 Book 8 of Pierre, or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville. This liberal box recording is in the public domain. The second interview at the farmhouse, and the second part of the story of Isabel, their immediate impulsive effect upon Pierre. Chapter 1. His second interview with Isabel was more satisfying but nonetheless affecting and mystical than the first, though in the beginning, to his no small surprise it was far more strange and embarrassing. As before, Isabel herself admitted him into the farmhouse and spoke no word to him till they were both seated in the room of the double casement and himself had first addressed her. If Pierre had any way predetermined how to deport himself at the moment, it was to manifest by some outward token the utmost affection for his sister. But her rapt silence and that atmosphere of unearthliness which invested her now froze him to his seat, his arms refused to open, his lips refused to meet in the fraternal kiss, while all the while his heart was overflowing with the deepest love. And he knew full well that his presence was inexpressibly grateful to the girl, never did love and reverence so intimately react and blend, never did pity so join with wonder in casting a spell upon the movements of his body and impeding him in its command. After a few embarrassed words from Pierre and a brief reply, a pause ensued during which not only was the slow, soft stepping overhead quite audible as that intervals on the night before, but also some slight domestic sounds were heard from the adjoining room. And noticing the unconsciously interrogating expression of Pierre's face, Isabelle thus spoke to him. I feel my brother that thou dost appreciate the peculiarity and the mystery of my life and of myself, and therefore I am at rest concerning the possibility of thy misconstruing any of my actions. It is only when people refuse to admit the uncommonness of some persons and the circumstances surrounding them that erroneous conceits are nourished and their feelings pained. My brother, if ever I shall seem reserved and unembracing to thee, still thou must ever trust the heart of Isabelle and permit no doubt to cross thee there. My brother, the sounds thou hast just overheard in yonder room have suggested to thee interesting questions connected with myself. Do not speak. I fervently understand thee. I will tell thee upon what terms I have been living here and how it is that I, a hired person, am enabled to receive thee in this seemingly privacy. For as thou mayest very readily imagine, this room is not my own, and this reminds me also that I have yet some few further trifling things to tell thee respecting the circumstances which have ended in bestowing upon me so angelical a brother. I cannot retain that word, said Pierre, with earnest loneness and drawing a little nearer to her, of right it only pertains to thee. My brother, I will now go on and tell thee all that I think thou couldst wish to know in addition to what was so dimly rehearsed last night. Some three months ago the people of the distant farmhouse where I was then staying broke up their household and departed for some western country. No place immediately presented itself where my services were wanted, but I was hospitably received at an old neighbor's heart and most kindly invited to tarry there till some employ should offer. But I did not wait for a chance to help me. My enquiries resulted in ascertaining this sad story of Deli Alver and that through the fate which had overtaken her, her aged parents were not only plunged into the most poignant grief but were deprived of the domestic help of an only daughter, a circumstance whose deep discomfort cannot be easily realized by persons who have always been ministered to by servants. Though indeed my natural mood, if I may call it so, for want of a better term was strangely touched by thinking that the misery of Deli should be the source of benefit to me, yet this had no practically operative effect upon me. My most inmost and truest thoughts seldom had. And so I came hither and my hands were tested by that I did not come entirely for naught. Now my brother, since thou didst leave me yesterday, I have felt no small surprise that thou didst not then seek from me how and when I came to learn the name of Glen Denning as so closely associated with myself. And now I came to know saddle meadows to be the family seat and how I at last resolved upon addressing thee, Pierre and none other into what may be attributed that very memorable scene in the sewing circle at the Miss Penney's. I had myself been wondering at myself that these things should hither to have so entirely absent of themselves from my mind, responded Pierre, but truly, Isabel, thy all-abounding hair falls upon me with some spell which dismisses all ordinary considerations from me and leaves me only sensible to the Nubian power in thine eyes. But go on and tell me everything and anything I desire to know all, Isabel, and yet nothing which thou wilt not voluntarily disclose. I feel that already I know the pith of all that already I feel toward thee to the very limit of all and that whatever remains for thee to tell me can but corroborate and confirm. So go on, my dearest I, my only sister. Isabel fixed her wonderful eyes upon him with the gaze of long impassionment, then rose suddenly to her feet and advanced swiftly toward him, but more suddenly paused and reseeded herself in silence and continued so for a time, with her head averted from him, and mutely resting on her hand, gazing out of the open casement upon the soft heat lightning occasionally revealed there. She resumed anon. Chapter 2 My brother, thou wilt remember that certain part of my story which in reference to my more childish years spent remote from here introduced the gentleman, my, yes, our father Pierre. I cannot describe to thee for indeed I do not myself comprehend how it was that though at the time I sometimes called him my father and the people of the house also called him so, sometimes when speaking of him to me, yet partly I suppose because of the extraordinary secludedness of my previous life I did not then join in my mind with the word father all those peculiar associations which the term ordinarily inspires in children. The word father only seemed a word of general love and endearment to me little or nothing more. It did not seem to involve any claims of any sort one way or the other. I did not ask the name of my father for I could have had no motive to hear him named except to individualize the person who was so peculiarly kind to me and individualized in that way he already was since he was generally called by us the gentleman and sometimes my father. As I have no reason to suppose that had I then or afterward questioned the people of the house as to what more particular name my father went by in the world they would have it all disclosed it to me and indeed since for certain singular reasons I now feel convinced that on that point they were pledged to secrecy. I do not know that I ever would have come to learn my father's name and by consequence ever have learned the least shade or shadow of knowledge as to you Pierre or any of your kin. Had it not been for the nearest little accident which early revealed it to me though at the moment I did not know the value of that knowledge the last time my father visited the house he chance to leave his handkerchief behind him it was the farmer's wife who first discovered it she picked it up and fumbling at it a moment as if rapidly examining the corners tossed it to me saying here Isabelle here is the good gentleman's handkerchief keep it for him now till he comes to see little Belle again gladly I caught the handkerchief and put it into my bosom it was a white one and upon closely scanning it I found a small line of fine faded yellowish writing in the middle of it at that time I could not read either print or writing so I was none the wiser than but still some secret instinct told me that the woman would not so freely have given me the handkerchief had she known there was any writing on it I for bore questioning her on the subject I waited till my father should return to secretly question him the handkerchief had become dusty by lying on the uncarpeted floor I took it to the book and washed it and laid it out on the grass where none were chance to pass and I ironed it under my little apron so that none would be attracted to it to look at it again but my father never returned so in my grief the handkerchief became the more and the more endeared to me it absorbed many of the secret tears I wept in memory of my dear departed friend whom in my childlike ignorance I then equally called my father and the gentleman but when the impression of his death became a fixed thing to me then again I washed and dried and ironed a precious memorial of him and put it away where none should find it but myself and resolve never more to soil it with my tears and I folded it in such a manner that the name was invisibly buried in the heart of it and it was like opening a book and turning over many blank leaves before I came to the mysterious writing which I knew should be one day read by me without direct help from anyone now I resolved to learn my letters and learn to read in order that of myself I might learn the meaning of those faded characters no other purpose but that only one did I have in learning them to read I easily induced the woman to give me my little teachings and being uncommonly quick and moreover most eager to learn I soon mastered the alphabet and went on to spelling and by and by to reading and at last to the complete deciphering of the talismanic word glendinning I was yet very ignorant glendinning thought I what is that it sounds something like gentlemen glendinning just as many syllables as gentlemen and G it begins with the same letter yes it must mean my father I will think of him by that word now I will not think of the gentleman but of glendinning when at last I removed from that house and went to another and still another and as I still grew up and thought more to myself that word was ever humming in my head I saw it would only prove the key to more but I repressed all undue curiosity if any such as ever filled my breast I would not ask of anyone who it was that had been glendinning where he had lived whether ever any other girl or boy had called him father as I had done I resolved to hold myself in perfect patience as somehow mystically certain that fate would at last disclose to me of itself and at the suitable time whatever fate thought it best for me to know but now my brother I must go aside a little for a moment hand me the guitar surprised and rejoiced thus far at the unanticipated newness and the sweet lucidness and simplicity of Isabelle's narrating as compared with the obscure and marvelous revelations of the night before for her to continue her story in the same limpid manner but remembering into what a holy tumultuous and unearthly frame of mind the melodies of her guitar had formally thrown him Pierre now in handing the instrument to Isabelle could not entirely restrain something like a look of half regret accompanied rather strangely with a half smile of gentle humor it did not pass unnoticed by his sister receiving the guitar looked up into his face within expression which are almost have been arch and