

                              Nathaniel Hawthorne

                             The Blithedale Romance

                                    Preface

In the »Blithedale« of this volume, many readers will probably suspect a faint
and not very faithful shadowing of BROOK FARM, in Roxbury, which (now a little
more than ten years ago) was occupied and cultivated by a company of socialists.
The Author does not wish to deny, that he had this Community in his mind, and
that (having had the good fortune, for a time, to be personally connected with
it) he has occasionally availed himself of his actual reminiscences, in the hope
of giving a more lifelike tint to the fancy-sketch in the following pages. He
begs it to be understood, however, that he has considered the Institution itself
as not less fairly the subject of fictitious handling, than the imaginary
personages whom he has introduced there. His whole treatment of the affair is
altogether incidental to the main purpose of the Romance; nor does he put
forward the slightest pretensions to illustrate a theory, or elicit a
conclusion, favourable or otherwise, in respect to Socialism.
    In short, his present concern with the Socialist Community is merely to
establish a theatre, a little removed from the highway of ordinary travel, where
the creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagorical antics, without
exposing them to too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives. In
the old countries, with which Fiction has long been conversant, a certain
conventional privilege seems to be awarded to the romancer; his work is not put
exactly side by side with nature; and he is allowed a license with regard to
every-day Probability, in view of the improved effects which he is bound to
produce thereby. Among ourselves, on the contrary, there is as yet no such Faery
Land, so like the real world, that, in a suitable remoteness, one cannot well
tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, beheld
through which the inhabitants have a propriety of their own. This atmosphere is
what the American romancer needs. In its absence, the beings of imagination are
compelled to show themselves in the same category as actually living mortals; a
necessity that generally renders the paint and pasteboard of their composition
but too painfully discernible. With the idea of partially obviating this
difficulty, (the sense of which has always pressed very heavily upon him,) the
Author has ventured to make free with his old, and affectionately remembered
home, at BROOK FARM, as being, certainly, the most romantic episode of his own
life - essentially a day-dream, and yet a fact - and thus offering an available
foothold between fiction and reality. Furthermore, the scene was in good keeping
with the personages whom he desired to introduce.
    These characters, he feels it right to say, are entirely fictitious. It
would, indeed, (considering how few amiable qualities he distributes among his
imaginary progeny,) be a most grievous wrong to his former excellent associates,
were the Auther to allow it to be supposed that he has been sketching any of
their likenesses. Had he attempted it, they would at least have recognized the
touches of a friendly pencil. But he has done nothing of the kind. The
self-concentrated Philanthropist; the high-spirited Woman, bruising herself
against the narrow limitations of her sex; the weakly Maiden, whose tremulous
nerves endow her with Sibylline attributes; the Minor Poet, beginning life with
strenuous aspirations, which die out with his youthful fervour - all these might
have been looked for, at BROOK FARM, but, by some accident, never made their
appearance there.
    The Author cannot close his reference to this subject, without expressing a
most earnest wish that some one of the many cultivated and philosophic minds,
which took an interest in that enterprise, might now give the world its history.
Ripley, with whom rests the honourable paternity of the Institution, Dana,
Dwight, Channing, Burton, Parker, for instance - with others, whom he dares not
name, because they veil themselves from the public eye - among these is the
ability to convey both the outward narrative and the inner truth and spirit of
the whole affair, together with the lessons which those years of thought and
toil must have elaborated, for the behove of future experimentalists. Even the
brilliant Howadji might find as rich a theme in his youthful reminiscenses of
BROOK FARM, and a more novel one - close at hand as it lies - than those which
he has since made so distant a pilgrimage to seek, in Syria, and along the
current of the Nile.
    
    CONCORD (Mass.), May, 1852.
 

                                 I. Old Moodie

The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my
bachelor-apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled
Lady, when an elderly-man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part
of the street.
    »Mr. Coverdale,« said he, softly, »can I speak with you a moment?«
    As I have casually alluded to the Veiled Lady, it may not be amiss to
mention, for the benefit of such of my readers as are unacquainted with her now
forgotten celebrity, that she was a phenomenon in the mesmeric line; one of the
earliest that had indicated the birth of a new science, or the revival of an old
humbug. Since those times, her sisterhood have grown too numerous to attract
much individual notice; nor, in fact, has any one of them ever come before the
public under such skilfully contrived circumstances of stage-effect, as those
which at once mystified and illuminated the remarkable performances of the lady
in question. Now-a-days, in the management of his subject, clairvoyant or
medium, the exhibitor affects the simplicity and openness of scientific
experiment; and even if he profess to tread a step or two across the boundaries
of the spiritual world, yet carries with him the laws of our actual life, and
extends them over his preternatural conquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago, on
the contrary, all the arts of mysterious arrangement, of picturesque
disposition, and artistically contrasted light and shade, were made available in
order to set the apparent miracle in the strongest attitude of opposition to
ordinary facts. In the case of the Veiled Lady, moreover, the interest of the
spectator was further wrought up by the enigma of her identity, and an absurd
rumour (probably set afloat by the exhibitor, and at one time very prevalent)
that a beautiful young lady, of family and fortune, was enshrouded within the
misty drapery of the veil. It was white, with somewhat of a subdued silver
sheen, like the sunny side of a cloud; and falling over the wearer, from head to
foot, was supposed to insulate her from the material world, from time and space,
and to endow her with many of the privileges of a disembodied spirit.
    Her pretensions, however, whether miraculous or otherwise, have little to do
with the present narrative; except, indeed, that I had propounded, for the
Veiled Lady's prophetic solution, a query as to the success of our Blithedale
enterprise. The response, by-the-by, was of the true Sibylline stamp,
nonsensical in its first aspect, yet, on closer study, unfolding a variety of
interpretations, one of which has certainly accorded with the event. I was
turning over this riddle in my mind, and trying to catch its slippery purport by
the tail, when the old man, above-mentioned, interrupted me.
    »Mr. Coverdale! - Mr. Coverdale!« said he, repeating my name twice, in order
to make up for the hesitating and ineffectual way in which he uttered it - »I
ask your pardon, sir - but I hear you are going to Blithedale tomorrow?«
    I knew the pale, elderly face, with the red-tipt nose, and the patch over
one eye, and likewise saw something characteristic in the old fellow's way of
standing under the arch of a gate, only revealing enough of himself to make me
recognize him as an acquaintance. He was a very shy personage, this Mr. Moodie;
and the trait was the more singular, as his mode of getting his bread
necessarily brought him into the stir and hubbub of the world, more than the
generality of men.
    »Yes, Mr. Moodie,« I answered, wondering what interest he could take in the
fact, »it is my intention to go to Blithedale tomorrow. Can I be of any service
to you, before my departure?«
    »If you pleased, Mr. Coverdale,« said he, »you might do me a very great
favour.«
    »A very great one!« repeated I, in a tone that must have expressed but
little alacrity of beneficence, although I was ready to do the old man any
amount of kindness involving no special trouble to myself. »A very great favour,
do you say? My time is brief, Mr. Moodie, and I have a good many preparations to
make. But be good enough to tell me what you wish.«
    »Ah, sir,« replied old Moodie, »I don't quite like to do that; and, on
further thoughts, Mr. Coverdale, perhaps I had better apply to some older
gentleman, or to some lady, if you would have the kindness to make me known to
one, who may happen to be going to Blithedale. You are a young man, sir!«
    »Does that fact lessen my availability for your purpose?« asked I. »However,
if an older man will suit you better, there is Mr. Hollingsworth, who has three
or four years the advantage of me in age, and is a much more solid character,
and a philanthropist to boot. I am only a poet, and, so the critics tell me, no
great affair at that! But what can this business be, Mr. Moodie? It begins to
interest me; especially since your hint that a lady's influence might be found
desirable. Come; I am really anxious to be of service to you.«
    But the old fellow, in his civil and demure manner, was both freakish and
obstinate; and he had now taken some notion or other into his head that made him
hesitate in his former design.
    »I wonder, sir,« said he, »whether you know a lady whom they call Zenobia?«
    »Not personally,« I answered, »although I expect that pleasure tomorrow, as
she has got the start of the rest of us, and is already a resident at
Blithedale. But have you a literary turn, Mr. Moodie? - or have you taken up the
advocacy of women's rights? - or what else can have interested you in this lady?
Zenobia, by-the-by, as I suppose you know, is merely her public name; a sort of
mask in which she comes before the world, retaining all the privileges of
privacy - a contrivance, in short, like the white drapery of the Veiled Lady,
only a little more transparent. But it is late! Will you tell me what I can do
for you?«
    »Please to excuse me to-night, Mr. Coverdale,« said Moodie. »You are very
kind; but I am afraid I have troubled you, when, after all, there may be no
need. Perhaps, with your good leave, I will come to your lodgings
tomorrow-morning, before you set out for Blithedale. I wish you a good-night,
sir, and beg pardon for stopping you.«
    And so he splipped away; and, as he did not show himself, the next morning, it
was only through subsequent events that I ever arrived at a plausible conjecture
as to what his business could have been. Arriving at my room, I threw a lump of
cannel coal upon the grate, lighted a cigar, and spent an hour in musings of
every hue, from the brightest to the most sombre; being, in truth, not so very
confident as at some former periods, that this final step, which would mix me up
irrevocably with the Blithedale affair, was the wisest that could possibly be
taken. It was nothing short of midnight when I went to bed, after drinking a
glass of particularly fine Sherry, on which I used to pride myself, in those
days. It was the very last bottle; and I finished it, with a friend, the next
forenoon, before setting out for Blithedale.
 

                                 II. Blithedale

There can hardly remain for me, (who am really getting to be a frosty bachelor,
with another white hair, every week or so, in my moustache,) there can hardly
flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon the hearth, as that which I remember,
the next day, at Blithedale. It was a wood-fire, in the parlour of an old
farm-house, on an April afternoon, but with the fitful gusts of a wintry
snow-storm roaring in the chimney. Vividly does that fireside re-create itself,
as I rake away the ashes from the embers in my memory, and blow them up with a
sigh, for lack of more inspiring breath. Vividly, for an instant, but, anon,
with the dimmest gleam, and with just as little fervency for my heart as for my
finger-ends! The staunch oaken-logs were long ago burnt out. Their genial glow
must be represented, if at all, by the merest phosphoric glimmer, like that
which exudes, rather than shines, from damp fragments of decayed trees, deluding
the benighted wanderer through a forest. Around such chill mockery of a fire,
some few of us might sit on the withered leaves, spreading out each a palm
towards the imaginary warmth, and talk over our exploded scheme for beginning
the life of Paradise anew.
    Paradise, indeed! Nobody else in the world, I am bold to affirm - nobody, at
least, in our bleak little world of New England - had dreamed of Paradise, that
day, except as the pole suggests the tropic. Nor, with such materials as were at
hand, could the most skilful architect have constructed any better imitation of
Eve's bower, than might be seen in the snow-hut of an Esquimaux. But we made a
summer of it, in spite of the wild drifts.
    It was an April day, as already hinted, and well towards the middle of the
month. When morning dawned upon me, in town, its temperature was mild enough to
be pronounced even balmy, by a lodger - like myself - in one of the midmost
houses of a brick-block; each house partaking of the warmth of all the rest,
besides the sultriness of its individual furnace-heat. But, towards noon, there
had come snow, driven along the street by a north-easterly blast, and whitening
the roofs and sidewalks with a business-like perseverance that would have done
credit to our severest January tempest. It set about its task, apparently as
much in earnest as if it had been guaranteed from a thaw, for months to come.
The greater, surely, was my heroism, when, puffing out a final whiff of
cigar-smoke, I quitted my cosey pair of bachelor-rooms - with a good fire
burning in the grate, and a closet right at hand, where there was still a bottle
or two in the champagne-basket, and a residuum of claret in a box, and somewhat
of proof in the concavity of a big demijohn - quitted, I say, these comfortable
quarters, and plunged into the heart of the pitiless snow-storm, in quest of a
better life.
    The better life! Possibly, it would hardly look so, now; it is enough if it
looked so, then. The greatest obstacle to being heroic, is the doubt whether one
may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist
the doubt - and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted,
and when to be obeyed.
    Yet, after all, let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious, to
follow out one's day-dream to its natural consummation, although, if the vision
have been worth the having, it is certain never to be consummated otherwise than
by a failure. And what of that! Its airiest fragments, impalpable as they may
be, will possess a value that lurks not in the most ponderous realities of any
practicable scheme. They are not the rubbish of the mind. Whatever else I may
repent of, therefore, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies, that
I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world's destiny
- yes! - and to do what in me lay for their accomplishment; even to the extent
of quitting a warm fireside, flinging away a freshly lighted cigar, and
travelling far beyond the strike of city-clocks, through a drifting snow-storm.
    There were four of us who rode together through the storm; and
Hollingsworth, who had agreed to be of the number, was accidentally delayed, and
set forth at a later hour, alone. As we threaded the streets, I remember how the
buildings, on either side, seemed to press too closely upon us, insomuch that
our mighty hearts found barely room enough to throb between them. The snow-fall,
too, looked inexpressibly dreary, (I had almost called it dingy,) coming down
through an atmosphere of city-smoke, and alighting on the sidewalk, only to be
moulded into the impress of somebody's patched boot or over-shoe. Thus, the
track of an old conventionalism was visible on what was freshest from the sky.
But - when we left the pavements, and our muffled hoof-tramps beat upon a
desolate extent of country-road, and were effaced by the unfettered blast, as
soon as stamped - then, there was better air to breathe. Air, that had not been
breathed, once and again! Air, that had not been spoken into words of falsehood,
formality, and error, like all the air of the dusky city!
    »How pleasant it is!« remarked I, while the snow-flakes flew into my mouth,
the moment it was opened. »How very mild and balmy is this country-air!«
    »Ah, Coverdale, don't laugh at what little enthusiasm you have left,« said
one of my companions. »I maintain that this nitrous atmosphere is really
exhilarating; and, at any rate, we can never call ourselves regenerated men,
till a February north-easter shall be as grateful to us as the softest breeze of
June.«
    So we all of us took courage, riding fleetly and merrily along, by
stone-fences that were half-buried in the wave-like drifts; and through patches
of woodland, where the tree-trunks opposed a snow-encrusted side towards the
north-east; and within ken of deserted villas, with no foot-prints in their
avenues; and past scattered dwellings, whence puffed the smoke of country fires,
strongly impregnated with the pungent aroma of burning peat. Sometimes,
encountering a traveller, we shouted a friendly greeting; and he, unmuffling his
ears to the bluster and the snow-spray, and listening eagerly, appeared to think
our courtesy worth less than the trouble which it cost him. The churl! He
understood the shrill whistle of the blast, but had no intelligence for our
blithe tones of brotherhood. This lack of faith in our cordial sympathy, on the
traveller's part, was one among the innumerable tokens how difficult a task we
had in hand, for the reformation of the world. We rode on, however, with still
unflagging spirits, and made such good companionship with the tempest, that, at
our journey's end, we professed ourselves almost loth to bid the rude blusterer
good bye. But, to own the truth, I was little better than an icicle, and began
to be suspicious that I had caught a fearful cold.
    And, now, we were seated by the brisk fireside of the old farm-house; the
same fire that glimmers so faintly among my reminiscences, at the beginning of
this chapter. There we sat, with the snow melting out of our hair and beards,
and our faces all a-blaze, what with the past inclemency and present warmth. It
was, indeed, a right good fire that we found awaiting us, built up of great,
rough logs, and knotty limbs, and splintered fragments of an oak-tree, such as
farmers are wont to keep for their own hearths; since these crooked and
unmanageable boughs could never be measured into merchantable cords for the
market. A family of the old Pilgrims might have swung their kettle over
precisely such a fire as this, only, no doubt, a bigger one; and, contrasting it
with my coal-grate, I felt, so much the more, that we had transported ourselves
a world-wide distance from the system of society that shackled us at
breakfast-time.
    Good, comfortable Mrs. Foster (the wife of stout Silas Foster, who was to
manage the farm, at a fair stipend, and be our tutor in the art of husbandry)
bade us a hearty welcome. At her back - a back of generous breadth - appeared
two young women, smiling most hospitably, but looking rather awkward withal, as
not well knowing what was to be their position in our new arrangement of the
world. We shook hands affectionately, all round, and congratulated ourselves
that the blessed state of brotherhood and sisterhood, at which we aimed, might
fairly be dated from this moment. Our greetings were hardly concluded, when the
door opened, and Zenobia - whom I had never before seen, important as was her
place in our enterprise - Zenobia entered the parlour.
    This (as the reader, if at all acquainted with our literary biography, need
scarcely be told) was not her real name. She had assumed it, in the first
instance, as her magazine-signature; and as it accorded well with something
imperial which her friends attributed to this lady's figure and deportment,
they, half-laughingly, adopted it in their familiar intercourse with her. She
took the appellation in good part, and even encouraged its constant use, which,
in fact, was thus far appropriate, that our Zenobia - however humble looked her
new philosophy - had as much native pride as any queen would have known what to
do with.
 

                            III. A Knot of Dreamers

Zenobia bade us welcome, in a fine, frank, mellow voice, and gave each of us her
hand, which was very soft and warm. She had something appropriate, I recollect,
to say to every individual; and what she said to myself was this: -
    »I have long wished to know you, Mr. Coverdale, and to thank you for your
beautiful poetry, some of which I have learned by heart; - or, rather, it has
stolen into my memory, without my exercising any choice or volition about the
matter. Of course - permit me to say - you do not think of relinquishing an
occupation in which you have done yourself so much credit. I would almost rather
give you up, as an associate, than that the world should lose one of its true
poets!«
    »Ah, no; there will not be the slightest danger of that, especially after
this inestimable praise from Zenobia!« said I, smiling and blushing, no doubt,
with excess of pleasure. »I hope, on the contrary, now, to produce something
that shall really deserve to be called poetry - true, strong, natural, and
sweet, as is the life which we are going to lead - something that shall have the
notes of wild-birds twittering through it, or a strain like the wind-anthems in
the woods, as the case may be!«
    »Is it irksome to you to hear your own verses sung?« asked Zenobia, with a
gracious smile. »If so, I am very sorry; for you will certainly hear me singing
them, sometimes, in the summer evenings.«
    »Of all things,« answered I, »that is what will delight me most.«
    While this passed, and while she spoke to my companions, I was taking note
of Zenobia's aspect; and it impressed itself on me so distinctly, that I can now
summon her up like a ghost, a little wanner than the life, but otherwise
identical with it. She was dressed as simply as possible, in an American print,
(I think the dry-goods people call it so,) but with a silken kerchief, between
which and her gown there was one glimpse of a white shoulder. It struck me as a
great piece of good-fortune that there should be just that glimpse. Her hair -
which was dark, glossy, and of singular abundance - was put up rather soberly
and primly, without curls, or other ornament, except a single flower. It was an
exotic, of rare beauty, and as fresh as if the hot-house gardener had just clipt
it from the stem. That flower has struck deep root into my memory. I can both
see it and smell it, at this moment. So brilliant, so rare, so costly as it must
have been, and yet enduring only for a day, it was more indicative of the pride
and pomp, which had a luxuriant growth in Zenobia's character, than if a great
diamond had sparkled among her hair.
    Her hand, though very soft, was larger than most women would like to have -
or than they could afford to have - though not a whit too large in proportion
with the spacious plan of Zenobia's entire development. It did one good to see a
fine intellect (as hers really was, although its natural tendency lay in another
direction than towards literature) so fitly cased. She was, indeed, an admirable
figure of a woman, just on the hither verge of her richest maturity, with a
combination of features which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful, even if
some fastidious persons might pronounce them a little deficient in softness and
delicacy. But we find enough of those attributes, everywhere. Preferable - by
way of variety, at least - was Zenobia's bloom, health, and vigour, which she
possessed in such overflow that a man might well have fallen in love with her
for their sake only. In her quiet moods, she seemed rather indolent; but when
really in earnest, particularly if there were a spice of bitter feeling, she
grew all alive, to her finger-tips.
    »I am the first-comer,« Zenobia went on to say, while her smile beamed
warmth upon us all; »so I take the part of hostess, for to-day, and welcome you
as if to my own fireside. You shall be my guests, too, at supper. Tomorrow, if
you please, we will be brethren and sisters, and begin our new life from
day-break.«
    »Have we our various parts assigned?« asked some one.
    »Oh, we of the softer sex,« responded Zenobia, with her mellow, almost broad
laugh - most delectable to hear, but not in the least like an ordinary woman's
laugh - »we women (there are four of us here, already) will take the domestic
and indoor part of the business, as a matter of course. To bake, to boil, to
roast, to fry, to stew - to wash, and iron, and scrub, and sweep, and, at our
idler intervals, to repose ourselves on knitting and sewing - these, I suppose,
must be feminine occupations for the present. By-and-by, perhaps, when our
individual adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be that some of us,
who wear the petticoat, will go afield, and leave the weaker brethren to take
our places in the kitchen!«
    »What a pity,« I remarked, »that the kitchen, and the house-work generally,
cannot be left out of our system altogether! It is odd enough, that the kind of
labour which falls to the lot of women is just that which chiefly distinguishes
artificial life - the life of degenerated mortals - from the life of Paradise.
Eve had no dinner-pot, and no clothes to mend, and no washing-day.«
    »I am afraid,« said Zenobia, with mirth gleaming out of her eyes, »we shall
find some difficulty in adopting the Paradisiacal system, for at least a month
to come. Look at that snow-drift sweeping past the window! Are there any figs
ripe, do you think? Have the pine-apples been gathered, to-day? Would you like a
bread-fruit, or a cocoa-nut? Shall I run out and pluck you some roses? No, no,
Mr. Coverdale, the only flower hereabouts is the one in my hair, which I got out
of a green-house, this morning. As for the garb of Eden,« added she, shivering
playfully, »I shall not assume it till after May-day!«
    Assuredly, Zenobia could not have intended it - the fault must have been
entirely in my imagination - but these last words, together with something in
her manner, irresistibly brought up a picture of that fine, perfectly developed
figure, in Eve's earliest garment. I almost fancied myself actually beholding
it. Her free, careless, generous modes of expression often had this effect of
creating images which, though pure, are hardly felt to be quite decorous, when
born of a thought that passes between man and woman. I imputed it, at that time,
to Zenobia's noble courage, conscious of no harm, and scorning the petty
restraints which take the life and colour out of other women's conversation.
There was another peculiarity about her. We seldom meet with women, now-a-days,
and in this country, who impress us as being women at all; their sex fades away
and goes for nothing, in ordinary intercourse. Not so with Zenobia. One felt an
influence breathing out of her, such as we might suppose to come from Eve, when
she was just made, and her Creator brought her to Adam, saying - »Behold, here
is a woman!« Not that I would convey the idea of especial gentleness, grace,
modesty, and shyness, but of a certain warm and rich characteristic, which
seems, for the most part, to have been refined away out of the feminine system.
    »And now,« continued Zenobia, »I must go and help get supper. Do you think
you can be content - instead of figs, pine-apples, and all the other delicacies
of Adam's supper-table - with tea and toast, and a certain modest supply of ham
and tongue, which, with the instinct of a housewife, I brought hither in a
basket? And there shall be bread-and-milk, too, if the innocence of your taste
demands it.«
    The whole sisterhood now went about their domestic avocations, utterly
declining our offers to assist, farther than by bringing wood, for the
kitchen-fire, from a huge pile in the back-yard. After heaping up more than a
sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting-room, drew our chairs closer to
the hearth, and began to talk over our prospects. Soon, with a tremendous
stamping in the entry, appeared Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth, and
grisly-bearded. He came from foddering the cattle, in the barn, and from the
field, where he had been ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it
impossible to draw a furrow. He greeted us in pretty much the same tone as if he
were speaking to his oxen, took a quid from his iron tobacco-box, pulled off his
wet cow-hide boots, and sat down before the fire in his stocking-feet. The steam
arose from his soaked garments, so that the stout yeoman looked vaporous and
spectre-like.
    »Well, folks,« remarked Silas, »you'll be wishing yourselves back to town
again, if this weather holds!«
    And, true enough, there was a look of gloom, as the twilight fell silently
and sadly out of the sky, its gray or sable flakes intermingling themselves with
the fast descending snow. The storm, in its evening aspect, was decidedly
dreary. It seemed to have arisen for our especial behove; a symbol of the cold,
desolate, distrustful phantoms that invariably haunt the mind, on the eve of
adventurous enterprises, to warn us back within the boundaries of ordinary life.
    But our courage did not quail. We would not allow ourselves to be depressed
by the snow-drift, trailing past the window, any more than if it had been the
sigh of a summer wind among rustling boughs. There have been few brighter
seasons for us, than that. If ever men might lawfully dream awake, and give
utterance to their wildest visions, without dread of laughter or scorn on the
part of the audience - yes, and speak of earthly happiness, for themselves and
mankind, as an object to be hopefully striven for, and probably attained - we,
who made that little semi-circle round the blazing fire, were those very men. We
had left the rusty iron frame-work of society behind us. We had broken through
many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep most people on the weary
tread-mill of the established system, even while they feel its irksomeness
almost as intolerable as we did. We had stepped down from the pulpit; we had flung
aside the pen; we had shut up the ledger; we had thrown off that sweet,
bewitching, enervating indolence, which is better, after all, than most of the
enjoyments within mortal grasp. It was our purpose - a generous one, certainly,
and absurd, no doubt, in full proportion with its generosity - to give up
whatever we had heretofore attained, for the sake of showing mankind the example
of a life governed by other than the false and cruel principles, on which human
society has all along been based.
    And, first of all, we had divorced ourselves from Pride, and were striving
to supply its place with familiar love. We meant to lessen the labouring man's
great burden of toil, by performing our due share of it at the cost of our own
thews and sinews. We sought our profit by mutual aid, instead of wresting it by
the strong hand from an enemy, or filching it craftily from those less shrewd
than ourselves, (if, indeed, there were any such, in New England,) or winning it
by selfish competition with a neighbour; in one or another of which fashions,
every son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of the common evil,
whether he chooses it or no. And, as the basis of our institution, we purposed
to offer up the earnest toil of our bodies, as a prayer, no less than an effort,
for the advancement of our race.
    Therefore, if we built splendid castles (phalansteries, perhaps, they might
be more fitly called,) and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coals of
the hearth around which we were clustering - and if all went to rack with the
crumbling embers, and have never since arisen out of the ashes - let us take to
ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better
of the world's improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men
seldom fall twice, in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature
that can thus magnanimously persist in error.
    Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation; but when he did
speak, it was very much to some practical purpose. For instance: -
    »Which man among you,« quoth he, »is the best judge of swine? Some of us
must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half-a-dozen pigs!«
    Pigs! Good heavens, had we come out from among the swinish multitude, for
this? And again, in reference to some discussion about raising early vegetables
for the market: -
    »We shall never make any hand at market-gardening,« said Silas Foster,
»unless the women-folks will undertake to do all the weeding. We haven't team
enough for that and the regular farm-work, reckoning three of you city-folks as
worth one common field-hand. No, no, I tell you, we should have to get up a
little too early in the morning, to compete with the market-gardeners round
Boston!«
    It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised, after
our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, should relate to
the possibility of getting the advantage over the outside barbarians, in their
own field of labour. But, to own the truth, I very soon became sensible, that, as
regarded society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility, rather than
new brotherhood. Nor could this fail to be the case, in some degree, until the
bigger and better half of society should range itself on our side. Constituting
so pitiful a minority as now, we were inevitably estranged from the rest of
mankind, in pretty fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual bond among
ourselves.
    This dawning idea, however, was driven back into my inner consciousness by
the entrance of Zenobia. She came with the welcome intelligence that supper was
on the table. Looking at herself in the glass, and perceiving that her one
magnificent flower had grown rather languid, (probably by being exposed to the
fervency of the kitchen-fire,) she flung it on the floor, as unconcernedly as a
village-girl would throw away a faded violet. The action seemed proper to her
character; although, methought, it would still more have befitted the bounteous
nature of this beautiful woman to scatter fresh flowers from her hand, and to
revive faded ones by her touch. Nevertheless - it was a singular, but
irresistible effect - the presence of Zenobia caused our heroic enterprise to
show like an illusion, a masquerade, a pastoral, a counterfeit Arcadia, in which
we grown-up men and women were making a play-day of the years that were given us
to live in. I tried to analyse this impression, but not with much success.
    »It really vexes me,« observed Zenobia, as we left the room, »that Mr.
Hollingsworth should be such a laggard. I should not have thought him at all the
sort of person to be turned back by a puff of contrary wind, or a few
snow-flakes drifting into his face.«
    »Do you know Hollingsworth personally?« I inquired.
    »No; only as an auditor - auditress, I mean - of some of his lectures,« said
she. »What a voice he has! And what a man he is! Yet not so much an intellectual
man, I should say, as a great heart; at least, he moved me more deeply than I
think myself capable of being moved, except by the stroke of a true, strong
heart against my own. It is a sad pity that he should have devoted his glorious
powers to such a grimy, unbeautiful, and positively hopeless object as this
reformation of criminals, about which he makes himself and his wretchedly small
audiences so very miserable. To tell you a secret, I never could tolerate a
philanthropist, before. Could you?«
    »By no means,« I answered; »neither can I now!«
    »They are, indeed, an odiously disagreeable set of mortals,« continued
Zenobia. »I should like Mr. Hollingsworth a great deal better, if the
philanthropy had been left out. At all events, as a mere matter of taste, I wish
he would let the bad people alone, and try to benefit those who are not already
past his help. Do you suppose he will be content to spend his life - or even a
few months of it - among tolerably virtuous and comfortable individuals, like
ourselves?«
    »Upon my word, I doubt it,« said I. »If we wish to keep him with us, we must
systematically commit at least one crime apiece! Mere peccadillos will not
satisfy him.«
    Zenobia turned, sidelong, a strange kind of a glance upon me; but, before I
could make out what it meant, we had entered the kitchen, where, in accordance
with the rustic simplicity of our new life, the supper-table was spread.
 

                              IV. The Supper-Table

The pleasant firelight! I must still keep harping on it.
    The kitchen-hearth had an old-fashioned breadth, depth, and spaciousness,
far within which lay what seemed the butt of a good-sized oak-tree, with the
moisture bubbling merrily out of both ends. It was now half-an-hour beyond dusk.
The blaze from an armfull of substantial sticks, rendered more combustible by
brush-wood and pine, flickered powerfully on the smoke-blackened walls, and so
cheered our spirits that we cared not what inclemency might rage and roar, on
the other side of our illuminated windows. A yet sultrier warmth was bestowed by
a goodly quantity of peat, which was crumbling to white ashes among the burning
brands, and incensed the kitchen with its not ungrateful fragrance. The
exuberance of this household fire would alone have sufficed to bespeak us no
true farmers; for the New England yeoman, if he have the misfortune to dwell
within practicable distance of a wood-market, is as niggardly of each stick as
if it were a bar of California gold.
    But it was fortunate for us, on that wintry eve of our untried life, to
enjoy the warm and radiant luxury of a somewhat too abundant fire. If it served
no other purpose, it made the men look so full of youth, warm blood, and hope,
and the women - such of them, at least, as were anywise convertible by its magic
- so very beautiful, that I would cheerfully have spent my last dollar to
prolong the blaze. As for Zenobia, there was a glow in her cheeks that made me
think of Pandora, fresh from Vulcan's workshop, and full of the celestial warmth
by dint of which he had tempered and moulded her.
    »Take your places, my dear friends all,« cried she; »seat yourselves without
ceremony - and you shall be made happy with such tea as not many of the world's
working-people, except yourselves, will find in their cups to-night. After this
one supper, you may drink butter-milk, if you please. To-night, we will quaff
this nectar, which, I assure you, could not be bought with gold.«
    We all sat down - grisly Silas Foster, his rotund helpmate, and the two
bouncing handmaidens, included - and looked at one another in a friendly, but
rather awkward way. It was the first practical trial of our theories of equal
brotherhood and sisterhood; and we people of superior cultivation and refinement
(for as such, I presume, we unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves) felt as if
something were already accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth
is, however, that the labouring oar was with our unpolished companions; it being
far easier to condescend, than to accept of condescension. Neither did I refrain
from questioning, in secret, whether some of us - and Zenobia among the rest -
would so quietly have taken our places among these good people, save for the
cherished consciousness that it was not by necessity, but choice. Though we saw
fit to drink our tea out of earthen cups to-night, and in earthen company, it
was at our own option to use pictured porcelain and handle silver forks again,
tomorrow. This same salvo, as to the power of regaining our former position,
contributed much, I fear, to the equanimity with which we subsequently bore many
of the hardships and humiliations of a life of toil. If ever I have deserved -
(which has not often been the case, and, I think, never) - but if ever I did
deserve to be soundly cuffed by a fellow-mortal, for secretly putting weight
upon some imaginary social advantage, it must have been while I was striving to
prove myself ostentatiously his equal, and no more. It was while I sat beside
him on his cobbler's bench, or clinked my hoe against his own, in the cornfield,
or broke the same crust of bread, my earth-grimed hand to his, at our noontide
lunch. The poor, proud man should look at both sides of sympathy like this.
    The silence, which followed upon our sitting down to table, grew rather
oppressive; indeed, it was hardly broken by a word, during the first round of
Zenobia's fragrant tea.
    »I hope,« said I, at last, »that our blazing windows will be visible a great
way off. There is nothing so pleasant and encouraging to a solitary traveller,
on a stormy night, as a flood of firelight, seen amid the gloom. These ruddy
window-panes cannot fail to cheer the hearts of all that look at them. Are they
not warm and bright with the beacon-fire which we have kindled for humanity?«
    »The blaze of that brush-wood will only last a minute or two longer,«
observed Silas Foster; but whether he meant to insinuate that our moral
illumination would have as brief a term, I cannot say.
    »Meantime,« said Zenobia, »it may serve to guide some wayfarer to a
shelter.«
    And, just as she said this, there came a knock at the house-door.
    »There is one of the world's wayfarers!« said I.
    »Aye, aye, just so!« quoth Silas Foster. »Our firelight will draw
stragglers, just as a candle draws dor-bugs, on a summer night.«
    Whether to enjoy a dramatic suspense, or that we were selfishly contrasting
our own comfort with the chill and dreary situation of the unknown person at the
threshold - or that some of us city-folk felt a little startled at the knock
which came so unseasonably, through night and storm, to the door of the lonely
farm-house - so it happened, that nobody, for an instant or two, arose to answer
the summons. Pretty soon, there came another knock. The first had been
moderately loud; the second was smitten so forcibly that the knuckles of the
applicant must have left their mark in the door-panel.
    »He knocks as if he had a right to come in,« said Zenobia, laughing. »And
what are we thinking of? It must be Mr. Hollingsworth!«
    Hereupon, I went to the door, unbolted, and flung it wide open. There, sure
enough, stood Hollingsworth, his shaggy great-coat all covered with snow; so
that he looked quite as much like a polar bear as a modern philanthropist.
    »Sluggish hospitality, this!« said he, in those deep tones of his, which
seemed to come out of a chest as capacious as a barrel. »It would have served
you right if I had lain down and spent the night on the door-step, just for the
sake of putting you to shame. But here is a guest, who will need a warmer and
softer bed.«
    And stepping back to the wagon, in which he had journeyed hither,
Hollingsworth received into his arms, and deposited on the door-step, a figure
enveloped in a cloak. It was evidently a woman; or rather - judging from the
ease with which he lifted her, and the little space which she seemed to fill in
his arms - a slim and unsubstantial girl. As she showed some hesitation about
entering the door, Hollingsworth, with his usual directness and lack of
ceremony, urged her forward, not merely within the entry, but into the warm and
strongly lighted kitchen.
    »Who is this?« whispered I, remaining behind with him, while he was taking
off his great-coat.
    »Who? Really, I don't know,« answered Hollingsworth, looking at me with some
surprise. »It is a young person who belongs here, however; and, no doubt, she
has been expected. Zenobia, or some of the women-folks, can tell you all about
it.«
    »I think not,« said I, glancing towards the new-comer and the other
occupants of the kitchen. »Nobody seems to welcome her. I should hardly judge
that she was an expected guest.«
    »Well, well,« said Hollingsworth, quietly. »We'll make it right.«
    The stranger, or whatever she were, remained standing precisely on that spot
of the kitchen-floor, to which Hollingsworth's kindly hand had impelled her. The
cloak falling partly off, she was seen to be a very young woman, dressed in a
poor, but decent gown, made high in the neck, and without any regard to fashion
or smartness. Her brown hair fell down from beneath a hood, not in curls, but
with only a slight wave; her face was of a wan, almost sickly hue, betokening
habitual seclusion from the sun and free atmosphere, like a flower-shrub that
had done its best to blossom in too scanty light. To complete the pitiableness
of her aspect, she shivered either with cold, or fear, or nervous excitement, so
that you might have beheld her shadow vibrating on the fire-lighted wall. In
short, there has seldom been seen so depressed and sad a figure as this young
girl's; and it was hardly possible to help being angry with her, from mere
despair of doing anything for her comfort. The fantasy occurred to me, that she
was some desolate kind of a creature, doomed to wander about in snow-storms, and
that, though the ruddiness of our window-panes had tempted her into a human
dwelling, she would not remain long enough to melt the icicles out of her hair.
    Another conjecture likewise came into my mind. Recollecting Hollingsworth's
sphere of philanthropic action, I deemed it possible that he might have brought
one of his guilty patients, to be wrought upon, and restored to spiritual
health, by the pure influences which our mode of life would create.
    As yet, the girl had not stirred. She stood near the door, fixing a pair of
large, brown, melancholy eyes upon Zenobia - only upon Zenobia! - she evidently
saw nothing else in the room, save that bright, fair, rosy, beautiful woman. It
was the strangest look I ever witnessed; long a mystery to me, and forever a
memory. Once, she seemed about to move forward and greet her - I know not with
what warmth, or with what words; - but, finally, instead of doing so, she
drooped down upon her knees, clasped her hands, and gazed piteously into
Zenobia's face. Meeting no kindly reception, her head fell on her bosom.
    I never thoroughly forgave Zenobia for her conduct on this occasion. But
women are always more cautious, in their casual hospitalities, than men.
    »What does the girl mean?« cried she, in rather a sharp tone. »Is she crazy?
Has she no tongue?«
    And here Hollingsworth stepped forward.
    »No wonder if the poor child's tongue is frozen in her mouth,« said he - and
I think he positively frowned at Zenobia - »The very heart will be frozen in her
bosom, unless you women can warm it, among you, with the warmth that ought to be
in your own!«
    Hollingsworth's appearance was very striking, at this moment. He was then
about thirty years old, but looked several years older, with his great shaggy
head, his heavy brow, his dark complexion, his abundant beard, and the rude
strength with which his features seemed to have been hammered out of iron,
rather than chiselled or moulded from any finer or softer material. His figure
was not tall, but massive and brawny, and well befitting his original
occupation, which - as the reader probably knows - was that of a blacksmith. As
for external polish, or mere courtesy of manner, he never possessed more than a
tolerably educated bear; although, in his gentler moods, there was a tenderness
in his voice, eyes, mouth, in his gesture, and in every indescribable
manifestation, which few men could resist, and no woman. But he now looked stern
and reproachful; and it was with that inauspicious meaning in his glance, that
Hollingsworth first met Zenobia's eyes, and began his influence upon her life.
    To my surprise, Zenobia - of whose haughty spirit I had been told so many
examples - absolutely changed colour, and seemed mortified and confused.
    »You do not quite do me justice, Mr. Hollingsworth,« said she, almost
humbly. »I am willing to be kind to the poor girl. Is she a protégée of yours?
What can I do for her?«
    »Have you anything to ask of this lady?« said Hollingsworth, kindly, to the
girl. »I remember you mentioned her name, before we left town.«
    »Only that she will shelter me,« replied the girl, tremulously. »Only that
she will let me be always near her!«
    »Well, indeed,« exclaimed Zenobia, recovering herself, and laughing, »this
is an adventure, and well worthy to be the first incident in our life of love
and free-heartedness! But I accept it, for the present, without further question
- only,« added she, »it would be a convenience if we knew your name!«
    »Priscilla,« said the girl; and it appeared to me that she hesitated whether
to add anything more, and decided in the negative. »Pray do not ask me my other
name - at least, not yet - if you will be so kind to a forlorn creature.«
    Priscilla! Priscilla! I repeated the name to myself, three or four times;
and, in that little space, this quaint and prim cognomen had so amalgamated
itself with my idea of the girl, that it seemed as if no other name could have
adhered to her for a moment. Heretofore, the poor thing had not shed any tears;
but now that she found herself received, and at least temporarily established,
the big drops began to ooze out from beneath her eyelids, as if she were full of
them. Perhaps it showed the iron substance of my heart, that I could not help
smiling at this odd scene of unknown and unaccountable calamity, into which our
cheerful party had been entrapped, without the liberty of choosing whether to
sympathize or no. Hollingsworth's behaviour was certainly a great deal more
creditable than mine.
    »Let us not pry farther into her secrets,« he said to Zenobia and the rest
of us, apart - and his dark, shaggy face looked really beautiful with its
expression of thoughtful benevolence - »Let us conclude that Providence has sent
her to us, as the first fruits of the world, which we have undertaken to make
happier than we find it. Let us warm her poor, shivering body with this good
fire, and her poor, shivering heart with our best kindness. Let us feed her, and
make her one of us. As we do by this friendless girl, so shall we prosper! And,
in good time, whatever is desirable for us to know will be melted out of her, as
inevitably as those tears which we see now.«
    »At least,« remarked I, »you may tell us how and where you met with her.«
    »An old man brought her to my lodgings,« answered Hollingsworth, »and begged
me to convey her to Blithedale, where - so I understood him - she had friends.
And this is positively all I know about the matter.«
    Grim Silas Foster, all this while, had been busy at the supper-table,
pouring out his own tea, and gulping it down with no more sense of its
exquisiteness than if it were a decoction of catnip; helping himself to pieces
of dipt toast on the flat of his knife-blade, and dropping half of it on the
table-cloth; using the same serviceable implement to cut slice after slice of
ham; perpetrating terrible enormities with the butter-plate; and, in all other
respects, behaving less like a civilized Christian than the worst kind of an
ogre. Being, by this time, fully gorged, he crowned his amiable exploits with a
draught from the water-pitcher, and then favoured us with his opinion about the
business in hand. And, certainly, though they proceeded out of an unwiped mouth,
his expressions did him honour.
    »Give the girl a hot cup of tea, and a thick slice of this first-rate
bacon,« said Silas, like a sensible man as he was. »That's what she wants. Let
her stay with us as long as she likes, and help in the kitchen, and take the
cow-breath at milking-time; and, in a week or two, she'll begin to look like a
creature of this world!«
    So we sat down again to supper, and Priscilla along with us.
 

