Herman Melville: Pierre, Or the Ambiguities

The marble girl sat before her easel; a small box of pointed charcoal, and some pencils by her side; her painter's wand held out against the frame; the charcoal-pencil suspended in two fingers, while with the same hand, holding a crust of bread, she was lightly brushing the portrait-paper, to efface some ill-considered stroke. The floor was scattered with the breadcrumbs and charcoal dust; he looked behind the easel, and saw his own portrait, in the skeleton.

At the first glimpse of him, Lucy started not, nor stirred; but as if her own wand had there enchanted her, sat tranced.

"Dead embers of departed fires lie by thee, thou pale girl; with dead embers thou seekest to relume the flame of all extinguished love! Waste not so that bread; eat it-in bitterness!"

He turned, and entered the corridor, and then, with outstretched arms, paused between the two outer doors of Isabel and Lucy.

"For ye two, my most undiluted prayer is now, that from your here unseen and frozen chairs ye may never stir alive;- the fool of Truth, the fool of Virtue, the fool of Fate, now quits ye forever!"

As he now sped down the long winding passage, some one eagerly hailed him from a stair.

"What, what, my boy? where now in such a squally hurry? Hallo, I say!"

But without heeding him at all, Pierre drove on. Millthorpe looked anxiously and alarmedly after him a moment, then made a movement in pursuit, but paused again.

"There was ever a black vein in this Glendinning; and now that vein is swelled, as if it were just one peg above a tourniquet drawn over-tight. I scarce durst dog him now; yet my heart misgives me that I should.-Shall I go to his rooms and ask what black thing this is that hath befallen him? — No; not yet;-might be thought officious-they say I'm given to that. I'll wait; something may turn up soon. I'll into the front street, and saunter some; and then-we'll see."

Pierre passed on to a remote quarter of the building, and abruptly entered the room of one of the Apostles whom he knew. There was no one in it. He hesitated an instant; then walked up to a book-case, with a chest of drawers in the lower part.

"Here I saw him put them:-this, — no-here-ay-we'll try this."

Wrenching open the locked drawer, a brace of pistols, a powder flask, a bullet-bag, and a round green box of percussion-caps lay before him.

"Ha! what wondrous tools Prometheus used, who knows? but more wondrous these, that in an instant, can unmake the top-most three-score-years-and-ten of all Prometheus' makings. Come: here's two tubes that'll outroar the thousand pipes of Harlem.-Is the music in 'em? — No? — Well then, here's powder for the shrill treble; and wadding for the tenor; and a lead bullet for the concluding bass! And, — and, — and, — ay; for the top-wadding, I'll send 'em back their lie, and plant it scorching in their brains!"

He tore off that part of Glen and Fred's letter, which more particularly gave the lie; and halving it, rammed it home upon the bullets.

He thrust a pistol into either breast of his coat; and taking the rearward passages, went down into the back street; directing his rapid steps toward the grand central thoroughfare of the city.

It was a cold, but clear, quiet, and slantingly sunny day; it was between four and five of the afternoon; that hour, when the great glaring avenue was most thronged with haughty-rolling carriages, and proud-rustling promenaders, both men and women. But these last were mostly confined to the one wide pavement to the west; the other pavement was well-nigh deserted, save by porters, waiters, and parcel-carriers of the shops. On the west pave, up and down, for three long miles, two streams of glossy, shawled, or broadcloth life unceasingly brushed by each other, as long, resplendent, drooping trains of rival peacocks brush.

Mixing with neither of these, Pierre stalked midway between. From his wild and fatal aspect, one way the people took the wall, the other way they took the curb. Unentangledly Pierre threaded all their host, though in its inmost heart. Bent he was, on a straightforward, mathematical intent. His eyes were all about him as he went; especially he glanced over to the deserted pavement opposite; for that emptiness did not deceive him; he himself had often walked that side, the better to scan the pouring throng upon the other.

Just as he gained a large, open, triangular space, built round with the stateliest public erections;-the very proscenium of the town;-he saw Glen and Fred advancing, in the distance, on the other side. He continued on; and soon he saw them crossing over to him obliquely, so as to take him face-and-face. He continued on; when suddenly running ahead of Fred, who now chafingly stood still (because Fred would not make two, in the direct personal assault upon one), and shouting "Liar! Villain!" Glen leaped toward Pierre from front, and with such lightning-like ferocity, that the simultaneous blow of his cowhide smote Pierre across the cheek, and left a half-livid and half-bloody brand.

For that one moment, the people fell back on all sides from them; and left them-momentarily recoiled from each other- in a ring of panics.

But clapping both hands to his two breasts, Pierre, on both sides shaking off the sudden white grasp of two rushing girls, tore out both pistols, and rushed headlong upon Glen.

"For thy one blow, take here two deaths! Tis speechless sweet to murder thee!"

Spatterings of his own kindred blood were upon the pavement; his own hand had extinguished his house in slaughtering the only unoutlawed human being by the name of Glendinning;-and Pierre was seized by a hundred contending hands.

That sundown, Pierre stood solitary in a low dungeon of the city prison. The cumbersome stone ceiling almost rested on his brow; so that the long tiers of massive cell-galleries above seemed partly piled on him. His immortal, immovable, bleached cheek was dry; but the stone cheeks of the walls were trickling. The pent twilight of the contracted yard, coming through the barred arrow-slit, fell in dim bars upon the granite floor.

"Here, then, is the untimely, timely end;-Life's last chapter well stitched into the middle; Nor book, nor author of the book, hath any sequel, though each hath its last lettering! — It is ambiguous still. Had I been heartless now, disowned, and spurningly portioned off the girl at Saddle Meadows, then had I been happy through a long life on earth, and perchance through a long eternity in heaven! Now, 'tis merely hell in both worlds. Well, be it hell. I will mold a trumpet of the flames, and, with my breath of flame, breathe back my defiance! But give me first another body! I long and long to die, to be rid of this dishonored cheek. Hung by the neck till thou be dead.- Not if I forestall you, though! — Oh now to live is death, and now to die is life; now, to my soul, were a sword my midwife! — Hark! — the hangman? — who comes?"

"Thy wife and cousin-so they say;-hope they may be; they may stay till twelve," wheezingly answered a turnkey, pushing the tottering girls into the cell, and locking the door upon them.

"Ye two pale ghosts, were this the other world, ye were not welcome. Away! — Good Angel and Bad Angel both! — For Pierre is neuter now!"

"Oh, ye stony roofs, and seven-fold stony skies! — not thou art the murderer, but thy sister hath murdered thee, my brother, oh my brother!"

At these wailed words from Isabel, Lucy shrunk up like a scroll, and noiselessly fell at the feet of Pierre.

He touched her heart. — "Dead! — Girl! wife or sister, saint or fiend!" — seizing Isabel in his grasp-"in thy breasts, life for infants lodgeth not, but death-milk for thee and me! — The drug!" and tearing her bosom loose, he seized the secret vial nestling there.