"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 G.o.d!"

"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 att.i.tude 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?"

"G.o.d 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.

"G.o.d that made me, and that wast not so hard to me as wicked Delly deserved,--G.o.d 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 G.o.d!--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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.s 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.

Pierre, Isabel, and Delly were standing in the room; Isabel's eyes were fixed on the cot.

"I think it will be pretty cosy now," said Delly, palely glancing all round, and then adjusting the pillow anew.

"There is no warmth, though," said Isabel. "Pierre, there is no stove in the room. She will be very cold. The pipe--can we not send it this way?"

And she looked more intently at him, than the question seemed to warrant.

"Let the pipe stay where it is, Isabel," said Pierre, answering her own pointed gaze. "The dining-room door can stand open. She never liked sleeping in a heated room. Let all be; it is well. Eh! but there is a grate here, I see. I will buy coals. Yes, yes--that can be easily done; a little fire of a morning--the expense will be nothing. Stay, we will have a little fire here now for a welcome. She shall always have fire."

"Better change the pipe, Pierre," said Isabel, "that will be permanent, and save the coals."

"It shall not be done, Isabel. Doth not that pipe and that warmth go into thy room? Shall I rob my wife, good Delly, even to benefit my most devoted and true-hearted cousin?"

"Oh! I should say not, sir; not at all," said Delly hysterically.

A triumphant fire flashed in Isabel's eye; her full bosom arched out; but she was silent.

"She may be here, now, at any moment, Isabel," said Pierre; "come, we will meet her in the dining-room; that is our reception-place, thou knowest."

So the three went into the dining-room.

II.

They had not been there long, when Pierre, who had been pacing up and down, suddenly paused, as if struck by some laggard thought, which had just occurred to him at the eleventh hour. First he looked toward Delly, as if about to bid her quit the apartment, while he should say something private to Isabel; but as if, on a second thought, holding the contrary of this procedure most advisable, he, without preface, at once addressed Isabel, in his ordinary conversational tone, so that Delly could not but plainly hear him, whether she would or no.

"My dear Isabel, though, as I said to thee before, my cousin, Miss Tartan, that strange, and willful, nun-like girl, is at all hazards, mystically resolved to come and live with us, yet it must be quite impossible that her friends can approve in her such a singular step; a step even more singular, Isabel, than thou, in thy unsophisticatedness, can'st at all imagine. I shall be immensely deceived if they do not, to their very utmost, strive against it. Now what I am going to add may be quite unnecessary, but I can not avoid speaking it, for all that."

Isabel with empty hands sat silent, but intently and expectantly eying him; while behind her chair, Delly was bending her face low over her knitting--which she had seized so soon as Pierre had begun speaking--and with trembling fingers was nervously twitching the points of her long needles. It was plain that she awaited Pierre's accents with hardly much less eagerness than Isabel. Marking well this expression in Delly, and apparently not unpleased with it, Pierre continued; but by no slightest outward tone or look seemed addressing his remarks to any one but Isabel.

"Now what I mean, dear Isabel, is this: if that very probable hostility on the part of Miss Tartan's friends to her fulfilling her strange resolution--if any of that hostility should chance to be manifested under thine eye, then thou certainly wilt know how to account for it; and as certainly wilt draw no inference from it in the minutest conceivable degree involving any thing sinister in me. No, I am sure thou wilt not, my dearest Isabel. For, understand me, regarding this strange mood in my cousin as a thing wholly above my comprehension, and indeed regarding my poor cousin herself as a rapt enthusiast in some wild mystery utterly unknown to me; and unwilling ignorantly to interfere in what almost seems some supernatural thing, I shall not repulse her coming, however violently her friends may seek to stay it. I shall not repulse, as certainly as I have not invited. But a neutral att.i.tude sometimes seems a suspicious one. Now what I mean is this: let all such vague suspicions of me, if any, be confined to Lucy's friends; but let not such absurd misgivings come near my dearest Isabel, to give the least uneasiness. Isabel! tell me; have I not now said enough to make plain what I mean? Or, indeed, is not all I have said wholly unnecessary; seeing that when one feels deeply conscientious, one is often apt to seem superfluously, and indeed unpleasantly and unbeseemingly scrupulous? Speak, my own Isabel,"--and he stept nearer to her, reaching forth his arm.

"Thy hand is the caster's ladle, Pierre, which holds me entirely fluid.

Into thy forms and slightest moods of thought, thou pourest me; and I there solidify to that form, and take it on, and thenceforth wear it, till once more thou moldest me anew. If what thou tellest me be thy thought, then how can I help its being mine, my Pierre?"

"The G.o.ds made thee of a holyday, when all the common world was done, and shaped thee leisurely in elaborate hours, thou paragon!"

So saying, in a burst of admiring love and wonder, Pierre paced the room; while Isabel sat silent, leaning on her hand, and half-vailed with her hair. Delly's nervous st.i.tches became less convulsive. She seemed soothed; some dark and vague conceit seemed driven out of her by something either directly expressed by Pierre, or inferred from his expressions.

III.

"Pierre! Pierre!--Quick! Quick!--They are dragging me back!--oh, quick, dear Pierre!"

"What is that?" swiftly cried Isabel, rising to her feet, and amazedly glancing toward the door leading into the corridor.