                                V. Until Bedtime

Silas Foster, by the time we concluded our meal, had stripped off his coat and
planted himself on a low chair by the kitchen-fire, with a lap-stone, a hammer,
a piece of sole-leather, and some waxed ends, in order to cobble an old pair of
cow-hide boots; he being, in his own phrase, something of a dab (whatever degree
of skill that may imply) at the shoemaking-business. We heard the tap of his
hammer, at intervals, for the rest of the evening. The remainder of the party
adjourned to the sitting-room. Good Mrs. Foster took her knitting-work, and soon
fell fast asleep, still keeping her needles in brisk movement, and, to the best
of my observation, absolutely footing a stocking out of the texture of a dream.
And a very substantial stocking it seemed to be. One of the two handmaidens
hemmed a towel, and the other appeared to be making a ruffle, for her Sunday's
wear, out of a little bit of embroidered muslin, which Zenobia had probably
given her.
    It was curious to observe how trustingly, and yet how timidly, our poor
Priscilla betook herself into the shadow of Zenobia's protection. She sat beside
her on a stool, looking up, every now and then, with an expression of humble
delight at her new friend's beauty. A brilliant woman is often an object of the
devoted admiration - it might almost be termed worship, or idolatry - of some
young girl, who perhaps beholds the cynosure only at an awful distance, and has
as little hope of personal intercourse as of climbing among the stars of heaven.
We men are too gross to comprehend it. Even a woman, of mature age, despises or
laughs at such a passion. There occurred to me no mode of accounting for
Priscilla's behaviour, except by supposing that she had read some of Zenobia's
stories, (as such literature goes everywhere,) or her tracts in defence of the
sex, and had come hither with the one purpose of being her slave. There is
nothing parallel to this, I believe - nothing so foolishly disinterested, and
hardly anything so beautiful - in the masculine nature, at whatever epoch of
life; or, if there be, a fine and rare development of character might reasonably
be looked for, from the youth who should prove himself capable of such
self-forgetful affection.
    Zenobia happening to change her seat, I took the opportunity, in an under
tone, to suggest some such notion as the above.
    »Since you see the young woman in so poetical a light,« replied she, in the
same tone, »you had better turn the affair into a ballad. It is a grand subject,
and worthy of supernatural machinery. The storm, the startling knock at the
door, the entrance of the sable knight Hollingsworth and this shadowy
snow-maiden, who, precisely at the stroke of midnight, shall melt away at my
feet, in a pool of ice-cold water, and give me my death with a pair of wet
slippers! And when the verses are written, and polished quite to your mind, I
will favour you with my idea as to what the girl really is.«
    »Pray let me have it now,« said I. »It shall be woven into the ballad.«
    »She is neither more nor less,« answered Zenobia, »than a seamstress from
the city, and she has probably no more transcendental purpose than to do my
miscellaneous sewing; for I suppose she will hardly expect to make my dresses.«
    »How can you decide upon her so easily?« I inquired.
    »Oh, we women judge one another by tokens that escape the obtuseness of
masculine perceptions,« said Zenobia. »There is no proof, which you would be
likely to appreciate, except the needle marks on the tip of her forefinger.
Then, my supposition perfectly accounts for her paleness, her nervousness, and
her wretched fragility. Poor thing! She has been stifled with the heat of a
salamander-stove, in a small, close room, and has drunk coffee, and fed upon
dough-nuts, raisins, candy, and all such trash, till she is scarcely half-alive;
and so, as she has hardly any physique, a poet, like Mr. Miles Coverdale, may be
allowed to think her spiritual!«
    »Look at her now!« whispered I.
    Priscilla was gazing towards us, with an inexpressible sorrow in her wan
face, and great tears running down her cheeks. It was difficult to resist the
impression, that, cautiously as we had lowered our voices, she must have
overheard and been wounded by Zenobia's scornful estimate of her character and
purposes.
    »What ears the girl must have!« whispered Zenobia, with a look of vexation,
partly comic and partly real. »I will confess to you that I cannot quite make
her out. However, I am positively not an ill-natured person, unless when very
grievously provoked; and as you, and especially Mr. Hollingsworth, take so much
interest in this odd creature - and as she knocks, with a very slight tap,
against my own heart, likewise - why, I mean to let her in! From this moment, I
will be reasonably kind to her. There is no pleasure in tormenting a person of
one's own sex, even if she do favour one with a little more love than one can
conveniently dispose of; - and that, let me say, Mr. Coverdale, is the most
troublesome offence you can offer to a woman.«
    »Thank you!« said I, smiling. »I don't mean to be guilty of it.«
    She went towards Priscilla, took her hand, and passed her own rosy
finger-tips, with a pretty, caressing movement, over the girl's hair. The touch
had a magical effect. So vivid a look of joy flushed up beneath those fingers,
that it seemed as if the sad and wan Priscilla had been snatched away, and
another kind of creature substituted in her place. This one caress, bestowed
voluntarily by Zenobia, was evidently received as a pledge of all that the
stranger sought from her, whatever the unuttered boon might be. From that
instant, too, she melted in quietly amongst us, and was no longer a foreign
element. Though always an object of peculiar interest, a riddle, and a theme of
frequent discussion, her tenure at Blithedale was thenceforth fixed; we no more
thought of questioning it, than if Priscilla had been recognized as a domestic
sprite, who had haunted the rustic fireside, of old, before we had ever been
warmed by its blaze.
    She now produced, out of a work-bag that she had with her, some little
wooden instruments, (what they are called, I never knew,) and proceeded to knit,
or net, an article which ultimately took the shape of a silk purse. As the work
went on, I remembered to have seen just such purses, before. Indeed, I was the
possessor of one. Their peculiar excellence, besides the great delicacy and
beauty of the manufacture, lay in the almost impossibility that any uninitiated
person should discover the aperture; although, to a practised touch, they would
open as wide as charity or prodigality might wish. I wondered if it were not a
symbol of Priscilla's own mystery.
    Notwithstanding the new confidence with which Zenobia had inspired her, our
guest showed herself disquieted by the storm. When the strong puffs of wind
spattered the snow against the windows, and made the oaken frame of the
farm-house creak, she looked at us apprehensively, as if to inquire whether
these tempestuous outbreaks did not betoken some unusual mischief in the
shrieking blast. She had been bred up, no doubt, in some close nook, some
inauspiciously sheltered court of the city, where the uttermost rage of a
tempest, though it might scatter down the slates of the roof into the bricked
area, could not shake the casement of her little room. The sense of vast,
undefined space, pressing from the outside against the black panes of our
uncurtained windows, was fearful to the poor girl, heretofore accustomed to the
narrowness of human limits, with the lamps of neighbouring tenements glimmering
across the street. The house probably seemed to her adrift on the great ocean of
the night. A little parallelogram of sky was all that she had hitherto known of
nature; so that she felt the awfulness that really exists in its limitless
extent. Once, while the blast was bellowing, she caught hold of Zenobia's robe,
with precisely the air of one who hears her own name spoken, at a distance, but
is unutterably reluctant to obey the call.
    We spent rather an incommunicative evening. Hollingsworth hardly said a
word, unless when repeatedly and pertinaciously addressed. Then, indeed, he
would glare upon us from the thick shrubbery of his meditations, like a tiger
out of a jungle, make the briefest reply possible, and betake himself back into
the solitude of his heart and mind. The poor fellow had contracted this
ungracious habit from the intensity with which he contemplated his own ideas,
and the infrequent sympathy which they met with from his auditors; a
circumstance that seemed only to strengthen the implicit confidence that he
awarded to them. His heart, I imagine, was never really interested in our
socialist scheme, but was forever busy with his strange, and, as most people
thought it, impracticable plan for the reformation of criminals, through an
appeal to their higher instincts. Much as I liked Hollingsworth, it cost me many
a groan to tolerate him on this point. He ought to have commenced his
investigation of the subject by perpetrating some huge sin, in his proper
person, and examining the condition of his higher instincts, afterwards.
    The rest of us formed ourselves into a committee for providing our infant
Community with an appropriate name; a matter of greatly more difficulty than the
uninitiated reader would suppose. Blithedale was neither good nor bad. We should
have resumed the old Indian name of the premises, had it possessed the
oil-and-honey flow which the aborigines were so often happy in communicating to
their local appellations; but it chanced to be a harsh, ill-connected, and
interminable word, which seemed to fill the mouth with a mixture of very stiff
clay and very crumbly pebbles. Zenobia suggested Sunny Glimpse, as expressive of
a vista into a better system of society. This we turned over and over, for
awhile, acknowledging its prettiness, but concluded it to be rather too fine and
sentimental a name (a fault inevitable by literary ladies, in such attempts) for
sun-burnt men to work under. I ventured to whisper Utopia, which, however, was
unanimously scouted down, and the proposer very harshly maltreated, as if he had
intended a latent satire. Some were for calling our institution The Oasis, in
view of its being the one green spot in the moral sand-waste of the world; but
others insisted on a proviso for reconsidering the matter, at a twelvemonth's
end; when a final decision might be had, whether to name it The Oasis, or
Saharah. So, at last, finding it impracticable to hammer out anything better, we
resolved that the spot should still be Blithedale, as being of good augury
enough.
    The evening wore on, and the outer solitude looked in upon us through the
windows, gloomy, wild, and vague, like another state of existence, close beside
the littler sphere of warmth and light in which we were the prattlers and
bustlers of a moment. By-and-by, the door was opened by Silas Foster, with a
cotton handkerchief about his head, and a tallow candle in his hand.
    »Take my advice, brother-farmers,« said he, with a great, broad, bottomless
yawn, »and get to bed as soon as you can. I shall sound the horn at day-break;
and we've got the cattle to fodder, and nine cows to milk, and a dozen other
things to do, before breakfast.«
    Thus ended the first evening at Blithedale. I went shivering to my fireless
chamber, with the miserable consciousness (which had been growing upon me for
several hours past) that I had caught a tremendous cold, and should probably
awaken, at the blast of the horn, a fit subject for a hospital. The night proved
a feverish one. During the greater part of it, I was in that vilest of states
when a fixed idea remains in the mind, like the nail in Sisera's brain, while
innumerable other ideas go and come, and flutter to-and-fro, combining constant
transition with intolerable sameness. Had I made a record of that night's
half-waking dreams, it is my belief that it would have anticipated several of
the chief incidents of this narrative, including a dim shadow of its
catastrophe. Starting up in bed, at length, I saw that the storm was past, and
the moon was shining on the snowy landscape, which looked like a lifeless copy
of the world in marble.
    From the bank of the distant river, which was shimmering in the moonlight,
came the black shadow of the only cloud in heaven, driven swiftly by the wind,
and passing over meadow and hillock - vanishing amid tufts of leafless trees,
but reappearing on the hither side - until it swept across our door-step.
    How cold an Arcadia was this!
 

                          VI. Coverdale's Sick-Chamber

The horn sounded at day-break, as Silas Foster had forewarned us, harsh,
uproarious, inexorably drawn out, and as sleep-dispelling as if this
hard-hearted old yeoman had got hold of the trump of doom.
    On all sides, I could hear the creaking of the bedsteads, as the brethren of
Blithedale started from slumber, and thrust themselves into their habiliments,
all awry, no doubt, in their haste to begin the reformation of the world.
Zenobia put her head into the entry, and besought Silas Foster to cease his
clamour, and to be kind enough to leave an armful of firewood and a pail of water
at her chamber-door. Of the whole household - unless, indeed, it were Priscilla,
for whose habits, in this particular, I cannot vouch - of all our apostolic
society, whose mission was to bless mankind, Hollingsworth, I apprehend, was the
only one who began the enterprise with prayer. My sleeping-room being but thinly
partitioned from his, the solemn murmur of his voice made its way to my ears,
compelling me to be an auditor of his awful privacy with the Creator. It
affected me with a deep reverence for Hollingsworth, which no familiarity then
existing, or that afterwards grew more intimate between us - no, nor my
subsequent perception of his own great errors - ever quite effaced. It is so
rare, in these times, to meet with a man of prayerful habits, (except, of
course, in the pulpit,) that such an one is decidedly marked out by a light of
transfiguration, shed upon him in the divine interview from which he passes into
his daily life.
    As for me, I lay abed, and, if I said my prayers, it was backward, cursing
my day as bitterly as patient Job himself. The truth was, the hot-house warmth
of a town-residence, and the luxurious life in which I indulged myself, had
taken much of the pith out of my physical system; and the wintry blast of the
preceding day, together with the general chill of our airy old farm-house, had
got fairly into my heart and the marrow of my bones. In this predicament, I
seriously wished - selfish as it may appear - that the reformation of society
had been postponed about half-a-century, or at all events, to such a date as
should have put my intermeddling with it entirely out of the question.
    What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than
I had always lived in! It had satisfied me well enough. My pleasant
bachelor-parlour, sunny and shadowy, curtained and carpeted, with the bed-chamber
adjoining; my centre-table, strewn with books and periodicals; my writing-desk,
with a half-finished poem in a stanza of my own contrivance; my morning lounge
at the reading-room or picture-gallery; my noontide walk along the cheery
pavement, with the suggestive succession of human faces, and the brisk throb of
human life, in which I shared; my dinner at the Albion, where I had a hundred
dishes at command, and could banquet as delicately as the wizard Michael Scott,
when the devil fed him from the King of France's kitchen; my evening at the
billiard-club, the concert, the theatre, or at somebody's party, if I pleased: -
what could be better than all this? Was it better to hoe, to mow, to toil and
moil amidst the accumulations of a barn-yard, to be the chambermaid of two yoke
of oxen and a dozen cows, to eat salt-beef and earn it with the sweat of my
brow, and thereby take the tough morsel out of some wretch's mouth, into whose
vocation I had thrust myself? Above all, was it better to have a fever, and die
blaspheming, as I was like to do?
    In this wretched plight, with a furnace in my heart, and another in my head,
by the heat of which I was kept constantly at the boiling point - yet shivering
at the bare idea of extruding so much as a finger into the icy atmosphere of the
room - I kept my bed until breakfast-time, when Hollingsworth knocked at the
door, and entered.
    »Well, Coverdale,« cried he, »you bid fair to make an admirable farmer!
Don't you mean to get up to-
    »Neither to-day nor tomorrow,« said I, hopelessly. »I doubt if I ever rise
again!«
    »What is the matter now?« he asked.
    I told him my piteous case, and besought him to send me back to town, in a
close carriage.
    »No, no!« said Hollingsworth, with kindly seriousness. »If you are really
sick, we must take care of you.«
    Accordingly, he built a fire in my chamber, and having little else to do
while the snow lay on the ground, established himself as my nurse. A doctor was
sent for, who, being homeopathic, gave me as much medicine, in the course of a
fortnight's attendance, as would have lain on the point of a needle. They fed me
on water-gruel, and I speedily became a skeleton above ground. But, after all, I
have many precious recollections connected with that fit of sickness.
    Hollingsworth's more than brotherly attendance gave me inexpressible
comfort. Most men - and, certainly, I could not always claim to be one of the
exceptions - have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely hostile feeling,
towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity of any kind, causes to
faulter and faint amid the rude jostle of our selfish existence. The education
of Christianity, it is true, the sympathy of a like experience, and the example
of women, may soften, and possibly subvert, this ugly characteristic of our sex.
But it is originally there, and has likewise its analogy in the practice of our
brute brethren, who hunt the sick or disabled member of the herd from among
them, as an enemy. It is for this reason that the stricken deer goes apart, and
the sick lion grimly withdraws himself into his den. Except in love, or the
attachments of kindred, or other very long and habitual affection, we really
have no tenderness. But there was something of the woman moulded into the great,
stalwart frame of Hollingsworth; nor was he ashamed of it, as men often are of
what is best in them, nor seemed ever to know that there was such a soft place
in his heart. I knew it well, however, at that time; although, afterwards, it
came nigh to be forgotten. Methought there could not be two such men alive, as
Hollingsworth. There never was any blaze of a fireside that warmed and cheered
me, in the down-sinkings and shiverings of my spirit, so effectually as did the
light out of those eyes, which lay so deep and dark under his shaggy brows.
    Happy the man that has such a friend beside him, when he comes to die! And
unless a friend like Hollingsworth be at hand, as most probably there will not,
he had better make up his mind to die alone. How many men, I wonder, does one
meet with, in a lifetime, whom he would choose for his death-bed companions! At
the crisis of my fever, I besought Hollingsworth to let nobody else enter the
room, but continually to make me sensible of his own presence by a grasp of the
hand, a word - a prayer, if he thought good to utter it - and that then he
should be the witness how courageously I would encounter the worst. It still
impresses me as almost a matter of regret, that I did not die, then, when I had
tolerably made up my mind to it; for Hollingsworth would have gone with me to
the hither verge of life, and have sent his friendly and hopeful accents far
over on the other side, while I should be treading the unknown path. Now, were I
to send for him, he would hardly come to my bedside; nor should I depart the
easier, for his presence.
    »You are not going to die, this time,« said he, gravely smiling. »You know
nothing about sickness, and think your case a great deal more desperate than it
is.«
    »Death should take me while I am in the mood,« replied I, with a little of
my customary levity.
    »Have you nothing to do in life,« asked Hollingsworth, »that you fancy
yourself so ready to leave it?«
    »Nothing,« answered I - »nothing, that I know of, unless to make pretty
verses, and play a part, with Zenobia and the rest of the amateurs, in our
pastoral. It seems but an unsubstantial sort of business, as viewed through a
mist of fever. But, dear Hollingsworth, your own vocation is evidently to be a
priest, and to spend your days and nights in helping your fellow-creatures to
draw peaceful dying-breaths.«
    »And by which of my qualities,« inquired he, »can you suppose me fitted for
this awful ministry?«
    »By your tenderness,« I said. »It seems to me the reflection of God's own
love.«
    »And you call me tender!« repeated Hollingsworth, thoughtfully. »I should
rather say, that the most marked trait in my character is an inflexible severity
of purpose. Mortal man has no right to be so inflexible, as it is my nature and
necessity to be!«
    »I do not believe it,« I replied.
    But, in due time, I remembered what he said.
    Probably, as Hollingsworth suggested, my disorder was never so serious as,
in my ignorance of such matters, I was inclined to consider it. After so much
tragical preparation, it was positively rather mortifying to find myself on the
mending hand.
    All the other members of the Community showed me kindness, according to the
full measure of their capacity. Zenobia brought me my gruel, every day, made by
her own hands, (not very skilfully, if the truth must be told,) and, whenever I
seemed inclined to converse, would sit by my bedside, and talk with so much
vivacity as to add several gratuitous throbs to my pulse. Her poor little
stories and tracts never half did justice to her intellect; it was only the lack
of a fitter avenue that drove her to seek development in literature. She was
made (among a thousand other things that she might have been) for a
stump-oratress. I recognized no severe culture in Zenobia; her mind was full of
weeds. It startled me, sometimes, in my state of moral, as well as bodily
faint-heartedness, to observe the hardihood of her philosophy; she made no
scruple of oversetting all human institutions, and scattering them as with a
breeze from her fan. A female reformer, in her attacks upon society, has an
instinctive sense of where the life lies, and is inclined to aim directly at
that spot. Especially, the relation between the sexes is naturally among the
earliest to attract her notice.
    Zenobia was truly a magnificent woman. The homely simplicity of her dress
could not conceal, nor scarcely diminish, the queenliness of her presence. The
image of her form and face should have been multiplied all over the earth. It
was wronging the rest of mankind, to retain her as the spectacle of only a few.
The stage would have been her proper sphere. She should have made it a point of
duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors, and preferably to
the latter; because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost
scantiness of drapery, so that the eye might chastely be gladdened with her
material perfection, in its entireness. I know not well how to express, that the
native glow of colouring in her cheeks, and even the flesh-warmth over her round
arms, and what was visible of her full bust - in a word, her womanliness
incarnated - compelled me sometimes to close my eyes, as if it were not quite
the privilege of modesty to gaze at her. Illness and exhaustion, no doubt, had
made me morbidly sensitive.
    I noticed - and wondered how Zenobia contrived it - that she had always a
new flower in her hair. And still it was a hot-house flower - an outlandish
flower - a flower of the tropics, such as appeared to have sprung passionately
out of a soil, the very weeds of which would be fervid and spicy. Unlike as was
the flower of each successive day to the preceding one, it yet so assimilated
its richness to the rich beauty of the woman, that I thought it the only flower
fit to be worn; so fit, indeed, that Nature had evidently created this floral
gem, in a happy exuberance, for the one purpose of worthily adorning Zenobia's
head. It might be, that my feverish fantasies clustered themselves about this
peculiarity, and caused it to look more gorgeous and wonderful than if beheld
with temperate eyes. In the height of my illness, as I well recollect, I went so
far as to pronounce it preternatural.
    »Zenobia is an enchantress!« whispered I once to Hollingsworth. »She is a
sister of the Veiled Lady! That flower in her hair is a talisman. If you were to
snatch it away, she would vanish, or be transformed into something else!«
    »What does he say?« asked Zenobia.
    »Nothing that has an atom of sense in it,« answered Hollingsworth. »He is a
little beside himself, I believe, and talks about your being a witch, and of
some magical property in the flower that you wear in your hair.«
    »It is an idea worthy of a feverish poet,« said she, laughing, rather
compassionately, and taking out the flower. »I scorn to owe anything to magic.
Here, Mr. Hollingsworth: - you may keep the spell, while it has any virtue in
it; but I cannot promise you not to appear with a new one, tomorrow. It is the
one relic of my more brilliant, my happier days!«
    The most curious part of the matter was, that, long after my slight delirium
had passed away - as long, indeed, as I continued to know this remarkable woman
- her daily flower affected my imagination, though more slightly, yet in very
much the same way. The reason must have been, that, whether intentionally on her
part, or not, this favourite ornament was actually a subtle expression of
Zenobia's character.
    One subject, about which - very impertinently, moreover - I perplexed myself
with a great many conjectures, was, whether Zenobia had ever been married. The
idea, it must be understood, was unauthorized by any circumstance or suggestion
that had made its way to my ears. So young as I beheld her, and the freshest and
rosiest woman of a thousand, there was certainly no need of imputing to her a
destiny already accomplished; the probability was far greater, that her coming
years had all life's richest gifts to bring. If the great event of a woman's
existence had been consummated, the world knew nothing of it, although the world
seemed to know Zenobia well. It was a ridiculous piece of romance, undoubtedly,
to imagine that this beautiful personage, wealthy as she was, and holding a
position that might fairly enough be called distinguished, could have given
herself away so privately, but that some whisper and suspicion, and, by degrees,
a full understanding of the fact, would eventually be blown abroad. But, then,
as I failed not to consider, her original home was at a distance of many hundred
miles. Rumors might fill the social atmosphere, or might once have filled it,
there, which would travel but slowly, against the wind, towards our
north-eastern metropolis, and perhaps melt into thin air before reaching it.
    There was not, and I distinctly repeat it, the slightest foundation in my
knowledge for any surmise of the kind. But there is a species of intuition -
either a spiritual lie, or the subtle recognition of a fact - which comes to us
in a reduced state of the corporeal system. The soul gets the better of the
body, after wasting illness, or when a vegetable diet may have mingled too much
ether in the blood. Vapors then rise up to the brain, and take shapes that often
image falsehood, but sometimes truth. The spheres of our companions have, at
such periods, a vastly greater influence upon our own, than when robust health
gives us a repellent and self-defensive energy. Zenobia's sphere, I imagine,
impressed itself powerfully on mine, and transformed me, during this period of
my weakness, into something like a mesmerical clairvoyant.
    Then, also, as anybody could observe, the freedom of her deportment (though,
to some tastes, it might commend itself as the utmost perfection of manner, in a
youthful widow, or a blooming matron) was not exactly maidenlike. What girl had
ever laughed as Zenobia did! What girl had ever spoken in her mellow tones! Her
unconstrained and inevitable manifestation, I said often to myself, was that of
a woman to whom wedlock had thrown wide the gates of mystery. Yet, sometimes, I
strove to be ashamed of these conjectures. I acknowledged it as a masculine
grossness - a sin of wicked interpretation, of which man is often guilty towards
the other sex - thus to mistake the sweet, liberal, but womanly frankness of a
noble and generous disposition. Still, it was of no avail to reason with myself,
nor to upbraid myself. Pertinaciously the thought - »Zenobia is a wife! Zenobia
has lived, and loved! There is no folded petal, no latent dew-drop, in this
perfectly developed rose!« - irresistibly that thought drove out all other
conclusions, as often as my mind reverted to the subject.
    Zenobia was conscious of my observation, though not, I presume, of the point
to which it led me.
    »Mr. Coverdale,« said she, one day, as she saw me watching her, while she
arranged my gruel on the table, »I have been exposed to a great deal of eye-shot
in the few years of my mixing in the world, but never, I think, to precisely
such glances as you are in the habit of favoring me with. I seem to interest you
very much; and yet - or else a woman's instinct is for once deceived - I cannot
reckon you as an admirer. What are you seeking to discover in me?«
    »The mystery of your life,« answered I, surprised into the truth by the
unexpectedness of her attack. »And you will never tell me.«
    She bent her head towards me, and let me look into her eyes, as if
challenging me to drop a plummet-line down into the depths of her consciousness.
    »I see nothing now,« said I, closing my own eyes, »unless it be the face of
a sprite, laughing at me from the bottom of a deep well.«
    A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows, or suspects, that
any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away. Otherwise, the matter
could have been no concern of mine. It was purely speculative; for I should not,
under any circumstances, have fallen in love with Zenobia. The riddle made me so
nervous, however, in my sensitive condition of mind and body, that I most
ungratefully began to wish that she would let me alone. Then, too, her gruel was
very wretched stuff, with almost invariably the smell of pine-smoke upon it,
like the evil taste that is said to mix itself up with a witch's best concocted
dainties. Why could not she have allowed one of the other women to take the
gruel in charge? Whatever else might be her gifts, Nature certainly never
intended Zenobia for a cook. Or, if so, she should have meddled only with the
richest and spiciest dishes, and such as are to be tasted at banquets, between
draughts of intoxicating wine.
 

                             VII. The Convalescent

As soon as my incommodities allowed me to think of past occurrences, I failed
not to inquire what had become of the odd little guest, whom Hollingsworth had
been the medium of introducing among us. It now appeared, that poor Priscilla
had not so literally fallen out of the clouds, as we were at first inclined to
suppose. A letter, which should have introduced her, had since been received
from one of the city-missionaries, containing a certificate of character, and an
allusion to circumstances which, in the writer's judgment, made it especially
desirable that she should find shelter in our Community. There was a hint, not
very intelligible, implying either that Priscilla had recently escaped from some
particular peril, or irksomeness of position, or else that she was still liable
to this danger or difficulty, whatever it might be. We should ill have deserved
the reputation of a benevolent fraternity, had we hesitated to entertain a
petitioner in such need, and so strongly recommended to our kindness; not to
mention, moreover, that the strange maiden had set herself diligently to work,
and was doing good service with her needle. But a slight mist of uncertainty
still floated about Priscilla, and kept her, as yet, from taking a very decided
place among creatures of flesh and blood.
    The mysterious attraction, which, from her first entrance on our scene, she
evinced for Zenobia, had lost nothing of its force. I often heard her footsteps,
soft and low, accompanying the light, but decided tread of the latter, up the
staircase, stealing along the passage-way by her new friend's side, and pausing
while Zenobia entered my chamber. Occasionally, Zenobia would be a little
annoyed by Priscilla's too close attendance. In an authoritative and not very
kindly tone, she would advise her to breathe the pleasant air in a walk, or to
go with her work into the barn, holding out half a promise to come and sit on
the hay with her, when at leisure. Evidently, Priscilla found but scanty
requital for her love. Hollingsworth was likewise a great favourite with her. For
several minutes together, sometimes, while my auditory nerves retained the
susceptibility of delicate health, I used to hear a low, pleasant murmur,
ascending from the room below, and at last ascertained it to be Priscilla's
voice, babbling like a little brook to Hollingsworth. She talked more largely
and freely with him than with Zenobia, towards whom, indeed, her feelings seemed
not so much to be confidence, as involuntary affection. I should have thought
all the better of my own qualities, had Priscilla marked me out for the third
place in her regards. But, though she appeared to like me tolerably well, I
could never flatter myself with being distinguished by her, as Hollingsworth and
Zenobia were.
    One forenoon, during my convalescence, there came a gentle tap at my
chamber-door. I immediately said - »Come in, Priscilla!« - with an acute sense
of the applicant's identity. Nor was I deceived. It was really Priscilla, a
pale, large-eyed little woman, (for she had gone far enough into her teens to
be, at least, on the outer limit of girlhood,) but much less wan than at my
previous view of her, and far better conditioned both as to health and spirits.
As I first saw her, she had reminded me of plants that one sometimes observes
doing their best to vegetate among the bricks of an enclosed court, where there
is scanty soil, and never any sunshine. At present, though with no approach to
bloom, there were indications that the girl had human blood in her veins.
    Priscilla came softly to my bedside, and held out an article of snow-white
linen, very carefully and smoothly ironed. She did not seem bashful, nor anywise
embarrassed. My weakly condition, I suppose, supplied a medium in which she
could approach me.
    »Do not you need this?« asked she. »I have made it for you.«
    It was a night-cap!
    »My dear Priscilla,« said I, smiling, »I never had on a night-cap in my
life! But perhaps it will be better for me to wear one, now that I am a
miserable invalid. How admirably you have done it! No, no; I never can think of
wearing such an exquisitely wrought night-cap as this, unless it be in the
day-time, when I sit up to receive company!«
    »It is for use, not beauty,« answered Priscilla. »I could have embroidered
it and made it much prettier, if I pleased.«
    While holding up the night-cap, and admiring the fine needle-work, I
perceived that Priscilla had a sealed letter, which she was waiting for me to
take. It had arrived from the village post-office, that morning. As I did not
immediately offer to receive the letter, she drew it back, and held it against
her bosom, with both hands clasped over it, in a way that had probably grown
habitual to her. Now, on turning my eyes from the night-cap to Priscilla, it
forcibly struck me that her air, though not her figure, and the expression of
her face, but not its features, had a resemblance to what I had often seen in a
friend of mine, one of the most gifted women of the age. I cannot describe it.
The points, easiest to convey to the reader, were, a certain curve of the
shoulders, and a partial closing of the eyes, which seemed to look more
penetratingly into my own eyes, through the narrowed apertures, than if they had
been open at full width. It was a singular anomaly of likeness co-existing with
perfect dissimilitude.
    »Will you give me the letter, Priscilla?« said I.
    She started, put the letter into my hand, and quite lost the look that had
drawn my notice.
    »Priscilla,« I inquired, »did you ever see Miss Margaret Fuller?«
    »No,« she answered.
    »Because,« said I, »you reminded me of her, just now, and it happens,
strangely enough, that this very letter is from her!«
    Priscilla, for whatever reason, looked very much discomposed.
    »I wish people would not fancy such odd things in me!« she said, rather
petulantly. »How could I possibly make myself resemble this lady, merely by
holding her letter in my hand?«
    »Certainly, Priscilla, it would puzzle me to explain it,« I replied. »Nor do
I suppose that the letter had anything to do with it. It was just a coincidence
- nothing more.«
    She hastened out of the room; and this was the last that I saw of Priscilla,
until I ceased to be an invalid.
    Being much alone, during my recovery, I read interminably in Mr. Emerson's
Essays, the Dial, Carlyle's works, George Sand's romances, (lent me by Zenobia,)
and other books which one or another of the brethren or sisterhood had brought
with them. Agreeing in little else, most of these utterances were like the cry
of some solitary sentinel, whose station was on the outposts of the
advance-guard of human progression; or, sometimes, the voice came sadly from
among the shattered ruins of the past, but yet had a hopeful echo in the future.
They were well adapted (better, at least, than any other intellectual products,
the volatile essence of which had heretofore tinctured a printed page) to
pilgrims like ourselves, whose present bivouâc was considerably farther into the
waste of chaos than any mortal army of crusaders had ever marched before.
Fourier's works, also, in a series of horribly tedious volumes, attracted a good
deal of my attention, from the analogy which I could not but recognize between
his system and our own. There was far less resemblance, it is true, than the
world chose to imagine; inasmuch as the two theories differed, as widely as the
zenith from the nadir, in their main principles.
    I talked about Fourier to Hollingsworth, and translated, for his benefit,
some of the passages that chiefly impressed me.
    »When, as a consequence of human improvement,« said I, »the globe shall
arrive at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be converted into a
particular kind of lemonade, such as was fashionable at Paris in Fourier's time.
He calls it limonade à cèdre. It is positively a fact! Just imagine the
city-docks filled, every day, with a flood-tide of this delectable beverage!«
    »Why did not the Frenchman make punch of it, at once?« asked Hollingsworth.
»The jack-tars would be delighted to go down in ships, and do business in such
an element.«
    I further proceeded to explain, as well as I modestly could, several points
of Fourier's system, illustrating them with here and there a page or two, and
asking Hollingsworth's opinion as to the expediency of introducing these
beautiful peculiarities into our own practice.
    »Let me hear no more of it!« cried he, in utter disgust. »I never will
forgive this fellow! He has committed the Unpardonable Sin! For what more
monstrous iniquity could the Devil himself contrive, than to choose the selfish
principle - the principle of all human wrong, the very blackness of man's heart,
the portion of ourselves which we shudder at, and which it is the whole aim of
spiritual discipline to eradicate - to choose it as the master-workman of his
system? To seize upon and foster whatever vile, petty, sordid, filthy, bestial,
and abominable corruptions have cankered into our nature, to be the efficient
instruments of his infernal regeneration! And his consummated Paradise, as he
pictures it, would be worthy of the agency which he counts upon for establishing
it. The nauseous villain!«
    »Nevertheless,« remarked I, »in consideration of the promised delights of
his system - so very proper, as they certainly are, to be appreciated by
Fourier's countrymen - I cannot but wonder that universal France did not adopt
his theory, at a moment's warning. But is there not something very
characteristic of his nation in Fourier's manner of putting forth his views? He
makes no claim to inspiration. He has not persuaded himself - as Swedenborg did,
and as any other than a Frenchman would, with a mission of like importance to
communicate - that he speaks with authority from above. He promulgates his
system, so far as I can perceive, entirely on his own responsibility. He has
searched out and discovered the whole counsel of the Almighty, in respect to
mankind, past, present, and for exactly seventy thousand years to come, by the
mere force and cunning of his individual intellect!«
    »Take the book out of my sight!« said Hollingsworth, with great virulence of
expression, »or, I tell you fairly, I shall fling it in the fire! And as for
Fourier, let him make a Paradise, if he can, of Gehenna, where, as I
conscientiously believe, he is floundering at this moment!«
    »And bellowing, I suppose,« said I - not that I felt any ill-will towards
Fourier, but merely wanted to give the finishing touch to Hollingsworth's image
- »bellowing for the least drop of his beloved limonade à cèdre!«
    There is but little profit to be expected in attempting to argue with a man
who allows himself to declaim in this manner; so I dropped the subject, and never
took it up again.
    But had the system, at which he was so enraged, combined almost any amount
of human wisdom, spiritual insight, and imaginative beauty, I question whether
Hollingsworth's mind was in a fit condition to receive it. I began to discern
that he had come among us, actuated by no real sympathy with our feelings and
our hopes, but chiefly because we were estranging ourselves from the world, with
which his lonely and exclusive object in life had already put him at odds.
Hollingsworth must have been originally endowed with a great spirit of
benevolence, deep enough, and warm enough, to be the source of as much
disinterested good, as Providence often allows a human being the privilege of
conferring upon his fellows. This native instinct yet lived within him. I myself
had profited by it, in my necessity. It was seen, too, in his treatment of
Priscilla. Such casual circumstances, as were here involved, would quicken his
divine power of sympathy, and make him seem, while their influence lasted, the
tenderest man and the truest friend on earth. But, by-and-by, you missed the
tenderness of yesterday, and grew drearily conscious that Hollingsworth had a
closer friend than ever you could be. And this friend was the cold, spectral
monster which he had himself conjured up, and on which he was wasting all the
warmth of his heart, and of which, at last - as these men of a mighty purpose so
invariably do - he had grown to be the bond-slave. It was his philanthropic
theory!
    This was a result exceedingly sad to contemplate, considering that it had
been mainly brought about by the very ardour and exuberance of his philanthropy.
Sad, indeed, but by no means unusual. He had taught his benevolence to pour its
warm tide exclusively through one channel; so that there was nothing to spare
for other great manifestations of love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of
individual attachments, unless they could minister, in some way, to the terrible
egotism which he mistook for an angel of God. Had Hollingsworth's education been
more enlarged, he might not so inevitably have stumbled into this pit-fall. But
this identical pursuit had educated him. He knew absolutely nothing, except in a
single direction, where he had thought so energetically, and felt to such a
depth, that, no doubt, the entire reason and justice of the universe appeared to
be concentrated thitherward.
    It is my private opinion, that, at this period of his life, Hollingsworth
was fast going mad; and, as with other crazy people, (among whom I include
humorists of every degree,) it required all the constancy of friendship to
restrain his associates from pronouncing him an intolerable bore. Such prolonged
fiddling upon one string; such multiform presentation of one idea! His specific
object (of which he made the public more than sufficiently aware, through the
medium of lectures and pamphlets) was to obtain funds for the construction of an
edifice, with a sort of collegiate endowment. On this foundation, he purposed to
devote himself and a few disciples to the reform and mental culture of our
criminal brethren. His visionary edifice was Hollingsworth's one castle in the
air; it was the material type, in which his philanthropic dream strove to embody
itself; and he made the scheme more definite, and caught hold of it the more
strongly, and kept his clutch the more pertinaciously, by rendering it visible
to the bodily eye. I have seen him, a hundred times, with a pencil and sheet of
paper, sketching the façade, the side-view, or the rear of the structure, or
planning the internal arrangements, as lovingly as another man might plan those
of the projected home, where he meant to be happy with his wife and children. I
have known him to begin a model of the building with little stones, gathered at
the brookside, whither we had gone to cool ourselves in the sultry noon of
haying-time. Unlike all other ghosts, his spirit haunted an edifice which,
instead of being time-worn, and full of storied love, and joy, and sorrow, had
never yet come into existence.
    »Dear friend,« said I, once, to Hollingsworth, before leaving my
sick-chamber, »I heartily wish that I could make your schemes my schemes,
because it would be so great a happiness to find myself treading the same path
with you. But I am afraid there is not stuff in me stern enough for a
philanthropist - or not in this peculiar direction - or, at all events, not
solely in this. Can you bear with me, if such should prove to be the case?«
    »I will, at least, wait awhile,« answered Hollingsworth, gazing at me
sternly and gloomily. »But how can you be my life-long friend, except you strive
with me towards the great object of my life?«
    Heaven forgive me! A horrible suspicion crept into my heart, and stung the
very core of it as with the fangs of an adder. I wondered whether it were
possible that Hollingsworth could have watched by my bedside, with all that
devoted care, only for the ulterior purpose of making me a proselyte to his
views!
 