playful were it not for the ever abiding shadows cast from her infinite hair into her unfathomed eyes and and redoubledly shot back again from them do not be alarmed my brother and do not smile at me I am not going to play the mystery of Isabelle to thee tonight draw nearer now hold the light near to me so saying she loosened some ivory screws of the guitar so as to open up peep lengthwise through its interior now hold it thus my brother thus and see what thou wilt see but wait one instant till I hold the lamp so saying as Pierre held the instrument before him as directed Isabelle held the lamp so as to cast its light through the round sounding hole into the heart of the guitar now Pierre now eagerly Pierre did as he was bid but somehow felt disappointed and yet surprised at what he saw he saw the word Isabelle quite legibly but still fadedly gilded upon a part of one side of the interior where it made a projecting curve a very curious place thou has chosen Isabelle we're into have the ownership of the guitar engraved how did ever any person get in there to do it I should like to know the girl looked surprisingly at him a moment then took the instrument from him and looked into it herself she put it down and continued I see my brother thou dost not comprehend when one knows everything about any object to suppose that the slightest hint will suffice to throw it quite as open to any other person I did not have the name gilded there my brother how quite Pierre the name was gilded there when I first got the guitar though then I did not know it the guitar must have been expressly made for someone by the name of Isabelle because the lettering could only have been put there it was put together go on hurry said Pierre yes one day after I had owned it a long time a strange wind came into me thou knowest that it is not at all uncommon for children to break their dearest play things in order to gratify a half crazy curiosity you'll find out what is in the hidden heart of them so it is with children sometimes and Pierre I've always been and feel that I must always be a child though I should grow to three school years and ten seized with this sudden when I unscrewed the part I showed thee and peeped in and saw Isabelle now I've not yet told me that from as early a time as I can remember I have nearly always gone by the name of Bell and at the particular time I now speak of my knowledge of general and trivial matters was sufficiently advanced to make quite a familiar thing to me that Bell was often a diminutive for Isabella or Isabelle it was therefore no very strange affair that considering my age and other connected circumstances at the time I should have instinctively associated the word Isabelle found in the guitar with my own abbreviated name and so be led into all sorts of fancings they return upon me now do not speak to me she leaned away from him toward the occasionally illuminated casement in the same manner as on the previous night and for a few moments seemed struggling with some wild wilderness but now she suddenly turned and fully confronted Pierre with all the wonderfulness of her most surprising face I am called woman and thou man Pierre but there is neither man nor woman about it why should I not speak out to thee there is no sex in our immaculateness Pierre the secret name in the guitar even now thrills me through and through Pierre think think oh canst thou not comprehend see it what I mean Pierre the secret name in the guitar thrills me thrills me whirls me whirls me so secret holy hidden yet constantly carried about in it unseen unsuspected always vibrating to the hidden heartstrings broken heartstrings oh my mother my mother my mother as the wild plains of Isabelle pierced into his bosoms core they carried with them the first inkling of the extraordinary conceit so vaguely and shrinkingly hinted at in her till now entirely unintelligible words she lifted her dry burning eyes of long friend fire to him Pierre I have no slightest proof but the guitar was hers I know I feel it was say did I not last night tell thee how it first sung to me upon the bed and answered me without my ones touching it and how it always sung to me and answered me and soothed and loved me heart now thou shalt hear my mother's spirit she carefully scan the strings and tune them carefully then place the guitar in the casement bench and not before it and in low sweet and changefully modulated notes so barely audible that Pierre bent over to catch them breathe the word mother mother mother there was profound silence for a time when suddenly to the lowest and least audible note of all the magical untouched guitar responded with a quick spark of melody which in the following hush long vibrated and subsidingly tingled through the room while to his augmented wonder he now a spy quivering along the metallic strings of the guitar some minute scintillations seemingly caught from the instrument's close proximity to the occasionally irradiated window the girl still kept kneeling but an altogether unwanted expression suddenly overcast her whole countenance she darted one swift glance at Pierre and then with a single toss of her hand tumbled her unrestrained locks all over her so that they tent wise invested her whole kneeling form close to the floor and yet swept the floor with their wild redundancy never sire of le mion girl at dim mass and saint dominix cathedral so completely muffled the human figure to Pierre the deep oak and recess of the double casement before which isabelle was kneeling seemed now the immediate vestibule of some awful shrine mystically revealed through the obscurely open window which ever in a non was still softly illumined by the mild heat lightnings and ground lightnings that wove their wonderfulness without in the unsearchable air of that ebony warm and most noiseless summer night some unsubduable word was on Pierre's lip but a sudden voice from out the veil bat him be silent mother mother mother again after a preluting silence the guitar as magically responded as before the sparks quivered along its strings and again Pierre felt as in the immediate presence of the spirit shall I mother art thou ready without tell me now now these words were lowly and sweetly murmured in the same way with the word mother being changefully buried in their modulations till it the last now the magical guitar again responded and the girl swiftly drew it to her beneath her dark tent of hair in this act as the long curls swept over the strings of the guitar the strange sparks still quivering there caught at those attractive curls the entire casement was suddenly and wovenly illumined then waned again while now in the succeeding dimnest every downward undulating wave and bellow of Isabelle's tossed tresses gleamed here and there like attractive phosphorescent midnight sea and simultaneously all the forewinds of the world of melody broke loose and again as on the previous night only in a still more subtle and wholly inexplicable way Pierre felt himself surrounded by ten thousand sprites and gnomes and his whole soul was swayed and tossed by supernatural tides and again he heard the wondrous rebounding chanted words mystery mystery mystery of Isabelle mystery mystery Isabella mystery mystery chapter three almost deprived of consciousness by the spell flown over him by the marvelous girl Pierre unknowingly gazed away from her as on vacancy and when it lasts stillness had once more fallen upon the room all except the stepping and he recovered his self-possession and turned to look where he might now be he was surprised to see Isabelle composedly though avertedly seated on the bench the longer and fuller tresses of her now ungleaming hair flung back and the guitar quietly leaning in the corner he was about to put some unconsidered question to her but she half anticipated it by bidding him in a low but nevertheless almost authoritative tone not to make any allusion to the scene he had just beheld he paused profoundly thinking to himself and now felt certain that the entire scene from the first musical invocation of the guitar must have unpremeditatedly proceeded from a sudden impulse in the girl inspired by the peculiar mood into which the preceding conversation and especially the handling of the guitar under such circumstances had irresistibly thrown her but that certain something of the preternatural in the scene of which he could not read his mind the so to speak voluntary and all but intelligent responsiveness of the guitar it strangely scintillating strings the so suddenly glorified head of Isabel altogether these things seem not at the time entirely produced by customary or natural causes to pierce dilated senses Isabel seemed to swim in an electric fluid the vivid buckler of her brow seemed as a magnetic plate now first this night was pure made aware of what in the superstitiousness of his wrapped enthusiasm he could not help believing was an extraordinary physical magnetism in Isabel and as it were derived from this marvelous quality thus imputed to her he now first became vaguely sensible of a certain still more marvelous power in the girl over himself and his most interior thoughts and motions a power so hovering upon the confines of the invisible world that it seemed more inclined that way than this a power which not only seemed irresistibly to draw him toward Isabel but to draw him away from another quarter wantonly as it were and yet quite ignorantly and unintendingly and besides without respect apparently to anything ulterior and yet again only under cover of drawing him to her for over all these things and interfusing itself with the sparkling electricity in which she seemed to swim was an ever creeping and condensing haze of ambiguity often in after times with her did he recall this first magnetic night and would seem to see that she then had bound him to her by an extraordinary atmospheric spell both physical and spiritual which henceforth it had become impossible for him to break but whose full potency he never recognized till long after he had become habituated to its sway this spell seemed one with that pantheistic master spell which eternally locks in mystery and in muteness the universal subject world and the physical electricalness of Isabel seemed reciprocal with the heat lightnings and the ground lightnings nigh to which it had first become revealed to Pierre she seemed molded from fire and air and did the fight at some full-take pile of August under clouds heaped against the sunset the occasional sweet simplicity and innocence and humbleness of her story her often serene and open aspect her deep seated but mostly quiet unobtrusive sadness and that touchingness of her less unwanted tone and air these only the more signalized and contrastingly emphasized the profounder subtler and more mystic part of her especially did Pierre feel this when after another silent interval she now proceeded with her story in a manner so gently confiding so entirely artless so almost peasant like in its simplicity and dealing in some details so little sublimated in themselves that it seemed well not impossible that this unassuming mate should be the same dark regal being who had but just now that Pierre be silent and so imperious at tone and around whose wondrous temples the strange electric glory have been playing yet not very long did she now thus innocently proceed air