Pierre or the Ambiguities
Copyright© 2025 by Herman Melville
Book 11
HE CROSSES THE RUBICON
I.
SUCKED within the Maelstrom, man must go round. Strike at one end the longest conceivable row of billiard balls in close contact, and the furthermost ball will start forth, while all the rest stand still; and yet that last ball was not struck at all. So, through long previous generations, whether of births or thoughts, Fate strikes the present man. Idly he disowns the blow’s effect, because he felt no blow, and indeed, received no blow. But Pierre was not arguing Fixed Fate and Free Will, now; Fixed Fate and Free Will were arguing him, and Fixed Fate got the better in the debate.
The peculiarities of those influences which on the night and early morning following the last interview with Isabel, persuaded Pierre to the adoption of his final resolve, did now irresistibly impel him to a remarkable instantaneousness in his actions, even as before he had proved a lagger.
Without being consciously that way pointed, through the desire of anticipating any objections on the part of Isabel to the assumption of a marriage between himself and her; Pierre was now impetuously hurried into an act, which should have the effective virtue of such an executed intention, without its corresponding motive. Because, as the primitive resolve so deplorably involved Lucy, her image was then prominent in his mind; and hence, because he felt all eagerness to hold her no longer in suspense, but by a certain sort of charity of cruelty, at once to pronounce to her her fate; therefore, it was among his first final thoughts that morning to go to Lucy. And to this, undoubtedly, so trifling a circumstance as her being nearer to him, geographically, than Isabel, must have contributed some added, though unconscious influence, in his present fateful frame of mind.
On the previous undetermined days, Pierre had solicitously sought to disguise his emotions from his mother, by a certain carefulness and choiceness in his dress. But now, since his very soul was forced to wear a mask, he would wear no paltry palliatives and disguisements on his body. He went to the cottage of Lucy as disordered in his person, as haggard in his face.
II.
SHE was not risen yet. So, the strange imperious instantaneousness in him, impelled him to go straight to her chamber-door, and in a voice of mild invincibleness, demand immediate audience, for the matter pressed.
Already namelessly concerned and alarmed for her lover, now eight-and-forty hours absent on some mysterious and undisclosable affair; Lucy, at this surprising summons was overwhelmed with sudden terror; and in oblivion of all ordinary proprieties, responded to Pierre’s call, by an immediate assent.
Opening the door, he advanced slowly and deliberately toward her; and as Lucy caught his pale determined figure, she gave a cry of groping misery, which knew not the pang that caused it, and lifted herself trembling in her bed; but without uttering one word.
Pierre sat down on the bedside; and his set eyes met her terrified and virgin aspect.
“Decked in snow-white, and pale of cheek, thou indeed art fitted for the altar; but not that one of which thy fond heart did’st dream:—so fair a victim!”
“Pierre!”
“‘Tis the last cruelty of tyrants to make their enemies slay each other.”
“My heart! my heart!”
“Nay;—— Lucy, I am married.”
The girl was no more pale, but white as any leper; the bed-clothes trembled to the concealed shudderings of all her limbs; one moment she sat looking vacantly into the blank eyes of Pierre, and then fell over toward him in a swoon.
Swift madness mounted into the brain of Pierre; all the past seemed as a dream, and all the present an unintelligible horror. He lifted her, and extended her motionless form upon the bed, and stamped for succor. The maid Martha came running into the room, and beholding those two inexplicable figures, shrieked, and turned in terror. But Pierre’s repeated cry rallied Martha from this, and darting out of the chamber, she returned with a sharp restorative, which at length brought Lucy back to life.
“Martha! Martha!” now murmured Lucy, in a scarce audible whispering, and shuddering in the maid’s own shuddering arms, “quick, quick; come to me—drive it away! wake me! wake me!”
“Nay, pray God to sleep again,” cried Martha, bending over her and embracing her, and half-turning upon Pierre with a glance of loathing indignation. “In God’s holy name, sir, what may this be? How came you here; accursed!”
“Accursed?—it is well. Is she herself again, Martha?”
“Thou hast somehow murdered her; how then be herself again? My sweet mistress! oh, my young mistress! Tell me! tell me!” and she bent low over her.
Pierre now advanced toward the bed, making a gesture for the maid to leave them; but soon as Lucy re-caught his haggard form, she whisperingly wailed again, “Martha! Martha! drive it away!—there—there! him—him!” and shut her eyes convulsively, with arms abhorrently outstretched.
“Monster! incomprehensible fiend!” cried the anew terror-smitten maid—”depart! See! she dies away at the sight of thee—begone! Wouldst thou murder her afresh? Begone!”
Starched and frozen by his own emotion, Pierre silently turned and quitted the chamber; and heavily descending the stairs, tramped heavily—as a man slowly bearing a great burden—through a long narrow passage leading to a wing in the rear of the cottage, and knocking at Miss Lanyllyn’s door, summoned her to Lucy, who, he briefly said, had fainted. Then, without waiting for any response, left the house, and went directly to the mansion.
III.
“Is my mother up yet?” said he to Dates, whom he met in the hall.
“Not yet, sir;—heavens, sir! are you sick?”
“To death! Let me pass.”
Ascending toward his mother’s chamber, he heard a coming step, and met her on the great middle landing of the stairs, where in an ample niche, a marble group of the temple-polluting Laocoon and his two innocent children, caught in inextricable snarls of snakes, writhed in eternal torments.
“Mother, go back with me to thy chamber.”
She eyed his sudden presence with a dark but repressed foreboding; drew herself up haughtily and repellingly, and with a quivering lip, said, “Pierre, thou thyself hast denied me thy confidence, and thou shall not force me back to it so easily. Speak! what is that now between thee and me?”
“I am married, mother.”
“Great God! To whom?”
“Not to Lucy Tartan, mother.”
“That thou merely sayest ‘tis not Lucy, without saying who indeed it is, this is good proof she is something vile. Does Lucy know thy marriage?”
“I am but just from Lucy’s.”
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