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Surprised and rejoiced thus far at the unanticipated newness, and the sweet lucidness and simplicity of Isabel's narrating, as compared with the obscure and marvelous revelations of the night before, and all eager for her to continue her story in the same limpid ma
"Do not be alarmed, my brother; and do not smile at me; I am not going to play the Mystery of Isabel to thee to-night. Draw nearer to me now. Hold the light near to me."
So saying she loosened some ivory screws of the guitar, so as to open a peep lengthwise through its interior.
"Now hold it thus, my brother; thus; and see what thou wilt see; but wait one instant till I hold the lamp." So saying, as Pierre held the instrument before him as directed, Isabel held the lamp so as to cast its light through the round sounding-hole into the heart of the guitar.
"Now, Pierre, now."
Eagerly Pierre did as he was bid; but somehow felt disappointed, and yet surprised at what he saw. He saw the word Isabel, quite legibly but still fadedly gilded upon a part of one side of the interior, where it made a projecting curve.
"A very curious place thou hast chosen, Isabel, wherein to have the ownership of the guitar engraved. How did ever any person get in there to do it, I should like to know?"
The girl looked surprisedly at him a moment; then took the instrument from him, and looked into it herself. She put it down, and continued.
"I see, my brother, thou dost not comprehend. When one knows every thing about any object, one is too apt to suppose that the slightest hint will suffice to throw it quite as open to any other person. I did not have the name gilded there, my brother."
"How?" cried Pierre.
"The name was gilded there when I first got the guitar, though then I did not know it. The guitar must have been expressly made for some one by the name of Isabel; because the lettering could only have been put there before the guitar was put together."
"Go on-hurry," said Pierre.
"Yes, one day, after I had owned it a long time, a strange whim came into me. Thou know'st that it is not at all uncommon for children to break their dearest playthings in order to gratify a half-crazy curiosity to find out what is in the hidden heart of them. So it is with children, sometimes. And, Pierre, I have always been, and feel that I must always continue to be a child, though I should grow to three score years and ten. Seized with this sudden whim, I unscrewed the part I showed thee, and peeped in, and saw 'Isabel.' Now I have not yet told thee, that from as early a time as I can remember, I have nearly always gone by the name of Bell, And at the particular time I now speak of, my knowledge of general and trivial matters was sufficiently advanced to make it quite a familiar thing to me, that Bell was often a diminutive for Isabella, or Isabel. It was therefore no very strange affair, that considering my age, and other co
She leaned away from him, toward the occasionally illuminated casement, in the same ma
"I am called woman, and thou, man, Pierre; but there is neither man nor woman about it. Why should I not speak out to thee? There is no sex in our immaculateness. Pierre, the secret name in the guitar even now thrills me through and through. Pierre, think! think! Oh, canst thou not comprehend? see it? — what I mean, Pierre? The secret name in the guitar thrills me, thrills me, whirls me, whirls me; so secret, wholly hidden, yet constantly carried about in it; unseen, unsuspected, always vibrating to the hidden heart-strings-broken heartstrings; oh, my mother, my mother, my mother!"
As the wild plaints of Isabel pierced into his bosom's core, they carried with them the first inkling of the extraordinary conceit, so vaguely and shrinkingly hinted at in her till now entirely unintelligible words.
She lifted her dry burning eyes of long-fringed fire to him.
"Pierre-I have no slightest proof-but the guitar was hers, I know, I feel it was. Say, did I not last night tell thee, how it first sung to me upon the bed, and answered me, without my once touching it? and how it always sung to me and answered me, and soothed and loved me? — Hark now; thou shall hear my mother's spirit."
She carefully sca
The girl still kept kneeling; but an altogether unwonted expression suddenly overcast her whole countenance. She darted one swift glance at Pierre; and then with a single toss of her hand tumbled her unrestrained locks all over her, so that they tent-wise invested her whole kneeling form close to the floor, and yet swept the floor with their wild redundancy. Never soya of Limaean girl, at dun mass in St. Dominic's cathedral, so completely muffled the human figure. To Pierre, the deep oaken recess of the double casement, before which Isabel was kneeling, seemed now the immediate vestibule of some awful shrine, mystically revealed through the obscurely open window, which ever and anon was still softly illumined by the mild heat-lightnings and ground-lightnings, that wove their wonderfulness without, in the unsearchable air of that ebonly warm and most noiseless summer night.
Some unsubduable word was on Pierre's lip, but a sudden voice from out the veil bade him be silent.
"Mother-mother-mother!"
Again, after a preluding silence, the guitar as magically responded as before; the sparks quivered along its strings; and again Pierre felt as in the immediate presence of the spirit.
"Shall I, mother? — Art thou ready? Wilt thou tell me? — Now? Now?"
These words were lowly and sweetly murmured in the same way with the word mother, being changefully varied in their modulations, till at the last now, the magical guitar again responded; and the girl swiftly drew it to her beneath her dark tent of hair. In this act, as the long curls swept over the strings of the guitar, the strange sparks-still quivering there — caught at those attractive curls; the entire casement was suddenly and wovenly illumined; then waned again; while now, in the succeeding dimness, every downward undulating wave and billow of Isabel's tossed tresses gleamed here and there like a tract of phosphorescent midnight sea; and, simultaneously, all the four winds of the world of melody broke loose, and again as on the previous night, only in a still more subtile, and wholly inexplicable way, Pierre felt himself surrounded by ten thousand sprites and gnomes, and his whole soul was swayed and tossed by supernatural tides; and again he heard the wondrous, rebounding, chanted words: