years he had cherished for Glen.
All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's
ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the
pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of the age. If the general
love for women, had in Pierre sensibly modified his particular
sentiment toward Glen; neither had the thousand nameless
fascinations of the then brilliant paradises of France and Italy,
failed to exert their seductive influence on many of the previous
feelings of Glen. For as the very best advantages of life are
not without some envious drawback, so it is among the evils of
enlarged foreign travel, that in young and unsolid minds, it dislodges
some of the finest feelings of the home-born nature; replacing
them with a fastidious superciliousness, which like the
to a political legend—grind its daily coffee in any mill save of
European manufacture, and was satirically said to have thought
of importing European air for domestic consumption. The
mutually curtailed, lessening, long-postponed, and at last altogether
ceasing letters of Pierre and Glen were the melancholy
attestations of a fact, which perhaps neither of them took very
severely to heart, as certainly, concerning it, neither took the
other to task.
In the earlier periods of that strange transition from the
generous impulsiveness of youth to the provident circumspectness
of age, there generally intervenes a brief pause of unpleasant
reconsidering; when finding itself all wide of its former
spontaneous self, the soul hesitates to commit itself wholly to
selfishness; more than repents its wanderings;—yet all this is
but transient; and again hurried on by the swift current of
life, the prompt-hearted boy scarce longer is to be recognized in
matured man,—very slow to feel, deliberate even in love, and
statistical even in piety. During the sway of this peculiar period,
the boy shall still make some strenuous efforts to retrieve
his departing spontanieties; but so alloyed are all such endeavors
with the incipiencies of selfishness, that they were best not
made at all; since too often they seem but empty and self-deceptive
sallies, or still worse, the merest hypocritical assumptions.
Upon the return of Glen from abroad, the commonest courtesy,
not to say the blood-relation between them, prompted
Pierre to welcome him home, with a letter, which though not
over-long, and little enthusiastic, still breathed a spirit of cousinly
consideration and kindness, pervadingly touched by the
then naturally frank and all-attractive spirit of Pierre. To this,
the less earnest and now Europeanized Glen had replied in a
letter all sudden suavity; and in a strain of artistic artlessness,
mourned the apparent decline of their friendship; yet fondly
would revive with added sincerity. Yet upon accidentally fixing
his glance upon the opening salutation of this delicate missive,
Pierre thought he perceived certain, not wholly disguisable
chirographic tokens, that the “My very dear Pierre,” with which
the letter seemed to have been begun, had originally been
written “Dear Pierre;” but that when all was concluded, and
Glen's signature put to it, then the ardent words “My very”
had been prefixed to the reconsidered “Dear Pierre;” a casual
supposition, which possibly, however unfounded, materially retarded
any answering warmth in Pierre, lest his generous flame
should only embrace a flaunted feather. Nor was this idea
altogether unreinforced, when on the reception of a second, and
now half-business letter (of which mixed sort nearly all the subsequent
ones were), from Glen, he found that the “My very
dear Pierre” had already retreated into “My dear Pierre;” and
on a third occasion, into “Dear Pierre;” and on a fourth,
had made a forced and very spirited advanced march up to
“My dearest Pierre.” All of which fluctuations augured ill for
the determinateness of that love, which, however immensely
devoted to one cause, could yet hoist and sail under the flags
of all nations. Nor could he but now applaud a still subsequent
letter from Glen, which abruptly, and almost with apparent
indecorousness, under the circumstances, commenced the
strain of friendship without any overture of salutation whatever;
as if at last, owing to its infinite delicateness, entirely
hopeless of precisely defining the nature of their mystical love,
Glen chose rather to leave that precise definition to the sympathetical
heart and imagination of Pierre; while he himself
would go on to celebrate the general relation, by many a sugared
sentence of miscellaneous devotion. It was a little curious
and rather sardonically diverting, to compare these masterly,
yet not wholly successful, and indeterminate tactics of the
accomplished Glen, with the unfaltering stream of Beloved
his earlier letters, but here and there, from their subterranean
channel, flashed out in bright intervals, through all the
succeeding lines. Nor had the chance recollection of these
things at all restrained the reckless hand of Pierre, when he
threw the whole package of letters, both new and old, into that
most honest and summary of all elements, which is neither a
respecter of persons, nor a finical critic of what manner of
writings it burns; but like ultimate Truth itself, of which it is
the eloquent symbol, consumes all, and only consumes.
