BOOK XII.

ISABEL: MRS. GLENDINNING: THE PORTRAIT: AND LUCY.

I.

When on the previous night Pierre had left the farm-house where Isabel harbored, it will be remembered that no hour, either of night or day, no special time at all had been a.s.signed for a succeeding interview. It was Isabel, who for some doubtlessly sufficient reason of her own, had, for the first meeting, a.s.signed the early hour of darkness.

As now, when the full sun was well up the heavens, Pierre drew near the farm-house of the Ulvers, he descried Isabel, standing without the little dairy-wing, occupied in vertically arranging numerous glittering shield-like milk-pans on a long shelf, where they might purifyingly meet the sun. Her back was toward him. As Pierre pa.s.sed through the open wicket and crossed the short soft green sward, he unconsciously m.u.f.fled his footsteps, and now standing close behind his sister, touched her shoulder and stood still.

She started, trembled, turned upon him swiftly, made a low, strange cry, and then gazed rivetedly and imploringly upon him.

"I look rather queerish, sweet Isabel, do I not?" said Pierre at last with a writhed and painful smile.

"My brother, my blessed brother!--speak--tell me--what has happened--what hast thou done? Oh! Oh! I should have warned thee before, Pierre, Pierre; it is my fault--mine, mine!"

"_What_ is thy fault, sweet Isabel?"

"Thou hast revealed Isabel to thy mother, Pierre."

"I have not, Isabel. Mrs. Glendinning knows not thy secret at all."

"Mrs. Glendinning?--that's,--that's thine own mother, Pierre! In heaven's name, my brother, explain thyself. Knows not my secret, and yet thou here so suddenly, and with such a fatal aspect? Come, come with me into the house. Quick, Pierre, why dost thou not stir? Oh, my G.o.d! if mad myself sometimes, I am to make mad him who loves me best, and who, I fear, has in some way ruined himself for me;--then, let me no more stand upright on this sod, but fall p.r.o.ne beneath it, that I may be hidden!

Tell me!" catching Pierre's arms in both her frantic hands--"tell me, do I blast where I look? is my face Gorgon's?"

"Nay, sweet Isabel; but it hath a more sovereign power; that turned to stone; thine might turn white marble into mother's milk."

"Come with me--come quickly."

They pa.s.sed into the dairy, and sat down on a bench by the honey-suckled cas.e.m.e.nt.

"Pierre, forever fatal and accursed be the day my longing heart called thee to me, if now, in the very spring-time of our related love, thou art minded to play deceivingly with me, even though thou should'st fancy it for my good. Speak to me; oh speak to me, my brother!"

"Thou hintest of deceiving one for one's good. Now supposing, sweet Isabel, that in no case would I affirmatively deceive thee;--in no case whatever;--would'st thou then be willing for thee and me to piously deceive others, for both their and our united good?--Thou sayest nothing. Now, then, is it _my_ turn, sweet Isabel, to bid thee speak to me, oh speak to me!"

"That unknown, approaching thing, seemeth ever ill, my brother, which must have unfrank heralds to go before. Oh, Pierre, dear, dear Pierre; be very careful with me! This strange, mysterious, unexampled love between us, makes me all plastic in thy hand. Be very careful with me. I know little out of me. The world seems all one unknown India to me. Look up, look on me, Pierre; say now, thou wilt be very careful; say so, say so, Pierre!"

"If the most exquisite, and fragile filagree of Genoa be carefully handled by its artisan; if sacred nature carefully folds, and warms, and by inconceivable attentivenesses eggs round and round her minute and marvelous embryoes; then, Isabel, do I most carefully and most tenderly egg thee, gentlest one, and the fate of thee! Short of the great G.o.d, Isabel, there lives none who will be more careful with thee, more infinitely considerate and delicate with thee."

"From my deepest heart, do I believe thee, Pierre. Yet thou mayest be very delicate in some point, where delicateness is not all essential, and in some quick impulsive hour, omit thy fullest heedfulness somewhere where heedlessness were most fatal. Nay, nay, my brother; bleach these locks snow-white, thou sun! if I have any thought to reproach thee, Pierre, or betray distrust of thee. But earnestness must sometimes seem suspicious, else it is none. Pierre, Pierre, all thy aspect speaks eloquently of some already executed resolution, born in suddenness.

Since I last saw thee, Pierre, some deed irrevocable has been done by thee. My soul is stiff and starched to it; now tell me what it is?"

"Thou, and I, and Delly Ulver, to-morrow morning depart this whole neighborhood, and go to the distant city.--That is it."

"No more?"

"Is it not enough?"

"There is something more, Pierre."

"Thou hast not yet answered a question I put to thee but just now.

Bethink thee, Isabel. The deceiving of others by thee and me, in a thing wholly pertaining to ourselves, for their and our united good. Wouldst thou?"

"I would do any thing that does not tend to the marring of thy best lasting fortunes, Pierre. What is it thou wouldst have thee and me to do together? I wait; I wait!"

"Let us go into the room of the double cas.e.m.e.nt, my sister," said Pierre, rising.

"Nay, then; if it can not be said here, then can I not do it anywhere, my brother; for it would harm thee."

"Girl!" cried Pierre, sternly, "if for thee I have lost"--but he checked himself.

