您可以在百度里搜索“Pierre: Or， The Ambiguities 艾草文学(www.321553.xyz)”查找最新章节！

　　BOOK XXIII.

　　A LETTER FOR PIERRE. ISABEL. ARRIVAL OF LUCY'S EASEL AND TRUNKS AT THE 'TLES'.

　　CHAPTER 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.

　　"'Tis from some lady, Pierre; who can it be?—not thy mother though, of that I am certain;—the expression of her face, as seen by me, not at all answering to the expression of this handwriting here."

　　"My mother? from my mother?" muttered Pierre, in wild vacancy—"no! no! it can scarce be from her.—Oh, she writes no more, even in her own private tablets now! Death hath stolen the last leaf, and rubbed all out, to scribble his own ineffaceable hic jacet there!"

　　"Pierre!" cried Isabel, in affright.

　　"Give it me!" he shouted, vehemently, extending his hand. "Forgive me, sweet, sweet Isabel, I have wandered in my mind; this book makes me mad. There; I have it now"—in a tone of indifference—"now, leave me again. It is from some pretty aunt, or cousin, I suppose," carelessly balancing the letter in his hand.

　　Isabel quitted the room; the moment the door closed upon her, Pierre eagerly split open the letter, and read:— Pierre: Or， The Ambiguities