When the betrothment of Pierre to Lucy had become an
acknowledged thing, the courtly Glen, besides the customary
felicitations upon that event, had not omitted so fit an opportunity
to re-tender to his cousin all his previous jars of honey
and treacle, accompanied by additional boxes of candied citron
and plums. Pierre thanked him kindly; but in certain little
roguish ambiguities begged leave, on the ground of cloying, to
return him inclosed by far the greater portion of his present;
whose non-substantialness was allegorically typified in the containing
letter itself, prepaid with only the usual postage.
True love, as eve one knows, will still withstand many repulses,
even though rude. But whether it was the love or the
politeness of Glen, which on this occasion proved invincible, is
a matter we will not discuss. Certain it was, that quite undaunted,
Glen nobly returned to the charge, and in a very
prompt and unexpected answer, extended to Pierre all the
courtesies of the general city, and all the hospitalities of five
sumptuous chambers, which he and his luxurious environments
contrived nominally to occupy in the most fashionable private
hotel of a very opulent town. Nor did Glen rest here; but
like Napoleon, now seemed bent upon gaining the battle by
throwing all his regiments upon one point of attack, and gaining
that point at all hazards. Hearing of some rumor at the
tables of his relatives that the day was being fixed for the positive
for his rosiest sheet, and with scented ink, and a pen of gold,
indited a most burnished and redolent letter, which, after invoking
all the blessings of Apollo and Venus, and the Nine
Muses, and the Cardinal Virtues upon the coming event; concluded
at last with a really magnificent testimonial to his love.
According to this letter, among his other real estate in the
city, Glen had inherited a very charming, little, old house,
completely furnished in the style of the last century, in a
quarter of the city which, though now not so garishly fashionable
as of yore, still in its quiet secludedness, possessed great
attractions for the retired billings and cooings of a honeymoon.
Indeed he begged leave now to christen it the Cooery, and if
after his wedding jaunt, Pierre would deign to visit the city
with his bride for a month or two's sojourn, then the Cooery
would be but too happy in affording him a harbor. His sweet
cousin need be under no apprehension. Owing to the absence
of any fit applicant for it, the house had now long been without
a tenant, save an old, confidential, bachelor clerk of his
father's, who on a nominal rent, and more by way of safe-keeping
to the house than any thing else, was now hanging up his
well-furbished hat in its hall. This accommodating old clerk
would quickly unpeg his beaver at the first hint of new occupants.
Glen would charge himself with supplying the house
in advance with a proper retinue of servants; fires would be
made in the long-unoccupied chambers; the venerable, grotesque,
old mahoganies, and marbles, and mirror-frames, and
moldings could be very soon dusted and burnished; the
kitchen was amply provided with the necessary utensils for
cooking; the strong box of old silver immemorially pertaining
to the mansion, could be readily carted round from the vaults
of the neighboring Bank; while the hampers of old china, still
retained in the house, needed but little trouble to unpack; so
that silver and china would soon stand assorted in their appropriate
of the city's water would not fail to contribute its ingredient to
the concocting of a welcoming glass of negus before retiring on
the first night of their arrival.