"Lost? for me? Now does the very worst blacken on me. Pierre! Pierre!"

"I was foolish, and sought but to frighten thee, my sister. It was very foolish. Do thou now go on with thine innocent work here, and I will come again a few hours hence. Let me go now."

He was turning from her, when Isabel sprang forward to him, caught him with both her arms round him, and held him so convulsively, that her hair sideways swept over him, and half concealed him.

"Pierre, if indeed my soul hath cast on thee the same black shadow that my hair now flings on thee; if thou hast lost aught for me; then eternally is Isabel lost to Isabel, and Isabel will not outlive this night. If I am indeed an accursing thing, I will not act the given part, but cheat the air, and die from it. See; I let thee go, lest some poison I know not of distill upon thee from me."

She slowly drooped, and trembled from him. But Pierre caught her, and supported her.

"Foolish, foolish one! Behold, in the very bodily act of loosing hold of me, thou dost reel and fall;--unanswerable emblem of the indispensable heart-stay, I am to thee, my sweet, sweet Isabel! Prate not then of parting."

"What hast thou lost for me? Tell me!"

"A gainful loss, my sister!"

"'Tis mere rhetoric! What hast thou lost?"

"Nothing that my inmost heart would now recall. I have bought inner love and glory by a price, which, large or small, I would not now have paid me back, so I must return the thing I bought."

"Is love then cold, and glory white? Thy cheek is snowy, Pierre."

"It should be, for I believe to G.o.d that I am pure, let the world think how it may."

"What hast thou lost?"

"Not thee, nor the pride and glory of ever loving thee, and being a continual brother to thee, my best sister. Nay, why dost thou now turn thy face from me?"

"With fine words he wheedles me, and coaxes me, not to know some secret thing. Go, go, Pierre, come to me when thou wilt. I am steeled now to the worst, and to the last. Again I tell thee, I will do any thing--yes, any thing that Pierre commands--for, though outer ill do lower upon us, still, deep within, thou wilt be careful, very careful with me, Pierre?"

"Thou art made of that fine, unshared stuff of which G.o.d makes his seraphim. But thy divine devotedness to me, is met by mine to thee. Well mayest thou trust me, Isabel; and whatever strangest thing I may yet propose to thee, thy confidence,--will it not bear me out? Surely thou will not hesitate to plunge, when I plunge first;--already have I plunged! now thou canst not stay upon the bank. Hearken, hearken to me.--I seek not now to gain thy prior a.s.sent to a thing as yet undone; but I call to thee now, Isabel, from the depth of a foregone act, to ratify it, backward, by thy consent. Look not so hard upon me. Listen. I will tell all. Isabel, though thou art all fearfulness to injure any living thing, least of all, thy brother; still thy true heart foreknoweth not the myriad alliances and criss-crossings among mankind, the infinite entanglements of all social things, which forbids that one thread should fly the general fabric, on some new line of duty, without tearing itself and tearing others. Listen. All that has happened up to this moment, and all that may be yet to happen, some sudden inspiration now a.s.sures me, inevitably proceeded from the first hour I saw thee. Not possibly could it, or can it, be otherwise. Therefore feel I, that I have some patience. Listen. Whatever outer things might possibly be mine; whatever seeming brightest blessings; yet now to live uncomforting and unloving to thee, Isabel; now to dwell domestically away from thee; so that only by stealth, and base connivances of the night, I could come to thee as thy related brother; this would be, and is, unutterably impossible. In my bosom a secret adder of self-reproach and self-infamy would never leave off its sting. Listen. But without gratuitous dishonor to a memory which--for right cause or wrong--is ever sacred and inviolate to me, I can not be an open brother to thee, Isabel. But thou wantest not the openness; for thou dost not pine for empty nominalness, but for vital realness; what thou wantest, is not the occasional openness of my brotherly love; but its continual domestic confidence. Do I not speak thine own hidden heart to thee? say, Isabel? Well, then, still listen to me. One only way presents to this; a most strange way, Isabel; to the world, that never throbbed for thee in love, a most deceitful way; but to all a harmless way; so harmless in its essence, Isabel, that, seems to me, Pierre hath consulted heaven itself upon it, and heaven itself did not say Nay. Still, listen to me; mark me. As thou knowest that thou wouldst now droop and die without me; so would I without thee. We are equal there; mark _that_, too, Isabel. I do not stoop to thee, nor thou to me; but we both reach up alike to a glorious ideal! Now the continualness, the secretness, yet the always present domesticness of our love; how may we best compa.s.s that, without jeopardizing the ever-sacred memory I hinted of? One way--one way--only one! A strange way, but most pure. Listen. Brace thyself: here, let me hold thee now; and then whisper it to thee, Isabel. Come, I holding thee, thou canst not fall."

He held her tremblingly; she bent over toward him; his mouth wet her ear; he whispered it.

The girl moved not; was done with all her tremblings; leaned closer to him, with an inexpressible strangeness of an intense love, new and inexplicable. Over the face of Pierre there shot a terrible self-revelation; he imprinted repeated burning kisses upon her; pressed hard her hand; would not let go her sweet and awful pa.s.siveness.

Then they changed; they coiled together, and entangledly stood mute.