at times some fainter flashes of her electricalness came from her but only to be followed by such melting human and most feminine traits has brought all his soft enthusiast tears into the sympathetic but still unshedding eyes of Pierre chapter 4 thou remembers my brother my telling thee last night how the thou knowest what I mean that there avertedly pointing to the guitar thou remembers how it came into my possession but perhaps I did not tell thee that the peddler said he had got it in barter from the servants of a great house some distance from the place where I was then residing Pierre signed his acquiescence and Isabelle proceeded now at long though stated intervals that man passed the farmhouse in this trading route between the small towns and villages when I discovered the gilding in the guitar I kept watch for him for though I truly felt persuaded that fate had the dispensing of her own secrets in her own good time yet I also felt persuaded that in some cases fate drops us one little hint leaving our own minds to follow it up so that we of ourselves may come to the grand secret in Missouri so I kept diligent watch for him and the next time he stopped without permitting him at all to guess my motives I contrived to steal out of him what great house it was from which the guitar had come and my brother it was the mansion of saddle meadows pierce started and the girl went on yes my brother saddle meadows old general grand innings place he said but the old heroes long dead and gone now and the more is the pity so is the young general his son dead and gone but then there is a still younger grandson general left that family always keep the title and the name of going yes even to the surname Pierre Pierre Glendening was the white haired old general's name who fought in the old French and Indian Wars and Pierre Glendening is his young great grandson's name thou mayest well look at me so my brother yes he meant the the my brother but the guitar the guitar cry Pierre how came the guitar openly at saddle meadows and how came it to be brought it away by servants tell me that is about do not put such impetuous questions to me Pierre else thou mayest recall the old maybe it is the evil spell upon me I cannot precisely and knowingly answer thee I could surmise but what are surmises worth oh Pierre better a million times in far sweeter our mysteries than surmises though the mystery be unfathomable it is still the unfathomableness of fullness but the surmise that is but shallow and unmeaning emptiness but this is the most inexplicable point of all tell me Isabelle surely thou must have thought something about this thing much Pierre very much but only about the mystery of it nothing more could I I would not now be fully told how the guitar came to be at saddle meadows and came to be bartered away by the servants of saddle meadows enough that it found me out and came to me and spoke and sung to me and sued me and has been everything to me she paused a moment while vaguely to his secret self Pierre revolved these strange revealing but now he was all attention again as Isabelle resumed I now held in my minds hand the clue my brother but I did not immediately follow it further up sufficient to me in my loneliness was the knowledge that I now knew where my father's family was to be found as yet not the slightest intention of ever disclosing myself to them had entered my mind and assured as I was that for obvious reasons none of his surviving relatives could possibly know me even if they saw me for what I really was I felt entire security in the event of encountering any of them by chance but my unavoidable displacements and migrations from one house to another at last brought me within 12 miles of saddle meadows I began to feel an increasing longing in me but side by side with it a newborn and competing pride yes pride Pierre do my eyes flash they blind me if they do not but it is no common pride Pierre for what has is about to be proud of in this world it is the pride of a to to longing loving heart Pierre the pride of lasting suffering and grief my brother yes I conquered the great longing with the still more powerful pride Pierre and so I would not now be here in this room nor would stop ever have received any line from me nor in all worldly probability ever so much as heard of her who is called Isabelle had it not been for my hearing that at Walter only three miles from the mansion of saddle meadows poor bell would find people kind enough to give her wages for her work feel my hand my brother dear divine girl my own exalted Isabelle cried Pierre catching the offered hand with a vulnerable emotion how most unbeseeming that this strange hardness and this still stranger littleness should be united in any human hand but hard and small it by an opposite analogy hence of the soft capacious heart that made the hand so hard with heavenly submission to that most undeserved and martyred lot would Isabelle that these my kisses on the hand were on the heart itself and drop the seeds of eternal joy and comfort there he leaped to his feet and stood before her with such warm godlike majesty of love and tenderness that the girl gazed up at him as though he were the one benign star in all her general night Isabelle cried Pierre I stand the sweet penance in my father's dead thou and my mother's by our earthly acts we shall redeemingly bless lots we will love with the pure imperfect love of angel to an angel if ever I fall from the dear Isabelle may Pierre fall from himself fall back forever into vacant nothingness and night my brother my brother speak not so to me it is too much I'm used to any love there now thine so heavenly and immense falls crushing on me such love is almost hard to bear as hate be still do not speak to me they were both silent for a time when she went on yes my brother fate had now brought me within three miles of thee and but shall I go straight on until the all Pierre all everything art thou of such divinous that I may speak straight on in all my thoughts heedless wither they may flow or what things they may float to me straight on and fearlessly said Pierre by chance I saw the other Pierre and under such circumstances that I knew her to be thy mother and but shall I go on straight on my Isabelle thou did see my mother well and when I saw her though I spake not to her nor she to me yet straight way my heart knew that she would love me not thy heart spake true mother Pierre to himself go on I she swore an oath never to reveal myself to thy mother oath well sworn again he muttered go on but I saw the Pierre and more than ever filled my mother toward thy father Pierre then up heaved in me straight way I knew that if ever I should come to be made known to thee then thy own generous love would open itself to me again thy heart spake true he murmured go on and just thou re-swear again no Pierre but yes I did I swore that thou were my brother with love and pride I swore that young and noble Pierre Glen Denning was my brother and only that nothing more Pierre not to thee even did I ever think to reveal myself how then thou art revealed to me yes but the great God did it Pierre listen I felt very dreary here poor dear deli thou must have heard something of her story a most sorrowful house Pierre hark that is her seldom pausing pacing thou hears from the floor above so she keeps ever pacing pacing pacing in her track all threadbare Pierre is her chamber rug her father will not look upon her her mother she hath cursed her to her face out of yarn chamber Pierre deli hath not slept for now four weeks and more nor ever hath she once laid upon her bed it was last made up five weeks ago but paces paces paces all through the night till after twelve and then sits vacant in her chair often I would go to her to comfort her but she says nay nay nay to me through the door says nay nay nay and only nay to me through the bolted door bolted three weeks ago when I by cunning art stole her dead baby from her and with these fingers alone by night scooped out a hollow and seconding heaven's own charitable stroke buried that sweet wee symbol of her not unpardonable shame bought from the ruthless foot of man yes bolted three weeks ago not once unbolted since her food I must thrust through that little window in her closet Pierre hardly these two handfuls has she eaten in a week curses wasp like cohere on that villain Ned and sting him to his death cried Pierre smitten by this most piteous tale what can be done for her sweet isabel can Pierre do art if thou or I do not then the ever hospitable grave will prove her a quick refuge Pierre father and mother both art worse than dead and gone to her they would have turned her forth I think but for my own poor petitionings unceasing in her behalf Pierre's deep concern now gave place to a momentary look of benevolent intelligence Isabel a thought of benefit to deli has just entered me but I'm still uncertain how best it may be acted on resolved I am though to sucker her do thou still hold her here yet awhile by thy sweet petitionings till my further plans are more matured now run on with thy story and so divert me from the pacing her every step steps in my soul thy noble heart hath many chambers Pierre the records of thy wealth I see are not bound up in the one poor visibilt my brother thou art a visible token Pierre of the invisible angel hoods which in art darker hours we do sometimes distrust the gospel of thy acts goes very far my brother we're all men like to thee then we're there no men at all mankind extinct in seraphim praises are for the base my sister cunningly to entice them to fair virtue by our ignorance of the ill in them and our impudings of the good not theirs so make not my head to hang sweet Isabel praise me not go on now with thy tale I have said to thee my brother how most dreary I founded here and from the first wanted all my life to sadness if it be such still this health hath such acuteness in its general grief such hopelessness and despair remedy that even poor bell could scarce abide it always without some little going forth into contrasting scenes so I went forth into the places of delight only that I might return more brace to minister in the haunts of woe for continual unchanging residents therein that but bring on woe stupor and make us as dead so I went forth the times visiting the neighboring cottages where there were neighboring children and no one placed vacant at the cheerful board thus at last I had chance to hear of the sewing circle to be held at the miss pennies and how that they were anxious to press into their kind charity all the maidens of the country round in various cottages I was besought to join and they at length persuaded me not that I was naturally loathed to it and needed such entreaties but at first I felt great fear thus close the encounter some of the glendenings and that thought was then namelessly repulsive to me but by stealthy inquiries I learned that the lady of the manorial house would not be present to prove deceptive information but I went and all the rest they'll knowest I do sweet as a bell but thou must tell it over to me and all thy emotions there chapter 5 though but one day hath passed my brother since we first met thou hast that heavenly magnet in thee which draws all my soul's interior to thee I will go on having to wait for a neighbor's wagon I arrived but late at