The over-fastidiousness of some unhealthily critical minds, as
well as the moral pusillanimity of others, equally bars the acceptance
of effectually substantial favors from persons whose
motive in proffering them, is not altogether clear and unimpeachable;
and toward whom, perhaps, some prior coolness or
indifference has been shown. But when the acceptance of such
a favor would be really convenient and desirable to the one
party, and completely unattended with any serious distress to
the other; there would seem to be no sensible objection to an
immediate embrace of the offer. And when the acceptor is in
rank and fortune the general equal of the profferer, and perhaps
his superior, so that any courtesy he receives, can be amply returned
in the natural course of future events, then all motives
to decline are very materially lessened. And as for the
thousand inconceivable finicalnesses of small pros and cons
about imaginary fitnesses, and proprieties, and self-consistencies;
thank heaven, in the hour of heart-health, none such shilly-shallying
sail-trimmers ever balk the onward course of a bluff-minded
man. He takes the world as it is; and carelessly accommodates
himself to its whimsical humors; nor ever feels
any compunction at receiving the greatest possible favors from
those who are as able to grant, as free to bestow. He himself
bestows upon occasion; so that, at bottom, common charity
steps in to dictate a favorable consideration for all possible profferings;
seeing that the acceptance shall only the more enrich
him, indirectly, for new and larger beneficences of his own.
And as for those who noways pretend with themselves to
regulate their deportment by considerations of genuine benevolence,
and to whom such courteous profferings hypocritically
come from persons whom they suspect for secret enemies; then
forbid the uncivil blank repulse of such offers; but if they are
secretly malicious as well as frigid, or if they are at all capable
of being fully gratified by the sense of concealed superiority and
mastership (which precious few men are) then how delightful
for such persons under the guise of mere acquiescence in his
own voluntary civilities, to make genteel use of their foe. For
one would like to know, what were foes made for except to be
used? In the rude ages men hunted and javelined the tiger,
because they hated him for a mischief-minded wild-beast; but
in these enlightened times, though we love the tiger as little as
ever, still we mostly hunt him for the sake of his skin. A wise
man then will wear his tiger; every morning put on his tiger
for a robe to keep him warm and adorn him. In this view, foes
are far more desirable than friends; for who would hunt and
kill his own faithful affectionate dog for the sake of his skin?
and is a dog's skin as valuable as a tiger's? Cases there are
where it becomes soberly advisable, by direct arts to convert some
well-wishers into foes. It is false that in point of policy a man
should never make enemies. As well-wishers some men may
not only be nugatory but positive obstacles in your peculiar
plans; but as foes you may subordinately cement them into
your general design.
But into these ulterior refinements of cool Tuscan policy,
Pierre as yet had never become initiated; his experiences hitherto
not having been varied and ripe enough for that; besides,
he had altogether too much generous blood in his heart. Nevertheless,
thereafter, in a less immature hour, though still he
shall not have the heart to practice upon such maxims as the
above, yet shall he have the brain thoroughly to comprehend
their practicability; which is not always the case. And generally,
in worldly wisdom, men will deny to one the possession
of all insight, which one does not by his every-day outward life
practically reveal. It is a very common error of some unscrupulously
knavish men, to suppose that believing men, or benevolent-hearted
men, or good men, do not know enough to be unscrupulously
selfish, do not know enough to be unscrupulous
knaves. And thus—thanks to the world!—are there many spies
in the world's camp, who are mistaken for strolling simpletons.
And these strolling simpletons seem to act upon the principle,
that in certain things, we do not so much learn, by showing
that already we know a vast deal, as by negatively seeming
rather ignorant. But here we press upon the frontiers of that
sort of wisdom, which it is very well to possess, but not sagacious
to show that you possess. Still, men there are, who having
quite done with the world, all its mere worldly contents are
become so far indifferent, that they care little of what mere
worldly imprudence they may be guilty.
Now, if it were not conscious considerations like the really
benevolent or neutral ones first mentioned above, it was certainly
something akin to them, which had induced Pierre to
return a straightforward, manly, and entire acceptance to his
cousin of the offer of the house; thanking him, over and
over, for his most supererogatory kindness concerning the preengagement
of servants and so forth, and the setting in order
of the silver and china; but reminding him, nevertheless, that
he had overlooked all special mention of wines, and begged
him to store the bins with a few of the very best brands. He
would likewise be obliged, if he would personally purchase at
a certain celebrated grocer's, a small bag of undoubted Mocha
coffee; but Glen need not order it to be roasted or ground,
because Pierre preferred that both those highly important and
flavor-deciding operations should be performed instantaneously
previous to the final boiling and serving. Nor did he say
that he would pay for the wines and the Mocha; he contented
himself with merely stating the remissness on the part of his
cousin, and pointing out the best way of remedying it.
