- end_line
- 7978
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7915
- text
- reveal his father's shame to the common world, whose favorable opinion
for himself, Pierre now despised; how then reveal it to the woman he
adored? To her, above all others, would he now uncover his father's
tomb, and bid her behold from what vile attaintings he himself had
sprung? So Pierre turned round and tied Lucy to the same stake which
must hold himself, for he too plainly saw, that it could not be, but
that both their hearts must burn.
Yes, his resolve concerning his father's memory involved the necessity
of assuming even to Lucy his marriage with Isabel. Here he could not
explain himself, even to her. This would aggravate the sharp pang of
parting, by self-suggested, though wholly groundless surmising in Lucy's
mind, in the most miserable degree contaminating to her idea of him. But
on this point, he still fondly trusted that without at all marring his
filial bond, he would be enabled by some significant intimations to
arrest in Lucy's mind those darker imaginings which might find entrance
there; and if he could not set her wholly right, yet prevent her from
going wildly wrong.
For his mother Pierre was more prepared. He considered that by an
inscrutable decree, which it was but foolishness to try to evade, or
shun, or deny existence to, since he felt it so profoundly pressing on
his inmost soul; the family of the Glendinnings was imperiously called
upon to offer up a victim to the gods of woe; one grand victim at the
least; and that grand victim must be his mother, or himself. If he
disclosed his secret to the world, then his mother was made the victim;
if at all hazards he kept it to himself, then himself would be the
victim. A victim as respecting his mother, because under the peculiar
circumstances of the case, the non-disclosure of the secret involved her
entire and infamy-engendering misconception of himself. But to this he
bowed submissive.
One other thing--and the last to be here named, because the very least
in the conscious thoughts of Pierre; one other thing remained to menace
him with assured disastrousness. This thing it was, which though but
dimly hinted of as yet, still in the apprehension must have exerted a
powerful influence upon Pierre, in preparing him for the worst.
His father's last and fatal sickness had seized him suddenly. Both the
probable concealed distraction of his mind with reference to his early
life as recalled to him in an evil hour, and his consequent mental
wanderings; these, with other reasons, had prevented him from framing a
new will to supersede one made shortly after his marriage, and ere
Pierre was born. By that will which as yet had never been dragged into
the courts of law; and which, in the fancied security of her own and her
son's congenial and loving future, Mrs. Glendinning had never but once,
and then inconclusively, offered to discuss, with a view to a better and
more appropriate ordering of things to meet circumstances non-existent
at the period the testament was framed; by that will, all the
Glendinning property was declared his mother's.
Acutely sensible to those prophetic intimations in him, which painted in
advance the haughty temper of his offended mother, as all bitterness and
scorn toward a son, once the object of her proudest joy, but now become
a deep reproach, as not only rebellious to her, but glaringly
dishonorable before the world; Pierre distinctly foresaw, that as she
never would have permitted Isabel Banford in her true character to cross
her threshold; neither would she now permit Isabel Banford to cross her
threshold in any other, and disguised character; least of all, as that
unknown and insidious girl, who by some pernicious arts had lured her
only son from honor into infamy. But not to admit Isabel, was now to
exclude Pierre, if indeed on independent grounds of exasperation against
himself, his mother would not cast him out.
- title
- Chunk 2