                             VIII. A Modern Arcadia

May-day - I forget whether by Zenobia's sole decree, or by the unanimous vote of
our Community - had been declared a moveable festival. It was deferred until the
sun should have had a reasonable time to clear away the snow-drifts, along the
lee of the stone-walls, and bring out a few of the readiest wild-flowers. On the
forenoon of the substituted day, after admitting some of the balmy air into my
chamber, I decided that it was nonsense and effeminacy to keep myself a prisoner
any longer. So I descended to the sitting-room, and finding nobody there,
proceeded to the barn, whence I had already heard Zenobia's voice, and along
with it a girlish laugh, which was not so certainly recognizable. Arriving at
the spot, it a little surprised me to discover that these merry outbreaks came
from Priscilla.
    The two had been a-maying together. They had found anemones in abundance,
houstonias by the handfull, some columbines, a few long-stalked violets, and a
quantity of white everlasting-flowers, and had filled up their basket with the
delicate spray of shrubs and trees. None were prettier than the maple-twigs, the
leaf of which looks like a scarlet-bud, in May, and like a plate of vegetable
gold in October. Zenobia - who showed no conscience in such matters - had also
rifled a cherry-tree of one of its blossomed boughs; and, with all this variety
of sylvan ornament, had been decking out Priscilla. Being done with a good deal
of taste, it made her look more charming than I should have thought possible,
with my recollection of the wan, frost-nipt girl, as heretofore described.
Nevertheless, among those fragrant blossoms, and conspicuously, too, had been
stuck a weed of evil odour and ugly aspect, which, as soon as I detected it,
destroyed the effect of all the rest. There was a gleam of latent mischief - not
to call it deviltry - in Zenobia's eye, which seemed to indicate a slightly
malicious purpose in the arrangement.
    As for herself, she scorned the rural buds and leaflets, and wore nothing
but her invariable flower of the tropics.
    »What do you think of Priscilla now, Mr. Coverdale?« asked she, surveying
her as a child does its doll. »Is not she worth a verse or two?«
    »There is only one thing amiss,« answered I.
    Zenobia laughed, and flung the malignant weed away.
    »Yes; she deserves some verses now,« said I, »and from a better poet than
myself. She is the very picture of the New England spring, subdued in tint, and
rather cool, but with a capacity of sunshine, and bringing us a few alpine
blossoms, as earnest of something richer, though hardly more beautiful,
hereafter. The best type of her is one of those anemones.«
    »What I find most singular in Priscilla, as her health improves,« observed
Zenobia, »is her wildness. Such a quiet little body as she seemed, one would not
have expected that! Why, as we strolled the woods together, I could hardly keep
her from scrambling up the trees like a squirrel! She has never before known
what it is to live in the free air, and so it intoxicates her as if she were
sipping wine. And she thinks it such a Paradise here, and all of us,
particularly Mr. Hollingsworth and myself, such angels! It is quite ridiculous,
and provokes one's malice, almost, to see a creature so happy - especially a
feminine creature.«
    »They are always happier than male creatures,« said I.
    »You must correct that opinion, Mr. Coverdale,« replied Zenobia,
contemptuously, »or I shall think you lack the poetic insight. Did you ever see
a happy woman in your life? Of course, I do not mean a girl - like Priscilla,
and a thousand others, for they are all alike, while on the sunny side of
experience - but a grown woman. How can she be happy, after discovering that
fate has assigned her but one single event, which she must contrive to make the
substance of her whole life? A man has his choice of innumerable events.«
    »A woman, I suppose,« answered I, »by constant repetition of her one event,
may compensate for the lack of variety.«
    »Indeed!« said Zenobia.
    While we were talking, Priscilla caught sight of Hollingsworth, at a
distance, in a blue frock and with a hoe over his shoulder, returning from the
field. She immediately set out to meet him, running and skipping, with spirits
as light as the breeze of the May-morning, but with limbs too little exercised
to be quite responsive; she clapped her hands, too, with great exuberance of
gesture, as is the custom of young girls, when their electricity overcharges
them. But, all at once, midway to Hollingsworth, she paused, looked round about
her, towards the river, the road, the woods, and back towards us, appearing to
listen, as if she heard some one calling her name, and knew not precisely in
what direction.
    »Have you bewitched her?« I exclaimed.
    »It is no sorcery of mine,« said Zenobia. »But I have seen the girl do that
identical thing, once or twice before. Can you imagine what is the matter with
her?«
    »No; unless,« said I, »she has the gift of hearing those 'airy tongues that
syllable men's names' - which Milton tells about.«
    From whatever cause, Priscilla's animation seemed entirely to have deserted
her. She seated herself on a rock, and remained there until Hollingsworth came
up; and when he took her hand and led her back to us, she rather resembled my
original image of the wan and spiritless Priscilla, than the flowery May Queen
of a few moments ago. These sudden transformations, only to be accounted for by
an extreme nervous susceptibility, always continued to characterize the girl,
though with diminished frequency, as her health progressively grew more robust.
    I was now on my legs again. My fit of illness had been an avenue between two
existences; the low-arched and dark-some doorway, through which I crept out of a
life of old conventionalisms, on my hands and knees, as it were, and gained
admittance into the freer region that lay beyond. In this respect, it was like
death. And, as with death, too, it was good to have gone through it. No
otherwise could I have rid myself of a thousand follies, fripperies, prejudices,
habits, and other such worldly dust as inevitably settles upon the crowd along
the broad highway, giving them all one sordid aspect, before noontime, however
freshly they may have begun their pilgrimage, in the dewy morning. The very
substance upon my bones had not been fit to live with, in any better, truer, or
more energetic mode than that to which I was accustomed. So it was taken off me
and flung aside, like any other worn out or unseasonable garment; and, after
shivering a little while in my skeleton, I began to be clothed anew, and much
more satisfactorily than in my previous suit. In literal and physical truth, I
was quite another man. I had a lively sense of the exultation with which the
spirit will enter on the next stage of its eternal progress, after leaving the
heavy burden of its mortality in an earthly grave, with as little concern for
what may become of it, as now affected me for the flesh which I had lost.
    Emerging into the genial sunshine, I half fancied that the labours of the
brotherhood had already realized some of Fourier's predictions. Their
enlightened culture of the soil, and the virtues with which they sanctified
their life, had begun to produce an effect upon the material world and its
climate. In my new enthusiasm, man looked strong and stately! - and woman, oh,
how beautiful! - and the earth, a green garden, blossoming with many-coloured
delights! Thus Nature, whose laws I had broken in various artificial ways,
comported herself towards me as a strict, but loving mother, who uses the rod
upon her little boy for his naughtiness, and then gives him a smile, a kiss, and
some pretty playthings, to console the urchin for her severity.
    In the interval of my seclusion, there had been a number of recruits to our
little army of saints and martyrs. They were mostly individuals who had gone
through such an experience as to disgust them with ordinary pursuits, but who
were not yet so old, nor had suffered so deeply, as to lose their faith in the
better time to come. On comparing their minds, one with another, they often
discovered that this idea of a Community had been growing up, in silent and
unknown sympathy, for years. Thoughtful, strongly-lined faces were among them,
sombre brows, but eyes that did not require spectacles, unless prematurely
dimmed by the student's lamplight, and hair that seldom showed a thread of
silver. Age, wedded to the past, incrusted over with a stony layer of habits,
and retaining nothing fluid in its possibilities, would have been absurdly out
of place in an enterprise like this. Youth, too, in its early dawn, was hardly
more adapted to our purpose; for it would behold the morning radiance of its own
spirit beaming over the very same spots of withered grass and barren sand,
whence most of us had seen it vanish. We had very young people with us, it is
true - downy lads, rosy girls in their first teens, and children of all heights
above one's knee; - but these had chiefly been sent hither for education, which
it was one of the objects and methods of our institution to supply. Then we had
boarders, from town and elsewhere, who lived with us in a familiar way,
sympathized more or less in our theories, and sometimes shared in our labours.
    On the whole, it was a society such as has seldom met together; nor,
perhaps, could it reasonably be expected to hold together long. Persons of
marked individuality - crooked sticks, as some of us might be called - are not
exactly the easiest to bind up into a faggot. But, so long as our union should
subsist, a man of intellect and feeling, with a free nature in him, might have
sought far and near, without finding so many points of attraction as would
allure him hitherward. We were of all creeds and opinions, and generally
tolerant of all, on every imaginable subject. Our bond, it seems to me, was not
affirmative, but negative. We had individually found one thing or another to
quarrel with, in our past life, and were pretty well agreed as to the
inexpediency of lumbering along with the old system any farther. As to what
should be substituted, there was much less unanimity. We did not greatly care -
at least, I never did - for the written constitution under which our millennium
had commenced. My hope was, that, between theory and practice, a true and
available mode of life might be struck out, and that, even should we ultimately
fail, the months or years spent in the trial would not have been wasted, either
as regarded passing enjoyment, or the experience which makes men wise.
    Arcadians though we were, our costume bore no resemblance to the be-ribboned
doublets, silk breeches and stockings, and slippers fastened with artificial
roses, that distinguish the pastoral people of poetry and the stage. In outward
show, I humbly conceive, we looked rather like a gang of beggars or banditti,
than either a company of honest labouring men or a conclave of philosophers.
Whatever might be our points of difference, we all of us seemed to have come to
Blithedale with the one thrifty and laudable idea of wearing out our old
clothes. Such garments as had an airing, whenever we strode afield! Coats with
high collars, and with no collars, broad-skirted or swallow-tailed, and with the
waist at every point between the hip and armpit; pantaloons of a dozen
successive epochs, and greatly defaced at the knees by the humiliations of the
wearer before his lady-love; - in short, we were a living epitome of defunct
fashions, and the very raggedest presentment of men who had seen better days. It
was gentility in tatters. Often retaining a scholarlike or clerical air, you
might have taken us for the denizens of Grub-street, intent on getting a
comfortable livelihood by agricultural labour; or Coleridge's projected
Pantisocracy, in full experiment; or Candide and his motley associates, at work
in their cabbage-garden; or anything else that was miserably out at elbows, and
most clumsily patched in the rear. We might have been sworn comrades to
Falstaff's ragged regiment. Little skill as we boasted in other points of
husbandry, every mother's son of us would have served admirably to stick up for
a scarecrow. And the worst of the matter was, that the first energetic movement,
essential to one downright stroke of real labour, was sure to put a finish to
these poor habiliments. So we gradually flung them all aside, and took to honest
homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan
recommended, I think, by Virgil - Ara nudus; sere nudus - which, as Silas Foster
remarked when I translated the maxim, would be apt to astonish the women-folks.
    After a reasonable training, the yeoman-life throve well with us. Our faces
took the sunburn kindly; our chests gained in compass, and our shoulders in
breadth and squareness; our great brown fists looked as if they had never been
capable of kid gloves. The plough, the hoe, the scythe, and the hay-fork, grew
familiar to our grasp. The oxen responded to our voices. We could do almost as
fair a day's work as Silas Foster himself, sleep dreamlessly after it, and awake
at daybreak with only a little stiffness of the joints, which was usually quite
gone by breakfast-time.
    To be sure, our next neighbours pretended to be incredulous as to our real
proficiency in the business which we had taken in hand. They told slanderous
fables about our inability to yoke our own oxen, or to drive them afield, when
yoked, or to release the poor brutes from their conjugal bond at nightfall. They
had the face to say, too, that the cows laughed at our awkwardness at
milking-time, and invariably kicked over the pails; partly in consequence of our
putting the stool on the wrong side, and partly because, taking offence at the
whisking of their tails, we were in the habit of holding these natural
flyflappers with one hand, and milking with the other. They further averred,
that we hoed up whole acres of Indian corn and other crops, and drew the earth
carefully about the weeds; and that we raised five hundred tufts of burdock,
mistaking them for cabbages; and that, by dint of unskillful planting, few of our
seeds ever came up at all, or if they did come up, it was stern foremost, and
that we spent the better part of the month of June in reversing a field of
beans, which had thrust themselves out of the ground in this unseemly way. They
quoted it as nothing more than an ordinary occurrence for one or other of us to
crop off two or three fingers, of a morning, by our clumsy use of the
hay-cutter. Finally, and as an ultimate catastrophe, these mendacious rogues
circulated a report that we Communitarians were exterminated, to the last man,
by severing ourselves asunder with the sweep of our own scythes! - and that the
world had lost nothing by this little accident.
    But this was pure envy and malice on the part of the neighbouring farmers.
The peril of our new way of life was not lest we should fail in becoming
practical agriculturalists, but that we should probably cease to be anything
else. While our enterprise lay all in theory, we had pleased ourselves with
delectable visions of the spiritualization of labour. It was to be our form of
prayer, and ceremonial of worship. Each stroke of the hoe was to uncover some
aromatic root of wisdom, heretofore hidden from the sun. Pausing in the field,
to let the wind exhale the moisture from our foreheads, we were to look upward,
and catch glimpses into the far-off soul of truth. In this point of view,
matters did not turn out quite so well as we anticipated. It is very true, that,
sometimes, gazing casually around me, out of the midst of my toil, I used to
discern a richer picturesqueness in the visible scene of earth and sky. There
was, at such moments, a novelty, an unwonted aspect on the face of Nature, as if
she had been taken by surprise and seen at unawares, with no opportunity to put
off her real look, and assume the mask with which she mysteriously hides herself
from mortals. But this was all. The clods of earth, which we so constantly
belabored and turned over and over, were never etherealized into thought. Our
thoughts, on the contrary, were fast becoming cloddish. Our labour symbolized
nothing, and left us mentally sluggish in the dusk of the evening. Intellectual
activity is incompatible with any large amount of bodily exercise. The yeoman
and the scholar - the yeoman and the man of finest moral culture, though not the
man of sturdiest sense and integrity - are two distinct individuals, and can
never be melted or welded into one substance.
    Zenobia soon saw this truth, and gibed me about it, one evening, as
Hollingsworth and I lay on the grass, after a hard day's work.
    »I am afraid you did not make a song, to-day, while loading the hay-cart,«
said she, »as Burns did, when he was reaping barley.«
    »Burns never made a song in haying-time,« I answered, very positively. »He
was no poet while a farmer, and no farmer while a poet.«
    »And, on the whole, which of the two characters do you like best?« asked
Zenobia. »For I have an idea that you cannot combine them, any better than Burns
did. Ah, I see, in my mind's eye, what sort of an individual you are to be, two
or three years hence! Grim Silas Foster is your prototype, with his palm of
sole-leather, and his joints of rusty iron, (which, all through summer, keep the
stiffness of what he calls his winter's rheumatize,) and his brain of - I don't
know what his brain is made of, unless it be a Savoy cabbage; but yours may be
cauliflower, as a rather more delicate variety. Your physical man will be
transmuted into salt-beef and fried pork, at the rate, I should imagine, of a
pound and a half a day; that being about the average which we find necessary in
the kitchen. You will make your toilet for the day (still like this delightful
Silas Foster) by rinsing your fingers and the front part of your face in a
little tin-pan of water, at the door-step, and teasing your hair with a wooden
pocket-comb, before a seven-by-nine-inch looking-glass. Your only pastime will
be, to smoke some very vile tobacco in the black stump of a pipe!«
    »Pray spare me!« cried I. »But the pipe is not Silas's only mode of solacing
himself with the weed.«
    »Your literature,« continued Zenobia, apparently delighted with her
description, »will be the Farmer's Almanac; for, I observe, our friend Foster
never gets so far as the newspaper. When you happen to sit down, at odd moments,
you will fall asleep, and make nasal proclamation of the fact, as he does; and
invariably you must be jogged out of a nap, after supper, by the future Mrs.
Coverdale, and persuaded to go regularly to bed. And on Sundays; when you put on
a blue coat with brass buttons, you will think of nothing else to do, but to go
and lounge over the stone-walls and rail-fences, and stare at the corn growing.
And you will look with a knowing eye at oxen, and will have a tendency to
clamber over into pig-sties, and feel of the hogs, and give a guess how much
they will weigh, after you shall have stuck and dressed them. Already, I have
noticed, you begin to speak through your nose, and with a drawl. Pray, if you
really did make any poetry to-day, let us hear it in that kind of utterance!«
    »Coverdale has given up making verses, now,« said Hollingsworth, who never
had the slightest appreciation of my poetry. »Just think of him penning a
sonnet, with a fist like that! There is at least this good in a life of toil,
that it takes the nonsense and fancy-work out of a man, and leaves nothing but
what truly belongs to him. If a farmer can make poetry at the plough-tail, it
must be because his nature insists on it; and if that be the case, let him make
it, in Heaven's name!«
    »And how is it with you?« asked Zenobia, in a different voice; for she never
laughed at Hollingsworth, as she often did at me. - »You, I think, cannot have
ceased to live a life of thought and feeling.«
    »I have always been in earnest,« answered Hollingsworth. »I have hammered
thought out of iron, after heating the iron in my heart! It matters little what
my outward toil may be. Were I a slave at the bottom of a mine, I should keep
the same purpose - the same faith in its ultimate accomplishment - that I do
now. Miles Coverdale is not in earnest, either as a poet or a labourer.«
    »You give me hard measure, Hollingsworth,« said I, a little hurt. »I have
kept pace with you in the field; and my bones feel as if I had been in earnest,
whatever may be the case with my brain!«
    »I cannot conceive,« observed Zenobia, with great emphasis - and, no doubt,
she spoke fairly the feeling of the moment - »I cannot conceive of being, so
continually as Mr. Coverdale is, within the sphere of a strong and noble nature,
without being strengthened and ennobled by its influence!«
    This amiable remark of the fair Zenobia confirmed me in what I had already
begun to suspect - that Hollingsworth, like many other illustrious prophets,
reformers, and philanthropists, was likely to make at least two proselytes,
among the women, to one among the men. Zenobia and Priscilla! These, I believe,
(unless my unworthy self might be reckoned for a third,) were the only disciples
of his mission; and I spent a great deal of time, uselessly, in trying to
conjecture what Hollingsworth meant to do with them - and they with him!
 

                     IX. Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla

It is not, I apprehend, a healthy kind of mental occupation, to devote ourselves
too exclusively to the study of individual men and women. If the person under
examination be one's self, the result is pretty certain to be diseased action of
the heart, almost before we can snatch a second glance. Or, if we take the
freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many
of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into
parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder,
then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster, which, after all -
though we can point to every feature of his deformity in the real personage -
may be said to have been created mainly by ourselves!
    Thus, as my conscience has often whispered me, I did Hollingsworth a great
wrong by prying into his character, and am perhaps doing him as great a one, at
this moment, by putting faith in the discoveries which I seemed to make. But I
could not help it. Had I loved him less, I might have used him better. He - and
Zenobia and Priscilla, both for their own sakes and as connected with him - were
separated from the rest of the Community, to my imagination, and stood forth as
the indices of a problem which it was my business to solve. Other associates had
a portion of my time; other matters amused me; passing occurrences carried me
along with them, while they lasted. But here was the vortex of my meditations
around which they revolved, and whitherward they too continually tended. In the
midst of cheerful society, I had often a feeling of loneliness. For it was
impossible not to be sensible, that, while these three characters figured so
largely on my private theatre, I - though probably reckoned as a friend by all -
was at best but a secondary or tertiary personage with either of them.
    I loved Hollingsworth, as has already been enough expressed. But it
impressed me, more and more, that there was a stern and dreadful peculiarity in
this man, such as could not prove otherwise than pernicious to the happiness of
those who should be drawn into too intimate a connection with him. He was not
altogether human. There was something else in Hollingsworth, besides flesh and
blood, and sympathies and affections, and celestial spirit.
    This is always true of those men who have surrendered themselves to an
over-ruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor even
operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all that they think
and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle.
When such begins to be the predicament, it is not cowardice, but wisdom, to
avoid these victims. They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience.
They will keep no friend, unless he make himself the mirror of their purpose;
they will smite and slay you, and trample your dead corpse under foot, all the
more readily, if you take the first step with them, and cannot take the second,
and the third, and every other step of their terribly straight path. They have
an idol, to which they consecrate themselves high-priest, and deem it holy work
to offer sacrifices of whatever is most precious, and never once seem to suspect
- so cunning has the Devil been with them - that this false deity, in whose iron
features, immitigable to all the rest of mankind, they see only benignity and
love, is but a spectrum of the very priest himself, projected upon the
surrounding darkness. And the higher and purer the original object, and the more
unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter is the probability that they
can be led to recognize the process, by which godlike benevolence has been
debased into all-devouring egotism.
    Of course, I am perfectly aware that the above statement is exaggerated, in
the attempt to make it adequate. Professed philanthropists have gone far; but no
originally good man, I presume, ever went quite so far as this. Let the reader
abate whatever he deems fit. The paragraph may remain, however, both for its
truth and its exaggeration, as strongly expressive of the tendencies which were
really operative in Hollingsworth, and as exemplifying the kind of error into
which my mode of observation was calculated to lead me. The issue was, that, in
solitude, I often shuddered at my friend. In my recollection of his dark and
impressive countenance, the features grew more sternly prominent than the
reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more lurid in their light; the
frown, that had merely flitted across his brow, seemed to have contorted it with
an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him again, I was often filled with remorse,
when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire
that was burning in a cave. - »He is a man, after all!« thought I - »his Maker's
own truest image, a philanthropic man! - not that steel engine of the Devil's
contrivance, a philanthropist!« - But, in my wood-walks, and in my silent
chamber, the dark face frowned at me again.
    When a young girl comes within the sphere of such a man, she is as
perilously situated as the maiden whom, in the old classical myths, the people
used to expose to a dragon. If I had any duty whatever, in reference to
Hollingsworth, it was, to endeavour to save Priscilla from that kind of personal
worship which her sex is generally prone to lavish upon saints and heroes. It
often requires but one smile, out of the hero's eyes into the girl's or woman's
heart, to transform this devotion, from a sentiment of the highest approval and
confidence, into passionate love. Now, Hollingsworth smiled much upon Priscilla;
more than upon any other person. If she thought him beautiful, it was no wonder.
I often thought him so, with the expression of tender, human care, and gentlest
sympathy, which she alone seemed to have power to call out upon his features.
Zenobia, I suspect, would have given her eyes, bright as they were, for such a
look; it was the least that our poor Priscilla could do, to give her heart for a
great many of them. There was the more danger of this, inasmuch as the footing,
on which we all associated at Blithedale, was widely different from that of
conventional society. While inclining us to the soft affections of the Golden
Age, it seemed to authorize any individual, of either sex, to fall in love with
any other, regardless of what would elsewhere be judged suitable and prudent.
Accordingly, the tender passion was very rife among us, in various degrees of
mildness or virulence, but mostly passing away with the state of things that had
given it origin. This was all well enough; but, for a girl like Priscilla, and a
woman like Zenobia, to jostle one another in their love of a man like
Hollingsworth, was likely to be no child's play.
    Had I been as cold-hearted as I sometimes thought myself, nothing would have
interested me more than to witness the play of passions that must thus have been
evolved. But, in honest truth, I would really have gone far to save Priscilla,
at least, from the catastrophe in which such a drama would be apt to terminate.
    Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding and
blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner became
sensible of, than you thought it worth all that she had previously possessed. So
unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as if
we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our very eyes, and yet had only a
more reverential sense of the mystery of a woman's soul and frame. Yesterday,
her cheek was pale; to-day, it had a bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's
first one, was a wondrous novelty. Her imperfections and short-comings affected
me with a kind of playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation
as ever I experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her
animal spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble
and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength
to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls, out-of-doors.
There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty, as that of a company of
young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so giving themselves up to their
airy impulse that their tiptoes barely touch the ground.
    Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more
untameable, and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting variety,
breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a harmonious propriety
through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free as the wind, but keep
consonance with a strain of music, inaudible to us. Young men and boys, on the
other hand, play according to recognized law, old, traditionary games,
permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with scope enough for the outbreak of
savage instincts. For, young or old, in play or in earnest, man is prone to be a
brute.
    Especially is it delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race, with
her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than they need, and an air
between that of a bird and a young colt. But Priscilla's peculiar charm, in a
foot-race, was the weakness and irregularity with which she ran. Growing up
without exercise, except to her poor little fingers, she had never yet acquired
the perfect use of her legs. Setting buoyantly forth, therefore, as if no rival
less swift than Atalanta could compete with her, she ran faulteringly, and often
tumbled on the grass. Such an incident - though it seems too slight to think of
- was a thing to laugh at, but which brought the water into one's eyes, and
lingered in the memory after far greater joys and sorrows were swept out of it,
as antiquated trash. Priscilla's life, as I beheld it, was full of trifles that
affected me in just this way.
    When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that
Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than, any other
girl in the Community. For example, I once heard Silas Foster, in a very gruff
voice, threatening to rivet three horse-shoes round Priscilla's neck and chain
her to a post, because she, with some other young people, had clambered upon a
load of hay and caused it to slide off the cart. How she made her peace, I never
knew; but very soon afterwards, I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands round
Priscilla's waist, swinging her to-and-fro and finally depositing her on one of
the oxen, to take her first lesson in riding. She met with terrible mishaps in
her efforts to milk a cow; she let the poultry into the garden; she generally
spoilt whatever part of the dinner she took in charge; she broke crockery; she
dropped our biggest pitcher into the well; and - except with her needle, and those
little wooden instruments for purse-making - was as unserviceable a member of
society as any young lady in the land. There was no other sort of efficiency
about her. Yet everybody was kind to Priscilla; everybody loved her, and laughed
at her, to her face, and did not laugh, behind her back; everybody would have
given her half of his last crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake. These
were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a pleasant
weakness in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look after her own
interests, or fight her battle with the world. And Hollingsworth - perhaps
because he had been the means of introducing Priscilla to her new abode -
appeared to recognize her as his own especial charge.
    Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed
to me like a butterfly, at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking
it for a broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to a stricter
accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter
comes back drearily. Priscilla's gaiety, moreover, was of a nature that showed
me how delicate an instrument she was, and what fragile harp-strings were her
nerves. As they made sweet music at the airiest touch, it would require but a
stronger one to burst them all asunder. Absurd as it might be, I tried to reason
with her, and persuade her not to be so joyous, thinking that, if she would draw
less lavishly upon her fund of happiness, it would last the longer. I remember
doing so, one summer evening, when we tired labourers sat looking on, like
Goldsmith's old folks under the village thorn-tree, while the young people were
at their sports.
    »What is the use or sense of being so very gay?« I said to Priscilla, while
she was taking breath after a great frolic. »I love to see a sufficient cause
for everything; and I can see none for this. Pray tell me, now, what kind of a
world you imagine this to be, which you are so merry in?«
    »I never think about it at all,« answered Priscilla, laughing. »But this I
am sure of - that it is a world where everybody is kind to me, and where I love
everybody. My heart keeps dancing within me; and all the foolish things, which
you see me do, are only the motions of my heart. How can I be dismal, if my
heart will not let me?«
    »Have you nothing dismal to remember?« I suggested. »If not, then, indeed,
you are very fortunate!«
    »Ah!« said Priscilla, slowly.
    And then came that unintelligible gesture, when she seemed to be listening
to a distant voice.
    »For my part,« I continued, beneficently seeking to overshadow her with my
own sombre humour, »my past life has been a tiresome one enough; yet I would
rather look backward ten times, than forward once. For, little as we know of our
life to come, we may be very sure, for one thing, that the good we aim at will
not be attained. People never do get just the good they seek. If it come at all,
it is something else, which they never dreamed of, and did not particularly
want. Then, again, we may rest certain that our friends of to-day will not be
our friends of a few years hence; but, if we keep one of them, it will be at the
expense of the others - and, most probably, we shall keep none. To be sure,
there are more to be had! But who cares about making a new set of friends, even
should they be better than those around us?«
    »Not I!« said Priscilla. »I will live and die with these!«
    »Well; but let the future go!« resumed I. »As for the present moment, if we
could look into the hearts where we wish to be most valued, what should you
expect to see? One's own likeness, in the innermost, holiest niche? Ah, I don't
know! It may not be there at all. It may be a dusty image, thrust aside into a
corner, and by-and-by to be flung out-of-doors, where any foot may trample upon
it. If not to-day, then tomorrow! And so, Priscilla, I do not see much wisdom in
being so very merry in this kind of a world!«
    It had taken me nearly seven years of worldly life, to hive up the bitter
honey which I here offered to Priscilla. And she rejected it!
    »I don't believe one word of what you say!« she replied, laughing anew. »You
made me sad, for a minute, by talking about the past. But the past never comes
back again. Do we dream the same dream twice? There is nothing else that I am
afraid of.«
    So away she ran, and fell down on the green grass, as it was often her luck
to do, but got up again without any harm.
    »Priscilla, Priscilla!« cried Hollingsworth, who was sitting on the
door-step. »You had better not run any more to-night. You will weary yourself
too much. And do not sit down out of doors; for there is a heavy dew beginning
to fall!«
    At his first word, she went and sat down under the porch, at Hollingsworth's
feet, entirely contented and happy. What charm was there, in his rude
massiveness, that so attracted and soothed this shadowlike girl? It appeared to
me - who have always been curious in such matters - that Priscilla's vague and
seemingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that with which love blesses
inexperienced hearts, before they begin to suspect what is going on within them.
It transports them to the seventh heaven; and if you ask what brought them
thither, they neither can tell nor care to learn, but cherish an ecstatic faith
that there they shall abide forever.
    Zenobia was in the door-way, not far from Hollingsworth. She gazed at
Priscilla, in a very singular way. Indeed, it was a sight worth gazing at, and a
beautiful sight too, as the fair girl sat at the feet of that dark, powerful
figure. Her air, while perfectly modest, delicate, and virginlike, denoted her
as swayed by Hollingsworth, attracted to him, and unconsciously seeking to rest
upon his strength. I could not turn away my own eyes, but hoped that nobody,
save Zenobia and myself, were witnessing this picture. It is before me now, with
the evening twilight a little deepened by the dusk of memory.
    »Come hither, Priscilla!« said Zenobia. »I have something to say to you!«
    She spoke in little more than a whisper. But it is strange how expressive of
moods a whisper may often be. Priscilla felt at once that something had gone
wrong.
    »Are you angry with me?« she asked, rising slowly and standing before
Zenobia in a drooping attitude. »What have I done? I hope you are not angry!«
    »No, no, Priscilla!« said Hollingsworth, smiling. »I will answer for it, she
is not. You are the one little person in the world, with whom nobody can be
angry!«
    »Angry with you, child? What a silly idea!« exclaimed Zenobia, laughing.
»No, indeed! But, my dear Priscilla, you are getting to be so very pretty that
you absolutely need a duenna; and as I am older than you, and have had my own
little experience of life, and think myself exceedingly sage, I intend to fill
the place of a maiden-aunt. Every day, I shall give you a lecture, a
quarter-of-an-hour in length, on the morals, manners, and proprieties of social
life. When our pastoral shall be quite played out, Priscilla, my worldly wisdom
may stand you in good stead!«
    »I am afraid you are angry with me,« repeated Priscilla, sadly; for, while
she seemed as impressible as wax, the girl often showed a persistency in her own
ideas, as stubborn as it was gentle.
    »Dear me, what can I say to the child!« cried Zenobia, in a tone of humorous
vexation. »Well, well; since you insist on my being angry, come to my room, this
moment, and let me beat you!«
    Zenobia bade Hollingsworth good night very sweetly, and nodded to me with a
smile. But, just as she turned aside with Priscilla into the dimness of the
porch, I caught another glance at her countenance. It would have made the
fortune of a tragic actress, could she have borrowed it for the moment when she
fumbles in her bosom for the concealed dagger, or the exceedingly sharp bodkin,
or mingles the ratsbane in her lover's bowl of wine, or her rival's cup of tea.
Not that I in the least anticipated any such catastrophe; it being a remarkable
truth, that custom has in no one point a greater sway than over our modes of
wreaking our wild passions. And, besides, had we been in Italy, instead of New
England, it was hardly yet a crisis for the dagger or the bowl.
    It often amazed me, however, that Hollingsworth should show himself so
recklessly tender towards Priscilla, and never once seem to think of the effect
which it might have upon her heart. But the man, as I have endeavoured to
explain, was thrown completely off his moral balance, and quite bewildered as to
his personal relations, by his great excrescence of a philanthropic scheme. I
used to see, or fancy, indications that he was not altogether obtuse to
Zenobia's influence as a woman. No doubt, however, he had a still more exquisite
enjoyment of Priscilla's silent sympathy with his purposes, so unalloyed with
criticism, and therefore more grateful than any intellectual approbation, which
always involves a possible reserve of latent censure. A man - poet, prophet, or
whatever he may be - readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship
that is voluntarily tendered. In requital of so rich benefits as he was to
confer upon mankind, it would have been hard to deny Hollingsworth the simple
solace of a young girl's heart, which he held in his hand, and smelled to, like
a rosebud. But what if, while pressing out its fragrance, he should crush the
tender rosebud in his grasp!
    As for Zenobia, I saw no occasion to give myself any trouble. With her
native strength, and her experience of the world, she could not be supposed to
need any help of mine. Nevertheless, I was really generous enough to feel some
little interest likewise for Zenobia. With all her faults, (which might have
been a great many, besides the abundance that I knew of,) she possessed noble
traits, and a heart which must at least have been valuable while new. And she
seemed ready to fling it away, as uncalculatingly as Priscilla herself. I could
not but suspect, that, if merely at play with Hollingsworth, she was sporting
with a power which she did not fully estimate. Or, if in earnest, it might
chance, between Zenobia's passionate force and his dark, self-delusive egotism,
to turn out such earnest as would develop itself in some sufficiently tragic
catastrophe, though the dagger and the bowl should go for nothing in it.
    Meantime, the gossip of the Community set them down as a pair of lovers.
They took walks together, and were not seldom encountered in the wood-paths;
Hollingsworth deeply discoursing, in tones solemn and sternly pathetic. Zenobia,
with a rich glow on her cheeks, and her eyes softened from their ordinary
brightness, looked so beautiful, that, had her companion been ten times a
philanthropist, it seemed impossible but that one glance should melt him back
into a man. Oftener than anywhere else, they went to a certain point on the
slope of a pasture, commanding nearly the whole of our own domain, besides a
view of the river and an airy prospect of many distant hills. The bond of our
Community was such, that the members had the privilege of building cottages for
their own residence, within our precincts, thus laying a hearth-stone and
fencing in a home, private and peculiar, to all desirable extent; while yet the
inhabitants should continue to share the advantages of an associated life. It
was inferred, that Hollingsworth and Zenobia intended to rear their dwelling on
this favourite spot.
    I mentioned these rumours to Hollingsworth in a playful way.
    »Had you consulted me,« I went on to observe, »I should have recommended a
site further to the left, just a little withdrawn into the wood, with two or
three peeps at the prospect, among the trees. You will be in the shady vale of
years, long before you can raise any better kind of shade around your cottage,
if you build it on this bare slope.«
    »But I offer my edifice as a spectacle to the world,« said Hollingsworth,
»that it may take example and build many another like it. Therefore I mean to
set it on the open hill-side.«
    Twist these words how I might, they offered no very satisfactory import. It
seemed hardly probable that Hollingsworth should care about educating the public
taste in the department of cottage-architecture, desirable as such improvement
certainly was.
 

                             X. A Visitor from Town

Hollingsworth and I - we had been hoeing potatoes, that forenoon, while the rest
of the fraternity were engaged in a distant quarter of the farm - sat under a
clump of maples, eating our eleven o'clock lunch, when we saw a stranger
approaching along the edge of the field. He had admitted himself from the
road-side, through a turnstile, and seemed to have a purpose of speaking with
us.
    And, by-the-by, we were favoured with many visits at Blithedale; especially
from people who sympathized with our theories, and perhaps held themselves ready
to unite in our actual experiment, as soon as there should appear a reliable
promise of its success. It was rather ludicrous, indeed, (to me, at least, whose
enthusiasm had insensibly been exhaled, together with the perspiration of many a
hard day's toil,) it was absolutely funny, therefore, to observe what a glory
was shed about our life and labours, in the imagination of these longing
proselytes. In their view, we were as poetical as Arcadians, besides being as
practical as the hardest-fisted husbandmen in Massachusetts. We did not, it is
true, spend much time in piping to our sheep, or warbling our innocent loves to
the sisterhood. But they gave us credit for imbuing the ordinary rustic
occupations with a kind of religious poetry, insomuch that our very cow-yards
and pig-sties were as delightfully fragrant as a flower-garden. Nothing used to
please me more than to see one of these lay enthusiasts snatch up a hoe, as they
were very prone to do, and set to work with a vigour that perhaps carried him
through about a dozen ill-directed strokes. Men are wonderfully soon satisfied,
in this day of shameful bodily enervation, when, from one end of life to the
other, such multitudes never taste the sweet weariness that follows accustomed
toil. I seldom saw the new enthusiasm that did not grow as flimsy and flaccid as
the proselyte's moistened shirt-collar, with a quarter-of-an-hour's active
labour, under a July sun.
    But the person, now at hand, had not at all the air of one of these amiable
visionaries. He was an elderly man, dressed rather shabbily, yet decently
enough, in a gray frock-coat, faded towards a brown hue, and wore a
broad-brimmed white hat, of the fashion of several years gone by. His hair was
perfect silver, without a dark thread in the whole of it; his nose, though it
had a scarlet tip, by no means indicated the jollity of which a red nose is the
generally admitted symbol. He was a subdued, undemonstrative old man, who would
doubtless drink a glass of liquor, now and then, and probably more than was good
for him; not, however, with a purpose of undue exhilaration, but in the hope of
bringing his spirits up to the ordinary level of the world's cheerfulness.
Drawing nearer, there was a shy look about him, as if he were ashamed of his
poverty, or, at any rate, for some reason or other, would rather have us glance
at him sidelong than take a full-front view. He had a queer appearance of hiding
himself behind the patch on his left eye.
    »I know this old gentleman,« said I to Hollingsworth, as we sat observing
him - »that is, I have met him a hundred times, in town, and have often amused
my fancy with wondering what he was, before he came to be what he is. He haunts
restaurants and such places, and has an odd way of lurking in corners or getting
behind a door, whenever practicable, and holding out his hand, with some little
article in it, which he wishes you to buy. The eye of the world seems to trouble
him, although he necessarily lives so much in it. I never expected to see him in
an open field.«
    »Have you learned anything of his history?« asked Hollingsworth.
    »Not a circumstance,« I answered. »But there must be something curious in
it. I take him to be a harmless sort of a person, and a tolerably honest one;
but his manners, being so furtive, remind me of those of a rat - a rat without
the mischief, the fierce eye, the teeth to bite with, or the desire to bite.
See, now! He means to skulk along that fringe of bushes, and approach us on the
other side of our clump of maples.«
    We soon heard the old man's velvet tread on the grass, indicating that he
had arrived within a few feet of where we sat.
    »Good morning, Mr. Moodie,« said Hollingsworth, addressing the stranger as
an acquaintance. »You must have had a hot and tiresome walk from the city. Sit
down, and take a morsel of our bread and cheese!«
    The visitor made a grateful little murmur of acquiescence, and sat down in a
spot somewhat removed; so that, glancing round, I could see his gray pantaloons
and dusty shoes, while his upper part was mostly hidden behind the shrubbery.
Nor did he come forth from this retirement during the whole of the interview
that followed. We handed him such food as we had, together with a brown jug of
molasses-and-water, (would that it had been brandy, or something better, for the
sake of his chill old heart!) like priests offering dainty sacrifice to an
enshrined and invisible idol. I have no idea that he really lacked sustenance;
but it was quite touching, nevertheless, to hear him nibbling away at our
crusts.
    »Mr. Moodie,« said I, »do you remember selling me one of those very pretty
little silk purses, of which you seem to have a monopoly in the market? I keep
it, to this day, I can assure you.«
    »Ah, thank you!« said our guest. »Yes, Mr. Coverdale, I used to sell a good
many of those little purses.«
    He spoke languidly, and only those few words, like a watch with an inelastic
spring, that just ticks, a moment or two, and stops again. He seemed a very
forlorn old man. In the wantonness of youth, strength, and comfortable condition
- making my prey of people's individualities, as my custom was - I tried to
identify my mind with the old fellow's, and take his view of the world, as if
looking through a smoke-blackened glass at the sun. It robbed the landscape of
all its life. Those pleasantly swelling slopes of our farm, descending towards
the wide meadows, through which sluggishly circled the brimfull tide of the
Charles, bathing the long sedges on its hither and farther shores; the broad,
sunny gleam over the winding water; that peculiar picturesqueness of the scene,
where capes and headlands put themselves boldly forth upon the perfect level of
the meadow, as into a green lake, with inlets between the promontories; the
shadowy woodland, with twinkling showers of light falling into its depths; the
sultry heat-vapour, which rose everywhere like incense, and in which my soul
delighted, as indicating so rich a fervour in the passionate day, and in the
earth that was burning with its love: - I beheld all these things as through old
Moodie's eyes. When my eyes are dimmer than they have yet come to be, I will go
thither again, and see if I did not catch the tone of his mind aright, and if
the cold and lifeless tint of his perceptions be not then repeated in my own.
    Yet it was unaccountable to myself, the interest that I felt in him.
    »Have you any objection,« said I, »to telling me who made those little
purses?«
    »Gentlemen have often asked me that,« said Moodie, slowly; »but I shake my
head, and say little or nothing, and creep out of the way, as well as I can. I
am a man of few words; and if gentlemen were to be told one thing, they would be
very apt, I suppose, to ask me another. But it happens, just now, Mr. Coverdale,
that you can tell me more about the maker of those little purses, than I can
tell you.«
    »Why do you trouble him with needless questions, Coverdale?« interrupted
Hollingsworth. »You must have known, long ago, that it was Priscilla. And so, my
good friend, you have come to see her? Well, I am glad of it. You will find her
altered very much for the better, since that wintry evening when you put her
into my charge. Why, Priscilla has a bloom in her cheeks, now!«
    »Has my pale little girl a bloom?« repeated Moodie, with a kind of slow
wonder. »Priscilla with a bloom in her cheeks! Ah, I am afraid I shall not know
my little girl. And is she happy?«
    »Just as happy as a bird,« answered Hollingsworth.
    »Then, gentlemen,« said our guest, apprehensively, »I don't think it well
for me to go any further. I crept hitherward only to ask about Priscilla; and
now that you have told me such good news, perhaps I can do no better than to
creep back again. If she were to see this old face of mine, the child would
remember some very sad times which we have spent together. Some very sad times
indeed! She has forgotten them, I know - them and me - else she could not be so
happy, nor have a bloom in her cheeks. Yes - yes - yes,« continued he, still
with the same torpid utterance; »with many thanks to you, Mr. Hollingsworth, I
will creep back to town again.«
    »You shall do no such thing, Mr. Moodie!« said Hollingsworth, bluffly.
»Priscilla often speaks of you; and if there lacks anything to make her cheeks
bloom like two damask roses, I'll venture to say, it is just the sight of your
face. Come; we will go and find her.«
    »Mr. Hollingsworth!« said the old man, in his hesitating way.
    »Well!« answered Hollingsworth.
    »Has there been any call for Priscilla?« asked Moodie; and though his face
was hidden from us, his tone gave a sure indication of the mysterious nod and
wink with which he put the question. »You know, I think, sir, what I mean.«
    »I have not the remotest suspicion what you mean, Mr. Moodie,« replied
Hollingsworth. »Nobody, to my knowledge, has called for Priscilla, except
yourself. But, come; we are losing time, and I have several things to say to
you, by the way.«
    »And, Mr. Hollingsworth!« repeated Moodie.
    »Well, again!« cried my friend, rather impatiently. »What now?«
    »There is a lady here,« said the old man; and his voice lost some of its
wearisome hesitation. »You will account it a very strange matter for me to talk
about; but I chanced to know this lady, when she was but a little child. If I am
rightly informed, she has grown to be a very fine woman, and makes a brilliant
figure in the world, with her beauty, and her talents, and her noble way of
spending her riches. I should recognize this lady, so people tell me, by a
magnificent flower in her hair!«
    »What a rich tinge it gives to his colourless ideas, when he speaks of
Zenobia!« I whispered to Hollingsworth. »But how can there possibly be any
interest or connecting link between him and her?«
    »The old man, for years past,« whispered Hollingsworth, »has been a little
out of his right mind, as you probably see.«
    »What I would inquire,« resumed Moodie, »is, whether this beautiful lady is
kind to my poor Priscilla.«
    »Very kind,« said Hollingsworth.
    »Does she love her?« asked Moodie.
    »It should seem so,« answered my friend. »They are always together.«
    »Like a gentlewoman and her maid servant, I fancy?« suggested the old man.
    There was something so singular in his way of saying this, that I could not
resist the impulse to turn quite round, so as to catch a glimpse of his face;
almost imagining that I should see another person than old Moodie. But there he
sat, with the patched side of his face towards me.
    »Like an elder and younger sister, rather,« replied Hollingsworth.
    »Ah,« said Moodie, more complaisantly - for his latter tones had harshness
and acidity in them - »it would gladden my old heart to witness that. If one
thing would make me happier than another, Mr. Hollingsworth, it would be, to see
that beautiful lady holding my little girl by the hand.«
    »Come along,« said Hollingsworth, »and perhaps you may.«
    After a little more delay on the part of our freakish visitor, they set
forth together; old Moodie keeping a step or two behind Hollingsworth, so that
the latter could not very conveniently look him in the face. I remained under
the tuft of maples, doing my utmost to draw an inference from the scene that had
just passed. In spite of Hollingsworth's off-hand explanation, it did not strike
me that our strange guest was really beside himself, but only that his mind
needed screwing up, like an instrument long out of tune, the strings of which
have ceased to vibrate smartly and sharply. Methought it would be profitable for
us, projectors of a happy life, to welcome this old gray shadow, and cherish him
as one of us, and let him creep about our domain, in order that he might be a
little merrier for our sakes, and we, sometimes, a little sadder for his. Human
destinies look ominous, without some perceptible intermixture of the sable or
the gray. And then, too, should any of our fraternity grow feverish with an
over-exulting sense of prosperity, it would be a sort of cooling regimen to
slink off into the woods, and spend an hour, or a day, or as many days as might
be requisite to the cure, in uninterrupted communion with this deplorable old
Moodie!
    Going homeward to dinner, I had a glimpse of him behind the trunk of a tree,
gazing earnestly towards a particular window of the farm-house. And, by-and-by,
Priscilla appeared at this window, playfully drawing along Zenobia, who looked
as bright as the very day that was blazing down upon us, only not, by many
degrees, so well advanced towards her noon. I was convinced that this pretty
sight must have been purposely arranged by Priscilla, for the old man to see.
But either the girl held her too long, or her fondness was resented as too great
a freedom; for Zenobia suddenly put Priscilla decidedly away, and gave her a
haughty look, as from a mistress to a dependant. Old Moodie shook his head - and
again, and again, I saw him shake it, as he withdrew along the road - and, at
the last point whence the farm-house was visible, he turned, and shook his
uplifted staff.
 

