"I comprehend nothing, Pierre; there is nothing these eyes have ever looked upon, Pierre, that this soul comprehended. Ever, as now, do I go all a-grope amid the wide mysteriousness of things. Yes, she shall come; it is only one mystery the more. Doth she talk in her sleep, Pierre? Would it be well, if I slept with her, my brother?"
"On thy account; wishful for thy sake; to leave thee incommoded; and-and-not knowing precisely how things really are;-she probably anticipates and desires otherwise, my sister."
She gazed steadfastly at his outwardly firm, but not interiorly unfaltering aspect; and then dropped her glance in silence.
"Yes, she shall come, my brother; she shall come. But it weaves its thread into the general riddle, my brother.-Hath she that which they call the memory, Pierre; the memory? Hath she that?"
"We all have the memory, my sister."
"Not all! not all! — poor Bell hath but very little. Pierre! I have seen her in some dream. She is fair-haired-blue eyes — she is not quite so tall as I, yet a very little slighter."
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.