Pierre, Or the Ambiguities

by Herman Melville

  Pierre started. "Thou hast seen Lucy Tartan, at Saddle Meadows?"

  "Is Lucy Tartan the name? — Perhaps, perhaps;-but also, in the dream, Pierre; she came, with her blue eyes turned beseechingly on me; she seemed as if persuading me from thee;-methought she was then more than thy cousin;- methought she was that good angel, which some say, hovers over every human soul; and methought-oh, methought that I was thy other, — thy other angel, Pierre. Look: see these eyes, — this hair-nay, this cheek;-all dark, dark, dark, — and she-the blue-eyed-the fair-haired-oh, once the red-cheeked!"

  She tossed her ebon tresses over her; she fixed her ebon eyes on him.

  "Say, Pierre; doth not a funerealness invest me? Was ever hearse so plumed? — Oh, God! that I had been born with blue eyes, and fair hair! Those make the livery of heaven! Heard ye ever yet of a good angel with dark eyes, Pierre? — no, no, no-all blue, blue, blue-heaven's own blue-the clear, vivid, unspeakable blue, which we see in June skies, when all clouds are swept by.-But the good angel shall come to thee, Pierre. Then both will be close by thee, my brother; and thou mayest perhaps elect, — elect! — She shall come; she shall come.- When is it to be, dear Pierre?"

  "To-morrow, Isabel. So it is here written."

  She fixed her eye on the crumpled billet in his hand. "It were vile to ask, but not wrong to suppose the asking.- Pierre, — no, I need not say it, — wouldst thou?"

  "No; I would not let thee read it, my sister; I would not; because I have no right to-no right-no right;-that is it; no: I have no right. I will burn it this instant, Isabel."

  He stepped from her into the adjoining room, threw the billet into the stove, and watching its last ashes, returned to Isabel.

  She looked with endless intimations upon him.

  "It is burnt, but not consumed; it is gone, but not lost. Through stove, pipe, and flue, it hath mounted in flame, and gone as a scroll to heaven! It shall appear again, my brother. -Woe is me-woe, woe! — woe is me, oh, woe! Do not speak to me, Pierre; leave me now. She shall come. The Bad angel shall tend the Good; she shall dwell with us, Pierre. Mistrust me not; her considerateness to me, shall be outdone by mine to her.-Let me be alone now, my brother."

  IV

  Though by the unexpected petition to enter his privacy-a petition he could scarce ever deny to Isabel, since she so religiously abstained from preferring it, unless for some very reasonable cause, Pierre, in the midst of those conflicting, secondary emotions, immediately following the first wonderful effect of Lucy's strange letter, had been forced to put on, toward Isabel, some air of assurance and understanding concerning its contents; yet at bottom, he was still a prey to all manner of devouring mysteries.

  Soon, now, as he left the chamber of Isabel, these mysteriousnesses re-mastered him completely; and as he mechanically sat down in the dining-room chair, gently offered him by Delly-for the silent girl saw that some strangeness that sought stillness was in him;-Pierre's mind was revolving how it was possible, or any way conceivable, that Lucy should have been inspired with such seemingly wonderful presentiments of something assumed, or disguising, or non-substantial, somewhere and somehow, in his present most singular apparent position in the eye of the world. The wild words of Isabel yet rang in his ears. It were an outrage upon all womanhood to imagine that Lucy, however yet devoted to him in her hidden heart, should be willing to come to him, so long as she supposed, with the rest of the world, that Pierre was an ordinarily married man. But how-what possible reason- what possible intimation could she have had to suspect the contrary, or to suspect any thing unsound? For neither at this present time, nor at any subsequent period, did Pierre, or could Pierre, possibly imagine that in her marvelous presentiments of Love she had any definite conceit of the precise nature of the secret which so unrevealingly and enchantedly wrapped him. But a peculiar thought passingly recurred to him here.