the sewing circle when I entered the two joined rooms were very full with the farmer's girls our neighbors I passed along to the further corner where thou did see me and as I went some heads were turned in some withsprings I heard of she's the new help at poor Walter Ulvers the strange girl they've got she thinks herself amazing pretty I'll be bound but nobody knows her oh how to mirror but not over good I guess I wouldn't be her not I may have she's some other ruined deli run away minx it was the first time poor bell had ever mixed in such a general crowded company and knowing little or nothing of such things I had thought that the meeting being for charity's sweet sake uncharity could find no harbor there but there was a sense of selfishness not malice in them still it made my heart ache in me sadly but then I very keenly felt the dread suspiciousness in which a strange and lonely grief invests itself to common eyes as if grief itself were not enough nor innocence in the armor to us but despite must also come and I see infamy miserable returnings then ahead of the feeling the bewildering feeling of the inhumanities in my earlier story appear bless appear do not look so sadly and have reproachfully upon me lone and lost though I have been I love my kind and charitably and intelligently pity them who uncharitably and unintelligently do me despite and thou thou blessed brother hath glorified many sombra places in my soul and taught me once for all to know that my kind are capable of things to be glorious in angels so look away from me dear peer till thou hast taught thine eyes more wanted glances they are vile, falsifying telegraphs of me then sweet is about what my look was I cannot tell but my heart was only dark with ill-restrained upbratings against heaven that could unrelentingly see such innocence as thine so suffer go on with I too touching tale quietly I sat there sewing not brave enough to look up at all and thanking my good star that had led me to so conceal the nook behind the rest quietly I sat there sewing on a flannel shirt and with each stitch praying God that whatever heart it might be folded over the flannel might hold it truly warm and keep out the wide world coldness which I thought myself in which no flannel or thick as fur or any fire then could keep off from me quietly I sat there sewing when I heard the announcing words oh how deep and ineffacibly engraved they are ah dames dames madame glendening master peer glendening instantly my sharp needle went through my side and stitched my heart the flannel dropped from my hand thou hurts my shriek still nearer to the casement close at hand and through it open wide and God's own breath breathed on me and I rallied and said it was some mirrors passing fit it was quite over now I was used to it they had my heart's best thanks but would they now only leave me to myself it were best for me I would go on and so and thus it came and passed away and again I sat sewing on the flannel hoping either that the anticipated persons would soon depart that some spirit would catch me away from there I sat sewing on till pierre pierre without looking up for that I dare not do at any time that evening only once without looking up or knowing ought but the flannel on my knee and the needle in my heart I felt pierre felt a glance of magnetic meaning on me long eye shrinking sideways turned to meet it but could not till some helping spirit sees me and all my soul looked up at thee in my fronting face it was enough fate was in that moment all the loneliness of my life all the choked longings of my soul now poured over me I could not away from them then first I felt the complete deplorableness of my state that while thou my brother had a mother and troops of aunts and cousins and plentiful friends in city and in country I Isabel thy own father's daughter was thrust out of all hearts gates and shivered in the winter but this was but the least not poor bell can tell thee all the feelings of poor bell or what feelings she felt first it was all one world of old and new bewilderings mixed and slanted with a driving madness but it was most the sweet inquisitive kindly interested aspect of thy face so strangely like thy father's too the one only being that I first did love it was that which most stirred the distracting storm in me most charged me with the immense longings for someone of my blood to know me and to own me though but once and then away oh my dear brother Pierre Pierre couldst thou take out my heart and look at it in thy hand then thou wouldst find it all overwritten this way and that and crossed again and yet again with continual lines of longings that found no end but in suddenly calling thee call him call him he will come so cried my heart to me so cried the leaves and stars to me as I that night home but pride rose up the very pride in my own longings and as one arm pulled the other held so I stood still and called the not that fate will be fate and it was faded once having met thy fixed regardful glance once having seen the full angelicalness in thee my whole soul was undone by thee my whole pride was cut off at the root and soon showed a blighting in the bud which spread deep into my whole being till I knew that other indeed decay and die away I must and last pride let me go and I with the one little trumpet of a pen blew my heart's shrillest blast and called dear Pierre to me my soul was full and as my beseeching ink went tracing o'er the page my tears contributed their might and made a strange alloy how blessed I felt that might so bitterly teared mingled ink that last depth of my anguish would never be visibly known to thee but the tears would dry upon the page and all be so submerged freighted letter should meet thy eye ah there the west deceived poor Isabelle cried Pierre impulsively thy tears dried not fair but dried red almost like blood and nothing so much moved my inmost soul as that tragic sight how how Pierre my brother dried they read oh horrible enchantment most undreamed of may the ink the ink something chemical that changed that real tears to seeming blood only that my sister oh Pierre thus wonderfully is it seems to me that our own hearts do not ever know the extremity of their own sufferings sometimes we bleed blood when we think it only water of our sufferings as of our talents others sometimes are the better judges but stop me force me backward to my story yet me thinks that now thou knowest all no not entirely all thou dost not know what planned and when outmoded I did have in writing thee nor does poor Belle for poor Belle was too delirious to have planned and when outmoded then the impulse in me called thee not poor Belle God called thee Pierre not poor Belle even now when I passed one night after seeing thee and harkening to all that full love and graciousness even now I stand as one amazed and feel not what may be coming to me or what will now befall me from having so rashly claimed thee for mine Pierre now this instant the vague anguish fills me tell me loving me by owning me publicly or secretly tell me death it involved any vital hurt to thee speak without reserve speak honestly as I do to thee speak now Pierre and tell me all is love a harm can truth betray to pain sweet Isabelle how can hurt come in the path to God now when I know thee all now did I forget thee failed to acknowledge thee and love thee before the wide world's whole brazen with could I do that then might thou ask and reasonably and say tell me Pierre does not the suffocating in thee of poor Belle's holy claims does not that involve for thee unending misery and my truthful soul would echo unending misery nay nay nay thou art my sister and I'm thy brother and that part of the world which knows me shall acknowledge thee or by heaven I will crush the disdainful world down on its knees to thee my sweet Isabelle the many things in that eyes are dear delights to me I grow up with a glorious stature and indeed my brother I see God's indignant ambassador to me saying up up Isabelle and take no terms from the common world but do thou make terms to it and grime thy fierce rights out of it thy catching noblemess unsexes me my brother and now I know that in her most exalted moment then woman no more feels the twin born softness of her breasts but feels chain armor palpitating there her aditut of beautiful audacity her long scornful hair that trailed out a disheveled banner her wonderful transfigured eyes in which some meteors seemed playing up all this now seemed to pier the work of an invisible enchanter transformed she stood before him and pier bowing low over to her own that irrespective darting majesty of humanity which can be majestical and menacing in woman as in man but her gentler sex returned to Isabelle at last and she sat silent in the casements niche looking out upon the soft ground lightnings of the electric summer night chapter six sadly smiling pier broke the pause my sister thou art so rich that thou must do me alms I am very hungry I have forgotten to eat since breakfast and now thou shall bring me bread and a cup of water Isabelle ere I go forth from thee last night I went to a country like a bake house burglar but tonight thou and I must sub together Isabelle for as we may henceforth live together let us begin forthwith to eat in company Isabelle looked up at him with sudden and deep emotion then all acquiescing sweetness and silently left the room as she returned pier casting his eyes toward the ceiling said she is quiet now the pacing hath entirely ceased not the beating though my brother she is not quiet now quiet for her hath gone so that the pivoted stillness of this night is yet a noisy madness to her give me pen or pencil and some paper Isabelle she laid down her loaf and played a knife and brought him pen and ink and paper pier took the pen was this the one dear Isabelle it is the one my brother none other is in this poor cot he gazed at it intensely then turning to the table and suddenly wrote the following note for it deli alver with the deep and true regard and sympathy of pier glendening thy sad story partly known before hath now more fully come to me from one who sincerely feels for thee and who hath imparted her own sincerity to me thou desirest to quit this neighborhood and be somewhere at peace and find some secluded employ fitted to thy sex and age with this I now willingly charge myself and ensure it to thee so far as my utmost ability can go therefore if consolation be not wholly spurned by thy great grief which too often happens though it be but griefs great folly so to feel therefore to true friends of thine do here beseech thee to take some little heart to thee and be think thee that all by life has not yet lived that time hath sure as healing in his continuous balm be patient yet little while till thy future lot be disposed to thee through our best help and so know me and isabel thy earnest friends and true hearted lovers he handed the note to isabel she read it silently and put it down and spread her two hands over him and with one motion lifted her eyes toward deli and toward god though thinks it will not pain her to receive the note isabel thou knows best I thought that our help do really reach her some promise of it now might prove slight effort but keep it and do as thou thinks best then straightway will I give it her my brother said isabel quitting him and in