He concluded his letter by intimating that though the rumor
of a set day, and a near one, for his nuptials, was unhappily
but ill-founded, yet he would not hold Glen's generous offer as
merely based upon that presumption, and consequently falling
with it; but on the contrary, would consider it entirely good
for whatever time it might prove available to Pierre. He was
betrothed beyond a peradventure; and hoped to be married
ere death. Meanwhile, Glen would further oblige him by
giving the confidential clerk a standing notice to quit.
Though at first quite amazed at this letter,—for indeed, his
offer might possibly have proceeded as much from ostentation
as any thing else, nor had he dreamed of so unhesitating an
acceptance,—Pierre's cousin was too much of a precocious
young man of the world, disclosedly to take it in any other
than a very friendly, and cousinly, and humorous, and yet
practical way; which he plainly evinced by a reply far more
sincere and every way creditable, apparently, both to his heart
and head, than any letter he had written to Pierre since the
days of their boyhood. And thus, by the bluffness and, in
some sort, uncompunctuousness of Pierre, this very artificial
youth was well betrayed into an act of effective kindness;
being forced now to drop the empty mask of ostentation, and
put on the solid hearty features of a genuine face. And just
so, are some people in the world to be joked into occasional
effective goodness, when all coyness, and coolness, all resentments,
and all solemn preaching, would fail.
II.
But little would we comprehend the peculiar relation between
Pierre and Glen—a relation involving in the end the
most serious results—were there not here thrown over the
whole equivocal, preceding account of it, another and more
in itself; and so make one pervading ambiguity the only possible
explanation for all the ambiguous details.
It had long been imagined by Pierre, that prior to his own
special devotion to Lucy, the splendid Glen had not been entirely
insensible to her surprising charms. Yet this conceit in
its incipiency, he knew not how to account for. Assuredly his
cousin had never in the slightest conceivable hint betrayed
it; and as for Lucy, the same intuitive delicacy which forever
forbade Pierre to question her on the subject, did equally close
her own voluntary lips. Between Pierre and Lucy, delicateness
put her sacred signet on this chest of secrecy; which like the wax
of an executor upon a desk, though capable of being melted
into nothing by the smallest candle, for all this, still possesses to
the reverent the prohibitive virtue of inexorable bars and bolts.
If Pierre superficially considered the deportment of Glen
toward him, therein he could find no possible warrant for indulging
the suspicious idea. Doth jealousy smile so benignantly
and offer its house to the bride? Still, on the other
hand, to quit the mere surface of the deportment of Glen, and
penetrate beneath its brocaded vesture; there Pierre sometimes
seemed to see the long-lurking and yet unhealed wound of all
a rejected lover's most rankling detestation of a supplanting
rival, only intensified by their former friendship, and the unimpairable
blood-relation between them. Now, viewed by the
light of this master-solution, all the singular enigmas in Glen;
his capriciousness in the matter of the epistolary—“Dear
Pierres'” and “Dearest Pierres;” the mercurial fall from the
fever-heat of cordiality, to below the Zero of indifference; then
the contrary rise to fever-heat; and, above all, his emphatic
redundancy of devotion so soon as the positive espousals of
Pierre seemed on the point of consummation; thus read, all
these riddles apparently found their cunning solution. For the
deeper that some men feel a secret and poignant feeling, the
of Glen then was to be considered as in direct proportion
to his hoarded hate; and the climax of that hate was evinced
in throwing open his house to the bride. Yet if hate was the
abstract cause, hate could not be the immediate motive of the
conduct of Glen. Is hate so hospitable? The immediate motive
of Glen then must be the intense desire to disguise from the
wide world, a fact unspeakably humiliating to his gold-laced
and haughty soul: the fact that in the profoundest desire of
his heart, Pierre had so victoriously supplanted him. Yet was
it that very artful deportment in Glen, which Glen profoundly
assumed to this grand end; that consummately artful deportment
it was, which first obtruded upon Pierre the surmise,
which by that identical method his cousin was so absorbedly
intent upon rendering impossible to him. Hence we here see