  Within his social recollections there was a very remarkable case of a youth, who, while all but affianced to a beautiful girl-one returning his own throbbings with incipient passion — became somehow casually and momentarily betrayed into an imprudent manifested tenderness toward a second lady; or else, that second lady's deeply-concerned friends caused it to be made known to the poor youth, that such committal tenderness toward her he had displayed, nor had it failed to exert its natural effect upon her; certain it is, this second lady drooped and drooped, and came nigh to dying, all the while raving of the cruel infidelity of her supposed lover; so that those agonizing appeals, from so really lovely a girl, that seemed dying of grief for him, at last so moved the youth, that-morbidly disregardful of the fact, that inasmuch as two ladies claimed him, the prior lady had the best title to his hand-his conscience insanely upbraided him concerning the second lady; he thought that eternal woe would surely overtake him both here and hereafter if he did not renounce his first love-terrible as the effort would be both to him and her-and wed with the second lady; which he accordingly did; while, through his whole subsequent life, delicacy and honor toward his thus wedded wife, forbade that by explaining to his first love how it was with him in this matter, he should tranquilize her heart; and, therefore, in her complete ignorance, she believed that he was willfully and heartlessly false to her; and so came to a lunatic's death on his account.

  This strange story of real life, Pierre knew to be also familiar to Lucy; for they had several times conversed upon it; and the first love of the demented youth had been a schoolmate of Lucy's, and Lucy had counted upon standing up with her as bridesmaid. Now, the passing idea was self-suggested to Pierre, whether into Lucy's mind some such conceit as this, concerning himself and Isabel, might not possibly have stolen. But then again such a supposition proved wholly untenable in the end; for it did by no means suffice for a satisfactory solution of the absolute motive of the extraordinary proposed step of Lucy; nor indeed by any ordinary law of propriety, did it at all seem to justify that step. Therefore, he knew not what to think; hardly what to dream. Wonders, nay, downright miracles and no less were sung about Love; but here was the absolute miracle itself-the out-acted miracle. For infallibly certain he inwardly felt, that whatever her strange conceit; whatever her enigmatical delusion; whatever her most secret and inexplicable motive; still Lucy in her own virgin heart remained transparently immaculate, without shadow of flaw or vein. Nevertheless, what inconceivable conduct this was in her, which she in her letter so passionately proposed! Altogether, it amazed him; it confounded him.

  Now, that vague, fearful feeling stole into him, that, rail as all atheists will, there is a mysterious, inscrutable divineness in the world-a God-a Being positively present everywhere;-nay, He is now in this room; the air did part when I here sat down. I displaced the Spirit then-condensed it a little off from this spot. He looked apprehensively around him; he felt overjoyed at the sight of the humanness of Delly.

  While he was thus plunged into this mysteriousness, a knock was heard at the door.

  Delly hesitatingly rose-"Shall I let any one in, sir? — I think it is Mr. Millthorpe's knock."

  "Go and see-go and see"-said Pierre, vacantly.

  The moment the door was opened, Millthorpe-for it was he-catching a glimpse of Pierre's seated form, brushed past Delly, and loudly entered the room.

  "Ha, ha! well, my boy, how conies on the Inferno? That is it you are writing; one is apt to look black while writing Infernoes; you always loved Dante. My lad! I have finished ten metaphysical treatises; argued five cases before the court; attended all our society's meetings; accompanied our great Professor, Monsieur Volvoon, the lecturer, through his circuit in the philosophical saloons, sharing all the honors of his illustrious triumph; and by the way, let me tell you, Volvoon secretly gives me even more credit than is my due; for 'pon my soul, I did not help write more than one half, at most, of his Lectures; edited-anonymously, though-a learned, scientific work on 'The Precise Cause of the Modifications in the Undulatory Motion in Waves,' a posthumous work of a poor fellow-fine lad he was, too-a friend of mine. Yes
, here I have been doing all this, while you still are hammering away at that one poor plague Inferno! Oh, there's a secret in dispatching these things; patience! patience! you will yet learn the secret. Time! time! I can't teach it to you, my boy, but Time can: I wish I could, but I can't."

  There was another knock at the door.

  "Oh!" cried Millthorpe, suddenly turning round to it, "I forgot, my boy. I came to tell you that there is a porter, with some queer things, inquiring for you. I happened to meet him downstairs in the corridors, and I told him to follow me up-I would show him the road; here he is; let him in, good Delly, my girl."

  Thus far, the rattlings of Millthorpe, if producing any effect at all, had but stunned the averted Pierre. But now he started to his feet. A man with his hat on, stood in the door, holding an easel before him.

  "Is this Mr. Glendinning's room, gentlemen?"

  "Oh, come in, come in," cried Millthorpe, "all right."

  "Oh, is that you, sir? well, well, then"; and the man set down the easel.