fixing stillness now thrust along rivet through the night and fast nailed it to that side of the world and alone again in such an hour Pierre could not but listen he heard isabel step on the stair then it approached him from above then he heard a gentle knock and thought he heard a rustling as a paper slid over a threshold underneath the door then another advancing and opposite step tremblingly met isabelle's and then both steps stepped from each other and soon isabel came back to him thou didst knock and slide it underneath the door yes and she hath it now heart a sobbing thank god long air agreed have found a tear at last pity sympathy hath done this Pierre for thy dear deed thou art already sainted ere thou be doth do saints hunger isabel said pierce driving to call away from this come give me the loaf but no thou shalt help me my sister thank thee this is twice over the bread of sweetness is this of thine own making isabel my own making my brother give me the cup handed me with thine own hand so isabel my heart and soul are now full of deepest reverence yet I do dare to call this the real sacrament of the supper eat with me. They eat together without a single word. And without a single word, Pierre rose and kissed her pure and spotless brow, and without a single word departed from the place. Chapter 7. We know not Pierre, Glendening's thoughts as he gained the village, and passed on beneath its often shrouding trees, and saw no light from man, and heard no sound from man, but only by interval saw at his feet the soft ground lightning, snake-like playing in and out among the blades of grass, and between the trees caught the far dim light from heaven, and heard the far wide gentle hum of the sleeping but still breathing earth. He paused before a detached and pleasant house with much shrubbery about it. He mounted the portico and knocked distinctly there, just as the village clock struck one. He knocked, but no answer came. He knocked again, and soon he heard a sash thrown up in the second story, and an astonished voice inquired who was there. It is Pierre, Glendening, and he desires an instant interview with the Reverend Mr. Falls Grave. Do I hear right in heaven's name? What is the matter, young gentleman? Everything is the matter. The whole world is the matter. Will you admit me, sir? Certainly, but I beseech thee. Nay, stay, I will admit thee. In quicker time than could have been anticipated, the door was open to Pierre about Mr. Falls Grave, in person, holding a candle, and invested in his very becoming student's wrapper of scotch plaid. For heaven's sake, what is the matter, Mr. Glendening? Heaven and earth is the matter, sir. Shall we go up to the study? Certainly, but let us proceed then. They went upstairs, and soon found themselves in the clergyman's retreat, and both sat down, the amazed host still holding the candle in his hand, and intently eyeing Pierre with an apprehensive aspect. Thou art a man of God, sir, I believe. I, I, I, upon my word, Mr. Glendening. Yes, sir, the world calls thee a man of God. Now, what has thou, the man of God, decided with my mother concerning Deli Oliver? Deli Oliver, why, why, what can this matter mean? It means, sir, what have thou and my mother decided concerning Deli Oliver? She, Deli Oliver, she is to depart the neighborhood, why her own parents want her not. How is she to depart? Who is to take her? Art thou to take her? Where is she to go? Who has food for her? What is to keep her from the pollution to which such as she are every day driven to contribute by the detestable uncharitableness and heartlessness of the world? Mr. Glendening, said the clergyman, now somewhat calmly putting down the candle and folding himself with dignity in his gown, Mr. Glendening, I will not now make any mention of my natural astonishment at this most unusual call, and the most extraordinary time of it. Thou hast sought information upon a certain point, and I have given it to thee, to the best of my knowledge. All, thy, after, and incidental questions I choose to have no answer for. I would be most happy to see thee at any other time, but for the present thou must excuse my presence. Good night, sir. But Pierre sat entirely still, and the clergyman could not but remain standing still. I perfectly comprehend the whole, sir, deli alver, then is to be driven out to star or lot, and this, too, by the acquiescence of a man of God. Mr. Falls graved the subject of deli. Deeply interesting, as it is to me, is only the preface to another still more interesting to me, and concerning which I once cherished some slight hope that thou which have been able, in thy Christian character, to sincerely and honestly counsel me. But a hint from heaven assures me now that thou hast no earnest and world disdaining counsel for me. I must seek it direct from God himself, whom I now know never delegates his holiest admonishings. But I do not blame thee, I think I begin to see how thy profession is unavoidably entangled by all fleshly alliances, and cannot move with godly freedom in a world of benefits. I am more sorry than indignant, pardon me for my most uncivil call, and no me is not thy enemy. Good night, sir. End of Book 8. Book 9 of Pierre or the Ambiguities by Herman Melville. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 9, more lights and the gloom of that light, more gloom and the light of that gloom. Chapter 1. In those hyperborean regions to which enthusiastic truth and earnestness and independence will invariably lead a mind fitted by nature for profound and fearless thought, all objects are seen in a dubious, uncertain, and refracting light, viewed through that rarefied atmosphere, the most immemorially admitted maxims of men begin to slide and fluctuate, and finally become wholly inverted, the very heavens themselves being not innocent of producing this confounding effect since it is mostly in the heavens themselves that these wonderful mirages are exhibited. But the example of many minds forever lost like undiscoverable arctic explorers amid those treacherous regions warns us entirely away from them, and we learn that it is not for man to follow the trail of truth too far since by so doing he entirely loses the directing compass of his mind for arrived at the pole to whose barrenness only it points, there the needle indifferently respects all points of the horizon alike. But even the less distant regions of thought are not without their singular introversions, hardly any sincere man of ordinary reflective powers and accustomed to exercise them at all, but must have been independently struck by the thought that after all, what is so enthusiastically applauded as the march of mind, meaning the inroads of truth into error, which has ever been regarded by hopeful persons as the one fundamental thing most earnestly to be prayed for has the greatest possible Catholic blessing to the world. Almost every thinking man must have been sometime or other struck with the idea that in certain respects a tremendous mistake may be lurking here. Since all the world does never gregariously advance to truth, but only here and there some of its individuals do, and by advancing leave the rest behind, cutting themselves forever adrift from their sympathy and making themselves always liable to be regarded with distrust, dislike, and often downright though off times concealed fear and hate. What wonder then that those advance minds which in spite of advance happen still to remain for the time irregularly should now and then be goaded into turning round in acts of wants and aggression upon sentiments and opinions now forever left in their rear. Certain it is that in their earlier stages of advance, especially in youthful minds as yet untranquilized by long habituation to the world as it inevitably and eternally is this aggressiveness is almost invariably manifested and as invariably afterward deplored by themselves. That amazing shock of practical truth which in the compass of a very few days and hours had not so much advanced as magically transplanted the youthful mind of Pierre far beyond all common discernments. It had not been entirely unattended by the lamentable rearward aggressiveness we have endeavored to portray above yielding to that unwarrantable mood. He had invaded the profound midnight slumbers of the Reverend Mr. Falls grave and most discourteously made war upon that really amiable and estimable person. But as through the strange force of circumstances his advance in insight had been so surprisingly rapid so also was now his advance in some sort of wisdom in charitableness and his concluding words to Mr. Falls grave sufficiently events that already air quitting that gentleman's study he had begun to repent his ever entering it on such a mission. And as he now walked on in the profound meditations induced by the hour and as all that was in him stirred to and fro intensely agitated by the ever created fire of enthusiastic earnestness he became fully alive to many palliating considerations which had they previously occurred to him would have peremptorily forbidden upon the respectable clergyman. But it is through the malice of this earthly air that only by being guilty of folly does mortal man in many cases arrive at the perception of sense a thought which should forever free us from hasty implications upon our ever recurring intervals of folly since though folly be our teacher sense is the lesson she teaches since if folly wholly depart from us further sense will be her companion in the flight and we will be left standing midway in wisdom for it is only the miraculous vanity of man which ever persuades him that even for the most richly gifted mind there ever arrives an earthly period where it can truly say to itself I have come to the ultimate of human speculative knowledge here after at this present point I will abide sudden on sets of new truth will assail him and overturn him as the Tartars did China for there is no China wall that man can build in his soul which shall permanently stay the eruptions of those barbarous hordes which truth ever nourishes in the loins of her frozen yet teeming north so that the empire of human knowledge can never be lasting in any one dynasty since truth still gives new emperors to the earth but the thoughts we hear indict as peers are to be very carefully discriminated from those we indict concerning him ignorant at this time of the ideas concerning the reciprocity and partnership of folly and sense in contributing to the mental and moral growth of the mind Pierre keenly upgraded his thoughtlessness and began to stagger in his soul as distrustful of that radical change in his general sentiments which had thus hurried him into a glaring impropriety and folly as distrustful of himself the most wretched distrust of all but this last distrust was not of the heart for heaven itself so he felt had sanctified that with its blessing but it was a distrust of his intellect which in undisciplinedly espousing the manly enthusiast cause of his heart seemed to cast a reproach upon that cause itself but though evermore hath the earnest heart and eventual balm for the most deplorable error of the head yet in the interval small alleviation is to be had and the whole man droops into nameless melancholy then it seems as though the most magnanimous and virtuous resolutions were only intended for fine spiritual