                               XI. The Wood-Path

Not long after the preceding incident, in order to get the ache of too constant
labour out of my bones, and to relieve my spirit of the irksomeness of a settled
routine, I took a holiday. It was my purpose to spend it, all alone, from
breakfast-time till twilight, in the deepest wood-seclusion that lay anywhere
around us. Though fond of society, I was so constituted as to need these
occasional retirements, even in a life like that of Blithedale, which was itself
characterized by a remoteness from the world. Unless renewed by a yet farther
withdrawal towards the inner circle of self-communion, I lost the better part of
my individuality. My thoughts became of little worth, and my sensibilities grew
as arid as a tuft of moss, (a thing whose life is in the shade, the rain, or the
noontide dew,) crumbling in the sunshine, after long expectance of a shower. So,
with my heart full of a drowsy pleasure, and cautious not to dissipate my mood
by previous intercourse with any one, I hurried away, and was soon pacing a
wood-path, arched overhead with boughs, and dusky brown beneath my feet.
    At first, I walked very swiftly, as if the heavy floodtide of social life
were roaring at my heels, and would outstrip and overwhelm me, without all the
better diligence in my escape. But, threading the more distant windings of the
track, I abated my pace and looked about me for some side-aisle, that should
admit me into the innermost sanctuary of this green cathedral; just as, in human
acquaintanceship, a casual opening sometimes lets us, all of a sudden, into the
long-sought intimacy of a mysterious heart. So much was I absorbed in my
reflections - or rather, in my mood, the substance of which was as yet too
shapeless to be called thought - that footsteps rustled on the leaves, and a
figure passed me by, almost without impressing either the sound or sight upon my
consciousness.
    A moment afterwards, I heard a voice at a little distance behind me,
speaking so sharply and impertinently that it made a complete discord with my
spiritual state, and caused the latter to vanish, as abruptly as when you thrust
a finger into a soap-bubble.
    »Halloo, friend!« cried this most unseasonable voice. »Stop a moment, I say!
I must have a word with you!«
    I turned about, in a humour ludicrously irate. In the first place, the
interruption, at any rate, was a grievous injury; then, the tone displeased me.
And, finally, unless there be real affection in his heart, a man cannot - such
is the bad state to which the world has brought itself - cannot more effectually
show his contempt for a brother-mortal, nor more gallingly assume a position of
superiority, than by addressing him as friend. Especially does the
misapplication of this phrase bring out that latent hostility, which is sure to
animate peculiar sects, and those who, with however generous a purpose, have
sequestered themselves from the crowd; a feeling, it is true, which may be
hidden in some dog-kennel of the heart, grumbling there in the darkness, but is
never quite extinct, until the dissenting party have gained power and scope
enough to treat the world generously. For my part, I should have taken it as far
less an insult to be styled fellow, clown, or bumpkin. To either of these
appellations, my rustic garb (it was a linen blouse, with checked shirt and
striped pantaloons, a chip-hat on my head, and a rough hickory-stick in my hand)
very fairly entitled me. As the case stood, my temper darted at once to the
opposite pole; not friend, but enemy!
    »What do you want with me?« said I, facing about.
    »Come a little nearer, friend!« said the stranger, beckoning.
    »No,« answered I. »If I can do anything for you, without too much trouble to
myself, say so. But recollect, if you please, that you are not speaking to an
acquaintance, much less a friend!«
    »Upon my word, I believe not!« retorted he, looking at me with some
curiosity; and lifting his hat, he made me a salute, which had enough of sarcasm
to be offensive, and just enough of doubtful courtesy to render any resentment
of it absurd. - »But I ask your pardon! I recognize a little mistake. If I may
take the liberty to suppose it, you, sir, are probably one of the Æsthetic - or
shall I rather say ecstatic? - labourers, who have planted themselves hereabouts.
This is your forest of Arden; and you are either the banished Duke, in person,
or one of the chief nobles in his train. The melancholy Jacques, perhaps? Be it
so! In that case, you can probably do me a favour.«
    I never, in my life, felt less inclined to confer a favour on any man.
    »I am busy!« said I.
    So unexpectedly had the stranger made me sensible of his presence, that he
had almost the effect of an apparition, and certainly a less appropriate one
(taking into view the dim woodland solitude about us) than if the salvage man of
antiquity, hirsute and cinctured with a leafy girdle, had started out of a
thicket. He was still young, seemingly a little under thirty, of a tall and
well-developed figure, and as handsome a man as ever I beheld. The style of his
beauty, however, though a masculine style, did not at all commend itself to my
taste. His countenance - I hardly know how to describe the peculiarity - had an
indecorum in it, a kind of rudeness, a hard, coarse, forth-putting freedom of
expression, which no degree of external polish could have abated, one single
jot. Not that it was vulgar. But he had no fineness of nature; there was in his
eyes (although they might have artifice enough of another sort) the naked
exposure of something that ought not to be left prominent. With these vague
allusions to what I have seen in other faces, as well as his, I leave the
quality to be comprehended best - because with an intuitive repugnance - by
those who possess least of it.
    His hair, as well as his beard and moustache, was coal-black; his eyes, too,
were black and sparkling, and his teeth remarkably brilliant. He was rather
carelessly, but well and fashionably dressed, in a summer-morning costume. There
was a gold chain, exquisitely wrought, across his vest. I never saw a smoother
or whiter gloss than that upon his shirt-bosom, which had a pin in it, set with
a gem that glimmered, in the leafy shadow where he stood, like a living tip of
fire. He carried a stick with a wooden head, carved in vivid imitation of that
of a serpent. I hated him, partly, I do believe, from a comparison of my own
homely garb with his well-ordered foppishness.
    »Well, sir,« said I, a little ashamed of my first irritation, but still with
no waste of civility, »be pleased to speak at once, as I have my own business in
hand.«
    »I regret that my mode of addressing you was a little unfortunate,« said the
stranger, smiling; for he seemed a very acute sort of person, and saw, in some
degree, how I stood affected towards him. »I intended no offence, and shall
certainly comport myself with due ceremony hereafter. I merely wish to make a
few inquiries respecting a lady, formerly of my acquaintance, who is now
resident in your Community, and, I believe, largely concerned in your social
enterprise. You call her, I think, Zenobia.«
    »That is her name in literature,« observed I - »a name, too, which possibly
she may permit her private friends to know and address her by; - but not one
which they feel at liberty to recognize, when used of her, personally, by a
stranger or casual acquaintance.«
    »Indeed!« answered this disagreeable person; and he turned aside his face,
for an instant, with a brief laugh, which struck me as a noteworthy expression
of his character. »Perhaps I might put forward a claim, on your own grounds, to
call the lady by a name so appropriate to her splendid qualities. But I am
willing to know her by any cognomen that you may suggest.«
    Heartily wishing that he would be either a little more offensive, or a good
deal less so, or break off our intercourse altogether, I mentioned Zenobia's
real name.
    »True,« said he; »and, in general society, I have never heard her called
otherwise. And, after all, our discussion of the point has been gratuitous. My
object is only to inquire when, where, and how, this lady may most conveniently
be seen?«
    »At her present residence, of course,« I replied. »You have but to go
thither and ask for her. This very path will lead you within sight of the
houses; - so I wish you good morning.«
    »One moment, if you please,« said the stranger. »The course you indicate
would certainly be the proper one, in an ordinary morning-call. But my business
is private, personal, and somewhat peculiar. Now, in a Community like this, I
should judge that any little occurrence is likely to be discussed rather more
minutely than would quite suit my views. I refer solely to myself, you
understand, and without intimating that it would be other than a matter of
entire indifference to the lady. In short, I especially desire to see her in
private. If her habits are such as I have known them, she is probably often to
be met with in the woods, or by the river-side; and I think you could do me the
favour to point out some favourite walk, where, about this hour, I might be
fortunate enough to gain an interview.«
    I reflected, that it would be quite a super-erogatory piece of quixotism, in
me, to undertake the guardianship of Zenobia, who, for my pains, would only make
me the butt of endless ridicule, should the fact ever come to her knowledge. I
therefore described a spot which, as often as any other, was Zenobia's resort,
at this period of the day; nor was it so remote from the farm-house as to leave
her in much peril, whatever might be the stranger's character.
    »A single word more!« said he; and his black eyes sparkled at me, whether
with fun or malice I knew not, but certainly as if the Devil were peeping out of
them. »Among your fraternity, I understand, there is a certain holy and
benevolent blacksmith; a man of iron, in more senses than one; a rough,
cross-grained, well-meaning individual, rather boorish in his manners - as might
be expected - and by no means of the highest intellectual cultivation. He is a
philanthropical lecturer, with two or three disciples, and a scheme of his own,
the preliminary step in which involves a large purchase of land, and the
erection of a spacious edifice, at an expense considerably beyond his means;
inasmuch as these are to be reckoned in copper or old iron, much more
conveniently than in gold or silver. He hammers away upon his one topic, as
lustily as ever he did upon a horse-shoe! Do you know such a person?«
    I shook my head, and was turning away.
    »Our friend,« he continued, »is described to me as a brawny, shaggy, grim,
and ill-favoured personage, not particularly well-calculated, one would say, to
insinuate himself with the softer sex. Yet, so far has this honest fellow
succeeded with one lady, whom we wot of, that he anticipates, from her abundant
resources, the necessary funds for realizing his plan in brick and mortar!«
    Here the stranger seemed to be so much amused with his sketch of
Hollingsworth's character and purposes, that he burst into a fit of merriment,
of the same nature as the brief, metallic laugh already alluded to, but
immensely prolonged and enlarged. In the excess of his delight, he opened his
mouth wide, and disclosed a gold band around the upper part of his teeth;
thereby making it apparent that every one of his brilliant grinders and incisors
was a sham. This discovery affected me very oddly. I felt as if the whole man
were a moral and physical humbug; his wonderful beauty of face, for aught I
knew, might be removeable like a mask; and, tall and comely as his figure
looked, he was perhaps but a wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with nothing
genuine about him, save the wicked expression of his grin. The fantasy of his
spectral character so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his
strange mirth on my sympathies, that I soon began to laugh as loudly as himself.
    By-and-by, he paused, all at once; so suddenly, indeed, that my own
cachinnation lasted a moment longer.
    »Ah, excuse me!« said he. »Our interview seems to proceed more merrily than
it began.«
    »It ends here,« answered I. »And I take shame to myself, that my folly has
lost me the right of resenting your ridicule of a friend.«
    »Pray allow me,« said the stranger, approaching a step nearer, and laying
his gloved hand on my sleeve. »One other favour I must ask of you. You have a
young person, here at Blithedale, of whom I have heard - whom, perhaps, I have
known - and in whom, at all events, I take a peculiar interest. She is one of
those delicate, nervous young creatures, not uncommon in New England, and whom I
suppose to have become what we find them by the gradual refining away of the
physical system, among your women. Some philosophers choose to glorify this
habit of body by terming it spiritual; but, in my opinion, it is rather the
effect of unwholesome food, bad air, lack of out-door exercise, and neglect of
bathing, on the part of these damsels and their female progenitors; all
resulting in a kind of hereditary dyspepsia. Zenobia, even with her
uncomfortable surplus of vitality, is far the better model of womanhood. But -
to revert again to this young person - she goes among you by the name of
Priscilla. Could you possibly afford me the means of speaking with her?«
    »You have made so many inquiries of me,« I observed, »that I may at least
trouble you with one. What is your name?«
    He offered me a card, with Professor Westervelt engraved on it. At the same
time, as if to vindicate his claim to the professorial dignity, so often assumed
on very questionable grounds, he put on a pair of spectacles, which so altered
the character of his face that I hardly knew him again. But I liked the present
aspect no better than the former one.
    »I must decline any further connection with your affairs,« said I, drawing
back. »I have told you where to find Zenobia. As for Priscilla, she has closer
friends than myself, through whom, if they see fit, you can gain access to her.«
    »In that case,« returned the Professor, ceremoniously raising his hat, »good
morning to you.«
    He took his departure, and was soon out of sight among the windings of the
wood-path. But, after a little reflection, I could not help regretting that I
had so peremptorily broken off the interview, while the stranger seemed inclined
to continue it. His evident knowledge of matters, affecting my three friends,
might have led to disclosures, or inferences, that would perhaps have been
serviceable. I was particularly struck with the fact, that, ever since the
appearance of Priscilla, it had been the tendency of events to suggest and
establish a connection between Zenobia and her. She had come, in the first
instance, as if with the sole purpose of claiming Zenobia's protection. Old
Moodie's visit, it appeared, was chiefly to ascertain whether this object had
been accomplished. And here, to-day, was the questionable Professor, linking one
with the other in his inquiries, and seeking communication with both.
    Meanwhile, my inclination for a ramble having been baulked, I lingered in
the vicinity of the farm, with perhaps a vague idea that some new event would
grow out of Westervelt's proposed interview with Zenobia. My own part, in these
transactions, was singularly subordinate. It resembled that of the Chorus in a
classic play, which seems to be set aloof from the possibility of personal
concernment, and bestows the whole measure of its hope or fear, its exultation
or sorrow, on the fortunes of others, between whom and itself this sympathy is
the only bond. Destiny, it may be - the most skilful of stage-managers - seldom
chooses to arrange its scenes, and carry forward its drama, without securing the
presence of at least one calm observer. It is his office to give applause, when
due, and sometimes an inevitable tear, to detect the final fitness of incident
to character, and distil, in his long-brooding thought, the whole morality of
the performance.
    Not to be out of the way, in case there were need of me in my vocation, and,
at the same time, to avoid thrusting myself where neither Destiny nor mortals
might desire my presence, I remained pretty near the verge of the woodlands. My
position was off the track of Zenobia's customary walk, yet not so remote but
that a recognized occasion might speedily have brought me thither.
 

                           XII. Coverdale's Hermitage

Long since, in this part of our circumjacent wood, I had found out for myself a
little hermitage. It was a kind of leafy cave, high upward into the air, among
the midmost branches of a white-pine tree. A wild grapevine, of unusual size and
luxuriance, had twined and twisted itself up into the tree, and, after wreathing
the entanglement of its tendrils around almost every bough, had caught hold of
three or four neighbouring trees, and married the whole clump with a perfectly
inextricable knot of polygamy. Once, while sheltering myself from a summer
shower, the fancy had taken me to clamber up into this seemingly impervious mass
of foliage. The branches yielded me a passage, and closed again, beneath, as if
only a squirrel or a bird had passed. Far aloft, around the stem of the central
pine, behold, a perfect nest for Robinson Crusoe or King Charles! A hollow
chamber, of rare seclusion, had been formed by the decay of some of the
pine-branches, which the vine had lovingly strangled with its embrace, burying
them from the light of day in an aerial sepulchre of its own leaves. It cost me
but little ingenuity to enlarge the interior, and open loop-holes through the
verdant walls. Had it ever been my fortune to spend a honey-moon, I should have
thought seriously of inviting my bride up thither, where our next neighbours
would have been two orioles in another part of the clump.
    It was an admirable place to make verses, tuning the rhythm to the breezy
symphony that so often stirred among the vine-leaves; or to meditate an essay
for the Dial, in which the many tongues of Nature whispered mysteries, and
seemed to ask only a little stronger puff of wind, to speak out the solution of
its riddle. Being so pervious to air-currents, it was just the nook, too, for
the enjoyment of a cigar. This hermitage was my one exclusive possession, while
I counted myself a brother of the socialists. It symbolized my individuality,
and aided me in keeping it inviolate. None ever found me out in it, except,
once, a squirrel. I brought thither no guest, because, after Hollingsworth
failed me, there was no longer the man alive with whom I could think of sharing
all. So there I used to sit, owl-like, yet not without liberal and hospitable
thoughts. I counted the innumerable clusters of my vine, and fore-reckoned the
abundance of my vintage. It gladdened me to anticipate the surprise of the
Community, when, like an allegorical figure of rich October, I should make my
appearance, with shoulders bent beneath the burden of ripe grapes, and some of
the crushed ones crimsoning my brow as with a blood-stain.
    Ascending into this natural turret, I peeped, in turn, out of several of its
small windows. The pine-tree, being ancient, rose high above the rest of the
wood, which was of comparatively recent growth. Even where I sat, about midway
between the root and the topmost bough, my position was lofty enough to serve as
an observatory, not for starry investigations, but for those sublunary matters
in which lay a lore as infinite as that of the planets. Through one loop-hole, I
saw the river lapsing calmly onward, while, in the meadow near its brink, a few
of the brethren were digging peat for our winter's fuel. On the interior
cart-road of our farm, I discerned Hollingsworth, with a yoke of oxen hitched to
a drag of stones, that were to be piled into a fence, on which we employed
ourselves at the odd intervals of other labour. The harsh tones of his voice,
shouting to the sluggish steers, made me sensible, even at such a distance, that
he was ill at ease, and that the baulked philanthropist had the battle-spirit in
his heart.
    »Haw Buck!« quoth he. »Come along there, ye lazy ones! What are ye about
now? Gee!«
    »Mankind, in Hollingsworth's opinion,« thought I, »is but another yoke of
oxen, as stubborn, stupid, and sluggish, as our old Brown and Bright. He
vituperates us aloud, and curses us in his heart, and will begin to prick us
with the goad stick, by-and-by. But, are we his oxen? And what right has he to
be the driver? And why, when there is enough else to do, should we waste our
strength in dragging home the ponderous load of his philanthropic absurdities?
At my height above the earth, the whole matter looks ridiculous!«
    Turning towards the farm-house, I saw Priscilla (for, though a great way
off, the eye of faith assured me that it was she) sitting at Zenobia's window,
and making little purses, I suppose, or perhaps mending the Community's old
linen. A bird flew past my tree; and as it clove its way onward into the sunny
atmosphere, I flung it a message for Priscilla.
    »Tell her,« said I, »that her fragile thread of life has inextricably
knotted itself with other and tougher threads, and most likely it will be
broken. Tell her that Zenobia will not be long her friend. Say that
Hollingsworth's heart is on fire with his own purpose, but icy for all human
affection, and that, if she has given him her love, it is like casting a flower
into a sepulchre. And say, that, if any mortal really cares for her, it is
myself, and not even I, for her realities - poor little seamstress, as Zenobia
rightly called her! - but for the fancy-work with which I have idly decked her
out!«
    The pleasant scent of the wood, evolved by the hot sun, stole up to my
nostrils, as if I had been an idol in its niche. Many trees mingled their
fragrance into a thousand-fold odour. Possibly, there was a sensual influence in
the broad light of noon that lay beneath me. It may have been the cause, in
part, that I suddenly found myself possessed by a mood of disbelief in moral
beauty or heroism, and a conviction of the folly of attempting to benefit the
world. Our especial scheme of reform, which, from my observatory, I could take
in with the bodily eye, looked so ridiculous that it was impossible not to laugh
aloud.
    »But the joke is a little too heavy,« thought I. »If I were wise, I should
get out of the scrape, with all diligence, and then laugh at my companions for
remaining in it!«
    While thus musing, I heard, with perfect distinctness, somewhere in the wood
beneath, the peculiar laugh, which I have described as one of the disagreeable
characteristics of Professor Westervelt. It brought my thoughts back to our
recent interview. I recognized, as chiefly due to this man's influence, the
sceptical and sneering view which, just now, had filled my mental vision in
regard to all life's better purposes. And it was through his eyes, more than my
own, that I was looking at Hollingsworth, with his glorious, if impracticable
dream, and at the noble earthliness of Zenobia's character, and even at
Priscilla, whose impalpable grace lay so singularly between disease and beauty.
The essential charm of each had vanished. There are some spheres, the contact
with which inevitably degrades the high, debases the pure, deforms the
beautiful. It must be a mind of uncommon strength, and little impressibility,
that can permit itself the habit of such intercourse, and not be permanently
deteriorated; and yet the Professor's tone represented that of worldly society
at large, where a cold scepticism smothers what it can of our spiritual
aspirations, and makes the rest ridiculous. I detested this kind of man, and all
the more, because a part of my own nature showed itself responsive to him.
    Voices were now approaching, through the region of the wood which lay in the
vicinity of my tree. Soon, I caught glimpses of two figures - a woman and a man
- Zenobia and the stranger - earnestly talking together as they advanced.
    Zenobia had a rich, though varying colour. It was, most of the while, a
flame, and anon a sudden paleness. Her eyes glowed, so that their light
sometimes flashed upward to me, as when the sun throws a dazzle from some bright
object on the ground. Her gestures were free, and strikingly impressive. The
whole woman was alive with a passionate intensity, which I now perceived to be
the phase in which her beauty culminated. Any passion would have become her
well, and passionate love, perhaps, the best of all. This was not love, but
anger, largely intermixed with scorn. Yet the idea strangely forced itself upon
me, that there was a sort of familiarity between these two companions,
necessarily the result of an intimate love - on Zenobia's part, at least - in
days gone by, but which had prolonged itself into as intimate a hatred, for all
futurity. As they passed among the trees, reckless as her movement was, she took
good heed that even the hem of her garment should not brush against the
stranger's person. I wondered whether there had always been a chasm, guarded so
religiously, betwixt these two.
    As for Westervelt, he was not a whit more warmed by Zenobia's passion, than
a salamander by the heat of its native furnace. He would have been absolutely
statuesque, save for a look of slight perplexity tinctured strongly with
derision. It was a crisis in which his intellectual perceptions could not
altogether help him out. He failed to comprehend, and cared but little for
comprehending, why Zenobia should put herself into such a fume; but satisfied
his mind that it was all folly, and only another shape of a woman's manifold
absurdity, which men can never understand. How many a woman's evil fate has
yoked her with a man like this! Nature thrusts some of us into the world
miserably incomplete, on the emotional side, with hardly any sensibilities
except what pertain to us as animals. No passion, save of the senses; no holy
tenderness, nor the delicacy that results from this. Externally, they bear a
close resemblance to other men, and have perhaps all save the finest grace; but
when a woman wrecks herself on such a being, she ultimately finds that the real
womanhood, within her, has no corresponding part in him. Her deepest voice lacks
a response; the deeper her cry, the more dead his silence. The fault may be none
of his; he cannot give her what never lived within his soul. But the
wretchedness, on her side, and the moral deterioration attendant on a false and
shallow life, without strength enough to keep itself sweet, are among the most
pitiable wrongs that mortals suffer.
    Now, as I looked down from my upper region at this man and woman - outwardly
so fair a sight, and wandering like two lovers in the wood - I imagined that
Zenobia, at an earlier period of youth, might have fallen into the misfortune
above indicated. And when her passionate womanhood, as was inevitable, had
discovered its mistake, there had ensued the character of eccentricity and
defiance, which distinguished the more public portion of her life.
    Seeing how aptly matters had chanced, thus far, I began to think it the
design of fate to let me into all Zenobia's secrets, and that therefore the
couple would sit down beneath my tree, and carry on a conversation which would
leave me nothing to inquire. No doubt, however, had it so happened, I should
have deemed myself honourably bound to warn them of a listener's presence by
flinging down a handful of unripe grapes; or by sending an unearthly groan out
of my hiding-place, as if this were one of the trees of Dante's ghostly forest.
But real life never arranges itself exactly like a romance. In the first place,
they did not sit down at all. Secondly, even while they passed beneath the tree,
Zenobia's utterance was so hasty and broken, and Westervelt's so cool and low,
that I hardly could make out an intelligible sentence, on either side. What I
seem to remember, I yet suspect may have been patched together by my fancy, in
brooding over the matter, afterwards.
    »Why not fling the girl off,« said Westervelt, »and let her go?«
    »She clung to me from the first,« replied Zenobia. »I neither know nor care
what it is in me that so attaches her. But she loves me, and I will not fail
her.«
    »She will plague you, then,« said he, »in more ways than one.«
    »The poor child!« exclaimed Zenobia. »She can do me neither good nor harm.
How should she?«
    I know not what reply Westervelt whispered; nor did Zenobia's subsequent
exclamation give me any clue, except that it evidently inspired her with horror
and disgust.
    »With what kind of a being am I linked!« cried she. »If my Creator cares
aught for my soul, let him release me from this miserable bond!«
    »I did not think it weighed so heavily,« said her companion.
    »Nevertheless,« answered Zenobia, »it will strangle me at last!«
    And then I heard her utter a helpless sort of moan; a sound which,
struggling out of the heart of a person of her pride and strength, affected me
more than if she had made the wood dolorously vocal with a thousand shrieks and
wails.
    Other mysterious words, besides what are above-written, they spoke together;
but I understood no more, and even question whether I fairly understood so much
as this. By long brooding over our recollections, we subtilize them into
something akin to imaginary stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished
from it. In a few moments, they were completely beyond ear-shot. A breeze
stirred after them, and awoke the leafy tongues of the surrounding trees, which
forthwith began to babble, as if innumerable gossips had all at once got wind of
Zenobia's secret. But, as the breeze grew stronger, its voice among the branches
was as if it said - »Hush! Hush!« - and I resolved that to no mortal would I
disclose what I had heard. And, though there might be room for casuistry, such,
I conceive, is the most equitable rule in all similar conjunctures.
 

                             XIII. Zenobia's Legend

The illustrious Society of Blithedale, though it toiled in downright earnest for
the good of mankind, yet not unfrequently illuminated its laborious life with an
afternoon or evening of pastime. Pic-nics under the trees were considerably in
vogue; and, within doors, fragmentary bits of theatrical performance, such as
single acts of tragedy or comedy, or dramatic proverbs and charades. Zenobia,
besides, was fond of giving us readings from Shakespeare, and often with a depth
of tragic power, or breadth of comic effect, that made one feel it an
intolerable wrong to the world, that she did not at once go upon the stage.
Tableaux vivants were another of our occasional modes of amusement, in which
scarlet shawls, old silken robes, ruffs, velvets, furs, and all kinds of
miscellaneous trumpery, converted our familiar companions into the people of a
pictorial world. We had been thus engaged, on the evening after the incident
narrated in the last chapter. Several splendid works of art - either arranged
after engravings from the Old Masters, or original illustrations of scenes in
history or romance - had been presented, and we were earnestly entreating
Zenobia for more.
    She stood, with a meditative air, holding a large piece of gauze, or some
such ethereal stuff, as if considering what picture should next occupy the
frame; while at her feet lay a heap of many-coloured garments, which her quick
fancy and magic skill could so easily convert into gorgeous draperies for heroes
and princesses.
    »I am getting weary of this,« said she, after a moment's thought. »Our own
features, and our own figures and airs, show a little too intrusively through
all the characters we assume. We have so much familiarity with one another's
realities, that we cannot remove ourselves, at pleasure, into an imaginary
sphere. Let us have no more pictures, to-night; but, to make you what poor
amends I can, how would you like to have me trump up a wild, spectral legend, on
the spur of the moment?«
    Zenobia had the gift of telling a fanciful little story, off hand, in a way
that made it greatly more effective, than it was usually found to be, when she
afterwards elaborated the same production with her pen. Her proposal, therefore,
was greeted with acclamation.
    »Oh, a story, a story, by all means!« cried the young girls. »No matter how
marvellous, we will believe it, every word! And let it be a ghost-story, if you
please!«
    »No; not exactly a ghost-story,« answered Zenobia; »but something so nearly
like it that you shall hardly tell the difference. And, Priscilla, stand you
before me, where I may look at you, and get my inspiration out of your eyes.
They are very deep and dreamy, to-night!«
    I know not whether the following version of her story will retain any
portion of its pristine character. But, as Zenobia told it, wildly and rapidly,
hesitating at no extravagance, and dashing at absurdities which I am too
timorous to repeat - giving it the varied emphasis of her inimitable voice, and
the pictorial illustration of her mobile face, while, through it all, we caught
the freshest aroma of the thoughts, as they came bubbling out of her mind - thus
narrated, and thus heard, the legend seemed quite a remarkable affair. I
scarcely knew, at the time, whether she intended us to laugh, or be more
seriously impressed. From beginning to end it was undeniable nonsense, but not
necessarily the worse for that.
 



                                The Silvery Veil

 
You have heard, my dear friends, of the Veiled Lady, who grew suddenly so very
famous, a few months ago. And have you never thought how remarkable it was, that
this marvellous creature should vanish, all at once, while her renown was on the
increase, before the public had grown weary of her, and when the enigma of her
character, instead of being solved, presented itself more mystically at every
exhibition? Her last appearance, as you know, was before a crowded audience. The
next evening - although the bills had announced her, at the corner of every
street, in red letters of a gigantic size - there was no Veiled Lady to be seen!
Now, listen to my simple little tale; and you shall hear the very latest
incident in the known life - (if life it may be called, which seemed to have no
more reality than the candlelight image of one's self, which peeps at us outside
of a dark window-pane) - the life of this shadowy phenomenon.
    A party of young gentlemen, you are to understand, were enjoying themselves,
one afternoon, as young gentlemen are sometimes fond of doing, over a bottle or
two of champagne; and - among other ladies less mysterious - the subject of the
Veiled Lady, as was very natural, happened to come up before them for
discussion. She rose, as it were, with the sparkling effervescence of their
wine, and appeared in a more airy and fantastic light, on account of the medium
through which they saw her. They repeated to one another, between jest and
earnest, all the wild stories that were in vogue; nor, I presume, did they
hesitate to add any small circumstance that the inventive whim of the moment
might suggest, to heighten the marvellousness of their theme.
    »But what an audacious report was that,« observed one, »which pretended to
assert the identity of this strange creature with a young lady« - and here he
mentioned her name - »the daughter of one of our most distinguished families!«
    »Ah, there is more in that story than can well be accounted for!« remarked
another. »I have it on good authority, that the young lady in question is
invariably out of sight, and not to be traced, even by her own family, at the
hours when the Veiled Lady is before the public; nor can any satisfactory
explanation be given of her disappearance. And just look at the thing! Her
brother is a young fellow of spirit. He cannot but be aware of these rumours in
reference to his sister. Why, then, does he not come forward to defend her
character, unless he is conscious that an investigation would only make the
matter worse?«
    It is essential to the purposes of my legend to distinguish one of these
young gentlemen from his companions; so, for the sake of a soft and pretty name,
(such as we, of the literary sisterhood, invariably bestow upon our heroes,) I
deem it fit to call him Theodore.
    »Pshaw!« exclaimed Theodore. »Her brother is no such fool! Nobody, unless
his brain be as full of bubbles as this wine, can seriously think of crediting
that ridiculous rumour. Why, if my senses did not play me false, (which never was
the case yet,) I affirm that I saw that very lady, last evening, at the
exhibition, while this veiled phenomenon was playing off her juggling tricks!
What can you say to that?«
    »Oh, it was a spectral illusion that you saw!« replied his friends, with a
general laugh. »The Veiled Lady is quite up to such a thing.«
    However, as the above-mentioned fable could not hold its ground against
Theodore's downright refutation, they went on to speak of other stories, which
the wild babble of the town had set afloat. Some upheld, that the veil covered
the most beautiful countenance in the world; others - and certainly with more
reason, considering the sex of the Veiled Lady - that the face was the most
hideous and horrible, and that this was her sole motive for hiding it. It was
the face of a corpse; it was the head of a skeleton; it was a monstrous visage,
with snaky locks, like Medusa's, and one great red eye in the centre of the
forehead. Again, it was affirmed, that there was no single and unchangeable set
of features, beneath the veil, but that whosoever should be bold enough to lift
it, would behold the features of that person, in all the world, who was destined
to be his fate; perhaps he would be greeted by the tender smile of the woman
whom he loved; or, quite as probably, the deadly scowl of his bitterest enemy
would throw a blight over his life. They quoted, moreover, this startling
explanation of the whole affair: - that the Magician (who exhibited the Veiled
Lady, and who, by-the-by, was the handsomest man in the whole world) had
bartered his own soul for seven years' possession of a familiar fiend, and that
the last year of the contract was wearing towards its close.
    If it were worth our while, I could keep you till an hour beyond midnight,
listening to a thousand such absurdities as these. But, finally, our friend
Theodore, who prided himself upon his common-sense, found the matter getting
quite beyond his patience.
    »I offer any wager you like,« cried he, setting down his glass so forcibly
as to break the stem of it, »that, this very evening, I find out the mystery of
the Veiled Lady!«
    Young men, I am told, boggle at nothing, over their wine. So, after a little
more talk, a wager of considerable amount was actually laid, the money staked,
and Theodore left to choose his own method of settling the dispute.
    How he managed it, I know not, nor is it of any great importance to this
veracious legend; the most natural way, to be sure, was by bribing the
door-keeper, or, possibly, he preferred clambering in at the window. But, at any
rate, that very evening, while the exhibition was going forward in the hall,
Theodore contrived to gain admittance into the private withdrawing-room, whither
the Veiled Lady was accustomed to retire, at the close of her performances.
There he waited, listening, I suppose, to the stifled hum of the great audience;
and, no doubt, he could distinguish the deep tones of the Magician, causing the
wonders that he wrought to appear more dark and intricate, by his mystic
pretence of an explanation; perhaps, too, in the intervals of the wild, breezy
music which accompanied the exhibition, he might hear the low voice of the
Veiled Lady, conveying her Sibylline responses. Firm as Theodore's nerves might
be, and much as he prided himself on his sturdy perception of realities, I
should not be surprised if his heart throbbed at a little more than its ordinary
rate!
    Theodore concealed himself behind a screen. In due time, the performance was
brought to a close; and whether the door was softly opened, or whether her
bodiless presence came through the wall, is more than I can say; but, all at
once, without the young man's knowing how it happened, a veiled figure stood in
the centre of the room. It was one thing to be in presence of this mystery, in
the hall of exhibition, where the warm, dense life of hundreds of other mortals
kept up the beholder's courage, and distributed her influence among so many; it
was another thing to be quite alone with her, and that, too, with a hostile, or,
at least, an unauthorized and unjustifiable purpose. I rather imagine that
Theodore now began to be sensible of something more serious in his enterprise
than he had been quite aware of, while he sat with his boon-companions over
their sparkling wine.
    Very strange, it must be confessed, was the movement with which the figure
floated to-and-fro over the carpet, with the silvery veil covering her from head
to foot; so impalpable, so ethereal, so without substance, as the texture
seemed, yet hiding her every outline in an impenetrability like that of
midnight. Surely, she did not walk! She floated, and flitted, and hovered about
the room; - no sound of a footstep, no perceptible motion of a limb; - it was as
if a wandering breeze wafted her before it, at its own wild and gentle pleasure.
But, by-and-by, a purpose began to be discernible, throughout the seeming
vagueness of her unrest. She was in quest of something! Could it be, that a
subtle presentiment had informed her of the young man's presence? And, if so,
did the Veiled Lady seek, or did she shun him? The doubt in Theodore's mind was
speedily resolved; for, after a moment or two of these erratic flutterings, she
advanced, more decidedly, and stood motionless before the screen.
    »Thou art here!« said a soft, low voice. »Come forth, Theodore!«
    Thus summoned by his name, Theodore, as a man of courage, had no choice. He
emerged from his concealment, and presented himself before the Veiled Lady, with
the wine-flush, it may be, quite gone out of his cheeks.
    »What wouldst thou with me?« she inquired, with the same gentle composure
that was in her former utterance.
    »Mysterious creature,« replied Theodore, »I would know who and what you
are!«
    »My lips are forbidden to betray the secret!« said the Veiled Lady.
    »At whatever risk, I must discover it!« rejoined Theodore.
    »Then,« said the Mystery, »there is no way, save to lift my veil!«
    And Theodore, partly recovering his audacity, stepped forward, on the instant,
to do as the Veiled Lady had suggested. But she floated backward to the opposite
side of the room, as if the young man's breath had possessed power enough to
waft her away.
    »Pause, one little instant,« said the soft, low voice, »and learn the
conditions of what thou art so bold to undertake! Thou canst go hence, and think
of me no more; or, at thy option, thou canst lift this mysterious veil, beneath
which I am a sad and lonely prisoner, in a bondage which is worse to me than
death. But, before raising it, I entreat thee, in all maiden modesty, to bend
forward, and impress a kiss, where my breath stirs the veil; and my virgin lips
shall come forward to meet thy lips; and from that instant, Theodore, thou shalt
be mine, and I thine, with never more a veil between us! And all the felicity of
earth and of the future world shall be thine and mine together. So much may a
maiden say behind the veil! If thou shrinkest from this, there is yet another
way.«
    »And what is that?« asked Theodore.
    »Dost thou hesitate,« said the Veiled Lady, »to pledge thyself to me, by
meeting these lips of mine, while the veil yet hides my face? Has not thy heart
recognized me? Dost thou come hither, not in holy faith, nor with a pure and
generous purpose, but in scornful scepticism and idle curiosity? Still, thou
mayst lift the veil! But from that instant, Theodore, I am doomed to be thy evil
fate; nor wilt thou ever taste another breath of happiness!«
    There was a shade of inexpressible sadness in the utterance of these last
words. But Theodore, whose natural tendency was towards scepticism, felt himself
almost injured and insulted by the Veiled Lady's proposal that he should pledge
himself, for life and eternity, to so questionable a creature as herself; or
even that she should suggest an inconsequential kiss, taking into view the
probability that her face was none of the most bewitching. A delightful idea,
truly, that he should salute the lips of a dead girl, or the jaws of a skeleton,
or the grinning cavity of a monster's mouth! Even should she prove a comely
maiden enough, in other respects, the odds were ten to one that her teeth were
defective; a terrible drawback on the delectableness of a kiss!
    »Excuse me, fair lady,« said Theodore - and I think he nearly burst into a
laugh - »if I prefer to lift the veil first; and for this affair of the kiss, we
may decide upon it, afterwards!«
    »Thou hast made thy choice,« said the sweet, sad voice, behind the veil; and
there seemed a tender, but unresentful sense of wrong done to womanhood by the
young man's contemptuous interpretation of her offer. »I must not counsel thee
to pause; although thy fate is still in thine own hand!«
    Grasping at the veil, he flung it upward, and caught a glimpse of a pale,
lovely face, beneath; just one momentary glimpse; and then the apparition
vanished, and the silvery veil fluttered slowly down, and lay upon the floor.
Theodore was alone. Our legend leaves him there. His retribution was, to pine,
forever and ever, for another sight of that dim, mournful face - which might
have been his life-long, house-hold, fireside joy - to desire, and waste life in
a feverish quest, and never meet it more!
    But what, in good sooth, had become of the Veiled Lady? Had all her
existence been comprehended within that mysterious veil, and was she now
annihilated? Or was she a spirit, with a heavenly essence, but which might have
been tamed down to human bliss, had Theodore been brave and true enough to claim
her? Hearken, my sweet friends - and hearken, dear Priscilla - and you shall
learn the little more that Zenobia can tell you!
    Just at the moment, so far as can be ascertained, when the Veiled Lady
vanished, a maiden, pale and shadowy, rose up amid a knot of visionary people,
who were seeking for the better life. She was so gentle and so sad - a nameless
melancholy gave her such hold upon their sympathies - that they never thought of
questioning whence she came. She might have heretofore existed; or her thin
substance might have been moulded out of air, at the very instant when they
first beheld her. It was all one to them; they took her to their hearts. Among
them was a lady, to whom, more than to all the rest, this pale, mysterious girl
attached herself.
    But, one morning, the lady was wandering in the woods, and there met her a
figure in an Oriental robe, with a dark beard, and holding in his hand a silvery
veil. He motioned her to stay. Being a woman of some nerve, she did not shriek,
nor run away, nor faint, as many ladies would have been apt to do, but stood
quietly, and bade him speak. The truth was, she had seen his face before, but
had never feared it, although she knew him to be a terrible magician.
    »Lady,« said he, with a warning gesture, »you are in peril!«
    »Peril!« she exclaimed. »And of what nature?«
    »There is a certain maiden,« replied the Magician, »who has come out of the
realm of Mystery, and made herself your most intimate companion. Now, the fates
have so ordained it, that, whether by her own will, or no, this stranger is your
deadliest enemy. In love, in worldly fortune, in all your pursuit of happiness,
she is doomed to fling a blight over your prospects. There is but one
possibility of thwarting her disastrous influence.«
    »Then, tell me that one method,« said the lady.
    »Take this veil!« he answered, holding forth the silvery texture. »It is a
spell; it is a powerful enchantment, which I wrought for her sake, and beneath
which she was once my prisoner. Throw it, at unawares, over the head of this
secret foe, stamp your foot, and cry - Arise, Magician, here is the Veiled Lady
- and immediately I will rise up through the earth, and seize her. And from that
moment, you are safe!«
    So the lady took the silvery veil, which was like woven air, or like some
substance airier than nothing, and that would float upward and be lost among the
clouds, were she once to let it go. Returning homeward, she found the shadowy
girl, amid the knot of visionary transcendentalists, who were still seeking for
the better life. She was joyous, now, and had a rose-bloom in her cheeks, and
was one of the prettiest creatures, and seemed one of the happiest, that the
world could show. But the lady stole noiselessly behind her, and threw the veil
over her head. As the slight, ethereal texture sank inevitably down over her
figure, the poor girl strove to raise it, and met her dear friend's eyes with
one glance of mortal terror, and deep, deep reproach. It could not change her
purpose.
    »Arise, Magician!« she exclaimed, stamping her foot upon the earth. »Here is
the Veiled Lady!«
    At the word, uprose the bearded man in the Oriental robes - the beautiful! -
the dark Magician, who had bartered away his soul! He threw his arms around the
Veiled Lady; and she was his bond-slave, forever more!
 
Zenobia, all this while, had been holding the piece of gauze, and so managed it
as greatly to increase the dramatic effect of the legend, at those points where
the magic veil was to be described. Arriving at the catastrophe, and uttering
the fatal words, she flung the gauze over Priscilla's head; and, for an instant,
her auditors held their breath, half expecting, I verily believe, that the
Magician would start up through the floor, and carry off our poor little friend,
before our eyes.
    As for Priscilla, she stood, droopingly, in the midst of us, making no
attempt to remove the veil.
    »How do you find yourself, my love?« said Zenobia, lifting a corner of the
gauze, and peeping beneath it, with a mischievous smile. »Ah, the dear little
soul! Why, she is really going to faint! Mr. Coverdale, Mr. Coverdale, pray
bring a glass of water!«
    Her nerves being none of the strongest, Priscilla hardly recovered her
equanimity during the rest of the evening. This, to be sure, was a great pity;
but, nevertheless, we thought it a very bright idea of Zenobia's, to bring her
legend to so effective a conclusion.
 