  "Well, my boy," exclaimed Millthorpe to Pierre; "you are in the Inferno dream yet. Look; that's what people call an easel, my boy. An easel, an easel-not a weasel; you look at it as though you thought it a weasel. Come; wake up, wake up! You ordered it, I suppose, and here it is. Going to paint and illustrate the Inferno, as you go along, I suppose. Well, my friends tell me it is a great pity my own things ain't illustrated. But I can't afford it. There now is that Hymn to the Niger, which I threw into a pigeon-hole, a year or two ago- that would be fine for illustrations."

  "Is it for Mr. Glendinning you inquire?" said Pierre now, in a slow, icy tone, to the porter.

  "Mr. Glendinning, sir; all right, ain't it?"

  "Perfectly," said Pierre mechanically, and casting another strange, rapt, bewildered glance at the easel. "But something seems strangely wanting here. Ay, now I see, I see it:- Villain! — the vines! Thou hast torn the green heart-strings! Thou hast but left the cold skeleton of the sweet arbor wherein she once nestled! Thou besotted, heartless hind and fiend, dost thou so much as dream in thy shriveled liver of the eternal mischief thou hast done? Restore thou the green vines! untrample them, thou accursed! — Oh my God, my God, trampled vines pounded and crushed in all fibers, how can they live over again, even though they be replanted! Curse thee, thou! — Nay, nay," he added moodily-"I was but wandering to myself." Then rapidly and mockingly-"Pardon, pardon! — porter; I most humbly crave thy most haughty pardon." Then imperiously-"Come, stir thyself, man; thou hast more below: bring all up."

  As the astounded porter turned, he whispered to Millthorpe — "Is he safe? — shall I bring 'em?"

  "Oh certainly," smiled Millthorpe: "I'll look out for him; he's never really dangerous when I'm present; there, go!"

  Two trunks now followed, with "L.T." blurredly marked upon the ends.

  "Is that all, my man?" said Pierre, as the trunks were being put down before him; "well, how much?" — that moment his eyes first caught the blurred letters.

  "Prepaid, sir; but no objection to more."

  Pierre stood mute and unmindful, still fixedly eying the blurred letters; his body contorted, and one side drooping, as though that moment half-way down-stricken with a paralysis, and yet unconscious of the stroke.

  His two companions momentarily stood motionless in those respective attitudes, in which they had first caught sight of the remarkable change that had come over him. But, as if ashamed of having been thus affected, Millthorpe summoning a loud, merry voice, advanced toward Pierre, and, tapping his shoulder, cried, "Wake up, wake up, my boy! — He says he is prepaid, but no objection to more."

  "Prepaid;-what's that? Go, go, and jabber to apes!"

  "A curious young gentleman, is he not?" said Millthorpe lightly to the porter:-"Look you, my boy, I'll repeat:-He says he's prepaid, but no objection to more."

  "Ah? — take that then," said Pierre, vacantly putting something into the porter's hand.

  "And what shall I do with this, sir?" said the porter, staring.

  "Drink a health; but not mine, that were mockery!"

  "With a key, sir? This is a key you gave me."

  "Ah! — well, you at least shall not have the thing that unlocks me. Give me the key, and take this."

  "Ay, ay! — here's the chink! Thank 'ee, sir, thank 'ee. This'll drink. I ain't called a porter for nothing; Stout's the word; 2151 is my number; any jobs, call on me."

  "Do you ever cart a coffin, my man?" said Pierre.

  " 'Pon my soul!" cried Millthorpe, gayly laughing, "if you ain't writing an Inferno, then-but never mind. Porter! this gentleman is under medical treatment at present. You had better-ab'-you understand-'squatulate, porter! There, my boy, he is gone; I understand how to manage these fellows; there's a trick in it, my boy-an off-handed sort of what d'ye call it? — you understand-the trick! the trick! — the whole world's a trick. Know the trick of it, all's right; don't know, all's wrong. Ha! ha!"

  "The porter is gone then?" said Pierre, calmly. "Well, Mr. Millthorpe, you will have the goodness to follow him."

  "Rare joke! admirable! — Good morning, sir. Ha, ha!"

  And with his unruffleable hilariousness, Millthorpe quitted the room.

  But hardly had the door closed upon him, nor had he yet removed his hand from its outer knob, when suddenly it swung half open again, and thrusting his fair curly head within, Millthorpe cried: "By the way, my boy, I have a word for you. You know that greasy fellow who has been dunning you so of late. Well, be at rest there; he's paid. I was suddenly made flush yesterday:-regular flood-tide. You can return it any day, you know-no hurry; that's all.-But, by the way, — as you look as though you were going to have company here-just send for me in case you want to use me- any bedstead to put up, or heavy things to be lifted about. Don't you and the women do it, now, mind! That's all again. Adios, my boy. Take care of yourself!"