that as in the negative way the secrecy of any strong emotion is
exceedingly difficult to be kept lastingly private to one's own
bosom by any human being; so it is one of the most fruitless
undertakings in the world, to attempt by affirmative assumptions
to tender to men, the precisely opposite emotion as
yours. Therefore the final wisdom decrees, that if you have
aught which you desire to keep a secret to yourself, be a
Quietist there, and do and say nothing at all about it. For
among all the poor chances, this is the least poor. Pretensions
and substitutions are only the recourse of under-graduates in
the science of the world; in which science, on his own ground,
my Lord Chesterfield, is the poorest possible preceptor. The
earliest instinct of the child, and the ripest experience of age,
unite in affirming simplicity to be the truest and profoundest
part for man. Likewise this simplicity is so universal and all-containing
as a rule for human life, that the subtlest bad man,
and the purest good man, as well as the profoundest wise man,
do all alike present it on that side which they socially turn to
the inquisitive and unscrupulous world.
III.
Now the matter of the house had remained in precisely the
above-stated awaiting predicament, down to the time of Pierre's
great life-revolution, the receipt of Isabel's letter. And though,
indeed, Pierre could not but naturally hesitate at still accepting
the use of the dwelling, under the widely different circumstances
in which he now found himself; and though at first the
strongest possible spontaneous objections on the ground of personal
independence, pride, and general scorn, all clamorously
declared in his breast against such a course; yet, finally, the
same uncompunctuous, ever-adaptive sort of motive which had
induced his original acceptation, prompted him, in the end, still
to maintain it unrevoked. It would at once set him at rest
from all immediate tribulations of mere bed and board; and
by affording him a shelter, for an indefinite term, enable him
the better to look about him, and consider what could best be
done to further the permanent comfort of those whom Fate had
intrusted to his charge.
Irrespective, it would seem, of that wide general awaking of
his profounder being, consequent upon the extraordinary trials
he had so aggregatively encountered of late; the thought was
indignantly suggested to him, that the world must indeed be
organically despicable, if it held that an offer, superfluously accepted
in the hour of his abundance, should now, be rejected
in that of his utmost need. And without at all imputing any
singularity of benevolent-mindedness to his cousin, he did not
for a moment question, that under the changed aspect of
affairs, Glen would at least pretend the more eagerly to welcome
him to the house, now that the mere thing of apparent
courtesy had become transformed into something like a thing
of positive and urgent necessity. When Pierre also considered
that not himself only was concerned, but likewise two peculiarly
by the most sacred ties, and lately inspiring an emotion which
passed all human precedent in its mixed and mystical import;
these added considerations completely overthrew in Pierre all
remaining dictates of his vague pride and false independence, if
such indeed had ever been his.
Though the interval elapsing between his decision to depart
with his companions for the city, and his actual start in the
coach, had not enabled him to receive any replying word from
his cousin; and though Pierre knew better than to expect it;
yet a preparative letter to him he had sent; and did not doubt
that this proceeding would prove well-advised in the end.
In naturally strong-minded men, however young and inexperienced
in some things, those great and sudden emergencies,
which but confound the timid and the weak, only serve to call
forth all their generous latentness, and teach them, as by inspiration,
extraordinary maxims of conduct, whose counterpart, in
other men, is only the result of a long, variously-tried and
pains-taking life. One of those maxims is, that when, through
whatever cause, we are suddenly translated from opulence to
need, or from a fair fame to a foul; and straightway it becomes
necessary not to contradict the thing—so far at least as the
mere imputation goes,—to some one previously entertaining high
conventional regard for us, and from whom we would now
solicit some genuine helping offices; then, all explanation or palation
should be scorned; promptness, boldness, utter gladiatorianism,
and a defiant non-humility should mark every syllable
we breathe, and every line we trace.