                              XIV. Eliot's Pulpit

Our Sundays, at Blithedale, were not ordinarily kept with such rigid observance
as might have befitted the descendants of the Pilgrims, whose high enterprise,
as we sometimes flattered ourselves, we had taken up, and were carrying it
onward and aloft, to a point which they never dreamed of attaining.
    On that hallowed day, it is true, we rested from our labours. Our oxen,
relieved from their week-day yoke, roamed at large through the pasture; each
yoke-fellow, however, keeping close beside his mate, and continuing to
acknowledge, from the force of habit and sluggish sympathy, the union which the
taskmaster had imposed for his own hard ends. As for us, human yoke-fellows,
chosen companions of toil, whose hoes had clinked together throughout the week,
we wandered off, in various directions, to enjoy our interval of repose. Some, I
believe, went devoutly to the village-church. Others, it may be, ascended a city
or a country-pulpit, wearing the clerical robe with so much dignity that you
would scarcely have suspected the yeoman's frock to have been flung off, only
since milking-time. Others took long rambles among the rustic lanes and
by-paths, pausing to look at black, old farm-houses, with their sloping roofs;
and at the modern cottage, so like a plaything that it seemed as if real joy or
sorrow could have no scope within; and at the more pretending villa, with its
range of wooden columns, supporting the needless insolence of a great portico.
Some betook themselves into the wide, dusky barn, and lay there, for hours
together, on the odorous hay; while the sunstreaks and the shadows strove
together - these to make the barn solemn, those to make it cheerful - and both
were conquerors; and the swallows twittered a cheery anthem, flashing into
sight, or vanishing, as they darted to-and-fro among the golden rules of
sunshine. And others went a little way into the woods, and threw themselves on
Mother Earth, pillowing their heads on a heap of moss, the green decay of an old
log; and dropping asleep, the humble-bees and musquitoes sung and buzzed about
their ears, causing the slumberers to twitch and start, without awakening.
    With Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla, and myself, it grew to be a custom
to spend the Sabbath-afternoon at a certain rock. It was known to us under the
name of Eliot's pulpit, from a tradition that the venerable Apostle Eliot had
preached there, two centuries gone by, to an Indian auditory. The old
pine-forest, through which the Apostle's voice was wont to sound, had fallen, an
immemorial time ago. But the soil, being of the rudest and most broken surface,
had apparently never been brought under tillage; other growths, maple, and
beech, and birch, had succeeded to the primeval trees; so that it was still as
wild a tract of woodland as the great-great-great-great grandson of one of
Eliot's Indians (had any such posterity been in existence) could have desired,
for the site and shelter of his wigwam. These after-growths, indeed, lose the
stately solemnity of the original forest. If left in due neglect, however, they
run into an entanglement of softer wildness, among the rustling leaves of which
the sun can scatter cheerfulness, as it never could among the dark-browed pines.
    The rock itself rose some twenty or thirty feet, a shattered granite
boulder, or heap of boulders, with an irregular outline and many fissures, out
of which sprang shrubs, bushes, and even trees; as if the scanty soil, within
those crevices, were sweeter to their roots than any other earth. At the base of
the pulpit, the broken boulders inclined towards each other, so as to form a
shallow cave, within which our little party had sometimes found protection from
a summer shower. On the threshold, or just across it, grew a tuft of pale
columbines, in their season, and violets, sad and shadowy recluses, such as
Priscilla was, when we first knew her; children of the sun, who had never seen
their father, but dwelt among damp mosses, though not akin to them. At the
summit, the rock was overshadowed by the canopy of a birch-tree, which served as
a sounding-board for the pulpit. Beneath this shade, (with my eyes of sense half
shut, and those of the imagination widely opened,) I used to see the holy
Apostle of the Indians, with the sunlight flickering down upon him through the
leaves, and glorifying his figure as with the half-perceptible glow of a
transfiguration.
    I the more minutely describe the rock, and this little Sabbath solitude,
because Hollingsworth, at our solicitation, often ascended Eliot's pulpit, and -
not exactly preached - but talked to us, his few disciples, in a strain that
rose and fell as naturally as the wind's breath among the leaves of the
birch-tree. No other speech of man has ever moved me like some of those
discourses. It seemed most pitiful - a positive calamity to the world - that a
treasury of golden thoughts should thus be scattered, by the liberal handful,
down among us three, when a thousand hearers might have been the richer for
them; and Hollingsworth the richer, likewise, by the sympathy of multitudes.
After speaking much or little, as might happen, he would descend from his gray
pulpit, and generally fling himself at full length on the ground, face downward.
Meanwhile, we talked around him, on such topics as were suggested by the
discourse.
    Since her interview with Westervelt, Zenobia's continual inequalities of
temper had been rather difficult for her friends to bear. On the first Sunday
after that incident, when Hollingsworth had clambered down from Eliot's pulpit,
she declaimed with great earnestness and passion, nothing short of anger, on the
injustice which the world did to women, and equally to itself, by not allowing
them, in freedom and honour, and with the fullest welcome, their natural
utterance in public.
    »It shall not always be so!« cried she. »If I live another year, I will lift
up my own voice, in behalf of woman's wider liberty.«
    She, perhaps, saw me smile.
    »What matter of ridicule do you find in this, Miles Coverdale?« exclaimed
Zenobia, with a flash of anger in her eyes. »That smile, permit me to say, makes
me suspicious of a low tone of feeling, and shallow thought. It is my belief -
yes, and my prophecy, should I die before it happens - that, when my sex shall
achieve its rights, there will be ten eloquent women, where there is now one
eloquent man. Thus far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole
heart and her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of
society throttles us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats! We mumble a few
weak words, and leave a thousand better ones unsaid. You let us write a little,
it is true, on a limited range of subjects. But the pen is not for woman. Her
power is too natural and immediate. It is with the living voice, alone, that she
can compel the world to recognize the light of her intellect and the depth of
her heart!«
    Now - though I could not well say so to Zenobia - I had not smiled from any
unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims which she is beginning to
put forth. What amused and puzzled me, was the fact, that women, however
intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or
wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual affections chance to lie in
idleness, or to be ill at ease. They are not natural reformers, but become such
by the pressure of exceptional misfortune. I could measure Zenobia's inward
trouble, by the animosity with which she now took up the general quarrel of
woman against man.
    »I will give you leave, Zenobia,« replied I, »to fling your utmost scorn
upon me, if you ever hear me utter a sentiment unfavourable to the widest liberty
which woman has yet dreamed of. I would give her all she asks, and add a great
deal more, which she will not be the party to demand, but which men, if they
were generous and wise, would grant of their own free motion. For instance, I
should love dearly - for the next thousand years, at least - to have all
government devolve into the hands of women. I hate to be ruled by my own sex; it
excites my jealousy and wounds my pride. It is the iron sway of bodily force,
which abases us, in our compelled submission. But, how sweet the free, generous
courtesy, with which I would kneel before a woman-ruler!«
    »Yes; if she were young and beautiful,« said Zenobia, laughing. »But how if
she were sixty, and a fright?«
    »Ah; it is you that rate womanhood low,« said I. »But let me go on. I have
never found it possible to suffer a bearded priest so near my heart and
conscience, as to do me any spiritual good. I blush at the very thought! Oh, in
the better order of things, Heaven grant that the ministry of souls may be left
in charge of women! The gates of the Blessed City will be thronged with the
multitude that enter in, when that day comes! The task belongs to woman. God
meant it for her. He has endowed her with the religious sentiment in its utmost
depth and purity, refined from that gross, intellectual alloy, with which every
masculine theologist - save only One, who merely veiled Himself in mortal and
masculine shape, but was, in truth, divine - has been prone to mingle it. I have
always envied the Catholics their faith in that sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, who
stands between them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of His awful splendour,
but permitting His love to stream upon the worshipper, more intelligibly to
human comprehension, through the medium of a woman's tenderness. Have I not said
enough, Zenobia?«
    »I cannot think that this is true,« observed Priscilla, who had been gazing
at me with great, disapproving eyes. »And I am sure I do not wish it to be
true!«
    »Poor child!« exclaimed Zenobia, rather contemptuously. »She is the type of
womanhood, such as man has spent centuries in making it. He is never content,
unless he can degrade himself by stooping towards what he loves. In denying us
our rights, he betrays even more blindness to his own interests, than profligate
disregard of ours!«
    »Is this true?« asked Priscilla, with simplicity, turning to Hollingsworth.
»Is it all true that Mr. Coverdale and Zenobia have been saying?«
    »No, Priscilla,« answered Hollingsworth, with his customary bluntness. »They
have neither of them spoken one true word yet.«
    »Do you despise woman?« said Zenobia. »Ah, Hollingsworth, that would be most
ungrateful!«
    »Despise her? - No!« cried Hollingsworth, lifting his great shaggy head and
shaking it at us, while his eyes glowed almost fiercely. »She is the most
admirable handiwork of God, in her true place and character. Her place is at
man's side. Her office, that of the Sympathizer; the unreserved, unquestioning
Believer; the Recognition, withheld in every other manner, but given, in pity,
through woman's heart, lest man should utterly lose faith in himself; the Echo
of God's own voice, pronouncing - It is well done! All the separate action of
woman is, and ever has been, and always shall be, false, foolish, vain,
destructive of her own best and holiest qualities, void of every good effect,
and productive of intolerable mischiefs! Man is a wretch without woman; but
woman is a monster - and, thank Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto
imaginary monster - without man, as her acknowledged principal! As true as I had
once a mother, whom I loved, were there any possible prospect of woman's taking
the social stand which some of them - poor, miserable, abortive creatures, who
only dream of such things because they have missed woman's peculiar happiness,
or because Nature made them really neither man nor woman! - if there were a
chance of their attaining the end which these petticoated monstrosities have in
view, I would call upon my own sex to use its physical force, that unmistakeable
evidence of sovereignty, to scourge them back within their proper bounds! But it
will not be needful. The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is,
and never seeks to stray beyond it!«
    Never was mortal blessed - if blessing it were - with a glance of such
entire acquiescence and unquestioning faith, happy in its completeness, as our
little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on Hollingsworth. She seemed to take the
sentiment from his lips into her heart, and brood over it in perfect content.
The very woman whom he pictured - the gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a
more powerful existence - sat there at his feet.
    I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent - as I felt, by
the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought - this outrageous
affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of masculine egotism. It centred
everything in itself, and deprived woman of her very soul, her inexpressible and
unfathomable all, to make it a mere incident in the great sum of man.
Hollingsworth had boldly uttered what he, and millions of despots like him,
really felt. Without intending it, he had disclosed the well-spring of all these
troubled waters. Now, if ever, it surely behoved Zenobia to be the champion of
her sex.
    But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled. Some
tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not anger.
    »Well; be it so,« was all she said. »I, at least, have deep cause to think
you right. Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only too ready to
become to him what you say!«
    I smiled - somewhat bitterly, it is true - in contemplation of my own
ill-luck. How little did these two women care for me, who had freely conceded
all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fullness of my heart; while
Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible injustice, seemed to have
brought them both to his feet!
    »Women almost invariably behave thus!« thought I. »What does the fact mean?
Is it their nature? Or is it, at last, the result of ages of compelled
degradation? And, in either case, will it be possible ever to redeem them?«
    An intuition now appeared to possess all the party, that, for this time, at
least, there was no more to be said. With one accord, we arose from the ground,
and made our way through the tangled undergrowth towards one of those pleasant
wood-paths, that wound among the over-arching trees. Some of the branches hung
so low as partly to conceal the figures that went before, from those who
followed. Priscilla had leaped up more lightly than the rest of us, and ran
along in advance, with as much airy activity of spirit as was typified in the
motion of a bird, which chanced to be flitting from tree to tree, in the same
direction as herself. Never did she seem so happy as that afternoon. She skipt,
and could not help it, from very playfulness of heart.
    Zenobia and Hollingsworth went next, in close contiguity, but not with arm
in arm. Now, just when they had passed the impending bough of a birch-tree, I
plainly saw Zenobia take the hand of Hollingsworth in both her own, press it to
her bosom, and let it fall again!
    The gesture was sudden and full of passion; the impulse had evidently taken
her by surprise; it expressed all! Had Zenobia knelt before him, or flung
herself upon his breast, and gasped out - »I love you, Hollingsworth!« - I could
not have been more certain of what it meant. They then walked onward, as before.
But, methought, as the declining sun threw Zenobia's magnified shadow along the
path, I beheld it tremulous; and the delicate stem of the flower, which she wore
in her hair, was likewise responsive to her agitation.
    Priscilla - through the medium of her eyes, at least - could not possibly
have been aware of the gesture above-described. Yet, at that instant, I saw her
droop. The buoyancy, which just before had been so birdlike, was utterly
departed; the life seemed to pass out of her, and even the substance of her
figure to grow thin and gray. I almost imagined her a shadow, fading gradually
into the dimness of the wood. Her pace became so slow, that Hollingsworth and
Zenobia passed by, and I, without hastening my footsteps, overtook her.
    »Come, Priscilla,« said I, looking her intently in the face, which was very
pale and sorrowful, »we must make haste after our friends. Do you feel suddenly
ill? A moment ago, you flitted along so lightly that I was comparing you to a
bird. Now, on the contrary, it is as if you had a heavy heart, and very little
strength to bear it with. Pray take my arm!«
    »No,« said Priscilla, »I do not think it would help me. It is my heart, as
you say, that makes me heavy; and I know not why. Just now, I felt very happy.«
    No doubt, it was a kind of sacrilege in me to attempt to come within her
maidenly mystery. But as she appeared to be tossed aside by her other friends,
or carelessly let fall, like a flower which they had done with, I could not
resist the impulse to take just one peep beneath her folded petals.
    »Zenobia and yourself are dear friends, of late,« I remarked. »At first -
that first evening when you came to us - she did not receive you quite so warmly
as might have been wished.«
    »I remember it,« said Priscilla. »No wonder she hesitated to love me, who
was then a stranger to her, and a girl of no grace or beauty; she being herself
so beautiful!«
    »But she loves you now, of course,« suggested I. »And, at this very instant,
you feel her to be your dearest friend?«
    »Why do you ask me that question?« exclaimed Priscilla, as if frightened at
the scrutiny into her feelings which I compelled her to make. »It somehow puts
strange thoughts into my mind. But I do love Zenobia dearly! If she only loves
me half as well, I shall be happy!«
    »How is it possible to doubt that, Priscilla?« I rejoined. »But, observe how
pleasantly and happily Zenobia and Hollingsworth are walking together! I call it
a delightful spectacle. It truly rejoices me that Hollingsworth has found so fit
and affectionate a friend! So many people in the world mistrust him - so many
disbelieve and ridicule, while hardly any do him justice, or acknowledge him for
the wonderful man he is - that it is really a blessed thing for him to have won
the sympathy of such a woman as Zenobia. Any man might be proud of that. Any
man, even if he be as great as Hollingsworth, might love so magnificent a woman.
How very beautiful Zenobia is! And Hollingsworth knows it, too!«
    There may have been some petty malice in what I said. Generosity is a very
fine thing, at a proper time, and within due limits. But it is an insufferable
bore, to see one man engrossing every thought of all the women, and leaving his
friend to shiver in outer seclusion, without even the alternative of solacing
himself with what the more fortunate individual has rejected. Yes; it was out of
a foolish bitterness of heart that I had spoken.
    »Go on before!« said Priscilla, abruptly, and with true feminine
imperiousness, which heretofore I had never seen her exercise. »It pleases me
best to loiter along by myself. I do not walk so fast as you.«
    With her hand, she made a little gesture of dismissal. It provoked me, yet,
on the whole, was the most bewitching thing that Priscilla had ever done. I
obeyed her, and strolled moodily homeward, wondering - as I had wondered a
thousand times, already - how Hollingsworth meant to dispose of these two
hearts, which (plainly to my perception, and, as I could not but now suppose, to
his) he had engrossed into his own huge egotism.
    There was likewise another subject, hardly less fruitful of speculation. In
what attitude did Zenobia present herself to Hollingsworth? Was it in that of a
free woman, with no mortgage on her affections nor claimant to her hand, but
fully at liberty to surrender both, in exchange for the heart and hand which she
apparently expected to receive? But, was it a vision that I had witnessed in the
wood? Was Westervelt a goblin? Were those words of passion and agony, which
Zenobia had uttered in my hearing, a mere stage-declamation? Were they formed of
a material lighter than common air? Or, supposing them to bear sterling weight,
was it not a perilous and dreadful wrong, which she was meditating towards
herself and Hollingsworth?
    Arriving nearly at the farm-house, I looked back over the long slope of
pasture-land, and beheld them standing together, in the light of sunset, just on
the spot where, according to the gossip of the Community, they meant to build
their cottage. Priscilla, alone and forgotten, was lingering in the shadow of
the wood.
 

                                  XV. A Crisis

Thus the summer was passing away; a summer of toil, of interest, of something
that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and there became a
rich experience. I found myself looking forward to years, if not to a lifetime,
to be spent on the same system. The Community were now beginning to form their
permanent plans. One of our purposes was to erect a Phalanstery (as I think we
called it, after Fourier; but the phraseology of those days is not very fresh in
my remembrance) where the great and general family should have its
abiding-place. Individual members, too, who made it a point of religion to
preserve the sanctity of an exclusive home, were selecting sites for their
cottages, by the wood-side, or on the breezy swells, or in the sheltered nook of
some little valley, according as their taste might lean towards snugness or the
picturesque. Altogether, by projecting our minds outward, we had imparted a show
of novelty to existence, and contemplated it as hopefully as if the soil,
beneath our feet, had not been fathom-deep with the dust of deluded generations,
on every one of which, as on ourselves, the world had imposed itself as a
hitherto unwedded bride.
    Hollingsworth and myself had often discussed these prospects. It was easy to
perceive, however, that he spoke with little or no fervour, but either as
questioning the fulfilment of our anticipations, or, at any rate, with a quiet
consciousness that it was no personal concern of his. Shortly after the scene at
Eliot's pulpit, while he and I were repairing an old stone-fence, I amused
myself with sallying forward into the future time.
    »When we come to be old men,« I said, »they will call us Uncles, or Fathers
- Father Hollingsworth and Uncle Coverdale - and we will look back cheerfully to
these early days, and make a romantic story for the young people (and if a
little more romantic than truth may warrant, it will be no harm) out of our
severe trials and hardships. In a century or two, we shall every one of us be
mythical personages, or exceedingly picturesque and poetical ones, at all
events. They will have a great public hall, in which your portrait, and mine,
and twenty other faces that are living now, shall be hung up; and as for me, I
will be painted in my shirt-sleeves, and with the sleeves rolled up, to show my
muscular development. What stories will be rife among them about our mighty
strength,« continued I, lifting a big stone and putting it into its place;
»though our posterity will really be far stronger than ourselves, after several
generations of a simple, natural, and active life! What legends of Zenobia's
beauty, and Priscilla's slender and shadowy grace, and those mysterious
qualities which make her seem diaphanous with spiritual light! In due course of
ages, we must all figure heroically in an Epic Poem; and we will ourselves - at
least, I will - bend unseen over the future poet, and lend him inspiration,
while he writes it.«
    »You seem,« said Hollingsworth, »to be trying how much nonsense you can pour
out in a breath.«
    »I wish you would see fit to comprehend,« retorted I, »that the profoundest
wisdom must be mingled with nine-tenths of nonsense; else it is not worth the
breath that utters it. But I do long for the cottages to be built, that the
creeping plants may begin to run over them, and the moss to gather on the walls,
and the trees - which we will set out - to cover them with a breadth of shadow.
This spick-and-span novelty does not quite suit my taste. It is time, too, for
children to be born among us. The first-born child is still to come! And I shall
never feel as if this were a real, practical, as well as poetical, system of
human life, until somebody has sanctified it by death.«
    »A pretty occasion for martyrdom, truly!« said Hollingsworth.
    »As good as any other!« I replied. »I wonder, Hollingsworth, who, of all
these strong men, and fair women and maidens, is doomed the first to die. Would
it not be well, even before we have absolute need of it, to fix upon a spot for
a cemetery? Let us choose the rudest, roughest, most uncultivable spot, for
Death's garden-ground; and Death shall teach us to beautify it, grave by grave.
By our sweet, calm way of dying, and the airy elegance out of which we will
shape our funeral rites, and the cheerful allegories which we will model into
tombstones, the final scene shall lose its terrors; so that, hereafter, it may
be happiness to live, and bliss to die. None of us must die young. Yet, should
Providence ordain it so, the event shall not be sorrowful, but affect us with a
tender, delicious, only half-melancholy, and almost smiling pathos!«
    »That is to say,« muttered Hollingsworth, »you will die like a Heathen, as
you certainly live like one! But, listen to me, Coverdale. Your fantastic
anticipations make me discern, all the more forcibly, what a wretched,
unsubstantial scheme is this, on which we have wasted a precious summer of our
lives. Do you seriously imagine that any such realities as you, and many others
here, have dreamed of, will ever be brought to pass?«
    »Certainly, I do,« said I. »Of course, when the reality comes, it will wear
the every-day, common-place, dusty, and rather homely garb, that reality always
does put on. But, setting aside the ideal charm, I hold, that our highest
anticipations have a solid footing on common-sense.«
    »You only half believe what you say,« rejoined Hollingsworth; »and as for
me, I neither have faith in your dream, nor would care the value of this pebble
for its realization, were that possible. And what more do you want of it? It has
given you a theme for poetry. Let that content you. But, now, I ask you to be,
at last, a man of sobriety and earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which is
worth all our strength, and the strength of a thousand mightier than we!«
    There can be no need of giving, in detail, the conversation that ensued. It
is enough to say, that Hollingsworth once more brought forward his rigid and
unconquerable idea; a scheme for the reformation of the wicked by methods moral,
intellectual, and industrial, by the sympathy of pure, humble, and yet exalted
minds, and by opening to his pupils the possibility of a worthier life than that
which had become their fate. It appeared, unless he over-estimated his own
means, that Hollingsworth held it at his choice (and he did so choose) to obtain
possession of the very ground on which we had planted our Community, and which
had not yet been made irrevocably ours, by purchase. It was just the foundation
that he desired. Our beginnings might readily be adapted to his great end. The
arrangements, already completed, would work quietly into his system. So
plausible looked his theory, and, more than that, so practical; such an air of
reasonableness had he, by patient thought, thrown over it; each segment of it
was contrived to dove-tail into all the rest, with such a complicated
applicability; and so ready was he with a response for every objection - that,
really, so far as logic and argument went, he had the matter all his own way.
    »But,« said I, »whence can you, having no means of your own, derive the
enormous capital which is essential to this experiment? State-street, I imagine,
would not draw its purse-strings very liberally, in aid of such a speculation.«
    »I have the funds - as much, at least, as is needed for a commencement - at
command,« he answered. »They can be produced within a month, if necessary.«
    My thoughts reverted to Zenobia. It could only be her wealth which
Hollingsworth was appropriating so lavishly. And on what conditions was it to be
had? Did she fling it into the scheme, with the uncalculating generosity that
characterizes a woman, when it is her impulse to be generous at all? And did she
fling herself along with it? But Hollingsworth did not volunteer an explanation.
    »And have you no regrets,« I inquired, »in overthrowing this fair system of
our new life, which has been planned so deeply, and is now beginning to flourish
so hopefully around us? How beautiful it is, and, so far as we can yet see, how
practicable! The Ages have waited for us, and here we are - the very first that
have essayed to carry on our mortal existence, in love, and mutual help!
Hollingsworth, I would be loth to take the ruin of this enterprise upon my
conscience!«
    »Then let it rest wholly upon mine!« he answered, knitting his black brows.
»I see through the system. It is full of defects - irremediable and damning
ones! - from first to last, there is nothing else! I grasp it in my hand, and
find no substance whatever. There is not human nature in it!«
    »Why are you so secret in your operations?« I asked. »God forbid that I
should accuse you of intentional wrong; but the besetting sin of a
philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of
honour ceases to be the sense of other honourable men. At some point of his course
- I know not exactly when nor where - he is tempted to palter with the right,
and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public
ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience. Oh, my dear
friend, beware this error! If you meditate the overthrow of this establishment,
call together our companions, state your design, support it with all your
eloquence, but allow them an opportunity of defending themselves!«
    »It does not suit me,« said Hollingsworth. »Nor is it my duty to do so.«
    »I think it is!« replied I.
    Hollingsworth frowned; not in passion, but like Fate, inexorably.
    »I will not argue the point,« said he. »What I desire to know of you is -
and you can tell me in one word - whether I am to look for your co-operation in
this great scheme of good. Take it up with me! Be my brother in it! It offers
you (what you have told me, over and over again, that you most need) a purpose
in life, worthy of the extremest self-devotion - worthy of martyrdom, should God
so order it! In this view, I present it to you. You can greatly benefit mankind.
Your peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are capable of being so wrought
into this enterprise, that not one of them need lie idle. Strike hands with me;
and, from this moment, you shall never again feel the languor and vague
wretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied man! There may be no more aimless
beauty in your life; but, in its stead, there shall be strength, courage,
immitigable will - everything that a manly and generous nature should desire! We
shall succeed! We shall have done our best for this miserable world; and
happiness (which never comes but incidentally) will come to us unawares!«
    It seemed his intention to say no more. But, after he had quite broken off,
his deep eyes filled with tears, and he held out both his hands to me.
    »Coverdale,« he murmured, »there is not the man in this wide world, whom I
can love as I could you. Do not forsake me!«
    As I look back upon this scene, through the coldness and dimness of so many
years, there is still a sensation as if Hollingsworth had caught hold of my
heart, and were pulling it towards him with an almost irresistible force. It is
a mystery to me, how I withstood it. But, in truth, I saw in his scheme of
philanthropy nothing but what was odious. A loathsomeness that was to be forever
in my daily work! A great, black ugliness of sin, which he proposed to collect
out of a thousand human hearts, and that we should spend our lives in an
experiment of transmuting it into virtue! Had I but touched his extended hand,
Hollingsworth's magnetism would perhaps have penetrated me with his own
conception of all these matters. But I stood aloof. I fortified myself with
doubts whether his strength of purpose had not been too gigantic for his
integrity, impelling him to trample on considerations that should have been
paramount to every other.
    »Is Zenobia to take a part in your enterprise?« I asked.
    »She is,« said Hollingsworth.
    »She! - the beautiful! - the gorgeous!« I exclaimed. »And how have you
prevailed with such a woman to work in this squalid element?«
    »Through no base methods, as you seem to suspect,« he answered, »but by
addressing whatever is best and noblest in her.«
    Hollingsworth was looking on the ground. But, as he often did so -
generally, indeed, in his habitual moods of thought - I could not judge whether
it was from any special unwillingness now to meet my eyes. What it was that
dictated my next question, I cannot precisely say. Nevertheless, it rose so
inevitably into my mouth, and, as it were, asked itself, so involuntarily, that
there must needs have been an aptness in it.
    »What is to become of Priscilla?«
    Hollingsworth looked at me fiercely, and with glowing eyes. He could not
have shown any other kind of expression than that, had he meant to strike me
with a sword.
    »Why do you bring in the names of these women?« said he, after a moment of
pregnant silence. »What have they to do with the proposal which I make you? I
must have your answer! Will you devote yourself, and sacrifice all to this great
end, and be my friend of friends, forever?«
    »In Heaven's name, Hollingsworth,« cried I, getting angry, and glad to be
angry, because so only was it possible to oppose his tremendous
concentrativeness and indomitable will, »cannot you conceive that a man may wish
well to the world, and struggle for its good, on some other plan than precisely
that which you have laid down? And will you cast off a friend, for no
unworthiness, but merely because he stands upon his right, as an individual
being, and looks at matters through his own optics, instead of yours?«
    »Be with me,« said Hollingsworth, »or be against me! There is no third
choice for you.«
    »Take this, then, as my decision,« I answered. »I doubt the wisdom of your
scheme. Furthermore, I greatly fear that the methods, by which you allow
yourself to pursue it, are such as cannot stand the scrutiny of an unbiased
conscience.«
    »And you will not join me?«
    »No!«
    I never said the word - and certainly can never have it to say, hereafter -
that cost me a thousandth part so hard an effort as did that one syllable. The
heart-pang was not merely figurative, but an absolute torture of the breast. I
was gazing steadfastly at Hollingsworth. It seemed to me that it struck him,
too, like a bullet. A ghastly paleness - always so terrific on a swarthy face -
overspread his features. There was a convulsive movement of his throat, as if he
were forcing down some words that struggled and fought for utterance. Whether
words of anger, or words of grief, I cannot tell; although, many and many a
time, I have vainly tormented myself with conjecturing which of the two they
were. One other appeal to my friendship - such as once, already, Hollingsworth
had made - taking me in the revulsion that followed a strenuous exercise of
opposing will, would completely have subdued me. But he left the matter there.
    »Well!« said he.
    And that was all! I should have been thankful for one word more, even had it
shot me through the heart, as mine did him. But he did not speak it; and, after
a few moments, with one accord, we set to work again, repairing the stone-fence.
Hollingsworth, I observed, wrought like a Titan; and, for my own part, I lifted
stones which, at this day - or, in a calmer mood, at that one - I should no more
have thought it possible to stir, than to carry off the gates of Gaza on my
back.
 

                               XVI. Leave-Takings

A few days after the tragic passage-at-arms between Hollingsworth and me, I
appeared at the dinner-table, actually dressed in a coat, instead of my
customary blouse; with a satin cravat, too, a white vest, and several other
things that made me seem strange and outlandish to myself. As for my companions,
this unwonted spectacle caused a great stir upon the wooden benches, that
bordered either side of our homely board.
    »What's in the wind now, Miles?« asked one of them. »Are you deserting us?«
    »Yes, for a week or two,« said I. »It strikes me that my health demands a
little relaxation of labour, and a short visit to the seaside, during the
dog-days.«
    »You look like it!« grumbled Silas Foster, not greatly pleased with the idea
of losing an efficient labourer, before the stress of the season was well over.
»Now, here's a pretty fellow! His shoulders have broadened, a matter of six
inches, since he came among us; he can do his day's work, if he likes, with any
man or ox on the farm; - and yet he talks about going to the seashore for his
health! Well, well, old woman,« added he to his wife, »let me have a platefull
of that pork and cabbage! I begin to feel in a very weakly way. When the others
have had their turn, you and I will take a jaunt to Newport or Saratoga!«
    »Well, but, Mr. Foster,« said I, »you must allow me to take a little
breath.«
    »Breath!« retorted the old yeoman. »Your lungs have the play of a pair of
blacksmith's bellows, already. What on earth do you want more? But go along! I
understand the business. We shall never see your face here again. Here ends the
reformation of the world, so far as Miles Coverdale has a hand in it!«
    »By no means,« I replied. »I am resolute to die in the last ditch, for the
good of the cause.«
    »Die in a ditch!« muttered gruff Silas, with genuine Yankee intolerance of
any intermission of toil, except on Sunday, the Fourth of July, the autumnal
Cattle-show, Thanksgiving, or the annual Fast. »Die in a ditch! I believe in my
conscience you would, if there were no steadier means than your own labour to
keep you out of it!«
    The truth was, that an intolerable discontent and irksomeness had come over
me. Blithedale was no longer what it had been. Everything was suddenly faded.
The sun-burnt and arid aspect of our woods and pastures, beneath the August sky,
did but imperfectly symbolize the lack of dew and moisture that, since
yesterday, as it were, had blighted my fields of thought, and penetrated to the
innermost and shadiest of my contemplative recesses. The change will be
recognized by many, who, after a period of happiness, have endeavoured to go on
with the same kind of life, in the same scene, in spite of the alteration or
withdrawal of some principal circumstance. They discover (what heretofore,
perhaps, they had not known) that it was this which gave the bright colour and
vivid reality to the whole affair.
    I stood on other terms than before, not only with Hollingsworth, but with
Zenobia and Priscilla. As regarded the two latter, it was that dreamlike and
miserable sort of change that denies you the privilege to complain, because you
can assert no positive injury, nor lay your finger on anything tangible. It is a
matter which you do not see, but feel, and which, when you try to analyse it,
seems to lose its very existence, and resolve itself into a sickly humour of your
own. Your understanding, possibly, may put faith in this denial. But your heart
will not so easily rest satisfied. It incessantly remonstrates, though, most of
the time, in a bass-note, which you do not separately distinguish; but,
now-and-then, with a sharp cry, importunate to be heard, and resolute to claim
belief. »Things are not as they were!« - it keeps saying - »You shall not impose
on me! I will never be quiet! I will throb painfully! I will be heavy, and
desolate, and shiver with cold! For I, your deep heart, know when to be
miserable, as once I knew when to be happy! All is changed for us! You are
beloved no more!« And, were my life to be spent over again, I would invariably
lend my ear to this Cassandra of the inward depths, however clamorous the music
and the merriment of a more superficial region.
    My outbreak with Hollingsworth, though never definitely known to our
associates, had really an effect upon the moral atmosphere of the Community. It
was incidental to the closeness of relationship, into which we had brought
ourselves, that an unfriendly state of feeling could not occur between any two
members, without the whole society being more or less commoted and made
uncomfortable thereby. This species of nervous sympathy (though a pretty
characteristic enough, sentimentally considered, and apparently betokening an
actual bond of love among us) was yet found rather inconvenient in its practical
operation; mortal tempers being so infirm and variable as they are. If one of us
happened to give his neighbour a box on the ear, the tingle was immediately felt,
on the same side of everybody's head. Thus, even on the supposition that we were
far less quarrelsome than the rest of the world, a great deal of time was
necessarily wasted in rubbing our ears.
    Musing on all these matters, I felt an inexpressible longing for at least a
temporary novelty. I thought of going across the Rocky Mountains, or to Europe,
or up the Nile - of offering myself a volunteer on the Exploring Expedition - of
taking a ramble of years, no matter in what direction, and coming back on the
other side of the world. Then, should the colonists of Blithedale have
established their enterprise on a permanent basis, I might fling aside my
pilgrim-staff and dusty shoon, and rest as peacefully here as elsewhere. Or, in
case Hollingsworth should occupy the ground with his School of Reform, as he now
purposed, I might plead earthly guilt enough, by that time, to give me what I
was inclined to think the only trustworthy hold on his affections. Meanwhile,
before deciding on any ultimate plan, I determined to remove myself to a little
distance, and take an exterior view of what we had all been about.
    In truth, it was dizzy work, amid such fermentation of opinions as was going
on in the general brain of the Community. It was a kind of Bedlam, for the time
being; although, out of the very thoughts that were wildest and most
destructive, might grow a wisdom, holy, calm, and pure, and that should
incarnate itself with the substance of a noble and happy life. But, as matters
now were, I felt myself (and having a decided tendency towards the actual, I
never liked to feel it) getting quite out of my reckoning, with regard to the
existing state of the world. I was beginning to lose the sense of what kind of a
world it was, among innumerable schemes of what it might or ought to be. It was
impossible, situated as we were, not to imbibe the idea that everything in
nature and human existence was fluid, or fast becoming so; that the crust of the
Earth, in many places, was broken, and its whole surface portentously upheaving;
that it was a day of crisis, and that we ourselves were in the critical vortex.
Our great globe floated in the atmosphere of infinite space like an
unsubstantial bubble. No sagacious man will long retain his sagacity, if he live
exclusively among reformers and progressive people, without periodically
returning into the settled system of things, to correct himself by a new
observation from that old stand-point.
    It was now time for me, therefore, to go and hold a little talk with the
conservatives, the writers of the North American Review, the merchants, the
politicians, the Cambridge men, and all those respectable old blockheads, who
still, in this intangibility and mistiness of affairs, kept a death-grip on one
or two ideas which had not come into vogue since yesterday-morning.
    The brethren took leave of me with cordial kindness; and as for the
sisterhood, I had serious thoughts of kissing them all round, but forbore to do
so, because, in all such general salutations, the penance is fully equal to the
pleasure. So I kissed none of them, and nobody, to say the truth, seemed to
expect it.
    »Do you wish me,« I said to Zenobia, »to announce, in town, and at the
watering-places, your purpose to deliver a course of lectures on the rights of
women?«
    »Women possess no rights,« said Zenobia, with a half-melancholy smile; »or,
at all events, only little girls and grandmothers would have the force to
exercise them.«
    She gave me her hand, freely and kindly, and looked at me, I thought, with a
pitying expression in her eyes; nor was there any settled light of joy in them,
on her own behalf, but a troubled and passionate flame, flickering and fitful.
    »I regret, on the whole, that you are leaving us,« she said; »and all the
more, since I feel that this phase of our life is finished, and can never be
lived over again. Do you know, Mr. Coverdale, that I have been several times on
the point of making you my confidant, for lack of a better and wiser one? But
you are too young to be my Father Confessor; and you would not thank me for
treating you like one of those good little handmaidens, who share the
bosom-secrets of a tragedy-queen!«
    »I would at least be loyal and faithful,« answered I, »and would counsel you
with an honest purpose, if not wisely.«
    »Yes,« said Zenobia, »you would be only too wise - too honest. Honesty and
wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!«
    »Ah, Zenobia,« I exclaimed, »if you would but let me speak!«
    »By no means,« she replied; »especially when you have just resumed the whole
series of social conventionalisms, together with that straight-bodied coat. I
would as lief open my heart to a lawyer or a clergyman! No, no, Mr. Coverdale;
if I choose a counsellor, in the present aspect of my affairs, it must be either
an angel or a madman; and I rather apprehend that the latter would be likeliest
of the two to speak the fitting word. It needs a wild steersman when we voyage
through Chaos! The anchor is up! Farewell!«
    Priscilla, as soon as dinner was over, had betaken herself into a corner,
and set to work on a little purse. As I approached her, she let her eyes rest on
me, with a calm, serious look; for, with all her delicacy of nerves, there was a
singular self-possession in Priscilla, and her sensibilities seemed to lie
sheltered from ordinary commotion, like the water in a deep well.
    »Will you give me that purse, Priscilla,« said I, »as a parting keepsake?«
    »Yes,« she answered; »if you will wait till it is finished.«
    »I must not wait, even for that,« I replied. »Shall I find you here, on my
return?«
    »I never wish to go away,« said she.
    »I have sometimes thought,« observed I, smiling, »that you, Priscilla, are a
little prophetess; or, at least, that you have spiritual intimations respecting
matters which are dark to us grosser people. If that be the case, I should like
to ask you what is about to happen. For I am tormented with a strong foreboding,
that, were I to return even so soon as tomorrow morning, I should find
everything changed. Have you any impressions of this nature?«
    »Ah, no!« said Priscilla, looking at me apprehensively. »If any such
misfortune is coming, the shadow has not reached me yet. Heaven forbid! I should
be glad if there might never be any change, but one summer follow another, and
all just like this!«
    »No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike,« said I, with
a degree of Orphic wisdom that astonished myself. »Times change, and people
change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us!
Good bye, Priscilla!«
    I gave her hand a pressure, which, I think, she neither resisted nor
returned. Priscilla's heart was deep, but of small compass; it had room but for
a very few dearest ones, among whom she never reckoned me.
    On the door-step, I met Hollingsworth. I had a momentary impulse to hold out
my hand, or, at least, to give a parting nod, but resisted both. When a real and
strong affection has come to an end, it is not well to mock the sacred past with
any show of those common-place civilities that belong to ordinary intercourse.
Being dead henceforth to him, and he to me, there could be no propriety in our
chilling one another with the touch of two corpse-like hands, or playing at
looks of courtesy with eyes that were impenetrable beneath the glaze and the
film. We passed, therefore, as if mutually invisible.
    I can nowise explain what sort of whim, prank, or perversity it was, that,
after all these leave-takings, induced me to go to the pig-stye and take leave
of the swine! There they lay, buried as deeply among the straw as they could
burrow, four huge black grunters, the very symbols of slothful ease and sensual
comfort. They were asleep, drawing short and heavy breaths, which heaved their
big sides up and down. Unclosing their eyes, however, at my approach, they
looked dimly forth at the outer world, and simultaneously uttered a gentle
grunt; not putting themselves to the trouble of an additional breath for that
particular purpose, but grunting with their ordinary inhalation. They were
involved, and almost stifled, and buried alive, in their own corporeal
substance. The very unreadiness and oppression, wherewith these greasy citizens
gained breath enough to keep their life-machinery in sluggish movement, appeared
to make them only the more sensible of the ponderous and fat satisfaction of
their existence. Peeping at me, an instant, out of their small, red, hardly
perceptible eyes, they dropped asleep again; yet not so far asleep but that their
unctuous bliss was still present to them, betwixt dream and reality.
    »You must come back in season to eat part of a spare-rib,« said Silas
Foster, giving my hand a mighty squeeze. »I shall have these fat fellows hanging
up by the heels, heads downward, pretty soon, I tell you!«
    »Oh, cruel Silas, what a horrible idea!« cried I. »All the rest of us, men,
women, and live-stock, save only these four porkers, are bedevilled with one
grief or another; they alone are happy - and you mean to cut their throats, and
eat them! It would be more for the general comfort to let them eat us; and
bitter and sour morsels we should be!«
 

                                XVII. The Hotel

Arriving in town, (where my bachelor-rooms, long before this time, had received
some other occupant,) I established myself, for a day or two, in a certain
respectable hotel. It was situated somewhat aloof from my former track in life;
my present mood inclining me to avoid most of my old companions, from whom I was
now sundered by other interests, and who would have been likely enough to amuse
themselves at the expense of the amateur working-man. The hotel-keeper put me
into a back-room of the third story of his spacious establishment. The day was
lowering, with occasional gusts of rain, and an ugly-tempered east-wind, which
seemed to come right off the chill and melancholy sea, hardly mitigated by
sweeping over the roofs, and amalgamating itself with the dusky element of
city-smoke. All the effeminacy of past days had returned upon me at once. Summer
as it still was, I ordered a coal-fire in the rusty grate, and was glad to find
myself growing a little too warm with an artificial temperature.
    My sensations were those of a traveller, long sojourning in remote regions,
and at length sitting down again amid customs once familiar. There was a newness
and an oldness, oddly combining themselves into one impression. It made me
acutely sensible how strange a piece of mosaic-work had lately been wrought into
my life. True; if you look at it in one way, it had been only a summer in the
country. But, considered in a profounder relation, it was part of another age, a
different state of society, a segment of an existence peculiar in its aims and
methods, a leaf of some mysterious volume, interpolated into the current history
which Time was writing off. At one moment, the very circumstances now
surrounding me - my coal-fire, and the dingy room in the bustling hotel -
appeared far off and intangible. The next instant, Blithedale looked vague, as
if it were at a distance both in time and space, and so shadowy, that a question
might be raised whether the whole affair had been anything more than the
thoughts of a speculative man. I had never before experienced a mood that so
robbed the actual world of its solidity. It nevertheless involved a charm, on
which - a devoted epicure of my own emotions - I resolved to pause, and enjoy
the moral sillabub until quite dissolved away.
    Whatever had been my taste for solitude and natural scenery, yet the thick,
foggy, stifled element of cities, the entangled life of many men together,
sordid as it was, and empty of the beautiful, took quite as strenuous a hold
upon my mind. I felt as if there could never be enough of it. Each
characteristic sound was too suggestive to be passed over, unnoticed. Beneath
and around me, I heard the stir of the hotel; the loud voices of guests,
landlord, or barkeeper; steps echoing on the staircase; the ringing of a bell,
announcing arrivals or departures; the porter lumbering past my door with
baggage, which he thumped down upon the floors of neighbouring chambers; the
lighter feet of chamber-maids scudding along the passages; - it is ridiculous to
think what an interest they had for me. From the street, came the tumult of the
pavements, pervading the whole house with a continual uproar, so broad and deep
that only an unaccustomed ear would dwell upon it. A company of the
city-soldiery, with a full military band, marched in front of the hotel,
invisible to me, but stirringly audible both by its foot-tramp and the clangor
of its instruments. Once or twice, all the city-bells jangled together,
announcing a fire, which brought out the engine-men and their machines, like an
army with its artillery rushing to battle. Hour by hour, the clocks in many
steeples responded one to another. In some public hall, not a great way off,
there seemed to be an exhibition of a mechanical diorama; for, three times
during the day, occurred a repetition of obstreperous music, winding up with the
rattle of imitative cannon and musketry, and a huge final explosion. Then ensued
the applause of the spectators, with clap of hands, and thump of sticks, and the
energetic pounding of their heels. All this was just as valuable, in its way, as
the sighing of the breeze among the birch-trees, that overshadowed Eliot's
pulpit.
    Yet I felt a hesitation about plunging into this muddy tide of human
activity and pastime. It suited me better, for the present, to linger on the
brink, or hover in the air above it. So I spent the first day, and the greater
part of the second, in the laziest manner possible, in a rocking-chair, inhaling
the fragrance of a series of cigars, with my legs and slippered feet
horizontally disposed, and in my hand a novel, purchased of a railroad
bibliopolist. The gradual waste of my cigar accomplished itself with an easy and
gentle expenditure of breath. My book was of the dullest, yet had a sort of
sluggish flow, like that of a stream in which your boat is as often aground as
afloat. Had there been a more impetuous rush, a more absorbing passion of the
narrative, I should the sooner have struggled out of its uneasy current, and
have given myself up to the swell and subsidence of my thoughts. But, as it was,
the torpid life of the book served as an unobtrusive accompaniment to the life
within me and about me. At intervals, however, when its effect grew a little too
soporific - not for my patience, but for the possibility of keeping my eyes open
- I bestirred myself, started from the rocking-chair, and looked out of the
window.
    A gray sky; the weathercock of a steeple, that rose beyond the opposite
range of buildings, pointing from the eastward; a sprinkle of small,
spiteful-looking raindrops on the window-pane! In that ebb-tide of my energies,
had I thought of venturing abroad, these tokens would have checked the abortive
purpose.
    After several such visits to the window, I found myself getting pretty well
acquainted with that little portion of the backside of the universe which it
presented to my view. Over against the hotel and its adjacent houses, at the
distance of forty or fifty yards, was the rear of a range of buildings, which
appeared to be spacious, modern, and calculated for fashionable residences. The
interval between was apportioned into grass-plots, and here and there an apology
for a garden, pertaining severally to these dwellings. There were apple-trees,
and pear and peach-trees, too, the fruit on which looked singularly large,
luxuriant, and abundant; as well it might, in a situation so warm and sheltered,
and where the soil had doubtless been enriched to a more than natural fertility.
In two or three places, grape-vines clambered upon trellises, and bore clusters
already purple, and promising the richness of Malta or Madeira in their ripened
juice. The blighting winds of our rigid climate could not molest these trees and
vines; the sunshine, though descending late into this area, and too early
intercepted by the height of the surrounding houses, yet lay tropically there,
even when less than temperate in every other region. Dreary as was the day, the
scene was illuminated by not a few sparrows and other birds, which spread their
wings, and flitted and fluttered, and alighted now here, now there, and busily
scratched their food out of the wormy earth. Most of these winged people seemed
to have their domicile in a robust and healthy buttonwood-tree. It aspired
upward, high above the roof of the houses, and spread a dense head of foliage
half across the area.
    There was a cat - as there invariably is, in such places - who evidently
thought herself entitled to all the privileges of forest-life, in this close
heart of city-conventionalisms. I watched her creeping along the low, flat roofs
of the offices, descending a flight of wooden steps, gliding among the grass,
and besieging the buttonwood-tree, with murderous purpose against its feathered
citizens. But, after all, they were birds of city-breeding, and doubtless knew
how to guard themselves against the peculiar perils of their position.
    Bewitching to my fancy are all those nooks and crannies, where Nature, like
a stray partridge, hides her head among the long-established haunts of men! It
is likewise to be remarked, as a general rule, that there is far more of the
picturesque, more truth to native and characteristic tendencies, and vastly
greater suggestiveness, in the back view of a residence, whether in town or
country, than in its front The latter is always artificial; it is meant for the
world's eye, and is therefore a veil and a concealment. Realities keep in the
rear, and put forward an advance-guard of show and humbug. The posterior aspect
of any old farm-house, behind which a railroad has unexpectedly been opened, is
so different from that looking upon the immemorial highway, that the spectator
gets new ideas of rural life and individuality, in the puff or two of
steam-breath which shoots him past the premises. In a city, the distinction
between what is offered to the public, and what is kept for the family, is
certainly not less striking.
    But, to return to my window, at the back of the hotel. Together with a due
contemplation of the fruit-trees, the grape-vines, the buttonwood-tree, the cat,
the birds, and many other particulars, I failed not to study the row of
fashionable dwellings to which all these appertained. Here, it must be
confessed, there was a general sameness. From the upper-story to the first
floor, they were so much alike that I could only conceive of the inhabitants as
cut out on one identical pattern, like little wooden toy-people of German
manufacture. One long, united roof, with its thousands of slates glittering in
the rain, extended over the whole. After the distinctness of separate
characters, to which I had recently been accustomed, it perplexed and annoyed me
not to be able to resolve this combination of human interests into well-defined
elements. It seemed hardly worth while for more than one of those families to be
in existence; since they all had the same glimpse of the sky, all looked into
the same area, all received just their equal share of sunshine through the front
windows, and all listened to precisely the same noises of the street on which
they bordered. Men are so much alike, in their nature, that they grow
intolerable unless varied by their circumstances.
    Just about this time, a waiter entered my room. The truth was, I had rung
the bell and ordered a sherry-cobbler.
    »Can you tell me,« I inquired, »what families reside in any of those houses
opposite?«
    »The one right opposite is a rather stylish boarding-house,« said the
waiter. »Two of the gentlemen-boarders keep horses at the stable of our
establishment. They do things in very good style, sir, the people that live
there.«
    I might have found out nearly as much for myself, on examining the house a
little more closely. In one of the upper chambers, I saw a young man in a
dressing-gown, standing before the glass and brushing his hair, for a
quarter-of-an-hour together. He then spent an equal space of time in the
elaborate arrangement of his cravat, and finally made his appearance in a
dress-coat, which I suspected to be newly come from the tailor's, and now first
put on for a dinner-party. At a window of the next story below, two children,
prettily dressed, were looking out. By-and-by, a middle-aged gentleman came
softly behind them, kissed the little girl, and playfully pulled the little
boy's ear. It was a papa, no doubt, just come in from his counting-room or
office; and anon appeared mamma, stealing as softly behind papa, as he had
stolen behind the children, and laying her hand on his shoulder to surprise him.
Then followed a kiss between papa and mamma, but a noiseless one; for the
children did not turn their heads.
    »I bless God for these good folks!« thought I to myself. »I have not seen a
prettier bit of nature, in all my summer in the country, than they have shown me
here in a rather stylish boarding-house. I will pay them a little more
attention, by-and-by.«
    On the first floor, an iron balustrade ran along in front of the tall, and
spacious windows, evidently belonging to a back drawing-room; and, far into the
interior, through the arch of the sliding-doors, I could discern a gleam from
the windows of the front apartment. There were no signs of present occupancy in
this suite of rooms; the curtains being enveloped in a protective covering,
which allowed but a small portion of their crimson material to be seen. But two
housemaids were industriously at work; so that there was good prospect that the
boarding-house might not long suffer from the absence of its most expensive and
profitable guests. Meanwhile, until they should appear, I cast my eyes downward
to the lower regions. There, in the dusk that so early settles into such places,
I saw the red glow of the kitchen-range; the hot cook, or one of her
subordinates, with a ladle in her hand, came to draw a cool breath at the
back-door; as soon as she disappeared, an Irish man-servant, in a white jacket,
crept slyly forth and threw away the fragments of a china-dish, which
unquestionably he had just broken. Soon afterwards, a lady, showily dressed,
with a curling front of what must have been false hair, and reddish brown, I
suppose, in hue - though my remoteness allowed me only to guess at such
particulars - this respectable mistress of the boarding-house made a momentary
transit across the kitchen-window, and appeared no more. It was her final,
comprehensive glance, in order to make sure that soup, fish, and flesh, were in
a proper state of readiness, before the serving up of dinner.
    There was nothing else worth noticing about the house; unless it be, that,
on the peak of one of the dormer-windows, which opened out of the roof, sat a
dove, looking very dreary and forlorn; insomuch that I wondered why she chose to
sit there, in the chilly rain, while her kindred were doubtless nestling in a
warm and comfortable dove-cote. All at once, this dove spread her wings, and
launching herself in the air, came flying so straight across the intervening
space, that I fully expected her to alight directly on my window-sill. In the
latter part of her course, however, she swerved aside, flew upward, and
vanished, as did likewise the slight, fantastic pathos with which I had invested
her.
 

