- end_line
- 6634
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6564
- text
- still fadedly gilded upon a part of one side of the interior, where it
made a projecting curve.
"A very curious place thou hast chosen, Isabel, wherein to have the
ownership of the guitar engraved. How did ever any person get in there
to do it, I should like to know?"
The girl looked surprisedly at him a moment; then took the instrument
from him, and looked into it herself. She put it down, and continued.
"I see, my brother, thou dost not comprehend. When one knows every thing
about any object, one is too apt to suppose that the slightest hint
will suffice to throw it quite as open to any other person. _I_ did not
have the name gilded there, my brother."
"How?" cried Pierre.
"The name was gilded there when I first got the guitar, though then I
did not know it. The guitar must have been expressly made for some one
by the name of Isabel; because the lettering could only have been put
there before the guitar was put together."
"Go on--hurry," said Pierre.
"Yes, one day, after I had owned it a long time, a strange whim came
into me. Thou know'st that it is not at all uncommon for children to
break their dearest playthings in order to gratify a half-crazy
curiosity to find out what is in the hidden heart of them. So it is with
children, sometimes. And, Pierre, I have always been, and feel that I
must always continue to be a child, though I should grow to three score
years and ten. Seized with this sudden whim, I unscrewed the part I
showed thee, and peeped in, and saw 'Isabel.' Now I have not yet told
thee, that from as early a time as I can remember, I have nearly always
gone by the name of Bell. And at the particular time I now speak of, my
knowledge of general and trivial matters was sufficiently advanced to
make it quite a familiar thing to me, that Bell was often a diminutive
for Isabella, or Isabel. It was therefore no very strange affair, that
considering my age, and other connected circumstances at the time, I
should have instinctively associated the word Isabel, found in the
guitar, with my own abbreviated name, and so be led into all sorts of
fancyings. They return upon me now. Do not speak to me."
She leaned away from him, toward the occasionally illuminated casement,
in the same manner as on the previous night, and for a few moments
seemed struggling with some wild bewilderment But now she suddenly
turned, and fully confronted Pierre with all the wonderfulness of her
most surprising face.
"I am called woman, and thou, man, Pierre; but there is neither man nor
woman about it. Why should I not speak out to thee? There is no sex in
our immaculateness. Pierre, the secret name in the guitar even now
thrills me through and through. Pierre, think! think! Oh, canst thou not
comprehend? see it?--what I mean, Pierre? The secret name in the guitar
thrills me, thrills me, whirls me, whirls me; so secret, wholly hidden,
yet constantly carried about in it; unseen, unsuspected, always
vibrating to the hidden heart-strings--broken heart-strings; oh, my
mother, my mother, my mother!"
As the wild plaints of Isabel pierced into his bosom's core, they
carried with them the first inkling of the extraordinary conceit, so
vaguely and shrinkingly hinted at in her till now entirely
unintelligible words.
She lifted her dry burning eyes of long-fringed fire to him.
"Pierre--I have no slightest proof--but the guitar was _hers_, I know, I
feel it was. Say, did I not last night tell thee, how it first sung to
me upon the bed, and answered me, without my once touching it? and how
it always sung to me and answered me, and soothed and loved me,--Hark
now; thou shalt hear my mother's spirit."
- title
- Chunk 3