emotions not as mere preludes to their bodily translation into acts since in the saying their embodiment we have but proved ourselves miserable bunglers and thereupon take an ignominious shame to ourselves then to that never entirely repulsed host of commonness and conventionalness and worldly prudent mindedness return to the charge press hard on the faltering soul and within human hootings to ride all its nobleness as mere eccentricity which further wisdom and experience shall surely cure the man is as seized by arms and legs and convulsively pulled either way by his own indecisions and doubts blackness advances her banner over this cruel altercation and he droops and swoon beneath its folds it was precisely in this mood of mind that at about two in the morning Pierre with the hanging head now crossed the private threshold of the mansion of saddle meadows chapter 2 in the profoundly silent heart of a house full of sleeping serving men and maids Pierre now sat in his chamber before his accustomed round table still tossed with the books and the papers which three days before he had abruptly left for a sudden and more absorbing object uppermost and most conspicuous among the books were the inferno of Dante and the Hamlet of Shakespeare his mind was wandering and vague his arm wandered and was vague soon he found the open inferno in his hand and as I met the following lines allegorically over ascribed within the arch of the goings of the womb of human life through me you pass into the city of world through me you pass into eternal pain through me among the people lost for I all hope abandoned ye who enter here he dropped the fatal volume from his hand he dropped his faded head upon his chest his mind was wandering and vague his arm wandered and was vague some moments past and he found the open Hamlet in his hand and his eyes met the following lines the time is out of joint O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right he dropped the two true volume from his hand his petrifying heart dropped hollily within him as a pebble down carers brook well chapter three the man Dante alligieri received unforgivable affronts and insults from the world and the poet Dante alligieri bequeathed his immortal curse to it in the sublime malediction of the inferno the fiery tongue whose political forkings lost him the solace of this world found its malicious counterpart in that muse of fire which would forever bar the vast bulk of mankind from all solace in the world to come fortunately for the felicity of the dilettante in literature the horrible allegorical meanings of the inferno lie not on the surface but unfortunately for the earnest and youthful piercers into truth and reality those horrible meanings when first discovered infuse their poison into a spot previously unprovided with that sovereign antidote of a sense of uncut but you later bull security which is only the possession of the furthest advanced and profound as souls judgey then ye judicious the mood of pier so far as the passage in Dante touched him if among the deeper significances of its pervading indefiniteness which significances are wisely hidden from all but the rarest the depths the pregnant tragedy of Hamlet convey any one particular moral at all fitted to the ordinary uses of man it is this that all meditation is worthless unless it prompt to action that it is not for man to stand shelly shelling amid the conflicting invasions of surrounding impulses that in the earliest instant of conviction the roused man must strike and if possible with the precision and the force of the lightning bolt pier had always been an admiring reader of Hamlet but neither his age nor his mental experience thus far had qualified him either to catch initiating glimpses into the hopeless gloom of its interior meaning or to draw from the general story those superficial and purely incidental lessons wherein the pains taking moralist so complacently expatiates the intensest light of reason and revelation combined cannot shed such blazenings upon the deeper truths in man as will sometimes proceed from his own profoundest gloom out of darkness is then his light and cat like he distinctly sees all objects through a medium which is mere blindness to common vision where for have gloom and grief been celebrated of old as the selectest chamberlains to knowledge where for is it that not to know gloom and grief is not to know art that and heroic man should learn by the light of that gloom pier now turned over the soul of Hamlet in his hand he knew not at least felt not then that Hamlet though a thing of life was after all but a thing of breath evoked by the wanton magic of a creative hand and as wantonly dismissed at last into endless halls of hell and night it is the not impartially bestowed privilege of the more final insights that at the same moment they reveal the depths they do sometimes also reveal though by no means so distinctly some answering heights but when only midway down the gulf its crags wholly concealed the upper vaults and the wanderer thinks it all one gulf of downward dark judgy then ye judicious the mood of pier so far as the passage in Hamlet touched him chapter four torn into a hundred shreds the printed pages of hell and Hamlet lay at his feet which trampled them while their vacant covers mocked him with their idle titles Dante had made him fierce and Hamlet had insinuated that there was none to strike Dante had taught him that he had bitter cause of quarrel Hamlet taunted him with faltering in the fight now he began to curse anew his fate for now he began to see that after all he had been finally juggling with himself and postponing with himself and in meditative sentimentalities wasting the moments consecrated to instant action eight and forty hours and more had passed was Isabelle acknowledged had she yet hung on his public arm who knew yet of Isabelle but Pierre like a skulking coward he had gone prowling in the woods by day and like a skulking coward he had stolen to her haunt by night like a thief he had sat and stammered and turned pale before his mother and in the cause of holy right permitted a woman to grow tall and Hector over him ah easy for man to think like a hero but hard for man to act like one all imaginable audacity's readily enter into the soul few come boldly forth from it did he or did he not vitally mean to do this thing was the immense stuff to do it his or was it not his why defer why put off what was there to be gained by deferring and putting off his resolution had been taken why was it not executed what more was there to learn what more which was essential to the public acknowledgement of visible had remained to be learned after his first glance at her first letter had doubts of her identity come over him to stay him none at all against the wall of the thick darkness of the mystery of isabel recorded as by some phosphoric finger was the burning fact that is a bill was his sister why then how then when stand this other nothing of his acts did he stagger at the thought that at the first announcement to his mother concerning isabel and his resolution to own her boldly and lovingly his proud mother spurning the reflection on his father would likewise sperm pierre and isabel and denounce both him and her and hate them both alike as unnatural accomplices against the good name of the purest of husbands and parents not at all such a thought was not in him for had he not already resolved that his mother should know nothing of the fact of isabel but how now what then how was isabel to be acknowledged to the world if his mother was to know nothing of that acknowledgement short-sighted miserable paulder and huckster thou has been playing a most fond and foolish game with thyself fool and coward coward and fool tear thyself open and read there the confounding story of that blind dodishness thy two grand resolutions the public acknowledgement of isabel and the charitable withholding of her existence from my own mother these are impossible adjuncts likewise thyself magnanimous purpose to screen that father's honorable memory from reproach and thy other intention the open vindication of that fraternal nest to isabel these also are impossible adjuncts and the having individually entertained for such resolves without perceiving that once brought together they all mutually expire this this ineffable folly pierre brands thee in the forehead for an unaccountable infatuate well mayors thou distrust thyself and curse thyself and tear thy hamlet and thy hell oh fool blind fool and a million times and ask go go thou poor and feeble one high deeds are not for such blind grubs as thou quit isabel and go to lucy back home both pardon of thy mother and hereafter be a more obedient and good boy to her pierre pierre pierre infatuate impossible would it be now to tell all the confusion and confoundings in the soul of pierre so soon as the above absurdities in his mind presented themselves first to his combining consciousness he would feign have disowned the very memory and the mind which produced to him such an immense scandal upon his common sanity now indeed did all the fiery floods in the inferno and all the rolling gloom and hamlet suffocate him at once in flame and smoke the cheeks of his soul collapsed in him he dashed himself in blind fury and swift madness against the wall and fell dabbling in the vomit of his loathed identity into book nine book ten of pierre or the ambiguities by Herman Melville this liver box recording is in the public domain the unprecedented final resolution of pierre chapter one glorified be his gracious memory who first said the deepest gloom precedes the day we care not whether the saying will prove true to the utmost bounds of things sufficient that it sometimes does hold true within the bounds of earthly finitude next morning pierre rose from the floor of his chamber haggard and tattered in body from his past nights utter misery but stoically serene and symmetrical in soul with the foretaste of what then seemed to him a planned and perfect future now he thinks he knows that the holy unanticipated storm which had so terribly burst upon him had yet burst upon him for his good for the place which in its undetected in incipiency the storm had obscurely occupied in his soul seemed now clear sky to him and all his horizon seemed distinctly commanded by him his resolution was a strange and extraordinary one but therefore it only the better met a strange and extraordinary emergency but it was not only strange and extraordinary in its novelty of mere aspect but it was wonderful in its unequaled renunciation of himself from the first determined at all hazards to hold his father's fair fame in violet from anything he should do in reference to protecting isabel and extending to her a brother's utmost devotedness and love and equally determined not to shake his mother's lasting peace by any useless exposure of unwelcome facts and yet bowed in his deepest soul some way to embrace isabel before the world and yield to her his constant consolation and companionship and finding no possible mode of unitedly encompassing all these ends without a most singular act of pious imposter which he thought all heaven would justify in him since he himself was to be the grand self renouncing victim therefore this was his settled and immovable purpose now namely to assume before the world that