                           XVIII. The Boarding-House

The next day, as soon as I thought of looking again towards the opposite house,
there sat the dove again, on the peak of the same dormer-window!
    It was by no means an early hour; for, the preceding evening, I had
ultimately mustered enterprise enough to visit the theatre, had gone late to
bed, and slept beyond all limit, in my remoteness from Silas Foster's awakening
horn. Dreams had tormented me, throughout the night. The train of thoughts
which, for months past, had worn a track through my mind, and to escape which
was one of my chief objects in leaving Blithedale, kept treading remorselessly
to-and-fro, in their old footsteps, while slumber left me impotent to regulate
them. It was not till I had quitted my three friends that they first began to
encroach upon my dreams. In those of the last night, Hollingsworth and Zenobia,
standing on either side of my bed, had bent across it to exchange a kiss of
passion. Priscilla, beholding this - for she seemed to be peeping in at the
chamber-window - had melted gradually away, and left only the sadness of her
expression in my heart. There it still lingered, after I awoke; one of those
unreasonable sadnesses that you know not how to deal with, because it involves
nothing for common-sense to clutch.
    It was a gray and dripping forenoon; gloomy enough in town, and still
gloomier in the haunts to which my recollections persisted in transporting me.
For, in spite of my efforts to think of something else, I thought how the gusty
rain was drifting over the slopes and valleys of our farm; how wet must be the
foliage that overshadowed the pulpit-rock; how cheerless, in such a day, my
hermitage - the tree-solitude of my owl-like humors - in the vine-encircled
heart of the tall pine! It was a phase of home-sickness. I had wrenched myself
too suddenly out of an accustomed sphere. There was no choice now, but to bear
the pang of whatever heart-strings were snapt asunder, and that illusive torment
(like the ache of a limb long ago cut off) by which a past mode of life prolongs
itself into the succeeding one. I was full of idle and shapeless regrets. The
thought impressed itself upon me, that I had left duties unperformed. With the
power, perhaps, to act in the place of destiny, and avert misfortune from my
friends, I had resigned them to their fate. That cold tendency, between instinct
and intellect, which made me pry with a speculative interest into people's
passions and impulses, appeared to have gone far towards unhumanizing my heart.
    But a man cannot always decide for himself whether his own heart is cold or
warm. It now impresses me, that, if I erred at all, in regard to Hollingsworth,
Zenobia, and Priscilla, it was through too much sympathy, rather than too
little.
    To escape the irksomeness of these meditations, I resumed my post at the
window. At first sight, there was nothing new to be noticed. The general aspect
of affairs was the same as yesterday, except that the more decided inclemency of
to-day had driven the sparrows to shelter, and kept the cat within doors,
whence, however, she soon emerged, pursued by the cook, and with what looked
like the better half of a roast chicken in her mouth. The young man in the
dress-coat was invisible; the two children, in the story below, seemed to be
romping about the room, under the superintendence of a nursery-maid. The damask
curtains of the drawing-room, on the first floor, were now fully displayed,
festooned gracefully from top to bottom of the windows, which extended from the
ceiling to the carpet. A narrower window, at the left of the drawing-room, gave
light to what was probably a small boudoir, within which I caught the faintest
imaginable glimpse of a girl's figure, in airy drapery. Her arm was in regular
movement, as if she were busy with her German worsted, or some other such pretty
and unprofitable handiwork.
    While intent upon making out this girlish shape, I became sensible that a
figure had appeared at one of the windows of the drawing-room. There was a
presentiment in my mind; or perhaps my first glance, imperfect and sidelong as
it was, had sufficed to convey subtle information of the truth. At any rate, it
was with no positive surprise, but as if I had all along expected the incident,
that, directing my eyes thitherward, I beheld - like a full-length picture, in
the space between the heavy festoons of the window-curtains - no other than
Zenobia! At the same instant, my thoughts made sure of the identity of the
figure in the boudoir. It could only be Priscilla.
    Zenobia was attired, not in the almost rustic costume which she had
heretofore worn, but in a fashionable morning-dress. There was, nevertheless,
one familiar point. She had, as usual, a flower in her hair, brilliant, and of a
rare variety, else it had not been Zenobia. After a brief pause at the window,
she turned away, exemplifying, in the few steps that removed her out of sight,
that noble and beautiful motion which characterized her as much as any other
personal charm. Not one woman in a thousand could move so admirably as Zenobia.
Many women can sit gracefully; some can stand gracefully; and a few, perhaps,
can assume a series of graceful positions. But natural movement is the result
and expression of the whole being, and cannot be well and nobly performed,
unless responsive to something in the character. I often used to think that
music - light and airy, wild and passionate, or the full harmony of stately
marches, in accordance with her varying mood - should have attended Zenobia's
footsteps.
    I waited for her re-appearance. It was one peculiarity, distinguishing
Zenobia from most of her sex, that she needed for her moral well-being, and
never would forego, a large amount of physical exercise. At Blithedale, no
inclemency of sky or muddiness of earth had ever impeded her daily walks. Here,
in town, she probably preferred to tread the extent of the two drawing-rooms,
and measure out the miles by spaces of forty feet, rather than bedraggle her
skirts over the sloppy pavements. Accordingly, in about the time requisite to
pass through the arch of the sliding-doors to the front window, and to return
upon her steps, there she stood again, between the festoons of the crimson
curtains. But another personage was now added to the scene. Behind Zenobia
appeared that face which I had first encountered in the wood-path; the man who
had passed, side by side with her, in such mysterious familiarity and
estrangement, beneath my vine-curtained hermitage in the tall pine-tree. It was
Westervelt. And though he was looking closely over her shoulder, it still seemed
to me, as on the former occasion, that Zenobia repelled him - that, perchance,
they mutually repelled each other - by some incompatibility of their spheres.
    This impression, however, might have been altogether the result of fancy and
prejudice, in me. The distance was so great as to obliterate any play of
feature, by which I might otherwise have been made a partaker of their counsels.
    There now needed only Hollingsworth and old Moodie to complete the knot of
characters, whom a real intricacy of events, greatly assisted by my method of
insulating them from other relations, had kept so long upon my mental stage, as
actors in a drama. In itself, perhaps, it was no very remarkable event, that
they should thus come across me, at the moment when I imagined myself free.
Zenobia, as I well knew, had retained an establishment in town, and had not
unfrequently withdrawn herself from Blithedale, during brief intervals, on one
of which occasions she had taken Priscilla along with her. Nevertheless, there
seemed something fatal in the coincidence that had borne me to this one spot, of
all others in a great city, and transfixed me there, and compelled me again to
waste my already wearied sympathies on affairs which were none of mine, and
persons who cared little for me. It irritated my nerves; it affected me with a
kind of heart-sickness. After the effort which it cost me to fling them off -
after consummating my escape, as I thought, from these goblins of flesh and
blood, and pausing to revive myself with a breath or two of an atmosphere in
which they should have no share - it was a positive despair, to find the same
figures arraying themselves before me, and presenting their old problem in a
shape that made it more insoluble than ever.
    I began to long for a catastrophe. If the noble temper of Hollingsworth's
soul were doomed to be utterly corrupted by the too powerful purpose, which had
grown out of what was noblest in him; if the rich and generous qualities of
Zenobia's womanhood might not save her; if Priscilla must perish by her
tenderness and faith, so simple and so devout; - then be it so! Let it all come!
As for me, I would look on, as it seemed my part to do, understandingly, if my
intellect could fathom the meaning and the moral, and, at all events, reverently
and sadly. The curtain fallen, I would pass onward with my poor individual life,
which was now attenuated of much of its proper substance, and diffused among
many alien interests.
    Meanwhile, Zenobia and her companion had retreated from the window. Then
followed an interval, during which I directed my eyes towards the figure in the
boudoir. Most certainly it was Priscilla, although dressed with a novel and
fanciful elegance. The vague perception of it, as viewed so far off, impressed
me as if she had suddenly passed out of a chrysalis state and put forth wings.
Her hands were not now in motion. She had dropped her work, and sat with her head
thrown back, in the same attitude that I had seen several times before, when she
seemed to be listening to an imperfectly distinguished sound.
    Again the two figures in the drawing-room became visible. They were now a
little withdrawn from the window, face to face, and, as I could see by Zenobia's
emphatic gestures, were discussing some subject in which she, at least, felt a
passionate concern. By-and-by, she broke away, and vanished beyond my ken.
Westervelt approached the window, and leaned his forehead against a pane of
glass, displaying the sort of smile on his handsome features which, when I
before met him, had let me into the secret of his gold-bordered teeth. Every
human being, when given over to the Devil, is sure to have the wizard mark upon
him, in one form or another. I fancied that this smile, with its peculiar
revelation, was the Devil's signet on the Professor.
    This man, as I had soon reason to know, was endowed with a cat-like
circumspection; and though precisely the most unspiritual quality in the world,
it was almost as effective as spiritual insight, in making him acquainted with
whatever it suited him to discover. He now proved it, considerably to my
discomfiture, by detecting and recognizing me, at my post of observation.
Perhaps I ought to have blushed at being caught in such an evident scrutiny of
Professor Westervelt and his affairs. Perhaps I did blush. Be that as it might,
I retained presence of mind enough not to make my position yet more irksome, by
the poltroonery of drawing back.
    Westervelt looked into the depths of the drawing-room, and beckoned.
Immediately afterwards, Zenobia appeared at the window, with colour much
heightened, and eyes which, as my conscience whispered me, were shooting bright
arrows, barbed with scorn, across the intervening space, directed full at my
sensibilities as a gentleman. If the truth must be told, far as her flight-shot
was, those arrows hit the mark. She signified her recognition of me by a gesture
with her head and hand, comprising at once a salutation and dismissal. The next
moment, she administered one of those pitiless rebukes which a woman always has
at hand, ready for an offence, (and which she so seldom spares, on due
occasion,) by letting down a white linen curtain between the festoons of the
damask ones. It fell like the drop-curtain of a theatre, in the interval between
the acts.
    Priscilla had disappeared from the boudoir. But the dove still kept her
desolate perch, on the peak of the attic-window.
 

                          XIX. Zenobia's Drawing-Room

The remainder of the day, so far as I was concerned, was spent in meditating on
these recent incidents. I contrived, and alternately rejected, innumerable
methods of accounting for the presence of Zenobia and Priscilla, and the
connection of Westervelt with both. It must be owned, too, that I had a keen,
revengeful sense of the insult inflicted by Zenobia's scornful recognition, and
more particularly by her letting down the curtain; as if such were the proper
barrier to be interposed between a character like hers, and a perceptive faculty
like mine. For, was mine a mere vulgar curiosity? Zenobia should have known me
better than to suppose it. She should have been able to appreciate that quality
of the intellect and the heart, which impelled me (often against my own will,
and to the detriment of my own comfort) to live in other lives, and to endeavour
- by generous sympathies, by delicate intuitions, by taking note of things too
slight for record, and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with
the companions whom God assigned me - to learn the secret which was hidden even
from themselves.
    Of all possible observers, methought, a woman, like Zenobia, and a man, like
Hollingsworth, should have selected me. And, now, when the event has long been
past, I retain the same opinion of my fitness for the office. True; I might have
condemned them. Had I been judge, as well as witness, my sentence might have
been stern as that of Destiny itself. But, still, no trait of original nobility
of character; no struggle against temptation; no iron necessity of will, on the
one hand, nor extenuating circumstance to be derived from passion and despair,
on the other; no remorse that might co-exist with error, even if powerless to
prevent it; no proud repentance, that should claim retribution as a meed - would
go unappreciated. True, again, I might give my full assent to the punishment
which was sure to follow. But it would be given mournfully, and with
undiminished love. And, after all was finished, I would come, as if to gather up
the white ashes of those who had perished at the stake, and to tell the world -
the wrong being now atoned for - how much had perished there, which it had never
yet known how to praise.
    I sat in my rocking-chair, too far withdrawn from the window to expose
myself to another rebuke, like that already inflicted. My eyes still wandered
towards the opposite house, but without effecting any new discoveries. Late in
the afternoon, the weathercock on the church-spire indicated a change of wind;
the sun shone dimly out, as if the golden wine of its beams were mingled
half-and-half with water. Nevertheless, they kindled up the whole range of
edifices, threw a glow over the windows, glistened on the wet roofs, and, slowly
withdrawing upward, perched upon the chimney-tops; thence they took a higher
flight, and lingered an instant on the tip of the spire, making it the final
point of more cheerful light in the whole sombre scene. The next moment, it was
all gone. The twilight fell into the area like a shower of dusky snow; and
before it was quite dark, the gong of the hotel summoned me to tea.
    When I returned to my chamber, the glow of an astral lamp was penetrating
mistily through the white curtain of Zenobia's drawing-room. The shadow of a
passing figure was now-and-then cast upon this medium, but with too vague an
outline for even my adventurous conjectures to read the hieroglyphic that it
presented.
    All at once, it occurred to me how very absurd was my behaviour, in thus
tormenting myself with crazy hypotheses as to what was going on within that
drawing-room, when it was at my option to be personally present there. My
relations with Zenobia, as yet unchanged - as a familiar friend, and associated
in the same life-long enterprise - gave me the right, and made it no more than
kindly courtesy demanded, to call on her. Nothing, except our habitual
independence of conventional rules, at Blithedale, could have kept me from
sooner recognizing this duty. At all events, it should now be performed.
    In compliance with this sudden impulse, I soon found myself actually within
the house, the rear of which, for two days past, I had been so sedulously
watching. A servant took my card, and immediately returning, ushered me
up-stairs. On the way, I heard a rich, and, as it were, triumphant burst of
music from a piano, in which I felt Zenobia's character, although heretofore I
had known nothing of her skill upon the instrument. Two or three canary-birds,
excited by this gush of sound, sang piercingly, and did their utmost to produce
a kindred melody. A bright illumination streamed through the door of the front
drawing-room; and I had barely stepped across the threshold before Zenobia came
forward to meet me, laughing, and with an extended hand.
    »Ah, Mr. Coverdale,« said she, still smiling, but, as I thought, with a good
deal of scornful anger underneath, »it has gratified me to see the interest
which you continue to take in my affairs! I have long recognized you as a sort
of transcendental Yankee, with all the native propensity of your countrymen to
investigate matters that come within their range, but rendered almost poetical,
in your case, by the refined methods which you adopt for its gratification.
After all, it was an unjustifiable stroke, on my part - was it not? - to let
down the window-curtain!«
    »I cannot call it a very wise one,« returned I, with a secret bitterness
which, no doubt, Zenobia appreciated. »It is really impossible to hide anything,
in this world, to say nothing of the next. All that we ought to ask, therefore,
is, that the witnesses of our conduct, and the speculators on our motives,
should be capable of taking the highest view which the circumstances of the case
may admit. So much being secured, I, for one, would be most happy in feeling
myself followed, everywhere, by an indefatigable human sympathy.«
    »We must trust for intelligent sympathy to our guardian angels, if any there
be,« said Zenobia. »As long as the only spectator of my poor tragedy is a young
man, at the window of his hotel, I must still claim the liberty to drop the
curtain.«
    While this passed, as Zenobia's hand was extended, I had applied the very
slightest touch of my fingers to her own. In spite of an external freedom, her
manner made me sensible that we stood upon no real terms of confidence. The
thought came sadly across me, how great was the contrast betwixt this interview
and our first meeting. Then, in the warm light of the country fireside, Zenobia
had greeted me cheerily and hopefully, with a full sisterly grasp of the hand,
conveying as much kindness in it as other women could have evinced by the
pressure of both arms around my neck, or by yielding a cheek to the brotherly
salute. The difference was as complete as between her appearance, at that time -
so simply attired, and with only the one superb flower in her hair - and now,
when her beauty was set off by all that dress and ornament could do for it. And
they did much. Not, indeed, that they created, or added anything to what Nature
had lavishly done for Zenobia. But, those costly robes which she had on, those
flaming jewels on her neck, served as lamps to display the personal advantages
which required nothing less than such an illumination, to be fully seen. Even
her characteristic flower, though it seemed to be still there, had undergone a
cold and bright transfiguration; it was a flower exquisitely imitated in
jeweller's work, and imparting the last touch that transformed Zenobia into a
work of art.
    »I scarcely feel,« I could not forbear saying, »as if we had ever met
before. How many years ago it seems, since we last sat beneath Eliot's pulpit,
with Hollingsworth extended on the fallen leaves, and Priscilla at his feet! Can
it be, Zenobia, that you ever really numbered yourself with our little band of
earnest, thoughtful, philanthropic labourers?«
    »Those ideas have their time and place,« she answered, coldly. »But, I
fancy, it must be a very circumscribed mind that can find room for no others.«
    Her manner bewildered me. Literally, moreover, I was dazzled by the
brilliancy of the room. A chandelier hung down in the centre, glowing with I
know not how many lights; there were separate lamps, also, on two or three
tables, and on marble brackets, adding their white radiance to that of the
chandelier. The furniture was exceedingly rich. Fresh from our old farm-house,
with its homely board and benches in the dining-room, and a few wicker-chairs in
the best parlour, it struck me that here was the fulfilment of every fantasy of
an imagination, revelling in various methods of costly self-indulgence and
splendid ease. Pictures, marbles, vases; in brief, more shapes of luxury than
there could be any object in enumerating, except for an auctioneer's
advertisement - and the whole repeated and doubled by the reflection of a great
mirror, which showed me Zenobia's proud figure, likewise, and my own. It cost
me, I acknowledge, a bitter sense of shame, to perceive in myself a positive
effort to bear up against the effect which Zenobia sought to impose on me. I
reasoned against her, in my secret mind, and strove so to keep my footing. In
the gorgeousness with which she had surrounded herself - in the redundance of
personal ornament, which the largeness of her physical nature and the rich type
of her beauty caused to seem so suitable - I malevolently beheld the true
character of the woman, passionate, luxurious, lacking simplicity, not deeply
refined, incapable of pure and perfect taste.
    But, the next instant, she was too powerful for all my opposing struggles. I
saw how fit it was that she should make herself as gorgeous as she pleased, and
should do a thousand things that would have been ridiculous in the poor, thin,
weakly characters of other women. To this day, however, I hardly know whether I
then beheld Zenobia in her truest attitude, or whether that were the truer one
in which she had presented herself at Blithedale. In both, there was something
like the illusion which a great actress flings around her.
    »Have you given up Blithedale forever?« I inquired.
    »Why should you think so?« asked she.
    »I cannot tell,« answered I; »except that it appears all like a dream that
we were ever there together.«
    »It is not so to me,« said Zenobia. »I should think it a poor and meagre
nature, that is capable of but one set of forms, and must convert all the past
into a dream, merely because the present happens to be unlike it. Why should we
be content with our homely life of a few months past, to the exclusion of all
other modes? It was good; but there are other lives as good or better. Not, you
will understand, that I condemn those who give themselves up to it more entirely
than I, for myself, should deem it wise to do.«
    It irritated me, this self-complacent, condescending, qualified approval and
criticism of a system to which many individuals - perhaps as highly endowed as
our gorgeous Zenobia - had contributed their all of earthly endeavour, and their
loftiest aspirations. I determined to make proof if there were any spell that
would exorcise her out of the part which she seemed to be acting. She should be
compelled to give me a glimpse of something true; some nature, some passion, no
matter whether right or wrong, provided it were real.
    »Your allusion to that class of circumscribed characters, who can live only
in one mode of life,« remarked I, coolly, »reminds me of our poor friend
Hollingsworth. Possibly, he was in your thoughts, when you spoke thus. Poor
fellow! It is a pity that, by the fault of a narrow education, he should have so
completely immolated himself to that one idea of his; especially as the
slightest modicum of common-sense would teach him its utter impracticability.
Now that I have returned into the world, and can look at his project from a
distance, it requires quite all my real regard for this respectable and
well-intentioned man to prevent me laughing at him - as, I find, society at
large does!«
    Zenobia's eyes darted lightning; her cheeks flushed; the vividness of her
expression was like the effect of a powerful light, flaming up suddenly within
her. My experiment had fully succeeded. She had shown me the true flesh and
blood of her heart, by thus involuntarily resenting my slight, pitying,
half-kind, half-scornful mention of the man who was all in all with her. She
herself, probably, felt this; for it was hardly a moment before she
tranquillized her uneven breath, and seemed as proud and self-possessed as ever.
    »I rather imagine,« said she, quietly, »that your appreciation falls short
of Mr. Hollingsworth's just claims. Blind enthusiasm, absorption in one idea, I
grant, is generally ridiculous, and must be fatal to the respectability of an
ordinary man; it requires a very high and powerful character, to make it
otherwise. But a great man - as, perhaps, you do not know - attains his normal
condition only through the inspiration of one great idea. As a friend of Mr.
Hollingsworth, and, at the same time, a calm observer, I must tell you that he
seems to me such a man. But you are very pardonable for fancying him ridiculous.
Doubtless, he is so - to you! There can be no truer test of the noble and
heroic, in any individual, than the degree in which he possesses the faculty of
distinguishing heroism from absurdity.«
    I dared make no retort to Zenobia's concluding apothegm. In truth, I admired
her fidelity. It gave me a new sense of Hollingsworth's native power, to
discover that his influence was no less potent with this beautiful woman, here,
in the midst of artificial life, than it had been, at the foot of the gray rock,
and among the wild birch-trees of the wood-path, when she so passionately
pressed his hand against her heart. The great, rude, shaggy, swarthy man! And
Zenobia loved him!
    »Did you bring Priscilla with you?« I resumed. »Do you know, I have
sometimes fancied it not quite safe, considering the susceptibility of her
temperament, that she should be so constantly within the sphere of a man like
Hollingsworth? Such tender and delicate natures, among your sex, have often, I
believe, a very adequate appreciation of the heroic element in men. But, then,
again, I should suppose them as likely as any other women to make a reciprocal
impression. Hollingsworth could hardly give his affections to a person capable
of taking an independent stand, but only to one whom he might absorb into
himself. He has certainly shown great tenderness for Priscilla.«
    Zenobia had turned aside. But I caught the reflection of her face in the
mirror, and saw that it was very pale; - as pale, in her rich attire, as if a
shroud were round her.
    »Priscilla is here,« said she, her voice a little lower than usual. »Have
not you learnt as much, from your chamber-window? Would you like to see her?«
    She made a step or two into the back drawing-room, and called: -
    »Priscilla! Dear Priscilla!«
 

                                XX. They Vanish

Priscilla immediately answered the summons, and made her appearance through the
door of the boudoir. I had conceived the idea - which I now recognized as a very
foolish one - that Zenobia would have taken measures to debar me from an
interview with this girl, between whom and herself there was so utter an
opposition of their dearest interests, that, on one part or the other, a great
grief, if not likewise a great wrong, seemed a matter of necessity. But, as
Priscilla was only a leaf, floating on the dark current of events, without
influencing them by her own choice or plan - as she probably guessed not whither
the stream was bearing her, nor perhaps even felt its inevitable movement -
there could be no peril of her communicating to me any intelligence with regard
to Zenobia's purposes.
    On perceiving me, she came forward with great quietude of manner; and when I
held out my hand, her own moved slightly towards it, as if attracted by a feeble
degree of magnetism.
    »I am glad to see you, my dear Priscilla,« said I, still holding her hand.
»But everything that I meet with, now-a-days, makes me wonder whether I am
awake. You, especially, have always seemed like a figure in a dream - and now
more than ever.«
    »Oh, there is substance in these fingers of mine!« she answered, giving my
hand the faintest possible pressure, and then taking away her own. »Why do you
call me a dream? Zenobia is much more like one than I; she is so very, very
beautiful! And, I suppose,« added Priscilla, as if thinking aloud, »everybody
sees it, as I do.«
    But, for my part, it was Priscilla's beauty, not Zenobia's, of which I was
thinking, at that moment. She was a person who could be quite obliterated, so
far as beauty went, by anything unsuitable in her attire; her charm was not
positive and material enough to bear up against a mistaken choice of colour, for
instance, or fashion. It was safest, in her case, to attempt no art of dress;
for it demanded the most perfect taste, or else the happiest accident in the
world, to give her precisely the adornment which she needed. She was now dressed
in pure white, set off with some kind of a gauzy fabric, which - as I bring up
her figure in my memory, with a faint gleam on her shadowy hair, and her dark
eyes bent shyly on mine, through all the vanished years - seems to be floating
about her like a mist. I wondered what Zenobia meant by evolving so much
loveliness out of this poor girl. It was what few women could afford to do; for,
as I looked from one to the other, the sheen and splendour of Zenobia's presence
took nothing from Priscilla's softer spell, if it might not rather be thought to
add to it.
    »What do you think of her?« asked Zenobia.
    I could not understand the look of melancholy kindness with which Zenobia
regarded her. She advanced a step, and beckoning Priscilla near her, kissed her
cheek; then, with a slight gesture of repulse, she moved to the other side of
the room. I followed.
    »She is a wonderful creature,« I said. »Ever since she came among us, I have
been dimly sensible of just this charm which you have brought out. But it was
never absolutely visible till now. She is as lovely as a flower!«
    »Well; say so, if you like,« answered Zenobia. »You are a poet - at least,
as poets go, now-a-days - and must be allowed to make an opera-glass of your
imagination, when you look at women. I wonder, in such Arcadian freedom of
falling in love as we have lately enjoyed, it never occurred to you to fall in
love with Priscilla! In society, indeed, a genuine American never dreams of
stepping across the inappreciable air-line which separates one class from
another. But what was rank to the colonists of Blithedale?«
    »There were other reasons,« I replied, »why I should have demonstrated
myself an ass, had I fallen in love with Priscilla. By-the-by, has Hollingsworth
ever seen her in this dress?«
    »Why do you bring up his name, at every turn?« asked Zenobia, in an
undertone, and with a malign look which wandered from my face to Priscilla's.
»You know not what you do! It is dangerous, sir, believe me, to tamper thus with
earnest human passions, out of your own mere idleness, and for your sport. I
will endure it no longer! Take care that it does not happen again! I warn you!«
    »You partly wrong me, if not wholly,« I responded. »It is an uncertain sense
of some duty to perform, that brings my thoughts, and therefore my words,
continually to that one point.«
    »Oh, this stale excuse of duty!« said Zenobia, in a whisper so full of scorn
that it penetrated me like the hiss of a serpent. »I have often heard it before,
from those who sought to interfere with me, and I know precisely what it
signifies. Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a
cold-blooded criticism, founded on a shallow interpretation of half-perceptions;
a monstrous scepticism in regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's
own; a most irreverent propensity to thrust Providence aside, and substitute
one's self in its awful place - out of these, and other motives as miserable as
these, comes your idea of duty! But beware, sir! With all your fancied
acuteness, you step blindfold into these affairs. For any mischief that may
follow your interference, I hold you responsible!«
    It was evident, that, with but a little further provocation, the lioness
would turn to bay; if, indeed, such were not her attitude, already. I bowed,
and, not very well knowing what else to do, was about to withdraw. But, glancing
again towards Priscilla, who had retreated into a corner, there fell upon my
heart an intolerable burden of despondency, the purport of which I could not
tell, but only felt it to bear reference to her. I approached her, and held out
my hand; a gesture, however, to which she made no response. It was always one of
her peculiarities that she seemed to shrink from even the most friendly touch,
unless it were Zenobia's or Hollingsworth's. Zenobia, all this while, stood
watching us, but with a careless expression, as if it mattered very little what
might pass.
    »Priscilla,« I inquired, lowering my voice, »when do you go back to
Blithedale?«
    »Whenever they please to take me,« said she.
    »Did you come away of your own free-will?« I asked.
    »I am blown about like a leaf,« she replied. »I never have any free-will.«
    »Does Hollingsworth know that you are here?« said I.
    »He bade me come,« answered Priscilla.
    She looked at me, I thought, with an air of surprise, as if the idea were
incomprehensible, that she should have taken this step without his agency.
    »What a gripe this man has laid upon her whole being!« muttered I, between
my teeth. »Well; as Zenobia so kindly intimates, I have no more business here. I
wash my hands of it all. On Hollingsworth's head be the consequences!
Priscilla,« I added, aloud, »I know not that ever we may meet again. Farewell!«
    As I spoke the word, a carriage had rumbled along the street, and stopped
before the house. The door-bell rang, and steps were immediately afterwards
heard on the staircase. Zenobia had thrown a shawl over her dress.
    »Mr. Coverdale,« said she, with cool courtesy, »you will perhaps excuse us.
We have an engagement, and are going out.«
    »Whither?« I demanded.
    »Is not that a little more than you are entitled to inquire?« said she, with
a smile. »At all events, it does not suit me to tell you.«
    The door of the drawing-room opened, and Westervelt appeared. I observed
that he was elaborately dressed, as if for some grand entertainment. My dislike
for this man was infinite. At that moment, it amounted to nothing less than a
creeping of the flesh, as when, feeling about in a dark place, one touches
something cold and slimy, and questions what the secret hatefulness may be. And,
still, I could not but acknowledge, that, for personal beauty, for polish of
manner, for all that externally befits a gentleman, there was hardly another
like him. After bowing to Zenobia, and graciously saluting Priscilla in her
corner, he recognized me by a slight, but courteous inclination.
    »Come, Priscilla,« said Zenobia, »it is time. Mr. Coverdale, good evening!«
    As Priscilla moved slowly forward, I met her in the middle of the
drawing-room.
    »Priscilla,« said I, in the hearing of them all, »do you know whither you
are going?«
    »I do not know,« she answered.
    »Is it wise to go? - and is it your choice to go?« I asked. »If not - I am
your friend, and Hollingsworth's friend - tell me so, at once!«
    »Possibly,« observed Westervelt, smiling, »Priscilla sees in me an older
friend than either Mr. Coverdale or Mr. Hollingsworth. I shall willingly leave
the matter at her option.«
    While thus speaking, he made a gesture of kindly invitation; and Priscilla
passed me, with the gliding movement of a sprite, and took his offered arm. He
offered the other to Zenobia. But she turned her proud and beautiful face upon
him, with a look which - judging from what I caught of it in profile - would
undoubtedly have smitten the man dead, had he possessed any heart, or had this
glance attained to it. It seemed to rebound, however, from his courteous visage,
like an arrow from polished steel. They all three descended the stairs; and when
I likewise reached the street-door, the carriage was already rolling away.
 

                            XXI. An Old Acquaintance

Thus excluded from everybody's confidence, and attaining no further, by my most
earnest study, than to an uncertain sense of something hidden from me, it would
appear reasonable that I should have flung off all these alien perplexities.
Obviously, my best course was, to betake myself to new scenes. Here, I was only
an intruder. Elsewhere, there might be circumstances in which I could establish
a personal interest, and people who would respond, with a portion of their
sympathies, for so much as I should bestow of mine.
    Nevertheless, there occurred to me one other thing to be done. Remembering
old Moodie, and his relationship with Priscilla, I determined to seek an
interview, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the knot of affairs was as
inextricable, on that side, as I found it on all others. Being tolerably well
acquainted with the old man's haunts, I went, the next day, to the saloon of a
certain establishment about which he often lurked. It was a reputable place
enough, affording good entertainment in the way of meat, drink, and fumigation;
and there, in my young and idle days and nights, when I was neither nice nor
wise, I had often amused myself with watching the staid humors and sober
jollities of the thirsty souls around me.
    At my first entrance, old Moodie was not there. The more patiently to await
him, I lighted a cigar, and establishing myself in a corner, took a quiet, and,
by sympathy, a boozy kind of pleasure in the customary life that was going
forward. Human nature, in my opinion, has a naughty instinct that approves of
wine, at least, if not of stronger liquor. The temperance-men may preach till
doom's day; and still this cold and barren world will look warmer, kindlier,
mellower, through the medium of a toper's glass; nor can they, with all their
efforts, really spill his draught upon the floor, until some hitherto
unthought-of discovery shall supply him with a truer element of joy. The general
atmosphere of life must first be rendered so inspiriting that he will not need
his delirious solace. The custom of tippling has its defensible side, as well as
any other question. But these good people snatch at the old, time-honoured
demijohn, and offer nothing - either sensual or moral - nothing whatever to
supply its place; and human life, as it goes with a multitude of men, will not
endure so great a vacuum as would be left by the withdrawal of that big-bellied
convexity. The space, which it now occupies, must somehow or other be filled up.
As for the rich, it would be little matter if a blight fell upon their
vineyards; but the poor man - whose only glimpse of a better state is through
the muddy medium of his liquor - what is to be done for him? The reformers
should make their efforts positive, instead of negative; they must do away with
evil by substituting good.
    The saloon was fitted up with a good deal of taste. There were pictures on
the walls, and among them an oil-painting of a beef-steak, with such an
admirable show of juicy tenderness, that the beholder sighed to think it merely
visionary, and incapable of ever being put upon a gridiron. Another work of high
art was the lifelike representation of a noble sirloin; another, the
hind-quarters of a deer, retaining the hoofs and tawny fur; another, the head
and shoulders of a salmon; and, still more exquisitely finished, a brace of
canvass-back ducks, in which the mottled feathers were depicted with the
accuracy of a daguerreotype. Some very hungry painter, I suppose, had wrought
these subjects of still life, heightening his imagination with his appetite, and
earning, it is to be hoped, the privilege of a daily dinner off whichever of his
pictorial viands he liked best. Then there was a fine old cheese, in which you
could almost discern the mites; and some sardines, on a small plate, very richly
done, and looking as if oozy with the oil in which they had been smothered. All
these things were so perfectly imitated, that you seemed to have the genuine
article before you, and yet with an indescribable, ideal charm; it took away the
grossness from what was fleshiest and fattest, and thus helped the life of man,
even in its earthliest relations, to appear rich and noble, as well as warm,
cheerful, and substantial. There were pictures, too, of gallant revellers, those
of the old time, Flemish, apparently, with doublets and slashed sleeves,
drinking their wine out of fantastic, long-stemmed glasses; quaffing joyously,
quaffing forever, with inaudible laughter and song; while the champagne bubbled
immortally against their moustaches, or the purple tide of Burgundy ran
inexhaustibly down their throats.
    But, in an obscure corner of the saloon, there was a little picture -
excellently done, moreover - of a ragged, bloated, New England toper, stretched
out on a bench, in the heavy, apoplectic sleep of drunkenness. The death-in-life
was too well portrayed. You smelt the fumy liquor that had brought on this
syncope. Your only comfort lay in the forced reflection, that, real as he
looked, the poor caitiff was but imaginary, a bit of painted canvass, whom no
delirium tremens, nor so much as a retributive headache, awaited, on the morrow.
    By this time, it being past eleven o'clock, the two barkeepers of the saloon
were in pretty constant activity. One of these young men had a rare faculty in
the concoction of gincocktails. It was a spectacle to behold, how, with a
tumbler in each hand, he tossed the contents from one to the other. Never
conveying it awry, nor spilling the least drop, he compelled the frothy liquor,
as it seemed to me, to spout forth from one glass and descend into the other, in
a great parabolic curve, as well-defined and calculable as a planet's orbit. He
had a good forehead, with a particularly large development just above the
eyebrows; fine intellectual gifts, no doubt, which he had educated to this
profitable end; being famous for nothing but gin-cocktails, and commanding a
fair salary by his one accomplishment. These cocktails, and other artificial
combinations of liquor, (of which there were at least a score, though mostly, I
suspect, fantastic in their differences,) were much in favour with the younger
class of customers, who, at farthest, had only reached the second stage of
potatory life. The staunch, old soakers, on the other hand - men who, if put on
tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor, by way of blood - usually
confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water, gin, or West India rum; and,
oftentimes, they prefaced their dram with some medicinal remark as to the
wholesomeness and stomachic qualities of that particular drink. Two or three
appeared to have bottles of their own, behind the counter; and winking one red
eye to the barkeeper, he forthwith produced these choicest and peculiar
cordials, which it was a matter of great interest and favour, among their
acquaintances, to obtain a sip of.
    Agreeably to the Yankee habit, under whatever circumstances, the deportment
of all these good fellows, old or young, was decorous and thoroughly correct.
They grew only the more sober in their cups; there was no confused babble, nor
boisterous laughter. They sucked in the joyous fire of the decanters, and kept
it smouldering in their inmost recesses, with a bliss known only to the heart
which it warmed and comforted. Their eyes twinkled a little, to be sure; they
hemmed vigorously, after each glass, and laid a hand upon the pit of the
stomach, as if the pleasant titillation, there, was what constituted the
tangible part of their enjoyment. In that spot, unquestionably, and not in the
brain, was the acme of the whole affair. But the true purpose of their drinking
- and one that will induce men to drink, or do something equivalent, as long as
this weary world shall endure - was the renewed youth and vigour, the brisk,
cheerful sense of things present and to come, with which, for about a
quarter-of-an-hour, the dram permeated their systems. And when such
quarters-of-an-hour can be obtained in some mode less baneful to the great sum
of a man's life - but, nevertheless, with a little spice of impropriety, to give
it a wild flavour - we temperance-people may ring out our bells for victory!
    The prettiest object in the saloon was a tiny fountain, which threw up its
feathery jet, through the counter, and sparkled down again into an oval basin,
or lakelet, containing several gold-fishes. There was a bed of bright sand, at
the bottom, strewn with coral and rock-work; and the fishes went gleaming about,
now turning up the sheen of a golden side, and now vanishing into the shadows of
the water, like the fanciful thoughts that coquet with a poet in his dream.
Never before, I imagine, did a company of water-drinkers remain so entirely
uncontaminated by the bad example around them; nor could I help wondering that
it had not occurred to any freakish inebriate, to empty a glass of liquor into
their lakelet. What a delightful idea! Who would not be a fish, if he could
inhale jollity with the essential element of his existence!
    I had begun to despair of meeting old Moodie, when, all at once, I
recognized his hand and arm, protruding from behind a screen that was set up for
the accommodation of bashful topers. As a matter of course, he had one of
Priscilla's little purses, and was quietly insinuating it under the notice of a
person who stood near. This was always old Moodie's way. You hardly ever saw him
advancing towards you, but became aware of his proximity without being able to
guess how he had come thither. He glided about like a spirit, assuming
visibility close to your elbow, offering his petty trifles of merchandise,
remaining long enough for you to purchase, if so disposed, and then taking
himself off, between two breaths, while you happened to be thinking of something
else.
    By a sort of sympathetic impulse that often controlled me, in those more
impressible days of my life, I was induced to approach this old man in a mode as
undemonstrative as his own. Thus, when, according to his custom, he was probably
just about to vanish, he found me at his elbow.
    »Ah!« said he, with more emphasis than was usual with him. »It is Mr.
Coverdale!«
    »Yes, Mr. Moodie, your old acquaintance,« answered I. »It is some time now
since we ate our luncheon together, at Blithedale, and a good deal longer since
our little talk together, at the street-corner.«
    »That was a good while ago,« said the old man.
    And he seemed inclined to say not a word more. His existence looked so
colourless and torpid - so very faintly shadowed on the canvass of reality - that
I was half afraid lest he should altogether disappear, even while my eyes were
fixed full upon his figure. He was certainly the wretchedest old ghost in the
world, with his crazy hat, the dingy handkerchief about his throat, his suit of
threadbare gray, and especially that patch over his right eye, behind which he
always seemed to be hiding himself. There was one method, however, of bringing
him out into somewhat stronger relief. A glass of brandy would effect it.
Perhaps the gentler influence of a bottle of claret might do the same. Nor could
I think it a matter for the recording angel to write down against me, if - with
my painful consciousness of the frost in this old man's blood, and the positive
ice that had congealed about his heart - I should thaw him out, were it only for
an hour, with the summer warmth of a little wine. What else could possibly be
done for him? How else could he be imbued with energy enough to hope for a
happier state, hereafter? How else be inspirited to say his prayers? For there
are states of our spiritual system, when the throb of the soul's life is too
faint and weak to render us capable of religious aspiration.
    »Mr. Moodie,« said I, »shall we lunch together? And would you like to drink
a glass of wine?«
    His one eye gleamed. He bowed; and it impressed me that he grew to be more
of a man at once, either in anticipation of the wine, or as a grateful response
to my good-fellowship in offering it.
    »With pleasure,« he replied.
    The barkeeper, at my request, showed us into a private room, and, soon
afterwards, set some fried oysters and a bottle of claret on the table; and I
saw the old man glance curiously at the label of the bottle, as if to learn the
brand.
    »It should be good wine,« I remarked, »if it have any right to its label.«
    »You cannot suppose, sir,« said Moodie, with a sigh, »that a poor old
fellow, like me, knows any difference in wines.«
    And yet, in his way of handling the glass, in his preliminary snuff at the
aroma, in his first cautious sip of the wine, and the gustatory skill with which
he gave his palate the full advantage of it, it was impossible not to recognize
the connoisseur.
    »I fancy, Mr. Moodie,« said I, »you are a much better judge of wines than I
have yet learned to be. Tell me fairly - did you never drink it where the grape
grows?«
    »How should that have been, Mr. Coverdale?« answered old Moodie, shyly; but
then he took courage, as it were, and uttered a feeble little laugh. »The flavour
of this wine,« added he, »and its perfume, still more than its taste, makes me
remember that I was once a young man!«
    »I wish, Mr. Moodie,« suggested I - not that I greatly cared about it,
however, but was only anxious to draw him into some talk about Priscilla and
Zenobia - »I wish, while we sit over our wine, you would favour me with a few of
those youthful reminiscences.«
    »Ah,« said he, shaking his head, »they might interest you more than you
suppose. But I had better be silent, Mr. Coverdale. If this good wine-though
claret, I suppose, is not apt to play such a trick - but if it should make my
tongue run too freely, I could never look you in the face again.«
    »You never did look me in the face, Mr. Moodie,« I replied, »until this very
moment.«
    »Ah!« sighed old Moodie.
    It was wonderful, however, what an effect the mild grape-juice wrought upon
him. It was not in the wine, but in the associations which it seemed to bring
up. Instead of the mean, slouching, furtive, painfully depressed air of an old
city-vagabond, more like a gray kennel-rat than any other living thing, he began
to take the aspect of a decayed gentleman. Even his garments - especially after
I had myself quaffed a glass or two - looked less shabby than when we first sat
down. There was, by-and-by, a certain exuberance and elaborateness of gesture,
and manner, oddly in contrast with all that I had hitherto seen of him. Anon,
with hardly any impulse from me, old Moodie began to talk. His communications
referred exclusively to a long past and more fortunate period of his life, with
only a few unavoidable allusions to the circumstances that had reduced him to
his present state. But, having once got the clue, my subsequent researches
acquainted me with the main facts of the following narrative; although, in
writing it out, my pen has perhaps allowed itself a trifle of romantic and
legendary license, worthier of a small poet than of a grave biographer.
 