The preparative letter of Pierre to Glen, plunged at once
into the very heart of the matter, and was perhaps the briefest
letter he had ever written him. Though by no means are
such characteristics invariable exponents of the predominant
mood or general disposition of a man (since so accidental a
thing as a numb finger, or a bad quill, or poor ink, or squalid
yet in the present instance, the handwriting of Pierre happened
plainly to attest and corroborate the spirit of his communication.
The sheet was large; but the words were placarded
upon it in heavy though rapid lines, only six or eight to the
page. And as the footman of a haughty visitor—some Count
or Duke—announces the chariot of his lord by a thunderous
knock on the portal; so to Glen did Pierre, in the broad,
sweeping, and prodigious superscription of his letter, forewarn
him what manner of man was on the road.
In the moment of strong feeling a wonderful condensativeness
points the tongue and pen; so that ideas, then enunciated
sharp and quick as minute-guns, in some other hour of unruffledness
or unstimulatedness, require considerable time and
trouble to verbally recall.
Not here and now can we set down the precise contents of
Pierre's letter, without a tautology illy doing justice to the ideas
themselves. And though indeed the dread of tautology be the
continual torment of some earnest minds, and, as such, is surely
a weakness in them; and though no wise man will wonder
at conscientious Virgil all eager at death to burn his Æniad for
a monstrous heap of inefficient superfluity; yet not to dread
tautology at times only belongs to those enviable dunces, whom
the partial God hath blessed, over all the earth, with the inexhaustible
self-riches of vanity, and folly, and a blind self-complacency.
Some rumor of the discontinuance of his betrothment to
Lucy Tartan; of his already consummated marriage with a poor
and friendless orphan; of his mother's disowning him consequent
upon these events; such rumors, Pierre now wrote to his
cousin, would very probably, in the parlors of his city-relatives
and acquaintances, precede his arrival in town. But he hinted
no word of any possible commentary on these things. He
simply went on to say, that now, through the fortune of life—
was, for the present, thrown entirely upon his own resources,
both for his own support and that of his wife, as well as for
the temporary maintenance of a girl, whom he had lately had
excellent reason for taking under his especial protection. He
proposed a permanent residence in the city; not without some
nearly quite settled plans as to the procuring of a competent
income, without any ulterior reference to any member of their
wealthy and widely ramified family. The house, whose temporary
occupancy Glen had before so handsomely proffered him,
would now be doubly and trebly desirable to him. But the
pre-engaged servants, and the old china, and the old silver, and
the old wines, and the Mocha, were now become altogether unnecessary.
Pierre would merely take the place—for a short interval—of
the worthy old clerk; and, so far as Glen was concerned,
simply stand guardian of the dwelling, till his plans
were matured. His cousin had originally made his most
bounteous overture, to welcome the coming of the presumed
bride of Pierre; and though another lady had now taken her
place at the altar, yet Pierre would still regard the offer of Glen
as impersonal in that respect, and bearing equal reference to
any young lady, who should prove her claim to the possessed
hand of Pierre.
Since there was no universal law of opinion in such matters,
Glen, on general worldly grounds, might not consider the real
Mrs. Glendinning altogether so suitable a match for Pierre, as
he possibly might have held numerous other young ladies in
his eye: nevertheless, Glen would find her ready to return
with sincerity all his cousinly regard and attention. In conclusion,
Pierre said, that he and his party meditated an immediate
departure, and would very probably arrive in town in eight-and-forty
hours after the mailing of the present letter. He therefore
begged Glen to see the more indispensable domestic appliances
of the house set in some little order against their arrival;
confidential clerk of what he might soon expect. Then, without
any tapering sequel of—“Yours, very truly and faithfully,
my dear Cousin Glen,” he finished the letter with the abrupt
and isolated signature of—“Pierre.”
| Pierre, or, The ambiguities | |