  "Stay!" cried Pierre, reaching forth one hand, but moving neither foot-"Stay!" — in the midst of all his prior emotions struck by these singular traits in Millthorpe. But the door was abruptly closed; and singing Fa, la, la: Millthorpe in his seedy coat went tripping down the corridor.

  "Plus heart, minus head," muttered Pierre, his eyes fixed on the door. "Now, by heaven! the god that made Millthorpe was both a better and a greater than the god that made Napoleon or Byron.-Plus head, minus heart-Pah! the brains grow maggoty without a heart; but the heart's the preserving salt itself, and can keep sweet without the head.-Delly."

  "Sir?"

  "My cousin Miss Tartan is coming here to live with us, Delly. That easel, — those trunks are hers."

  "Good heavens! — coming here? — your cousin? — Miss Tartan?"

  "Yes, I thought you must have heard of her and me;-but it was broken off, Delly."

  "Sir? Sir?"

  "I have no explanation, Delly; and from you, I must have no amazement. My cousin, — mind, my cousin, Miss Tartan, is coming to live with us. The next room to this, on the other side there, is unoccupied. That room shall be — hers. You must wait upon her, too, Delly."

  "Certainly, sir, certainly; I will do any thing," said Delly, trembling; "but, — but-does Mrs. Glendin-din-does my mistress know this?"

  "My wife knows all"-said Pierre sternly. "I will go down and get the key of the room; and you must sweep it out."

  "What is to be put into it, sir?' said Delly. "Miss Tartan- why, she is used to all sorts of fine things, — rich carpets- wardrobes-mirrors-curtains;-why, why, why!"

  "Look," said Pierre, touching an old rug with his foot; — "here is a bit of carpet; drag that into her room; here is a chair, put that in; and for a bed, — ay, ay," he muttered to himself; "I have made it for her, and she ignorantly lies on it now! — as made-so lie. Oh God!"

  "Hark! my mistress is calling"-cried Delly, moving toward the opposite room.

  "Stay!" — cried Pierre, grasping her shoulder, "if both called at one time from these opposite chambers, and both were swooning, which door would you first fly
to?"

  The girl gazed at him uncomprehendingly and affrighted a moment; and then said, "This one, sir"-out of mere confusion perhaps, putting her hand on Isabel's latch.

  "It is well. Now go."

  He stood in an intent unchanged attitude till Delly returned.

  "How is my wife, now?"

  Again startled by the peculiar emphasis placed on the magical word wife, Delly, who had long before this, been occasionally struck with the infrequency of his using that term; she looked at him perplexedly, and said half-unconsciously-

  "Your wife, sir?"

  "Ay, is she not?"

  "God grant that she be-Oh, 'tis most cruel to ask that of poor, poor Delly, sir!"

  "Tut for thy tears! Never deny it again then! — I swear to heaven, she is!"

  With these wild words, Pierre seized his hat, and departed the room, muttering something about bringing the key of the additional chamber.

  As the door closed on him, Delly dropped on her knees. She lifted her head toward the ceiling, but dropped it again, as if tyrannically awed downward, and bent it low over, till her whole form tremulously cringed to the floor.

  "God that made me, and that wast not so hard to me as wicked Delly deserved, — God that made me, I pray to Thee! ward it off from me, if it be coming to me. Be not deaf to me; these stony walls-Thou canst hear through them. Pity! pity! — mercy, my God! — If they are not married; if I, penitentially seeking to be pure, am now but the servant to a greater sin, than I myself committed: then, pity! pity! pity! pity! pity! Oh God that made me, — see me, see me here-what can Delly do? If I go hence, none will take me in but villains. If I stay, then-for stay I must-and they be not married, — then pity, pity, pity, pity, pity!"

  BOOK XXIV. LUCY AT THE APOSTLES'

  I

  NEXT MORNING, the recently appropriated room adjoining on the other side of the dining-room, presented a different aspect from that which met the eye of Delly upon first unlocking it with Pierre on the previous evening. Two squares of faded carpeting of different patterns, covered the middle of the floor, leaving, toward the surbase, a wide, blank margin around them. A small glass hung in the pier; beneath that, a little stand, with a. foot or two of carpet before it. In one corner was a cot, neatly equipped with bedding. At the outer side of the cot, another strip of carpeting was placed. Lucy's delicate feet should not shiver on the naked floor.