                                XXII. Fauntleroy

Five-and-twenty years ago, at the epoch of this story, there dwelt, in one of
the middle states, a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy; a man of wealth, and
magnificent tastes, and prodigal expenditure. His home might almost be styled a
palace; his habits, in the ordinary sense, princely. His whole being seemed to
have crystallized itself into an external splendour, wherewith he glittered in
the eyes of the world, and had no other life than upon this gaudy surface. He
had married a lovely woman, whose nature was deeper than his own. But his
affection for her, though it showed largely, was superficial, like all his other
manifestations and developments; he did not so truly keep this noble creature in
his heart, as wear her beauty for the most brilliant ornament of his outward
state. And there was born to him a child, a beautiful daughter, whom he took
from the beneficent hand of God with no just sense of her immortal value, but as
a man, already rich in gems, would receive another jewel. If he loved her, it
was because she shone.
    After Fauntleroy had thus spent a few empty years, corruscating continually
an unnatural light, the source of it - which was merely his gold - began to grow
more shallow, and finally became exhausted. He saw himself in imminent peril of
losing all that had heretofore distinguished him; and, conscious of no innate
worth to fall back upon, he recoiled from this calamity, with the instinct of a
soul shrinking from annihilation. To avoid it - wretched man! - or, rather, to
defer it, if but for a month, a day, or only to procure himself the life of a
few breaths more, amid the false glitter which was now less his own than ever -
he made himself guilty of a crime. It was just the sort of crime, growing out of
its artificial state, which society (unless it should change its entire
constitution for this man's unworthy sake) neither could nor ought to pardon.
More safely might it pardon murder. Fauntleroy's guilt was discovered. He fled;
his wife perished by the necessity of her innate nobleness, in its alliance with
a being so ignoble; and betwixt her mother's death and her father's ignominy,
his daughter was left worse than orphaned.
    There was no pursuit after Fauntleroy. His family-connections, who had great
wealth, made such arrangements with those whom he had attempted to wrong, as
secured him from the retribution that would have overtaken an unfriended
criminal. The wreck of his estate was divided among his creditors. His name, in
a very brief space, was forgotten by the multitude who had passed it so
diligently from mouth to mouth. Seldom, indeed, was it recalled, even by his
closest former intimates. Nor could it have been otherwise. The man had laid no
real touch on any mortal's heart. Being a mere image, an optical delusion,
created by the sunshine of prosperity, it was his law to vanish into the shadow
of the first intervening cloud. He seemed to leave no vacancy; a phenomenon
which, like many others that attended his brief career, went far to prove the
illusiveness of his existence.
    Not, however, that the physical substance of Fauntleroy had literally melted
into vapour. He had fled northward, to the New England metropolis, and had taken
up his abode, under another name, in a squalid street, or court, of the older
portion of the city. There he dwelt among poverty-stricken wretches, sinners,
and forlorn, good people, Irish, and whomsoever else were neediest. Many
families were clustered in each house together, above stairs and below, in the
little peaked garrets, and even in the dusky cellars. The house, where
Fauntleroy paid weekly rent for a chamber and a closet, had been a stately
habitation, in its day. An old colonial Governor had built it, and lived there,
long ago, and held his levees in a great room where now slept twenty Irish
bedfellows, and died in Fauntleroy's chamber, which his embroidered and
white-wigged ghost still haunted. Tattered hangings, a marble hearth, traversed
with many cracks and fissures, a richly-carved oaken mantel-piece, partly
hacked-away for kindling-stuff, a stuccoed ceiling, defaced with great,
unsightly patches of the naked laths; - such was the chamber's aspect, as if,
with its splinters and rags of dirty splendour, it were a kind of practical gibe
at this poor, ruined man of show.
    At first, and at irregular intervals, his relatives allowed Fauntleroy a
little pittance to sustain life; not from any love, perhaps, but lest poverty
should compel him, by new offences, to add more shame to that with which he had
already stained them. But he showed no tendency to further guilt. His character
appeared to have been radically changed (as, indeed, from its shallowness, it
well might) by his miserable fate; or, it may be, the traits now seen in him
were portions of the same character, presenting itself in another phase. Instead
of any longer seeking to live in the sight of the world, his impulse was to
shrink into the nearest obscurity, and to be unseen of men, were it possible,
even while standing before their eyes. He had no pride; it was all trodden in
the dust. No ostentation; for how could it survive, when there was nothing left
of Fauntleroy, save penury and shame! His very gait demonstrated that he would
gladly have faded out of view, and have crept about invisibly, for the sake of
sheltering himself from the irksomeness of a human glance. Hardly, it was
averred, within the memory of those who knew him now, had he the hardihood to
show his full front to the world. He skulked in corners, and crept about in a
sort of noonday twilight, making himself gray and misty, at all hours, with his
morbid intolerance of sunshine.
    In his torpid despair, however, he had done an act which that condition of
the spirit seems to prompt, almost as often as prosperity and hope. Fauntleroy
was again married. He had taken to wife a forlorn, meek-spirited, feeble young
woman, a seamstress, whom he found dwelling with her mother in a contiguous
chamber of the old gubernatorial residence. This poor phantom - as the beautiful
and noble companion of his former life had done - brought him a daughter. And
sometimes, as from one dream into another, Fauntleroy looked forth out of his
present grimy environment, into that past magnificence, and wondered whether the
grandee of yesterday or the pauper of to-day were real. But, in my mind, the one
and the other were alike impalpable. In truth, it was Fauntleroy's fatality to
behold whatever he touched dissolve. After a few years, his second wife (dim
shadow that she had always been) faded finally out of the world, and left
Fauntleroy to deal as he might with their pale and nervous child. And, by this
time, among his distant relatives - with whom he had grown a weary thought,
linked with contagious infamy, and which they were only too willing to get rid
of - he was himself supposed to be no more.
    The younger child, like his elder one, might be considered as the true
offspring of both parents, and as the reflection of their state. She was a
tremulous little creature, shrinking involuntarily from all mankind, but in
timidity, and no sour repugnance. There was a lack of human substance in her; it
seemed as if, were she to stand up in a sunbeam, it would pass right through her
figure, and trace out the cracked and dusty window-panes upon the naked floor.
But, nevertheless, the poor child had a heart; and from her mother's gentle
character, she had inherited a profound and still capacity of affection. And so
her life was one of love. She bestowed it partly on her father, but, in greater
part, on an idea.
    For Fauntleroy, as they sat by their cheerless fireside - which was no
fireside, in truth, but only a rusty stove - had often talked to the little girl
about his former wealth, the noble loveliness of his first wife, and the
beautiful child whom she had given him. Instead of the fairy tales, which other
parents tell, he told Priscilla this. And, out of the loneliness of her sad
little existence, Priscilla's love grew, and tended upward, and twined itself
perseveringly around this unseen sister; as a grape-vine might strive to clamber
out of a gloomy hollow among the rocks, and embrace a young tree, standing in
the sunny warmth above. It was almost like worship, both in its earnestness and
its humility; nor was it the less humble, though the more earnest, because
Priscilla could claim human kindred with the being whom she so devoutly loved.
As with worship, too, it gave her soul the refreshment of a purer atmosphere.
Save for this singular, this melancholy, and yet beautiful affection, the child
could hardly have lived; or, had she lived, with a heart shrunken for lack of
any sentiment to fill it, she must have yielded to the barren miseries of her
position, and have grown to womanhood, characterless and worthless. But, now,
amid all the sombre coarseness of her father's outward life, and of her own,
Priscilla had a higher and imaginative life within. Some faint gleam thereof was
often visible upon her face. It was as if, in her spiritual visits to her
brilliant sister, a portion of the latter's brightness had permeated our dim
Priscilla, and still lingered, shedding a faint illumination through the
cheerless chamber, after she came back.
    As the child grew up, so pallid and so slender, and with much unaccountable
nervousness, and all the weaknesses of neglected infancy still haunting her, the
gross and simple neighbours whispered strange things about Priscilla. The big,
red, Irish matrons, whose innumerable progeny swarmed out of the adjacent doors,
used to mock at the pale Western child. They fancied - or, at least, affirmed
it, between jest and earnest - that she was not so solid flesh and blood as
other children, but mixed largely with a thinner element. They called her
ghost-child, and said that she could indeed vanish, when she pleased, but could
never, in her densest moments, make herself quite visible. The sun, at mid-day,
would shine through her; in the first gray of the twilight, she lost all the
distinctness of her outline; and, if you followed the dim thing into a dark
corner, behold! she was not there. And it was true, that Priscilla had strange
ways; strange ways, and stranger words, when she uttered any words at all. Never
stirring out of the old Governor's dusky house, she sometimes talked of distant
places and splendid rooms, as if she had just left them. Hidden things were
visible to her, (at least, so the people inferred from obscure hints, escaping
unawares out of her mouth,) and silence was audible. And, in all the world,
there was nothing so difficult to be endured, by those who had any dark secret
to conceal, as the glance of Priscilla's timid and melancholy eyes.
    Her peculiarities were the theme of continual gossip among the other
inhabitants of the gubernatorial mansion. The rumour spread thence into a wider
circle. Those who knew old Moodie - as he was now called - used often to jeer
him, at the very street-corners, about his daughter's gift of second-sight and
prophecy. It was a period when science (though mostly through its empirical
professors) was bringing forward, anew, a hoard of facts and imperfect theories,
that had partially won credence, in elder times, but which modern scepticism had
swept away as rubbish. These things were now tossed up again, out of the surging
ocean of human thought and experience. The story of Priscilla's preternatural
manifestations, therefore, attracted a kind of notice of which it would have
been deemed wholly unworthy, a few years earlier. One day, a gentleman ascended
the creaking staircase, and inquired which was old Moodie's chamber-door. And,
several times, he came again. He was a marvellously handsome man, still
youthful, too, and fashionably dressed. Except that Priscilla, in those days,
had no beauty, and, in the languor of her existence, had not yet blossomed into
womanhood, there would have been rich food for scandal in these visits; for the
girl was unquestionably their sole object, although her father was supposed
always to be present. But, it must likewise be added, there was something about
Priscilla that calumny could not meddle with; and thus far was she privileged,
either by the preponderance of what was spiritual, or the thin and watery blood
that left her cheek so pallid.
    Yet, if the busy tongues of the neighbourhood spared Priscilla, in one way,
they made themselves amends by renewed and wilder babble, on another score. They
averred that the strange gentleman was a wizard, and that he had taken advantage
of Priscilla's lack of earthly substance to subject her to himself, as his
familiar spirit, through whose medium he gained cognizance of whatever happened,
in regions near or remote. The boundaries of his power were defined by the verge
of the pit of Tartarus, on the one hand, and the third sphere of the celestial
world, on the other. Again, they declared their suspicion that the wizard, with
all his show of manly beauty, was really an aged and wizened figure, or else
that his semblance of a human body was only a necromantic, or perhaps a
mechanical contrivance, in which a demon walked about. In proof of it, however,
they could merely instance a gold band around his upper teeth, which had once
been visible to several old women, when he smiled at them from the top of the
Governor's staircase. Of course, this was all absurdity, or mostly so. But,
after every possible deduction, there remained certain very mysterious points
about the stranger's character, as well as the connection that he established
with Priscilla. Its nature, at that period, was even less understood than now,
when miracles of this kind have grown so absolutely stale, that I would gladly,
if the truth allowed, dismiss the whole matter from my narrative.
    We must now glance backward, in quest of the beautiful daughter of
Fauntleroy's prosperity. What had become of her? Fauntleroy's only brother, a
bachelor, and with no other relative so near, had adopted the forsaken child.
She grew up in affluence, with native graces clustering luxuriantly about her.
In her triumphant progress towards womanhood, she was adorned with every variety
of feminine accomplishment. But she lacked a mother's care. With no adequate
control, on any hand, (for a man, however stern, however wise, can never sway
and guide a female child,) her character was left to shape itself. There was
good in it, and evil. Passionate, self-willed, and imperious, she had a warm and
generous nature; showing the richness of the soil, however, chiefly by the weeds
that flourished in it, and choked up the herbs of grace. In her girlhood, her
uncle died. As Fauntleroy was supposed to be likewise dead, and no other heir
was known to exist, his wealth devolved on her, although, dying suddenly, the
uncle left no will. After his death, there were obscure passages in Zenobia's
history. There were whispers of an attachment, and even a secret marriage, with
a fascinating and accomplished, but unprincipled young man. The incidents and
appearances, however, which led to this surmise, soon passed away and were
forgotten.
    Nor was her reputation seriously affected by the report. In fact, so great
was her native power and influence, and such seemed the careless purity of her
nature, that whatever Zenobia did was generally acknowledged as right for her to
do. The world never criticised her so harshly as it does most women who
transcend its rules. It almost yielded its assent, when it beheld her stepping
out of the common path, and asserting the more extensive privileges of her sex,
both theoretically and by her practice. The sphere of ordinary womanhood was
felt to be narrower than her development required.
    A portion of Zenobia's more recent life is told in the foregoing pages.
Partly in earnest - and, I imagine, as was her disposition, half in a proud
jest, or in a kind of recklessness that had grown upon her, out of some hidden
grief - she had given her countenance, and promised liberal pecuniary aid, to
our experiment of a better social state. And Priscilla followed her to
Blithedale. The sole bliss of her life had been a dream of this beautiful
sister, who had never so much as known of her existence. By this time, too, the
poor girl was enthralled in an intolerable bondage, from which she must either
free herself or perish. She deemed herself safest near Zenobia, into whose large
heart she hoped to nestle.
    One evening, months after Priscilla's departure, when Moodie (or shall we
call him Fauntleroy?) was sitting alone in the state-chamber of the old
Governor, there came footsteps up the staircase. There was a pause on the
landing-place. A lady's musical, yet haughty accents were heard making an
inquiry from some denizen of the house, who had thrust a head out of a
contiguous chamber. There was then a knock at Moodie's door.
    »Come in!« said he.
    And Zenobia entered. The details of the interview that followed, being
unknown to me - while, notwithstanding, it would be a pity quite to lose the
picturesqueness of the situation - I shall attempt to sketch it, mainly from
fancy, although with some general grounds of surmise in regard to the old man's
feelings.
    She gazed, wonderingly, at the dismal chamber. Dismal to her, who beheld it
only for an instant, and how much more so to him, into whose brain each bare
spot on the ceiling, every tatter of the paper-hangings, and all the splintered
carvings of the mantel-piece, seen wearily through long years, had worn their
several prints! Inexpressibly miserable is this familiarity with objects that
have been, from the first, disgustful.
    »I have received a strange message,« said Zenobia, after a moment's silence,
»requesting, or rather enjoining it upon me, to come hither. Rather from
curiosity than any other motive - and because, though a woman, I have not all
the timidity of one - I have complied. Can it be you, sir, who thus summoned
me?«
    »It was,« answered Moodie.
    »And what was your purpose?« she continued. »You require charity, perhaps?
In that case, the message might have been more fitly worded. But you are old and
poor; and age and poverty should be allowed their privileges. Tell me,
therefore, to what extent you need my aid.«
    »Put up your purse,« said the supposed mendicant, with an inexplicable
smile. »Keep it - keep all your wealth - until I demand it all, or none! My
message had no such end in view. You are beautiful, they tell me; and I desired
to look at you!«
    He took the one lamp that showed the discomfort and sordidness of his abode,
and approaching Zenobia, held it up, so as to gain the more perfect view of her,
from top to toe. So obscure was the chamber, that you could see the reflection
of her diamonds thrown upon the dingy wall, and flickering with the rise and
fall of Zenobia's breath. It was the splendour of those jewels on her neck, like
lamps that burn before some fair temple, and the jewelled flower in her hair,
more than the murky yellow light, that helped him to see her beauty. But he
beheld it, and grew proud at heart; his own figure, in spite of his mean
habiliments, assumed an air of state and grandeur.
    »It is well!« cried old Moodie. »Keep your wealth. You are right worthy of
it. Keep it, therefore, but with one condition, only!«
    Zenobia thought the old man beside himself, and was moved with pity.
    »Have you none to care for you?« asked she. »No daughter? - no kind-hearted
neighbour? - no means of procuring the attendance which you need? Tell me, once
again, can I do nothing for you?«
    »Nothing,« he replied. »I have beheld what I wished. Now, leave me! Linger
not a moment longer; or I may be tempted to say what would bring a cloud over
that queenly brow. Keep all your wealth, but with only this one condition. Be
kind - be no less kind than sisters are - to my poor Priscilla!«
    And, it may be, after Zenobia withdrew, Fauntleroy paced his gloomy chamber,
and communed with himself, as follows: - or, at all events, it is the only
solution, which I can offer, of the enigma presented in his character.
    »I am unchanged - the same man as of yore!« said he. »True; my brother's
wealth, he dying intestate, is legally my own. I know it; yet, of my own choice,
I live a beggar, and go meanly clad, and hide myself behind a forgotten
ignominy. Looks this like ostentation? Ah, but, in Zenobia, I live again!
Beholding her so beautiful - so fit to be adorned with all imaginable splendour
of outward state - the cursed vanity, which, half-a-lifetime since, dropped off
like tatters of once gaudy apparel from my debased and ruined person, is all
renewed for her sake! Were I to re-appear, my shame would go with me from
darkness into daylight. Zenobia has the splendour, and not the shame. Let the
world admire her, and be dazzled by her, the brilliant child of my prosperity!
It is Fauntleroy that still shines through her!«
    But, then, perhaps, another thought occurred to him.
    »My poor Priscilla! And am I just, to her, in surrendering all to this
beautiful Zenobia? Priscilla! I love her best - I love her only! - but with
shame, not pride. So dim, so pallid, so shrinking - the daughter of my long
calamity! Wealth were but a mockery in Priscilla's hands. What is its use,
except to fling a golden radiance around those who grasp it? Yet, let Zenobia
take heed! Priscilla shall have no wrong!«
    But, while the man of show thus meditated - that very evening, so far as I
can adjust the dates of these strange incidents - Priscilla - poor, pallid
flower! - was either snatched from Zenobia's hand, or flung wilfully away!
 

                             XXIII. A Village-Hall

Well! I betook myself away, and wandered up and down, like an exorcised spirit
that had been driven from its old haunts, after a mighty struggle. It takes down
the solitary pride of man, beyond most other things, to find the
impracticability of flinging aside affections that have grown irksome. The
bands, that were silken once, are apt to become iron fetters, when we desire to
shake them off. Our souls, after all, are not our own. We convey a property in
them to those with whom we associate, but to what extent can never be known,
until we feel the tug, the agony, of our abortive effort to resume an exclusive
sway over ourselves. Thus, in all the weeks of my absence, my thoughts
continually reverted back, brooding over the by-gone months, and bringing up
incidents that seemed hardly to have left a trace of themselves, in their
passage. I spent painful hours in recalling these trifles, and rendering them
more misty and unsubstantial than at first, by the quantity of speculative
musing, thus kneaded in with them. Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla! These
three had absorbed my life into themselves. Together with an inexpressible
longing to know their fortunes, there was likewise a morbid resentment of my own
pain, and a stubborn reluctance to come again within their sphere.
    All that I learned of them, therefore, was comprised in a few brief and
pungent squibs, such as the newspapers were then in the habit of bestowing on
our socialist enterprise. There was one paragraph which, if I rightly guessed
its purport, bore reference to Zenobia, but was too darkly hinted to convey even
thus much of certainty. Hollingsworth, too, with his philanthropic project,
afforded the penny-a-liners a theme for some savage and bloody-minded jokes;
and, considerably to my surprise, they affected me with as much indignation as
if we had still been friends.
    Thus passed several weeks; time long enough for my brown and toil-hardened
hands to re-accustom themselves to gloves. Old habits, such as were merely
external, returned upon me with wonderful promptitude. My superficial talk, too,
assumed altogether a worldly tone. Meeting former acquaintances, who showed
themselves inclined to ridicule my heroic devotion to the cause of human
welfare, I spoke of the recent phase of my life as indeed fair matter for a
jest. But I also gave them to understand that it was, at most, only an
experiment, on which I had staked no valuable amount of hope or fear; it had
enabled me to pass the summer in a novel and agreeable way, had afforded me some
grotesque specimens of artificial simplicity, and could not, therefore, so far
as I was concerned, be reckoned a failure. In no one instance, however, did I
voluntarily speak of my three friends. They dwelt in a profounder region. The
more I consider myself, as I then was, the more do I recognize how deeply my
connection with those three had affected all my being.
    As it was already the epoch of annihilated space, I might, in the time I was
away from Blithedale, have snatched a glimpse at England, and been back again.
But my wanderings were confined within a very limited sphere. I hopped and
fluttered, like a bird with a string about its leg, gyrating round a small
circumference, and keeping up a restless activity to no purpose. Thus, it was
still in our familiar Massachusetts - in one of its white country-villages -
that I must next particularize an incident.
    The scene was one of those Lyceum-halls, of which almost every village has
now its own, dedicated to that sober and pallid, or, rather, drab-coloured, mode
of winter-evening entertainment, the Lecture. Of late years, this has come
strangely into vogue, when the natural tendency of things would seem to be, to
substitute lettered for oral methods of addressing the public. But, in halls
like this, besides the winter course of lectures, there is a rich and varied
series of other exhibitions. Hither comes the ventriloquist, with all his
mysterious tongues; the thaumaturgist, too, with his miraculous transformations
of plates, doves, and rings, his pancakes smoking in your hat, and his cellar of
choice liquors, represented in one small bottle. Here, also, the itinerant
professor instructs separate classes of ladies and gentlemen in physiology, and
demonstrates his lessons by the aid of real skeletons, and mannikins in wax,
from Paris. Here is to be heard the choir of Ethiopian melodists, and to be
seen, the diorama of Moscow or Bunker Hill, or the moving panorama of the
Chinese wall. Here is displayed the museum of wax figures, illustrating the wide
catholicism of earthly renown by mixing up heroes and statesmen, the Pope and
the Mormon Prophet, kings, queens, murderers, and beautiful ladies; every sort
of person, in short, except authors, of whom I never beheld even the most
famous, done in wax. And here, in this many-purposed hall, (unless the selectmen
of the village chance to have more than their share of the puritanism, which,
however diversified with later patchwork, still gives its prevailing tint to New
England character,) here the company of strolling players sets up its little
stage, and claims patronage for the legitimate drama.
    But, on the autumnal evening which I speak of, a number of printed handbills
- stuck up in the bar-room and on the sign-post of the hotel, and on the
meeting-house porch, and distributed largely through the village - had promised
the inhabitants an interview with that celebrated and hitherto inexplicable
phenomenon, the Veiled Lady!
    The hall was fitted up with an amphitheatrical descent of seats towards a
platform, on which stood a desk, two lights, a stool, and a capacious, antique
chair. The audience was of a generally decent and respectable character; old
farmers, in their Sunday black coats, with shrewd, hard, sun-dried faces, and a
cynical humour, oftener than any other expression, in their eyes; pretty girls,
in many-coloured attire; pretty young men - the schoolmaster, the lawyer, or
student-at-law, the shopkeeper - all looking rather suburban than rural. In
these days, there is absolutely no rusticity, except when the actual labour of
the soil leaves its earth-mould on the person. There was likewise a considerable
proportion of young and middle-aged women, many of them stern in feature, with
marked foreheads, and a very definite line of eyebrow; a type of womanhood in
which a bold intellectual development seems to be keeping pace with the
progressive delicacy of the physical constitution. Of all these people I took
note, at first, according to my custom. But I ceased to do so, the moment that
my eyes fell on an individual who sat two or three seats below me, immoveable,
apparently deep in thought, with his back, of course, towards me, and his face
turned steadfastly upon the platform.
    After sitting awhile, in contemplation of this person's familiar contour, I
was irresistibly moved to step over the intervening benches, lay my hand on his
shoulder, put my mouth close to his ear, and address him in a sepulchral,
melodramatic whisper: -
    »Hollingsworth! Where have you left Zenobia!«
    His nerves, however, were proof against my attack. He turned half around,
and looked me in the face, with great, sad eyes, in which there was neither
kindness nor resentment, nor any perceptible surprise.
    »Zenobia, when I last saw her,« he answered, »was at Blithedale.«
    He said no more. But there was a great deal of talk going on, near me, among
a knot of people who might be considered as representing the mysticism, or,
rather, the mystic sensuality, of this singular age. The nature of the
exhibition, that was about to take place, had probably given the turn to their
conversation.
    I heard, from a pale man in blue spectacles, some stranger stories than ever
were written in a romance; told, too, with a simple, unimaginative
steadfastness, which was terribly efficacious in compelling the auditor to
receive them into the category of established facts. He cited instances of the
miraculous power of one human being over the will and passions of another;
insomuch that settled grief was but a shadow, beneath the influence of a man
possessing this potency, and the strong love of years melted away like a vapour.
At the bidding of one of these wizards, the maiden, with her lover's kiss still
burning on her lips, would turn from him with icy indifference; the newly made
widow would dig up her buried heart out of her young husband's grave, before the
sods had taken root upon it; a mother, with her babe's milk in her bosom, would
thrust away her child. Human character was but soft wax in his hands; and guilt,
or virtue, only the forms into which he should see fit to mould it. The
religious sentiment was a flame which he could blow up with his breath, or a
spark that he could utterly extinguish. It is unutterable, the horror and
disgust with which I listened, and saw, that, if these things were to be
believed, the individual soul was virtually annihilated, and all that is sweet
and pure, in our present life, debased, and that the idea of man's eternal
responsibility was made ridiculous, and immortality rendered, at once,
impossible, and not worth acceptance. But I would have perished on the spot,
sooner than believe it.
    The epoch of rapping spirits, and all the wonders that have followed in
their train - such as tables, upset by invisible agencies, bells, self-tolled at
funerals, and ghostly music, performed on jewsharps - had not yet arrived. Alas,
my countrymen, methinks we have fallen on an evil age! If these phenomena have
not humbug at the bottom, so much the worse for us. What can they indicate, in a
spiritual way, except that the soul of man is descending to a lower point than
it has ever before reached, while incarnate? We are pursuing a downward course,
in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into the same range with beings
whom death, in requital of their gross and evil lives, has degraded below
humanity. To hold intercourse with spirits of this order, we must stoop, and
grovel in some element more vile than earthly dust. These goblins, if they exist
at all, are but the shadows of past mortality, outcasts, mere refuse-stuff,
adjudged unworthy of the eternal world, and, on the most favourable supposition,
dwindling gradually into nothingness. The less we have to say to them, the
better; lest we share their fate!
    The audience now began to be impatient; they signified their desire for the
entertainment to commence, by thump of sticks and stamp of boot-heels. Nor was
it a great while longer, before, in response to their call, there appeared a
bearded personage in Oriental robes, looking like one of the enchanters of the
Arabian Nights. He came upon the platform from a side-door - saluted the
spectators, not with a salaam, but a bow - took his station at the desk - and
first blowing his nose with a white handkerchief, prepared to speak. The
environment of the homely village-hall, and the absence of many ingenious
contrivances of stage-effect, with which the exhibition had heretofore been set
off, seemed to bring the artifice of this character more openly upon the
surface. No sooner did I behold the bearded enchanter, than laying my hand again
on Hollingsworth's shoulder, I whispered in his ear: -
    »Do you know him?«
    »I never saw the man before,« he muttered, without turning his head.
    But I had seen him, three times, already. Once, on occasion of my first
visit to the Veiled Lady; a second time, in the wood-path at Blithedale; and,
lastly, in Zenobia's drawing-room. It was Westervelt. A quick association of
ideas made me shudder, from head to foot; and, again, like an evil spirit,
bringing up reminiscences of a man's sins, I whispered a question in
Hollingsworth's ear.
    »What have you done with Priscilla?«
    He gave a convulsive start, as if I had thrust a knife into him, writhed
himself round on his seat, glared fiercely into my eyes, but answered not a
word.
    The Professor began his discourse, explanatory of the psychological
phenomena, as he termed them, which it was his purpose to exhibit to the
spectators. There remains no very distinct impression of it on my memory. It was
eloquent, ingenious, plausible, with a delusive show of spirituality, yet really
imbued throughout with a cold and dead materialism. I shivered, as at a current
of chill air, issuing out of a sepulchral vault and bringing the smell of
corruption along with it. He spoke of a new era that was dawning upon the world;
an era that would link soul to soul, and the present life to what we call
futurity, with a closeness that should finally convert both worlds into one
great, mutually conscious brotherhood. He described (in a strange, philosophical
guise, with terms of art, as if it were a matter of chemical discovery) the
agency by which this mighty result was to be effected; nor would it have
surprised me, had he pretended to hold up a portion of his universally pervasive
fluid, as he affirmed it to be, in a glass phial.
    At the close of his exordium, the Professor beckoned with his hand - one,
twice, thrice - and a figure came gliding upon the platform, enveloped in a long
veil of silvery whiteness. It fell about her, like the texture of a summer
cloud, with a kind of vagueness, so that the outline of the form, beneath it,
could not be accurately discerned. But the movement of the Veiled Lady was
graceful, free, and unembarrassed, like that of a person accustomed to be the
spectacle of thousands. Or, possibly, a blindfold prisoner within the sphere
with which this dark, earthly magician had surrounded her, she was wholly
unconscious of being the central object to all those straining eyes.
    Pliant to his gesture, (which had even an obsequious courtesy, but, at the
same time, a remarkable decisiveness,) the figure placed itself in the great
chair. Sitting there, in such visible obscurity, it was perhaps as much like the
actual presence of a disembodied spirit as anything that stage-trickery could
devise. The hushed breathing of the spectators proved how high-wrought were
their anticipations of the wonders to be performed, through the medium of this
incomprehensible creature. I, too, was in breathless suspense, but with a far
different presentiment of some strange event at hand.
    »You see before you the Veiled Lady,« said the bearded Professor, advancing
to the verge of the platform. »By the agency of which I have just spoken, she
is, at this moment, in communion with the spiritual world. That silvery veil is,
in one sense, an enchantment, having been dipt, as it were, and essentially
imbued, through the potency of my art, with the fluid medium of spirits. Slight
and ethereal as it seems, the limitations of time and space have no existence
within its folds. This hall - these hundreds of faces, encompassing her within
so narrow an amphitheatre - are of thinner substance, in her view, than the
airiest vapour that the clouds are made of. She beholds the Absolute!«
    As preliminary to other, and far more wonderful psychological experiments,
the exhibitor suggested that some of his auditors should endeavour to make the
Veiled Lady sensible of their presence by such methods - provided, only, no
touch were laid upon her person - as they might deem best adapted to that end.
Accordingly, several deep-lunged country-fellows, who looked as if they might
have blown the apparition away with a breath, ascended the platform. Mutually
encouraging one another, they shouted so close to her ear, that the veil stirred
like a wreath of vanishing mist; they smote upon the floor with bludgeons; they
perpetrated so hideous a clamour, that methought it might have reached, at least
a little way, into the eternal sphere. Finally, with the assent of the
Professor, they laid hold of the great chair, and were startled, apparently, to
find it soar upward, as if lighter than the air through which it rose. But the
Veiled Lady remained seated and motionless, with a composure that was hardly
less than awful, because implying so immeasurable a distance betwixt her and
these rude persecutors.
    »These efforts are wholly without avail,« observed the Professor, who had
been looking on with an aspect of serene indifference. »The roar of a battery of
cannon would be inaudible to the Veiled Lady. And yet, were I to will it,
sitting in this very hall, she could hear the desert-wind sweeping over the
sands, as far off as Arabia; the ice-bergs grinding one against the other, in
the polar seas; the rustle of a leaf in an East Indian forest; the lowest
whispered breath of the bashfullest maiden in the world, uttering the first
confession of her love! Nor does there exist the moral inducement, apart from my
own behest, that could persuade her to lift the silvery veil, or arise out of
that chair!«
    Greatly to the Professor's discomposure, however, just as he spoke these
words, the Veiled Lady arose. There was a mysterious tremor that shook the magic
veil. The spectators, it may be, imagined that she was about to take flight into
that invisible sphere, and to the society of those purely spiritual beings, with
whom they reckoned her so near akin. Hollingsworth, a moment ago, had mounted
the platform, and now stood gazing at the figure, with a sad intentness that
brought the whole power of his great, stern, yet tender soul, into his glance.
    »Come!« said he, waving his hand towards her. »You are safe!«
    She threw off the veil, and stood before that multitude of people, pale,
tremulous, shrinking, as if only then had she discovered that a thousand eyes
were gazing at her. Poor maiden! How strangely had she been betrayed! Blazoned
abroad as a wonder of the world, and performing what were adjudged as miracles -
in the faith of many, a seeress and a prophetess - in the harsher judgment of
others, a mountebank - she had kept, as I religiously believe, her virgin
reserve and sanctity of soul, throughout it all. Within that encircling veil,
though an evil hand had flung it over her, there was as deep a seclusion as if
this forsaken girl had, all the while, been sitting under the shadow of Eliot's
pulpit, in the Blithedale woods, at the feet of him who now summoned her to the
shelter of his arms. And the true heart-throb of a woman's affection was too
powerful for the jugglery that had hitherto environed her. She uttered a shriek
and fled to Hollingsworth, like one escaping from her deadliest enemy, and was
safe forever!
 

                             XXIV. The Masqueraders

Two nights had passed since the foregoing occurrences, when, in a breezy
September forenoon, I set forth from town, on foot, towards Blithedale.
    It was the most delightful of all days for a walk, with a dash of
invigorating ice-temper in the air, but a coolness that soon gave place to the
brisk glow of exercise, while the vigour remained as elastic as before. The
atmosphere had a spirit and sparkle in it. Each breath was like a sip of
ethereal wine, tempered, as I said, with a crystal lump of ice. I had started on
this expedition in an exceedingly sombre mood, as well befitted one who found
himself tending towards home, but was conscious that nobody would be quite
overjoyed to greet him there. My feet were hardly off the pavement, however,
when this morbid sensation began to yield to the lively influences of air and
motion. Nor had I gone far, with fields yet green on either side, before my step
became as swift and light as if Hollingsworth were waiting to exchange a
friendly hand-grip, and Zenobia's and Priscilla's open arms would welcome the
wanderer's re-appearance. It has happened to me, on other occasions, as well as
this, to prove how a state of physical well-being can create a kind of joy, in
spite of the profoundest anxiety of mind.
    The pathway of that walk still runs along, with sunny freshness, through my
memory. I know not why it should be so. But my mental eye can even now discern
the September grass, bordering the pleasant roadside with a brighter verdure
than while the summer-heats were scorching it; the trees, too, mostly green,
although, here and there, a branch or shrub has donned its vesture of crimson
and gold, a week or two before its fellows. I see the tufted barberry bushes,
with their small clusters of scarlet fruit; the toadstools, likewise, some
spotlessly white, others yellow or red - mysterious growths, springing suddenly
from no root or seed, and growing nobody can tell how or wherefore. In this
respect, they resembled many of the emotions in my breast. And I still see the
little rivulets, chill, clear, and bright, that murmured beneath the road,
through subterranean rocks, and deepened into mossy pools where tiny fish were
darting to-and-fro, and within which lurked the hermit-frog. But, no - I never
can account for it - that, with a yearning interest to learn the upshot of all
my story, and returning to Blithedale for that sole purpose, I should examine
these things so like a peaceful-bosomed naturalist. Nor why, amid all my
sympathies and fears, there shot, at times, a wild exhilaration through my
frame!
    Thus I pursued my way, along the line of the ancient stone-wall that Paul
Dudley built, and through white villages, and past orchards of ruddy apples, and
fields of ripening maize, and patches of woodland, and all such sweet rural
scenery as looks the fairest, a little beyond the suburbs of a town.
Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla! They glided mistily before me, as I walked.
Sometimes, in my solitude, I laughed with the bitterness of self-scorn,
remembering how unreservedly I had given up my heart and soul to interests that
were not mine. What had I ever had to do with them? And why, being now free,
should I take this thraldom on me, once again? It was both sad and dangerous, I
whispered to myself, to be in too close affinity with the passions, the errors,
and the misfortunes, of individuals who stood within a circle of their own, into
which, if I stepped at all, it must be as an intruder, and at a peril that I could
not estimate.
    Drawing nearer to Blithedale, a sickness of the spirits kept alternating
with my flights of causeless buoyancy. I indulged in a hundred odd and
extravagant conjectures. Either there was no such place as Blithedale, nor ever
had been, nor any brotherhood of thoughtful labourers, like what I seemed to
recollect there; or else it was all changed, during my absence. It had been
nothing but dream-work and enchantment. I should seek in vain for the old
farm-house, and for the greensward, the potatoe-fields, the root-crops, and
acres of Indian corn, and for all that configuration of the land which I had
imagined. It would be another spot, and an utter strangeness.
    These vagaries were of the spectral throng, so apt to steal out of an
unquiet heart. They partly ceased to haunt me, on my arriving at a point whence,
through the trees, I began to catch glimpses of the Blithedale farm. That,
surely, was something real. There was hardly a square foot of all those acres,
on which I had not trodden heavily in one or another kind of toil. The curse of
Adam's posterity - and, curse or blessing be it, it gives substance to the life
around us - had first come upon me there. In the sweat of my brow, I had there
earned bread and eaten it, and so established my claim to be on earth, and my
fellowship with all the sons of labour. I could have knelt down, and have laid my
breast against that soil. The red clay, of which my frame was moulded, seemed
nearer akin to those crumbling furrows than to any other portion of the world's
dust. There was my home; and there might be my grave.
    I felt an invincible reluctance, nevertheless, at the idea of presenting
myself before my old associates, without first ascertaining the state in which
they were. A nameless foreboding weighed upon me. Perhaps, should I know all the
circumstances that had occurred, I might find it my wisest course to turn back,
unrecognized, unseen, and never look at Blithedale more. Had it been evening, I
would have stolen softly to some lighted window of the old farm-house, and
peeped darkling in, to see all their well-known faces round the supper-board.
Then, were there a vacant seat, I might noiselessly unclose the door, glide in,
and take my place among them, without a word. My entrance might be so quiet, my
aspect so familiar, that they would forget how long I had been away, and suffer
me to melt into the scene, as a wreath of vapour melts into a larger cloud. I
dreaded a boisterous greeting. Beholding me at table, Zenobia, as a matter of
course, would send me a cup of tea, and Hollingsworth fill my plate from the
great dish of pan-dowdy, and Priscilla, in her quiet way, would hand the cream,
and others help me to the bread and butter. Being one of them again, the
knowledge of what had happened would come to me, without a shock. For, still, at
every turn of my shifting fantasies, the thought stared me in the face, that
some evil thing had befallen us, or was ready to befall.
    Yielding to this ominous impression, I now turned aside into the woods,
resolving to spy out the posture of the Community, as craftily as the wild
Indian before he makes his onset. I would go wandering about the outskirts of
the farm, and, perhaps catching sight of a solitary acquaintance, would approach
him amid the brown shadows of the trees, (a kind of medium fit for spirits
departed and revisitant, like myself,) and entreat him to tell me how all things
were.
    The first living creature that I met, was a partridge, which sprung up
beneath my feet, and whirred away; the next was a squirrel, who chattered
angrily at me, from an overhanging bough. I trod along by the dark, sluggish
river, and remember pausing on the bank, above one of its blackest and most
placid pools - (the very spot, with the barkless stump of a tree aslant-wise
over the water, is depicting itself to my fancy, at this instant) - and
wondering how deep it was, and if any overladen soul had ever flung its weight
of mortality in thither, and if it thus escaped the burden, or only made it
heavier. And perhaps the skeleton of the drowned wretch still lay beneath the
inscrutable depth, clinging to some sunken log at the bottom with the gripe of
its old despair. So slight, however, was the track of these gloomy ideas, that I
soon forgot them in the contemplation of a brood of wild ducks, which were
floating on the river, and anon took flight, leaving each a bright streak over
the black surface. By-and-by, I came to my hermitage, in the heart of the
white-pine tree, and clambering up into it, sat down to rest. The grapes, which
I had watched throughout the summer, now dangled around me in abundant clusters
of the deepest purple, deliciously sweet to the taste, and though wild, yet free
from that ungentle flavour which distinguishes nearly all our native and
uncultivated grapes. Methought a wine might be pressed out of them, possessing a
passionate zest, and endowed with a new kind of intoxicating quality, attended
with such bacchanalian ecstasies as the tamer grapes of Madeira, France, and the
Rhine, are inadequate to produce. And I longed to quaff a great goblet of it, at
that moment!
    While devouring the grapes, I looked on all sides out of the peep-holes of
my hermitage, and saw the farm-house, the fields, and almost every part of our
domain, but not a single human figure in the landscape. Some of the windows of
the house were open, but with no more signs of life than in a dead man's unshut
eyes. The barn-door was ajar, and swinging in the breeze. The big, old dog - he
was a relic of the former dynasty of the farm - that hardly ever stirred out of
the yard, was nowhere to be seen. What, then, had become of all the fraternity
and sisterhood? Curious to ascertain this point, I let myself down out of the
tree, and going to the edge of the wood, was glad to perceive our herd of cows,
chewing the cud, or grazing, not far off. I fancied, by their manner, that two
or three of them recognized me, (as, indeed, they ought, for I had milked them,
and been their chamberlain, times without number;) but, after staring me in the
face, a little while, they phlegmatically began grazing and chewing their cuds
again. Then I grew foolishly angry at so cold a reception, and flung some rotten
fragments of an old stump at these unsentimental cows.
    Skirting farther round the pasture, I heard voices and much laughter
proceeding from the interior of the wood. Voices, male and feminine; laughter,
not only of fresh young throats, but the bass of grown people, as if solemn
organ-pipes should pour out airs of merriment. Not a voice spoke, but I knew it
better than my own; not a laugh, but its cadences were familiar. The wood, in
this portion of it, seemed as full of jollity as if Comus and his crew were
holding their revels, in one of its usually lonesome glades. Stealing onward as
far as I durst, without hazard of discovery, I saw a concourse of strange
figures beneath the overshadowing branches; they appeared, and vanished, and
came again, confusedly, with the streaks of sunlight glimmering down upon them.
    Among them was an Indian chief, with blanket, feathers and war-paint, and
uplifted tomahawk; and near him, looking fit to be his woodland-bride, the
goddess Diana, with the crescent on her head, and attended by our big, lazy dog,
in lack of any fleeter hound. Drawing an arrow from her quiver, she let it fly,
at a venture, and hit the very tree behind which I happened to be lurking.
Another group consisted of a Bavarian broom-girl, a negro of the Jim Crow order,
one or two foresters of the middle-ages, a Kentucky woodsman in his trimmed
hunting-shirt and deerskin leggings, and a Shaker elder, quaint, demure,
broad-brimmed, and square-skirted. Shepherds of Arcadia, and allegoric figures
from the Faerie Queen, were oddly mixed up with these. Arm in arm, or otherwise
huddled together, in strange discrepancy, stood grim Puritans, gay Cavaliers,
and Revolutionary officers, with three-cornered cocked-hats, and queues longer
than their swords. A bright-complexioned, dark-haired, vivacious little gipsy,
with a red shawl over her head, went from one group to another, telling fortunes
by palmistry; and Moll Pitcher, the renowned old witch of Lynn, broomstick in
hand, showed herself prominently in the midst, as if announcing all these
apparitions to be the offspring of her necromantic art. But Silas Foster, who
leaned against a tree near by, in his customary blue frock, and smoking a short
pipe, did more to disenchant the scene, with his look of shrewd, acrid, Yankee
observation, than twenty witches and necromancers could have done, in the way of
rendering it weird and fantastic.
    A little further off, some old-fashioned skinkers and drawers, all with
portentously red noses, were spreading a banquet on the leaf-strewn earth; while
a horned and long-tailed gentleman (in whom I recognized the fiendish musician,
erst seen by Tam O'Shanter) tuned his fiddle, and summoned the whole motley rout
to a dance, before partaking of the festal cheer. So they joined hands in a
circle, whirling round so swiftly, so madly, and so merrily, in time and tune
with the Satanic music, that their separate incongruities were blended all
together; and they became a kind of entanglement that went nigh to turn one's
brain, with merely looking at it. Anon, they stopped, all of a sudden, and staring
at one another's figures, set up a roar of laughter; whereat, a shower of the
September leaves (which, all day long, had been hesitating whether to fall or
no) were shaken off by the movement of the air, and came eddying down upon the
revellers.
    Then, for lack of breath, ensued a silence; at the deepest point of which,
tickled by the oddity of surprising my grave associates in this masquerading
trim, I could not possibly refrain from a burst of laughter, on my own separate
account.
    »Hush!« I heard the pretty gipsy fortuneteller say. »Who is that laughing?«
    »Some profane intruder!« said the goddess Diana. »I shall send an arrow
through his heart, or change him into a stag, as I did Actaeon, if he peeps from
behind the trees!«
    »Me take his scalp!« cried the Indian chief, brandishing his tomahawk, and
cutting a great caper in the air.
    »I'll root him in the earth, with a spell that I have at my tongue's end!«
squeaked Moll Pitcher. »And the green moss shall grow all over him, before he
gets free again!«
    »The voice was Miles Coverdale's,« said the fiendish fiddler, with a whisk
of his tail and a toss of his horns. »My music has brought him hither. He is
always ready to dance to the devil's tune!«
    Thus put on the right track, they all recognized the voice at once, and set
up a simultaneous shout.
    »Miles! Miles! Miles Coverdale, where are you?« they cried. »Zenobia! Queen
Zenobia! Here is one of your vassals lurking in the wood. Command him to
approach, and pay his duty!«
    The whole fantastic rabble forthwith streamed off in pursuit of me, so that
I was like a mad poet hunted by chimaeras. Having fairly the start of them,
however, I succeeded in making my escape, and soon left their merriment and riot
at a good distance in the rear. Its fainter tones assumed a kind of
mournfulness, and were finally lost in the hush and solemnity of the wood. In my
haste, I stumbled over a heap of logs and sticks that had been cut for firewood,
a great while ago, by some former possessor of the soil, and piled up square, in
order to be carted or sledded away to the farm-house. But, being forgotten, they
had lain there, perhaps fifty years, and possibly much longer; until, by the
accumulation of moss, and the leaves falling over them and decaying there, from
autumn to autumn, a green mound was formed, in which the softened outline of the
wood-pile was still perceptible. In the fitful mood that then swayed my mind, I
found something strangely affecting in this simple circumstance. I imagined the
long-dead woodman, and his long-dead wife and children, coming out of their
chill graves, and essaying to make a fire with this heap of mossy fuel!
    From this spot I strayed onward, quite lost in reverie, and neither knew nor
cared whither I was going, until a low, soft, well-remembered voice spoke, at a
little distance.
    »There is Mr. Coverdale!«
    »Miles Coverdale!« said another voice - and its tones were very stern - »Let
him come forward, then!«
    »Yes, Mr. Coverdale,« cried a woman's voice - clear and melodious, but, just
then, with something unnatural in its chord - »You are welcome! But you come
half-an-hour too late, and have missed a scene which you would have enjoyed!«
    I looked up, and found myself nigh Eliot's pulpit, at the base of which sat
Hollingsworth, with Priscilla at his feet, and Zenobia standing before them.
 

