- end_line
- 13611
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 13546
- text
- I.
If a frontier man be seized by wild Indians, and carried far and deep
into the wilderness, and there held a captive, with no slightest
probability of eventual deliverance; then the wisest thing for that man
is to exclude from his memory by every possible method, the least images
of those beloved objects now forever reft from him. For the more
delicious they were to him in the now departed possession, so much the
more agonizing shall they be in the present recalling. And though a
strong man may sometimes succeed in strangling such tormenting memories;
yet, if in the beginning permitted to encroach upon him unchecked, the
same man shall, in the end, become as an idiot. With a continent and an
ocean between him and his wife--thus sundered from her, by whatever
imperative cause, for a term of long years;--the husband, if
passionately devoted to her, and by nature broodingly sensitive of soul,
is wise to forget her till he embrace her again;--is wise never to
remember her if he hear of her death. And though such complete suicidal
forgettings prove practically impossible, yet is it the shallow and
ostentatious affections alone which are bustling in the offices of
obituarian memories. _The love deep as death_--what mean those five
words, but that such love can not live, and be continually remembering
that the loved one is no more? If it be thus then in cases where entire
unremorsefulness as regards the beloved absent objects is presumed, how
much more intolerable, when the knowledge of their hopeless wretchedness
occurs, attended by the visitations of before latent upbraidings in the
rememberer as having been any way--even unwillingly--the producers of
their sufferings. There seems no other sane recourse for some moody
organizations on whom such things, under such circumstances intrude, but
right and left to flee them, whatever betide.
If little or nothing hitherto has been said of Lucy Tartan in reference
to the condition of Pierre after his departure from the Meadows, it has
only been because her image did not willingly occupy his soul. He had
striven his utmost to banish it thence; and only once--on receiving the
tidings of Glen's renewed attentions--did he remit the intensity of
those strivings, or rather feel them, as impotent in him in that hour of
his manifold and overwhelming prostration.
Not that the pale form of Lucy, swooning on her snow-white bed; not that
the inexpressible anguish of the shriek--"My heart! my heart!" would not
now at times force themselves upon him, and cause his whole being to
thrill with a nameless horror and terror. But the very thrillingness of
the phantom made him to shun it, with all remaining might of his spirit.
Nor were there wanting still other, and far more wonderful, though but
dimly conscious influences in the breast of Pierre, to meet as
repellants the imploring form. Not to speak of his being devoured by the
all-exacting theme of his book, there were sinister preoccupations in
him of a still subtler and more fearful sort, of which some inklings
have already been given.
It was while seated solitary in his room one morning; his flagging
faculties seeking a momentary respite; his head sideways turned toward
the naked floor, following the seams in it, which, as wires, led
straight from where he sat to the connecting door, and disappeared
beneath it into the chamber of Isabel; that he started at a tap at that
very door, followed by the wonted, low, sweet voice,--
"Pierre! a letter for thee--dost thou hear? a letter,--may I come in?"
At once he felt a dart of surprise and apprehension; for he was
precisely in that general condition with respect to the outer world,
that he could not reasonably look for any tidings but disastrous, or at
least, unwelcome ones. He assented; and Isabel entered, holding out the
billet in her hand.
- title
- Chunk 1