by secret rights Pierre Landening was already become the husband of Isabel Banford an assumption which would entirely warrant his dwelling in her continual company and upon equal terms taking her wherever the world admitted him and at the same time foreclose all sinister inquisitions bearing upon his deceased parents memory or any way affecting his mother's lasting peace as indecisively linked with that true he in embryo foreknew that the extraordinary thing he had resolved would in another way indirectly though inevitably daughter most keen pang into his mother's heart but this then seemed to him part of the unavoidable vast price of his enthusiastic virtue and thus minded rather would he privately pain is living mother with a wound that might be curable then cast worldwide and a remediable dishonor so it seemed to him upon his departed father probably no other being then Isabel could have produced upon Pierre impressions powerful enough to eventuate in a final resolution so unparalleled as the above but the wonderful melodiousness of her grief had touched the secret monocord within his breast by an apparent magic precisely similar to that which had moved the stringed tongue of her guitar to respond to the heart strings of her own melancholy planes the deep voice of the being of Isabel called to him from out the immense distances of sky and air and there seemed no veto of the earth that could forbid her heavenly claim during the three days that he had personally known her and so been brought into magnetic contact with her other persuasions and potencies than those direct ones involved in her bewildering eyes and marvelous story had unconsciously left there in a faceable impressions on him and perhaps without his privity had mainly contributed to his resolve she had impressed him as the glorious child of pride and grief in whose countenance were traceable the divinous linuments of both her parents pride gave to her her nameless nobleness grief touched that nobleness with an angelical softness and again that softness was steeped in a most charitable humility which was the foundation of her loftiest excellence of all neither by word or letter had Isabel betrayed any spark of those more common emotions and desires which might not unreasonably be ascribed to an ordinary person placed in circumstances like hers though almost penniless she had not invoked a pecuniary bounty of pier and though she was altogether silent on that subject yet pier could not but be strangely sensible of something in her which disdain to voluntarily hang upon the mere bounty even of a brother nor though she by various nameless ways manifested her consciousness of being surrounded by uncongenial and inferior beings while yet descended from a generous stock and personally meriting the most refined companion ships which the wide world could yield nevertheless she had not demanded up here that he should array her in brocade and lead her forth among the rare in opulent ladies of the land but while thus event seeing her intuitive true lady likeness and nobleness by this entire freedom from all sordid motives neither had she merged all her feelings and any sickly sentimentalities of sisterly affection toward her so suddenly discovered brother which in the case of a naturally unattractive woman in her circumstances would not have been altogether alluring to pier know that intense and indescribable longing which her letter by its very incoherency had best embodied proceeded from no base vain or ordinary motive whatever but was the unsuppressable and unmistakable cry of the God head through her soul commanding peer to fly to her and do his highest and most glorious duty in the world nor now as it changedly seemed to peer did that duty consist in stubbornly flying in the marble face of the past and striving to reverse the decree which a pronounced that is about could never perfectly inherit all the privileges of a legitimate child of her father and thoroughly now he felt that even as this would in the present case be both preposterous in itself and cruel in effect to both the living and the dead so was it entirely undesired by is about who though once yielding to a momentary burst of aggressive enthusiasm yet in her more wanted mood of mournfulness and sweetness events no such lawless wandering thoroughly now he felt that is about was content to live obscure in her paternal identity so long as she could anyway appease her deep longings for the constant love and sympathy and close domestic contact of someone of her blood so that peer had no slightest misgiving that upon learning the character of his scheme she would deem it to come short of her natural expectations while so far as its apparent strangeness was concerned a strangeness perhaps invincible to squeamish and humdrum women here peer anticipated no obstacle in Isabel for her whole past was strange and strangeness seemed best befitting to her future but had peer now reread the opening paragraph of her letter to him he might have very quickly derived a powerful anticipated objection from his sister which is own complete disinterestedness concealed from him though peer had every reason to believe that owing to her secluded and humble life is about was in entire ignorance of the fact of his precise relation to Lucy tartan and ignorance whose first indirect and unconscious manifestation in Isabel had been unspeakably welcome to him and though of course he had both wisely and benevolently abstained from enlightening her on that point still not forstanding this was it possible that any true hearted noble girl like Isabel would to benefit herself willingly become a participator in an act which would prospectively and forever bar the blessed boon of marriageable love from one so young man who says peer and eternally entangle him in a fictitious alliance which though in reality but a web of air yet in effect would prove a wall of iron for the same powerful motive which induced the thought of forming such an alliance would always thereafter forbid that tacit exposure of its fictitiousness which would be consequent upon its public discontinuance and the real nuptials appear with any other being during the time of Isabel. But according to what view you take of it it is either the gracious or the malicious gift of the great God's demand that on the threshold of any holy new and momentous devoted enterprise the thousand ulterior intricacies and imperilings to which it most conduct these of the outset are mostly withheld from sight and so through her ever primeval wilderness fortune's night rides on the current of the palaces or the pitfalls in its heart. Surprising and past all ordinary belief are those strange over sights and inconsistencies into which the enthusiastic meditation upon unique or extreme resolves will sometimes beget in young and over ardent souls that all comprehending oneness that calm representativeness by which a steady philosophic mind reaches forth and draws to itself in their collective the objects of its contemplations that pertains not to the young enthusiast by his eagerness all objects are deceptively foreshortened by his intensity each object is viewed as detached so that essentially and relatively everything is misseen by him already have we exposed that passing preposperousness in Pierre which by reason of the above name cause which we have endeavored to portray reduced him to chairs for a time for unitedly impossible designs and now we behold this hapless youth all eager to involve himself in such an inexplicable twist of fate that the three dexterous maids themselves could hardly disentangle him if once he tied the complicating knots about him and Isabelle Ah, thou rash boy are there no couriers in the air to warn thee away from these narrowlings and point thee to those cretin' labyrinths to which thy life's court is leading thee where now are the high benefices wither fled the sweet angels that are ledged guardians to man not that the impulsive Pierre wholly overlooked all that was menacing to him in his future if now he acted out his most rare resolve but eagerly foreshortened by him they assumed not their full magnitude of menacing so riveted now his purpose were they pushed up to his face would he for that renounce his self renunciation while concerning all things more immediately contingent upon his central resolution these were doubtless in that measure foreseen and understood by him perfectly at least he seemed to foresee and understand that the present hope of Lucie Tartan must be banished from his being that this would carry a terrible hang to her which in the natural record would but redouble his own that to the world all his heroicness standing equally unexplained and unsuspected therefore the world would denounce him as infamously false to his betrothed reckless of the most binding human vows a secret lure and wetter of an unknown and enigmatic girl a spurner of all a loving mother's wisest counsellings a bringer down a blasting reproach upon an honorable name a besotted self-exile from a most prosperous house and bound to his fortune and lastly that now his whole life would in the eyes of the white humanity be covered with an all pervading haze of incurable sinisterness possibly not to be removed even in the concluding hour of death such oath thou son of man are the perils and the miseries thou callest down on thee when even in a virtuous cause thou steppest aside from those very lines of conduct by which the common world however base undastardly surrounds thee for thy worldly good of times it is very wonderful to trace the rarest and profoundest things and find their probable origin in something extremely trite for trivial yet so strange and complicate is the human soul so much is confusedly evolved from out itself and such vast and varied accessions from abroad and so impossible is it always to distinguish between these two that the wisest man were rash positively to assign the precise and incipient origination of his final thoughts and acts far as we blind moles can see man's life seems but an acting upon mysterious hints it is somehow hinted to us to do thus with us for surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity this preamble seems not entirely unnecessary as usher of the strange conceit that possibly the latent germ appears proposed extraordinary mode of executing his proposed extraordinary resolve namely the nominal conversion of a sister into a wife might have been found in the previous conversational conversion of a mother into a sister for hereby he had habituated his voice and manner to a certain fictitiousness in one of the closest domestic relations of life and since man's moral texture is very porous and things assumed upon the surface at last strike in hence this outward habituation to the above named fictitiousness had insensibly disposed as mine to it as it were but only innocently and pleasantly as yet by any possibility this general conceit be so then to peer the times of sportfulness were as pregnant with the hours of earnestness and in sport he learnt the terms of world chapter 2 if next to that resolve concerning his lasting fraternal succor to isaba there was at this present time any determination and peer absolutely inflexible and partaking at once of the sacredness and the indecisiveness of the most solemn oath it was the enthusiastic and apparently holy