She loveth me, ay;-but why? Had I been cast in a cripple's mold, how then? Now, do I remember that in her most caressing love, there ever gleamed some scaly, glittering folds of pride. Me she loveth with pride's love; in me she thinks she seeth her own curled and haughty beauty; before my glass she stands, — pride's priestess-and to her mirrored image, not to me, she offers up her offerings of kisses. Oh, small thanks I owe thee, Favorable Goddess, that didst clothe this form with all the beauty of a man, that so thou mightest hide from me all the truth of a man. Now I see that in his beauty a man is snared, and made stone-blind, as the worm within its silk. Welcome then be Ugliness and Poverty and Infamy, and all ye other crafty ministers of Truth, that beneath the hoods and rags of beggars hide yet the belts and crowns of kings. And dimmed be all beauty that must own the clay; and dimmed be all wealth, and all delight, and all the annual prosperities of earth, that but gild the links, and stud with diamonds the base rivets and the chains of Lies. Oh, now methinks I a little see why of old the men of Truth went barefoot, girded with a rope, and ever moving under mournfulness as underneath a canopy. I remember now those first wise words, wherewith our Saviour Christ first spoke in his first speech to men:-'Blessed are the poor in spirit, and blessed they that mourn.' Oh, hitherto I have but piled up words; bought books, and bought some small experiences, and builded me in, libraries; now I sit down and read. Oh, now I know the night, and comprehend the sorceries of the moon, and all the dark persuadings that have their birth in storms and winds. Oh, not long will Joy abide, when Truth doth come; nor Grief her laggard be. Well may this head hang on my breast, — it holds too much; well may my heart knock at my ribs, — prisoner impatient of his iron bars. Oh, men are jailers all; jailers of themselves; and in Opinion's world ignorantly hold their noblest part a captive to their vilest; as disguised royal Charles when caught by peasants. The heart! the heart! 'tis God's anointed; let me pursue the heart!
II
But if the presentiment in Pierre of his mother's pride, as bigotedly hostile to the noble design he cherished; if this feeling was so wretched to him; far more so was the thought of another and a deeper hostility, arising from her more spiritual part. For her pride would not be so scornful, as her wedded memories reject with horror, the unmentionable imputation involved in the mere fact of Isabel's existence. In what galleries of conjecture, among what horrible haunting toads and scorpions, would such a revelation lead her? When Pierre thought of this, the idea of at all divulging his secret to his mother, not only was made repelling by its hopelessness, as an infirm attack upon her citadel of pride, but was made in the last degree inhuman, as torturing her in her tenderest recollections, and desecrating the whitest altar in her sanctuary.
Though the conviction that he must never disclose his secret to his mother was originally an unmeditated, and as it were, an inspired one; yet now he was almost pains-taking in scrutinizing the entire circumstances of the matter, in order that nothing might be overlooked. For already he vaguely felt, that upon the concealment, or the disclosure of this thing, with reference to his mother, hinged his whole future course of conduct, his whole earthly weal, and Isabel's. But the more and the more that he pondered upon it, the more and the more fixed became his original conviction. He considered that in the case of a disclosure, all human probability pointed to his mother's scornful rejection of his suit as a pleader for Isabel's honorable admission into the honorable mansion of the Glendinnings. Then in that case, unconsciously thought Pierre, I shall have given the deep poison of a miserable truth to my mother, without benefit to any, and positive harm to all. And through Pierre's mind there then darted a baleful thought; how that the truth should not always be paraded; how that sometimes a lie is heavenly, and truth infernal. Filially infernal, truly, thought Pierre, if I should by one vile breath of truth, blast my father's blessed memory in the bosom of my mother, and plant the sharpest dagger of grief in her soul. I will not do it!
But as this resolution in him opened up so dark and wretched a background to his view, he strove to think no more of it now, but postpone it until the interview with Isabel should have in some way more definitely shaped his purposes. For, when suddenly encountering the shock of new and unanswerable revelations, which he feels must revolutionize all the circumstances of his life, man, at first, ever seeks to shun all conscious definitiveness in his thoughts and purposes; as assured, that the lines that shall precisely define his present misery, and thereby lay out his future path; these can only be defined by sharp stakes that cut into his heart.
III
Most melancholy of all the hours of earth, is that one long, gray hour, which to the watcher by the lamp intervenes between the night and day; when both lamp and watcher, overtasked, grow sickly in the pallid light; and the watcher, seeking for no gladness in the dawn, sees naught but garish vapors there; and almost invokes a curse upon the public day, that shall invade his lonely night of sufferance.
The one small window of his closet looked forth upon the meadow, and across the river, and far away to the distant heights, storied with the great deeds of the Glendinnings. Many a time had Pierre sought this window before sunrise, to behold the blood-red, out-flinging dawn, that would wrap those purple hills as with a banner. But now the morning dawned in mist and rain, and came drizzlingly upon his heart. Yet as the day advanced, and once more showed to him the accustomed features of his room by that natural light, which, till this very moment, had never lighted him but to his joy; now that the day, and not the night, was witness to his woe; now first the dread reality came appallingly upon him. A sense of horrible forlornness, feebleness, impotence, and infinite, eternal desolation possessed him. It was not merely mental, but corporeal also. He could not stand; and when he tried to sit, — his arms fell floorwards as tied to leaden weights. Dragging his ball and chain, he fell upon his bed; for when the mind is cast down, only in sympathetic proneness can the body rest; whence the bed is often Grief's first refuge. Half stupefied, as with opium, he fell into the profoundest
In an hour he awoke, instantly recalling all the previous night; and now finding himself a little strengthened, and lying so quietly and silently there, almost without bodily consciousness, but his soul unobtrusively alert; careful not to break the spell by the least movement of a limb, or the least turning of his head, Pierre steadfastly faced his grief, and looked deep down into its eyes; and thoroughly, and calmly, and summarily comprehended it now-so at least he thought-and what it demanded from him; and what he must quickly do in its more immediate sequences; and what that course of conduct was, which he must pursue in the coming unevadable breakfast interview with his mother; and what, for the present must be his plan with Lucy. His time of thought was brief. Rising from his bed, he steadied himself upright a moment; and then going to his writing-desk, in a few at first faltering, but at length unlagging lines, traced the following note:
"I must ask pardon of you, Lucy, for so strangely absenting myself last night. But you know me well enough to be very sure that I would not have done so without important cause. I was in the street approaching your cottage, when a message reached me, imperatively calling me away. It is a matter which will take up all my time and attention for, possibly, two or three days. I tell you this, now, that you may be prepared for it. And I know that however unwelcome this may be to you, you will yet bear with it for my sake; for, indeed, and indeed, Lucy dear, I would not dream of staying from you so long, unless irresistibly coerced to it. Do not come to the mansion until I come to you; and do not manifest any curiosity or anxiety about me, should you chance in the interval to see my mother in any other place. Keep just as cheerful as if I were by you all the time. Do this, now, I conjure you; and so farewell!"