supererogatory resolution to hold his father's memory untouched nor to one single being in the world revealed the paternity of isaba unrecollably dead and gone from out the living world again returned to utter helplessness so far as this world went his parish father seemed to appeal to the dutifulness and mercifulness to peer in terms far more moving than though the accents proceeded from his mortal mouth and what though not through the sin of peer but through his father's sin that father's fair fame now lay at the mercy of the son and could only be kept in violet by the son's free sacrifice of all earthly felicity what if this were so it but struck a still loftier chord in the bosom of the sum and build him with ease never had the generous peer cherished the heath the niche conceit that even in the general world sin is a fair object to be stretched on the cruelest racks by self complacent virtue that self complacent virtue may feed her lily liveredness on the power of sin's anguish for perfect virtue does not more lovely claim our approbation than repented sin in its concludedness does demand our tenderness and concern and as the more immense the virtue so should be the more immense our approbation likewise the more immense the sin the more infinite our pity in some sort sin have the sacredness not less than holiness and great sin calls forth more magnanimity than small virtue what man who is a man does not feel livelier and more generous emotions toward the great god of sin Satan then toward haberdasher who only is a sinner in the small and entirely honorable way of trade though Pierre profoundly shuddered at that impenetrable yet blackly significant nebulousness which the wild story a visible through around the early life of his father yet as he recall the dumb anguish of the invocation of the empty empty Ashley hand uplifted from his father's deathbed he most keenly felt that of what whoever unknown shade his father's guilt might be it in the final hour of death it had been most dismally repented by a repentance only the more full of utter readiness than it was a consuming secret in him mince the matter how his family would had not his father died a raver whence that raving following so prosperous a life whence but from the cruelest compunctions touched thus and strung in all the sinews and his nerves to the holding of his father's memory intact Pierre turned his confronting and frightened face toward Lucy tartan and still about that not even she should know the whole no not know the least there is an inevitable keen cruelty in the loftier heroism it is not heroism only to stand and flinched ourselves in the hour of suffering but it is heroism to stand and flinch both at home and at some loved ones united suffering united suffering which we could put an instant period to if we would but renounce the glorious cause for which ourselves do bleed and see our most loved one bleed if he would not reveal his father's shame to the common world whose favorable opinion for himself Pierre now despised how then reveal it to the woman he adored to her above all others would now uncover his father's tune and bid her behold from what vile attaintings he himself had sprung so Pierre turned round and tied Lucy to the same state which must hold himself for he too plainly saw that it could not be but that both their hearts must burn yes his resolve concerning his father's memory involved the necessity of assuming even to Lucy his marriage with Isabelle here he could not even to her this would aggravate the sharp pang of parting by itself suggested the holy groundless surmising in Lucy's mind in the most miserable degree contaminating to her idea of him but on this point he still fondly trusted that without at all marring his filial bond he would be enabled by some significant intimations to arrest in Lucy's mind those darker imaginings which might find interest there and if he ever holy right yet prevent her from going wildly long for his mother Pierre was more prepared he considered that by an inscrutable decree which it was but foolishness to try to evade or shun or do not existance to since he felt that so profoundly pressing on as in most so the family of the Glandonings was imperiously called upon to offer up a victim to the gods of world one grand victim at the least a grand victim must be his mother or himself if he disclosed his secret to the world then his mother was made the victim if it all hazards he kept it to himself then himself would be the victim a victim as respecting his mother because under the peculiar circumstances of the case the nondisclosure of the secret involved her entire and infamy engendering misconception of himself to do this he vowed submissive one other thing last to be here named because the very least in the conscious thoughts of Pierre one other thing remained to menace him with assured disastrousness this thing it was which though but dimly hinted up as yet still in the apprehension must have exerted a powerful influence upon Pierre in preparing him for the words his father's last and fatal sickness had seized him suddenly both the probable concealed distraction of his mind with reference to his life as recall to him in an evil hour and his consequential wanderings these with other reasons had prevented him from framing a new will to supersede one made shortly after his marriage and air Pierre was born by that will which as yet had never been dragged into the courts of law and which in the fancy security of her own and her son's congenial and loving future Mrs. Glenn Denning had never but once and then in conclusively offered to discuss with a view to a better and more appropriate ordering of things to meet circumstances nonexistent at the time at the period the testament was framed by that will all the Glen Denning property was declared his mother's acutely sensible to those prophetic intimations and him which painted in advance the haughty temper of his offended mother as all bitterness scorn toward his son once the object of her proudest joy but now become a deeper approach as not only rebellious to her but glaringly dishonorable before the world. Pierre distinctly foresaw that she never would have permitted Isabel Bamford in her true character to cross her threshold neither would she now permit Isabel Bamford to cross her threshold in any other and disguised character least of all as that unknown and insidious girl who by some pernicious arts had lured her only son from honor into infamy but not to admit Isabel was not to exclude Pierre if indeed on independent grounds of exasperation against himself his mother would not cast him out nor did the same interior intimations in him which forepainted the above bearing of his mother abstained to trace her whole haughty heart as so unrelentingly set against him that while she would close her doors against both him and his fictitious wife so also she would not willingly contribute one copper to support them in a supposed union so entirely important to her and though Pierre was not so familiar with the science of the law as to be quite certain what the law if appealed to concerning the provisions of his father's will would decree concerning any possible claims of the son to share with the mother in the property of the sire yet he prospectively felt an invincible repugnance to dragging his dead father's hand and seal into open court and fighting over them with a base mercenary motive and with his own mother for the antagonist for so thoroughly did his infallible presentiments paint his mother's character to him as operated upon and disclosed in all those fierce retreats hitherto held in abeyance by the mere chance and felicity of circumstances that he felt that her exasperation against him would even meet the test of a public legal contention concerning the glam dinning property for indeed there was a reserve strength and masculinity in the character of his mother from which on all these points Pierre had everything to drain besides will the matter how he would Pierre for nearly two whole years to come would still remain a minor an infant in the eye of the law incapable of personally asserting any legal claim and though he might sue by his next friend yet who would be his voluntary next friend when the execution of his great resolve would for him depopulate all the world of friends now to all these things and many more seem the soul of this infatuated young enthusiast braced chapter three there is a dark mad mystery in some human hearts which sometimes during the tyranny of a usurper mood leads them to be all eagerness to cast off the most intense beloved bond as a hindrance to the attainment of whatever transcendental object that usurper mood so tyrannically suggests then the beloved bond seems to hold us to no essential good lifted to exalted mounts we can dispense with all the veil endearments we sperm kisses our blisters to us and forsaking the palpitating forms of mortal love we emptily embrace the boundless and the embodied air we think we are not human we become as immortal bachelors in gods but again like the greek gods themselves prone we descend to earth glad to be eugazorious once more glad to hide these godlike heads within the bosoms made of two seducing clay weary with the invariable earth the restless sailor breaks from every infolding arm and puts to sea in height of tempest that blows off shore but in long night watches at the antipodes how heavily that ocean gloom lies in vast bales upon the deck thinking that that very moment in his deserted hamlet home the household sun is high and many a sun-eyed maiden meridian as the sun he curses fate himself he curses his senseless madness which is himself for whoso once has known the sweet knowledge and then in absence to him the avenging dream will come pierre was now this vulnerable god this self-uprating sailor this dreamer of the avenging dream though in some things he had unjuggled himself and forced himself to hide the prospect as it was yet so far as lucy was concerned he was at bottom still a juggler true in his extraordinary scheme lucy was so intimately interwoven that it seemed impossible for him at all to cast his future without some way having that heart's love and view but ignorant of its quantity as yet or fearful of ascertaining it like an algebraist for the real lucy he in his scheming thoughts had substituted but assigned some empty x and then the ultimate solution of the problem that empty x still figured not the real lucy but now when risen from the displacement of his chamber floor and risen from the still profounder prostration of his soul pierre had thought that all the horizon of his dark fate was commanded by him all his resolutions clearly defined and moveably decreed now finally to top all there suddenly it slid into his inmost heart the living and breathing form of lucy his lungs collapsed his eyeballs glared for the sweet imagined form so long buried alive in him writing on him from the grave and her light hair swept far down her shroud then for the time all minor things were welled in him his mother isabel the whole wide world and one only thing remained to him this all including query lucy or god but here we draw a veil some nameless struggles of the soul cannot be painted and some woes will not be told that the ambiguous procession will reveal their own ambiguousness in a book tin