                            XXV. The Three Together

Hollingsworth was in his ordinary working-dress. Priscilla wore a pretty and
simple gown, with a kerchief about her neck, and a calash, which she had flung
back from her head, leaving it suspended by the strings. But Zenobia (whose part
among the masquers, as may be supposed, was no inferior one) appeared in a
costume of fanciful magnificence, with her jewelled flower as the central
ornament of what resembled a leafy crown, or coronet. She represented the
Oriental princess, by whose name we were accustomed to know her. Her attitude
was free and noble, yet, if a queen's, it was not that of a queen triumphant,
but dethroned, on trial for her life, or perchance condemned, already. The
spirit of the conflict seemed, nevertheless, to be alive in her. Her eyes were
on fire; her cheeks had each a crimson spot, so exceedingly vivid, and marked
with so definite an outline, that I at first doubted whether it were not
artificial. In a very brief space, however, this idea was shamed by the paleness
that ensued, as the blood sank suddenly away. Zenobia now looked like marble.
    One always feels the fact, in an instant, when he has intruded on those who
love, or those who hate, at some acme of their passion that puts them into a
sphere of their own, where no other spirit can pretend to stand on equal ground
with them. I was confused - affected even with a species of terror - and wished
myself away. The intentness of their feelings gave them the exclusive property
of the soil and atmosphere, and left me no right to be or breathe there.
    »Hollingsworth - Zenobia - I have just returned to Blithedale,« said I, »and
had no thought of finding you here. We shall meet again at the house. I will
retire.«
    »This place is free to you,« answered Hollingsworth.
    »As free as to ourselves,« added Zenobia. »This long while past, you have
been following up your game, groping for human emotions in the dark corners of
the heart. Had you been here a little sooner, you might have seen them dragged
into the daylight. I could even wish to have my trial over again, with you
standing by, to see fair-play! Do you know, Mr. Coverdale, I have been on trial
for my life?«
    She laughed, while speaking thus. But, in truth, as my eyes wandered from
one of the group to another, I saw in Hollingsworth all that an artist could
desire for the grim portrait of a Puritan magistrate, holding inquest of life
and death in a case of witchcraft; - in Zenobia, the sorceress herself, not
aged, wrinkled, and decrepit, but fair enough to tempt Satan with a force
reciprocal to his own; - and, in Priscilla, the pale victim, whose soul and body
had been wasted by her spells. Had a pile of faggots been heaped against the
rock, this hint of impending doom would have completed the suggestive picture.
    »It was too hard upon me,« continued Zenobia, addressing Hollingsworth,
»that judge, jury, and accuser, should all be comprehended in one man! I demur,
as I think the lawyers say, to the jurisdiction. But let the learned Judge
Coverdale seat himself on the top of the rock, and you and me stand at its base,
side by side, pleading our cause before him! There might, at least, be two
criminals, instead of one.«
    »You forced this on me,« replied Hollingsworth, looking her sternly in the
face. »Did I call you hither from among the masqueraders yonder? Do I assume to
be your judge? No; except so far as I have an unquestionable right of judgment,
in order to settle my own line of behaviour towards those, with whom the events
of life bring me in contact. True; I have already judged you, but not on the
world's part - neither do I pretend to pass a sentence!«
    »Ah, this is very good!« said Zenobia, with a smile. »What strange beings
you men are, Mr. Coverdale! - is it not so? It is the simplest thing in the
world, with you, to bring a woman before your secret tribunals, and judge and
condemn her, unheard, and then tell her to go free without a sentence. The
misfortune is, that this same secret tribunal chances to be the only
judgment-seat that a true woman stands in awe of, and that any verdict short of
acquittal is equivalent to a death-sentence!«
    The more I looked at them, and the more I heard, the stronger grew my
impression that a crisis had just come and gone. On Hollingsworth's brow, it had
left a stamp like that of irrevocable doom, of which his own will was the
instrument. In Zenobia's whole person, beholding her more closely, I saw a
riotous agitation; the almost delirious disquietude of a great struggle, at the
close of which, the vanquished one felt her strength and courage still mighty
within her, and longed to renew the contest. My sensations were as if I had come
upon a battle-field, before the smoke was as yet cleared away.
    And what subjects had been discussed here? All, no doubt, that, for so many
months past, had kept my heart and my imagination idly feverish. Zenobia's whole
character and history; the true nature of her mysterious connection with
Westervelt; her later purposes towards Hollingsworth, and, reciprocally, his in
reference to her; and, finally, the degree in which Zenobia had been cognizant
of the plot against Priscilla, and what, at last, had been the real object of
that scheme. On these points, as before, I was left to my own conjectures. One
thing, only, was certain. Zenobia and Hollingsworth were friends no longer. If
their heart-strings were ever intertwined, the knot had been adjudged an
entanglement, and was now violently broken.
    But Zenobia seemed unable to rest content with the matter, in the posture
which it had assumed.
    »Ah! Do we part so?« exclaimed she, seeing Hollingsworth about to retire.
    »And why not?« said he, with almost rude abruptness. »What is there further
to be said between us?«
    »Well; perhaps nothing!« answered Zenobia, looking him in the face, and
smiling. »But we have come, many times before, to this gray rock, and we have
talked very softly, among the whisperings of the birch-trees. They were pleasant
hours! I love to make the latest of them, though not altogether so delightful,
loiter away as slowly as may be. And, besides, you have put many queries to me,
at this, which you design to be our last interview; and being driven, as I must
acknowledge, into a corner, I have responded with reasonable frankness. But,
now, with your free consent, I desire the privilege of asking a few questions in
my turn.«
    »I have no concealments,« said Hollingsworth.
    »We shall see!« answered Zenobia. »I would first inquire, whether you have
supposed me to be wealthy?«
    »On that point,« observed Hollingsworth, »I have had the opinion which the
world holds.«
    »And I held it, likewise,« said Zenobia. »Had I not, Heaven is my witness,
the knowledge should have been as free to you as me. It is only three days since
I knew the strange fact that threatens to make me poor; and your own
acquaintance with it, I suspect, is of at least as old a date. I fancied myself
affluent. You are aware, too, of the disposition which I purposed making of the
larger portion of my imaginary opulence; - nay, were it all, I had not
hesitated. Let me ask you further, did I ever propose or intimate any terms of
compact, on which depended this - as the world would consider it - so important
sacrifice?«
    »You certainly spoke of none,« said Hollingsworth.
    »Nor meant any,« she responded. »I was willing to realize your dream, freely
- generously, as some might think - but, at all events, fully - and heedless
though it should prove the ruin of my fortune. If, in your own thoughts, you
have imposed any conditions of this expenditure, it is you that must be held
responsible for whatever is sordid and unworthy in them. And, now, one other
question! Do you love this girl?«
    »Oh, Zenobia!« exclaimed Priscilla, shrinking back, as if longing for the
rock to topple over, and hide her.
    »Do you love her?« repeated Zenobia.
    »Had you asked me that question, a short time since,« replied Hollingsworth,
after a pause, during which, it seemed to me, even the birch-trees held their
whispering breath, »I should have told you - No! My feelings for Priscilla
differed little from those of an elder brother, watching tenderly over the
gentle sister whom God has given him to protect.«
    »And what is your answer, now?« persisted Zenobia.
    »I do love her!« said Hollingsworth, uttering the words with a deep, inward
breath, instead of speaking them outright. »As well declare it thus, as in any
other way. I do love her!«
    »Now, God be judge between us,« cried Zenobia, breaking into sudden passion,
»which of us two has most mortally offended Him! At least, I am a woman - with
every fault, it may be, that a woman ever had, weak, vain, unprincipled, (like
most of my sex; for our virtues, when we have any, are merely impulsive and
intuitive,) passionate, too, and pursuing my foolish and unattainable ends, by
indirect and cunning, though absurdly chosen means, as an hereditary bond-slave
must - false, moreover, to the whole circle of good, in my reckless truth to the
little good I saw before me - but still a woman! A creature, whom only a little
change of earthly fortune, a little kinder smile of Him who sent me hither, and
one true heart to encourage and direct me, might have made all that a woman can
be! But how is it with you? Are you a man? No; but a monster! A cold, heartless,
self-beginning and self-ending piece of mechanism!«
    »With what, then, do you charge me?« asked Hollingsworth, aghast, and
greatly disturbed at this attack. »Show me one selfish end in all I ever aimed
at, and you may cut it out of my bosom with a knife!«
    »It is all self!« answered Zenobia, with still intenser bitterness. »Nothing
else; nothing but self, self, self! The fiend, I doubt not, has made his
choicest mirth of you, these seven years past, and especially in the mad summer
which we have spent together. I see it now! I am awake, disenchanted,
disenthralled! Self, self, self! You have embodied yourself in a project. You
are a better masquerader than the witches and gipsies yonder; for your disguise
is a self-deception. See whither it has brought you! First, you aimed a
death-blow, and a treacherous one, at this scheme of a purer and higher life,
which so many noble spirits had wrought out. Then, because Coverdale could not
be quite your slave, you threw him ruthlessly away. And you took me, too, into
your plan, as long as there was hope of my being available, and now fling me
aside again, a broken tool! But, foremost, and blackest of your sins, you
stifled down your inmost consciousness! - you did a deadly wrong to your own
heart! - you were ready to sacrifice this girl, whom, if God ever visibly showed
a purpose, He put into your charge, and through whom He was striving to redeem
you!«
    »This is a woman's view,« said Hollingsworth, growing deadly pale - »a
woman's, whose whole sphere of action is in the heart, and who can conceive of
no higher nor wider one!«
    »Be silent!« cried Zenobia, imperiously. »You know neither man nor woman!
The utmost that can be said in your behalf - and because I would not be wholly
despicable in my own eyes, but would fain excuse my wasted feelings, nor own it
wholly a delusion, therefore I say it - is, that a great and rich heart has been
ruined in your breast. Leave me, now! You have done with me, and I with you.
Farewell!«
    »Priscilla,« said Hollingsworth, »come!«
    Zenobia smiled; possibly, I did so too. Not often, in human life, has a
gnawing sense of injury found a sweeter morsel of revenge, than was conveyed in
the tone with which Hollingsworth spoke those two words. It was the abased and
tremulous tone of a man, whose faith in himself was shaken, and who sought, at
last, to lean on an affection. Yes; the strong man bowed himself, and rested on
this poor Priscilla. Oh, could she have failed him, what a triumph for the
lookers-on!
    And, at first, I half imagined that she was about to fail him. She rose up,
stood shivering, like the birch-leaves that trembled over her head, and then
slowly tottered, rather than walked, towards Zenobia. Arriving at her feet, she
sank down there, in the very same attitude which she had assumed on their first
meeting, in the kitchen of the old farm-house. Zenobia remembered it.
    »Ah, Priscilla,« said she, shaking her head, »how much is changed since
then! You kneel to a dethroned princess. You, the victorious one! But he is
waiting for you. Say what you wish, and leave me.«
    »We are sisters!« gasped Priscilla.
    I fancied that I understood the word and action; it meant the offering of
herself, and all she had, to be at Zenobia's disposal. But the latter would not
take it thus.
    »True; we are sisters!« she replied; and, moved by the sweet word, she
stooped down and kissed Priscilla - but not lovingly; for a sense of fatal harm,
received through her, seemed to be lurking in Zenobia's heart - »We had one
father! You knew it from the first; I, but a little while - else some things,
that have chanced, might have been spared you. But I never wished you harm. You
stood between me and an end which I desired. I wanted a clear path. No matter
what I meant. It is over now. Do you forgive me?«
    »Oh, Zenobia,« sobbed Priscilla, »it is I that feel like the guilty one!«
    »No, no, poor little thing!« said Zenobia, with a sort of contempt. »You
have been my evil fate; but there never was a babe with less strength or will to
do an injury. Poor child! Methinks you have but a melancholy lot before you,
sitting all alone in that wide, cheerless heart, where, for aught you know - and
as I, alas! believe - the fire which you have kindled may soon go out. Ah, the
thought makes me shiver for you! What will you do, Priscilla, when you find no
spark among the ashes?«
    »Die!« she answered.
    »That was well said!« responded Zenobia, with an approving smile. »There is
all a woman in your little compass, my poor sister. Meanwhile, go with him, and
live!«
    She waved her away, with a queenly gesture, and turned her own face to the
rock. I watched Priscilla, wondering what judgment she would pass, between
Zenobia and Hollingsworth; how interpret his behaviour, so as to reconcile it
with true faith both towards her sister and herself; how compel her love for him
to keep any terms whatever with her sisterly affection! But, in truth, there was
no such difficulty as I imagined. Her engrossing love made it all clear.
Hollingsworth could have no fault. That was the one principle at the centre of
the universe. And the doubtful guilt or possible integrity of other people,
appearances, self-evident facts, the testimony of her own senses - even
Hollingsworth's self-accusation, had he volunteered it - would have weighed not
the value of a mote of thistle-down, on the other side. So secure was she of his
right, that she never thought of comparing it with another's wrong, but left the
latter to itself.
    Hollingsworth drew her arm within his, and soon disappeared with her among
the trees. I cannot imagine how Zenobia knew when they were out of sight; she
never glanced again towards them. But, retaining a proud attitude, so long as
they might have thrown back a retiring look, they were no sooner departed -
utterly departed - than she began slowly to sink down. It was as if a great,
invisible, irresistible weight were pressing her to the earth. Settling upon her
knees, she leaned her forehead against the rock, and sobbed convulsively; dry
sobs, they seemed to be, such as have nothing to do with tears.
 

                          XXVI. Zenobia and Coverdale

Zenobia had entirely forgotten me. She fancied herself alone with her great
grief. And had it been only a common pity that I felt for her - the pity that
her proud nature would have repelled, as the one worst wrong which the world yet
held in reserve - the sacredness and awfulness of the crisis might have impelled
me to steal away, silently, so that not a dry leaf should rustle under my feet.
I would have left her to struggle, in that solitude, with only the eye of God
upon her. But, so it happened, I never once dreamed of questioning my right to
be there, now, as I had questioned it, just before, when I came so suddenly upon
Hollingsworth and herself, in the passion of their recent debate. It suits me
not to explain what was the analogy that I saw, or imagined, between Zenobia's
situation and mine; nor, I believe, will the reader detect this one secret,
hidden beneath many a revelation which perhaps concerned me less. In simple
truth, however, as Zenobia leaned her forehead against the rock, shaken with
that tearless agony, it seemed to me that the self-same pang, with hardly
mitigated torment, leaped thrilling from her heart-strings to my own. Was it
wrong, therefore, if I felt myself consecrated to the priesthood, by sympathy
like this, and called upon to minister to this woman's affliction, so far as
mortal could?
    But, indeed, what could mortal do for her? Nothing! The attempt would be a
mockery and an anguish. Time, it is true, would steal away her grief, and bury
it, and the best of her heart in the same grave. But Destiny itself, methought,
in its kindliest mood, could do no better for Zenobia, in the way of quick
relief, than to cause the impending rock to impend a little further, and fall
upon her head. So I leaned against a tree, and listened to her sobs, in unbroken
silence. She was half prostrate, half kneeling, with her forehead still pressed
against the rock. Her sobs were the only sound; she did not groan, nor give any
other utterance to her distress. It was all involuntary.
    At length, she sat up, put back her hair, and stared about her with a
bewildered aspect, as if not distinctly recollecting the scene through which she
had passed, nor cognizant of the situation in which it left her. Her face and
brow were almost purple with the rush of blood. They whitened, however,
by-and-by, and, for some time, retained this deathlike hue. She put her hand to
her forehead, with a gesture that made me forcibly conscious of an intense and
living pain there.
    Her glance, wandering wildly to-and-fro, passed over me, several times,
without appearing to inform her of my presence. But, finally, a look of
recognition gleamed from her eyes into mine.
    »Is it you, Miles Coverdale?« said she, smiling. »Ah, I perceive what you
are about! You are turning this whole affair into a ballad. Pray let me hear as
many stanzas as you happen to have ready!«
    »Oh, hush, Zenobia!« I answered. »Heaven knows what an ache is in my soul!«
    »It is genuine tragedy, is it not?« rejoined Zenobia, with a sharp, light
laugh. »And you are willing to allow, perhaps, that I have had hard measure. But
it is a woman's doom, and I have deserved it like a woman; so let there be no
pity, as, on my part, there shall be no complaint. It is all right now, or will
shortly be so. But, Mr. Coverdale, by all means, write this ballad, and put your
soul's ache into it, and turn your sympathy to good account, as other poets do,
and as poets must, unless they choose to give us glittering icicles instead of
lines of fire. As for the moral, it shall be distilled into the final stanza, in
a drop of bitter honey.«
    »What shall it be, Zenobia?« I inquired, endeavouring to fall in with her
mood.
    »Oh, a very old one will serve the purpose,« she replied. »There are no new
truths, much as we have prided ourselves on finding some. A moral? Why, this: -
that, in the battlefield of life, the downright stroke, that would fall only on
a man's steel head-piece, is sure to light on a woman's heart, over which she
wears no breastplate, and whose wisdom it is, therefore, to keep out of the
conflict. Or this: - that the whole universe, her own sex and yours, and
Providence, or Destiny, to boot, make common cause against the woman who swerves
one hair's breadth out of the beaten track. Yes; and add, (for I may as well own
it, now,) that, with that one hair's breadth, she goes all astray, and never
sees the world in its true aspect, afterwards!«
    »This last is too stern a moral,« I observed. »Cannot we soften it a
little?«
    »Do it, if you like, at your own peril, not on my responsibility,« she
answered; then, with a sudden change of subject, she went on: - »After all, he
has flung away what would have served him better than the poor, pale flower he
kept. What can Priscilla do for him? Put passionate warmth into his heart, when
it shall be chilled with frozen hopes? Strengthen his hands, when they are weary
with much doing and no performance? No; but only tend towards him with a blind,
instinctive love, and hang her little, puny weakness for a clog upon his arm!
She cannot even give him such sympathy as is worth the name. For will he never,
in many an hour of darkness, need that proud, intellectual sympathy which he
might have had from me? - the sympathy that would flash light along his course,
and guide as well as cheer him? Poor Hollingsworth! Where will he find it now?«
    »Hollingsworth has a heart of ice!« said I, bitterly. »He is a wretch!«
    »Do him no wrong!« interrupted Zenobia, turning haughtily upon me. »Presume
not to estimate a man like Hollingsworth! It was my fault, all along, and none
of his. I see it now! He never sought me. Why should he seek me? What had I to
offer him? A miserable, bruised, and battered heart, spoilt long before he met
me! A life, too, hopelessly entangled with a villain's! He did well to cast me
off. God be praised, he did it! And yet, had he trusted me, and borne with me a
little longer, I would have saved him all this trouble.«
    She was silent, for a time, and stood with her eyes fixed on the ground.
Again raising them, her look was more mild and calm.
    »Miles Coverdale!« said she.
    »Well, Zenobia!« I responded. »Can I do you any service?«
    »Very little,« she replied. »But it is my purpose, as you may well imagine,
to remove from Blithedale; and, most likely, I may not see Hollingsworth again.
A woman in my position, you understand, feels scarcely at her ease among former
friends. New faces - unaccustomed looks - those only can she tolerate. She would
pine, among familiar scenes; she would be apt to blush, too, under the eyes that
knew her secret; her heart might throb uncomfortably; she would mortify herself,
I suppose, with foolish notions of having sacrificed the honour of her sex, at
the foot of proud, contumacious man. Poor womanhood, with its rights and wrongs!
Here will be new matter for my course of lectures, at the idea of which you
smiled, Mr. Coverdale, a month or two ago. But, as you have really a heart and
sympathies, as far as they go, and as I shall depart without seeing
Hollingsworth, I must entreat you to be a messenger between him and me.«
    »Willingly,« said I, wondering at the strange way in which her mind seemed
to vibrate from the deepest earnest to mere levity. »What is the message?«
    »True; - what is it?« exclaimed Zenobia. »After all, I hardly know. On
better consideration, I have no message. Tell him - tell him something pretty
and pathetic, that will come nicely and sweetly into your ballad - anything you
please, so it be tender and submissive enough. Tell him he has murdered me! Tell
him that I'll haunt him!« - she spoke these words with the wildest energy - »And
give him - no, give Priscilla - this!«
    Thus saying, she took the jewelled flower out of her hair; and it struck me
as the act of a queen, when worsted in a combat, discrowning herself, as if she
found a sort of relief in abasing all her pride.
    »Bid her wear this for Zenobia's sake,« she continued. »She is a pretty
little creature, and will make as soft and gentle a wife as the veriest
Bluebeard could desire. Pity that she must fade so soon! These delicate and puny
maidens always do. Ten years hence, let Hollingsworth look at my face and
Priscilla's, and then choose betwixt them. Or, if he pleases, let him do it
now!«
    How magnificently Zenobia looked, as she said this! The effect of her beauty
was even heightened by the over-consciousness and self-recognition of it, into
which, I suppose, Hollingsworth's scorn had driven her. She understood the look
of admiration in my face; and - Zenobia to the last - it gave her pleasure.
    »It is an endless pity,« said she, »that I had not bethought myself of
winning your heart, Mr. Coverdale, instead of Hollingsworth's. I think I should
have succeeded; and many women would have deemed you the worthier conquest of
the two. You are certainly much the handsomest man. But there is a fate in these
things. And beauty, in a man, has been of little account with me, since my
earliest girlhood, when, for once, it turned my head. Now, Farewell!«
    »Zenobia, whither are you going?« I asked.
    »No matter where,« said she. »But I am weary of this place, and sick to
death of playing at philanthropy and progress. Of all varieties of mock-life, we
have surely blundered into the very emptiest mockery, in our effort to establish
the one true system. I have done with it; and Blithedale must find another woman
to superintend the laundry, and you, Mr. Coverdale, another nurse to make your
gruel, the next time you fall ill. It was, indeed, a foolish dream! Yet it gave
us some pleasant summer days, and bright hopes, while they lasted. It can do no
more; nor will it avail us to shed tears over a broken bubble. Here is my hand!
Adieu!«
    She gave me her hand, with the same free, whole-souled gesture as on the
first afternoon of our acquaintance; and being greatly moved, I bethought me of
no better method of expressing my deep sympathy than to carry it to my lips. In
so doing, I perceived that this white hand - so hospitably warm when I first
touched it, five months since - was now cold as a veritable piece of snow.
    »How very cold!« I exclaimed, holding it between both my own, with the vain
idea of warming it. »What can be the reason? It is really deathlike!«
    »The extremities die first, they say,« answered Zenobia, laughing. »And so
you kiss this poor, despised, rejected hand! Well, my dear friend, I thank you!
You have reserved your homage for the fallen. Lip of man will never touch my
hand again. I intend to become a Catholic, for the sake of going into a nunnery.
When you next hear of Zenobia, her face will be behind the black-veil; so look
your last at it now - for all is over! Once more, farewell!«
    She withdrew her hand, yet left a lingering pressure, which I felt long
afterwards. So intimately connected, as I had been, with perhaps the only man in
whom she was ever truly interested, Zenobia looked on me as the representative
of all the past, and was conscious that, in bidding me adieu, she likewise took
final leave of Hollingsworth, and of this whole epoch of her life. Never did her
beauty shine out more lustrously, than in the last glimpse that I had of her.
She departed, and was soon hidden among the trees.
    But, whether it was the strong impression of the foregoing scene, or
whatever else the cause, I was affected with a fantasy that Zenobia had not
actually gone, but was still hovering about the spot, and haunting it. I seemed
to feel her eyes upon me. It was as if the vivid colouring of her character had
left a brilliant stain upon the air. By degrees, however, the impression grew
less distinct. I flung myself upon the fallen leaves, at the base of Eliot's
pulpit. The sunshine withdrew up the tree-trunks, and flickered on the topmost
boughs; gray twilight made the wood obscure; the stars brightened out; the
pendent boughs became wet with chill autumnal dews. But I was listless, worn-out
with emotion on my own behalf, and sympathy for others, and had no heart to
leave my comfortless lair, beneath the rock.
    I must have fallen asleep, and had a dream, all the circumstances of which
utterly vanished at the moment when they converged to some tragical catastrophe,
and thus grew too powerful for the thin sphere of slumber that enveloped them.
Starting from the ground, I found the risen moon shining upon the rugged face of
the rock, and myself all in a tremble.
 

                                XXVII. Midnight

It could not have been far from midnight, when I came beneath Hollingsworth's
window, and finding it open, flung in a tuft of grass, with earth at the roots,
and heard it fall upon the floor. He was either awake, or sleeping very lightly;
for scarcely a moment had gone by, before he looked out and discerned me
standing in the moonlight.
    »Is it you, Coverdale?« he asked. »What is the matter?«
    »Come down to me, Hollingsworth!« I answered. »I am anxious to speak with
you.«
    The strange tone of my own voice startled me, and him, probably, no less. He
lost no time, and soon issued from the house-door, with his dress half-arranged.
    »Again, what is the matter?« he asked, impatiently.
    »Have you seen Zenobia,« said I, »since you parted from her, at Eliot's
pulpit?«
    »No,« answered Hollingsworth; »nor did I expect it.«
    His voice was deep, but had a tremor in it. Hardly had he spoken, when Silas
Foster thrust his head, done up in a cotton handkerchief, out of another window,
and took what he called - as it literally was - a squint at us.
    »Well, folks, what are ye about here?« he demanded. »Aha, are you there,
Miles Coverdale? You have been turning night into day, since you left us, I
reckon; and so you find it quite natural to come prowling about the house, at
this time o' night, frightening my old woman out of her wits, and making her
disturb a tired man out of his best nap. In with you, you vagabond, and to bed!«
    »Dress yourself quietly, Foster,« said I. »We want your assistance.«
    I could not, for the life of me, keep that strange tone out of my voice.
Silas Foster, obtuse as were his sensibilities, seemed to feel the ghastly
earnestness that was conveyed in it, as well as Hollingsworth did. He
immediately withdrew his head, and I heard him yawning, muttering to his wife,
and again yawning heavily, while he hurried on his clothes. Meanwhile, I showed
Hollingsworth a delicate handkerchief, marked with a well-known cypher, and told
where I had found it, and other circumstances which had filled me with a
suspicion so terrible, that I left him, if he dared, to shape it out for
himself. By the time my brief explanation was finished, we were joined by Silas
Foster, in his blue woollen frock.
    »Well, boys,« cried he, peevishly, »what is to pay now?«
    »Tell him, Hollingsworth!« said I.
    Hollingsworth shivered, perceptibly, and drew in a hard breath betwixt his
teeth. He steadied himself, however, and looking the matter more firmly in the
face than I had done, explained to Foster my suspicions and the grounds of them,
with a distinctness from which, in spite of my utmost efforts, my words had
swerved aside. The tough-nerved yeoman, in his comment, put a finish on the
business, and brought out the hideous idea in its full terror, as if he were
removing the napkin from the face of a corpse.
    »And so you think she's drowned herself!« he cried.
    I turned away my face.
    »What on earth should the young woman do that for?« exclaimed Silas, his
eyes half out of his head with mere surprise. »Why, she has more means than she
can use or waste, and lacks nothing to make her comfortable, but a husband - and
that's an article she could have, any day! There's some mistake about this, I
tell you!«
    »Come,« said I, shuddering. »Let us go and ascertain the truth.«
    »Well, well,« answered Silas Foster, »just as you say. We'll take the long
pole, with the hook at the end, that serves to get the bucket out of the
draw-well, when the rope is broken. With that, and a couple of long-handled
hay-rakes, I'll answer for finding her, if she's anywhere to be found. Strange
enough! Zenobia drown herself! No, no, I don't believe it. She had too much
sense, and too much means, and enjoyed life a great deal too well.«
    When our few preparations were completed, we hastened, by a shorter than the
customary route, through fields and pastures, and across a portion of the
meadow, to the particular spot, on the river-bank, which I had paused to
contemplate, in the course of my afternoon's ramble. A nameless presentiment had
again drawn me thither, after leaving Eliot's pulpit. I showed my companions
where I had found the handkerchief, and pointed to two or three footsteps,
impressed into the clayey margin, and tending towards the water. Beneath its
shallow verge, among the water-weeds, there were further traces, as yet
unobliterated by the sluggish current, which was there almost at a stand-still.
Silas Foster thrust his face down close to these footsteps, and picked up a
shoe, that had escaped my observation, being half imbedded in the mud.
    »There's a kid-shoe that never was made on a Yankee last,« observed he. »I
know enough of shoemaker's craft to tell that. French manufacture; and see what
a high instep! - and how evenly she trod in it! There never was a woman that
stepped handsomer in her shoes than Zenobia did. Here,« he added, addressing
Hollingsworth, »would you like to keep the shoe?«
    Hollingsworth started back.
    »Give it to me, Foster,« said I.
    I dabbled it in the water, to rinse off the mud, and have kept it ever
since. Not far from this spot, lay an old, leaky punt, drawn up on the oozy
river-side, and generally half-full of water. It served the angler to go in
quest of pickerel, or the sportsman to pick up his wild-ducks. Setting this
crazy barque afloat, I seated myself in the stern, with the paddle, while
Hollingsworth sat in the bows, with the hooked pole, and Silas Foster amidships,
with a hay-rake.
    »It puts me in mind of my young days,« remarked Silas, »when I used to steal
out of bed to go bobbing for horn-pouts and eels. Heigh-ho! - well! - life and
death together make sad work for us all. Then, I was a boy, bobbing for fish;
and now I am getting to be an old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead
body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought anything had really happened to
Zenobia, I should feel kind o' sorrowful.«
    »I wish, at least, you would hold your tongue!« muttered I.
    The moon, that night, though past the full, was still large and oval, and
having risen between eight and nine o'clock, now shone aslantwise over the
river, throwing the high, opposite bank, with its woods, into deep shadow, but
lighting up the hither shore pretty effectually. Not a ray appeared to fall on
the river itself. It lapsed imperceptibly away, a broad, black, inscrutable
depth, keeping its own secrets from the eye of man, as impenetrably as mid-ocean
could.
    »Well, Miles Coverdale,« said Foster, »you are the helmsman. How do you mean
to manage this business?«
    »I shall let the boat drift, broadside foremost, past that stump,« I
replied. »I know the bottom, having sounded it in fishing. The shore, on this
side, after the first step or two, goes off very abruptly; and there is a pool,
just by the stump, twelve or fifteen feet deep. The current could not have force
enough to sweep any sunken object - even if partially buoyant - out of that
hollow.«
    »Come, then,« said Silas. »But I doubt whether I can touch bottom with this
hay-rake, if it's as deep as you say. Mr. Hollingsworth, I think you'll be the
lucky man, to-night, such luck as it is!«
    We floated past the stump. Silas Foster plied his rake manfully, poking it
as far as he could into the water, and immersing the whole length of his arm
besides. Hollingsworth at first sat motionless, with the hooked-pole elevated in
the air. But, by-and-by, with a nervous and jerky movement, he began to plunge
it into the blackness that upbore us, setting his teeth, and making precisely
such thrusts, methought, as if he were stabbing at a deadly enemy. I bent over
the side of the boat. So obscure, however, so awfully mysterious, was that dark
stream, that - and the thought made me shiver like a leaf - I might as well have
tried to look into the enigma of the eternal world, to discover what had become
of Zenobia's soul, as into the river's depths, to find her body. And there,
perhaps, she lay, with her face upward, while the shadow of the boat, and my own
pale face peering downward, passed slowly betwixt her and the sky.
    Once, twice, thrice, I paddled the boat up stream, and again suffered it to
glide, with the river's slow, funereal motion, downward. Silas Foster had raked
up a large mass of stuff, which, as it came towards the surface, looked somewhat
like a flowing garment, but proved to be a monstrous tuft of water-weeds.
Hollingsworth, with a gigantic effort, upheaved a sunken log. When once free of
the bottom, it rose partly out of water - all weedy and slimy, a
devilish-looking object, which the moon had not shone upon for half a hundred
years - then plunged again, and sullenly returned to its old resting-place, for
the remnant of the century.
    »That looked ugly!« quoth Silas. »I half thought it was the Evil One on the
same errand as ourselves - searching for Zenobia!«
    »He shall never get her!« said I, giving the boat a strong impulse.
    »That's not for you to say, my boy!« retorted the yeoman. »Pray God he never
has, and never may! Slow work this, however! I should really be glad to find
something. Pshaw! What a notion that is, when the only good-luck would be, to
paddle, and drift and poke, and grope, hereabouts, till morning, and have our
labour for our pains! For my part, I shouldn't wonder if the creature had only
lost her shoe in the mud, and saved her soul alive, after all. My stars, how she
will laugh at us, tomorrow morning!«
    It is indescribable what an image of Zenobia - at the breakfast-table, full
of warm and mirthful life - this surmise of Silas Foster's brought before my
mind. The terrible phantasm of her death was thrown by it into the remotest and
dimmest back-ground, where it seemed to grow as improbable as a myth.
    »Yes, Silas; it may be as you say!« cried I.
    The drift of the stream had again borne us a little below the stump, when I
felt - yes, felt, for it was as if the iron hook had smote my breast - felt
Hollingsworth's pole strike some object at the bottom of the river. He started
up, and almost overset the boat.
    »Hold on!« cried Foster. »You have her!«
    Putting a fury of strength into the effort, Hollingsworth heaved amain, and
up came a white swash to the surface of the river. It was the flow of a woman's
garments. A little higher, and we saw her dark hair, streaming down the current.
Black River of Death, thou hadst yielded up thy victim Zenobia was found!
    Silas Foster laid hold of the body - Hollingsworth, likewise, grappled with
it - and I steered towards the bank, gazing, all the while, at Zenobia, whose
limbs were swaying in the current, close at the boat's side. Arriving near the
shore, we all three stepped into the water, bore her out, and laid her on the
ground, beneath a tree.
    »Poor child!« said Foster - and his dry old heart, I verily believe,
vouchsafed a tear - »I'm sorry for her!«
    Were I to describe the perfect horror of the spectacle, the reader might
justly reckon it to me for a sin and shame. For more than twelve long years I
have borne it in my memory, and could now reproduce it as freshly as if it were
still before my eyes. Of all modes of death, methinks it is the ugliest. Her wet
garments swathed limbs of terrible inflexibility. She was the marble image of a
death-agony. Her arms had grown rigid in the act of struggling, and were bent
before her, with clenched hands; her knees, too, were bent, and - thank God for
it! - in the attitude of prayer. Ah, that rigidity! It is impossible to bear the
terror of it. It seemed - I must needs impart so much of my own miserable idea -
it seemed as if her body must keep the same position in the coffin, and that her
skeleton would keep it in the grave, and that when Zenobia rose, at the Day of
judgement, it would be in just the same attitude as now!
    One hope I had; and that, too, was mingled half with fear. She knelt, as if
in prayer. With the last, choking consciousness, her soul, bubbling out through
her lips, it may be, had given itself up to the Father, reconciled and penitent.
But her arms! They were bent before her, as if she struggled against Providence
in never-ending hostility. Her hands! They were clenched in immitigable
defiance. Away with the hideous thought! The flitting moment, after Zenobia sank
into the dark pool - when her breath was gone, and her soul at her lips - was as
long, in its capacity of God's infinite forgiveness, as the lifetime of the
world.
    Foster bent over the body, and carefully examined it.
    »You have wounded the poor thing's breast,« said he to Hollingsworth. »Close
by her heart, too!«
    »Ha!« cried Hollingsworth, with a start.
    And so he had, indeed, both before and after death.
    »See!« said Foster. »That's the place where the iron struck her. It looks
cruelly, but she never felt it!«
    He endeavoured to arrange the arms of the corpse decently by its side. His
utmost strength, however, scarcely sufficed to bring them down; and rising
again, the next instant, they bade him defiance, exactly as before. He made
another effort, with the same result.
    »In God's name, Silas Foster,« cried I, with bitter indignation, »let that
dead woman alone!«
    »Why, man, it's not decent!« answered he, staring at me in amazement. »I
can't bear to see her looking so! Well, well,« added he, after a third effort,
»'tis of no use, sure enough; and we must leave the women to do their best with
her, after we get to the house. The sooner that's done, the better.«
    We took two rails from a neighbouring fence, and formed a bier by laying
across some boards from the bottom of the boat. And thus we bore Zenobia
homeward. Six hours before, how beautiful! At midnight, what a horror! A
reflection occurs to me, that will show ludicrously, I doubt not, on my page,
but must come in, for its sterling truth. Being the woman that she was, could
Zenobia have foreseen all these ugly circumstances of death, how ill it would
become her, the altogether unseemly aspect which she must put on, and,
especially, old Silas Foster's efforts to improve the matter, she would no more
have committed the dreadful act, than have exhibited herself to a public
assembly in a badly-fitting garment! Zenobia, I have often thought, was not
quite simple in her death. She had seen pictures, I suppose, of drowned persons,
in lithe and graceful attitudes. And she deemed it well and decorous to die as
so many village-maidens have, wronged in their first-love, and seeking peace in
the bosom of the old, familiar stream - so familiar that they could not dread it
- where, in childhood, they used to bathe their little feet, wading mid-leg
deep, unmindful of wet skirts. But, in Zenobia's case, there was some tint of
the Arcadian affectation that had been visible enough in all our lives, for a
few months past.
    This, however, to my conception, takes nothing from the tragedy. For, has
not the world come to an awfully sophisticated pass, when, after a certain
degree of acquaintance with it, we cannot even put ourselves to death in
whole-hearted simplicity?
    Slowly, slowly, with many a dreary pause - resting the bier often on some
rock, or balancing it across a mossy log, to take fresh hold - we bore our
burden onward, through the moonlight, and, at last, laid Zenobia on the floor
of the old farm-house. By-and-by, came three or four withered women, and stood
whispering around the corpse, peering at it through their spectacles, holding up
their skinny hands, shaking their night-capt heads, and taking counsel of one
another's experience what was to be done.
    With those tire-women, we left Zenobia!
 

                           XXVIII. Blithedale-Pasture

Blithedale, thus far in its progress, had never found the necessity of a
burial-ground. There was some consultation among us, in what spot Zenobia might
most fitly be laid. It was my own wish, that she should sleep at the base of
Eliot's pulpit, and that, on the rugged front of the rock, the name by which we
familiarly knew her - ZENOBIA - and not another word, should be deeply cut, and
left for the moss and lichens to fill up, at their long leisure. But
Hollingsworth (to whose ideas, on this point, great deference was due) made it
his request that her grave might be dug on the gently sloping hill-side, in the
wide pasture, where, as we once supposed, Zenobia and he had planned to build
their cottage. And thus it was done, accordingly.
    She was buried very much as other people have been, for hundreds of years
gone by. In anticipation of a death, we Blithedale colonists had sometimes set
our fancies at work to arrange a funereal ceremony, which should be the proper
symbolic expression of our spiritual faith and eternal hopes; and this we meant
to substitute for those customary rites, which were moulded originally out of
the Gothic gloom, and, by long use, like an old velvet-pall, have so much more
than their first death-smell in them. But, when the occasion came, we found it
the simplest and truest thing, after all, to content ourselves with the old
fashion, taking away what we could, but interpolating no novelties, and
particularly avoiding all frippery of flowers and cheerful emblems. The
procession moved from the farm-house. Nearest the dead walked an old man in deep
mourning, his face mostly concealed in a white handkerchief, and with Priscilla
leaning on his arm. Hollingsworth and myself came next. We all stood around the
narrow niche in the cold earth; all saw the coffin lowered in; all heard the
rattle of the crumbly soil upon its lid - that final sound, which mortality
awakens on the utmost verge of sense, as if in the vain hope of bringing an echo
from the spiritual world.
    I noticed a stranger - a stranger to most of those present, though known to
me - who, after the coffin had descended, took up a handful of earth, and flung
it first into the grave. I had given up Hollingsworth's arm, and now found
myself near this man.
    »It was an idle thing - a foolish thing - for Zenobia to do!« said he. »She
was the last woman in the world to whom death could have been necessary. It was
too absurd! I have no patience with her.«
    »Why so?« I inquired, smothering my horror at his cold comment in my eager
curiosity to discover some tangible truth, as to his relation with Zenobia. »If
any crisis could justify the sad wrong she offered to herself, it was surely
that in which she stood. Everything had failed her - prosperity, in the world's
sense, for her opulence was gone - the heart's prosperity, in love. And there
was a secret burden on her, the nature of which is best known to you. Young as
she was, she had tried life fully, had no more to hope, and something, perhaps,
to fear. Had Providence taken her away in its own holy hand, I should have
thought it the kindest dispensation that could be awarded to one so wrecked.«
    »You mistake the matter completely,« rejoined Westervelt.
    »What, then, is your own view of it?« I asked.
    »Her mind was active, and various in its powers,« said he; »her heart had a
manifold adaptation; her constitution an infinite buoyancy, which (had she
possessed only a little patience to await the reflux of her troubles) would have
borne her upward, triumphantly, for twenty years to come. Her beauty would not
have waned - or scarcely so, and surely not beyond the reach of art to restore
it - in all that time. She had life's summer all before her, and a hundred
varieties of brilliant success. What an actress Zenobia might have been! It was
one of her least valuable capabilities. How forcibly she might have wrought upon
the world, either directly in her own person, or by her influence upon some man,
or a series of men, of controlling genius! Every prize that could be worth a
woman's having - and many prizes which other women are too timid to desire - lay
within Zenobia's reach.«
    »In all this,« I observed, »there would have been nothing to satisfy her
heart.«
    »Her heart!« answered Westervelt, contemptuously. »That troublesome organ
(as she had hitherto found it) would have been kept in its due place and degree,
and have had all the gratification it could fairly claim. She would soon have
established a control over it. Love had failed her, you say! Had it never failed
her before? Yet she survived it, and loved again - possibly, not once alone, nor
twice either. And now to drown herself for yonder dreamy philanthropist!«
    »Who are you,« I exclaimed, indignantly, »that dare to speak thus of the
dead? You seem to intend a eulogy, yet leave out whatever was noblest in her,
and blacken, while you mean to praise. I have long considered you as Zenobia's
evil fate. Your sentiments confirm me in the idea, but leave me still ignorant
as to the mode in which you have influenced her life. The connection may have
been indissoluble, except by death. Then, indeed - always in the hope of God's
infinite mercy - I cannot deem it a misfortune that she sleeps in yonder grave!«
    »No matter what I was to her,« he answered, gloomily, yet without actual
emotion. »She is now beyond my reach. Had she lived, and hearkened to my
counsels, we might have served each other well. But there Zenobia lies, in
yonder pit, with the dull earth over her. Twenty years of a brilliant lifetime
thrown away for a mere woman's whim!«
    Heaven deal with Westervelt according to his nature and deserts! - that is
to say, annihilate him. He was altogether earthy, worldly, made for time and its
gross objects, and incapable - except by a sort of dim reflection, caught from
other minds - of so much as one spiritual idea. Whatever stain Zenobia had, was
caught from him; nor does it seldom happen that a character of admirable
qualities loses its better life, because the atmosphere, that should sustain it,
is rendered poisonous by such breath as this man mingled with Zenobia's. Yet his
reflections possessed their share of truth. It was a woeful thought, that a woman
of Zenobia's diversified capacity should have fancied herself irretrievably
defeated on the broad battle-field of life, and with no refuge, save to fall on
her own sword, merely because Love had gone against her. It is nonsense, and a
miserable wrong - the result, like so many others, of masculine egotism - that
the success or failure of woman's existence should be made to depend wholly on
the affections, and on one species of affection; while man has such a multitude
of other chances, that this seems but an incident. For its own sake, if it will
do no more, the world should throw open all its avenues to the passport of a
woman's bleeding heart.
    As we stood around the grave, I looked often towards Priscilla, dreading to
see her wholly overcome with grief. And deeply grieved, in truth, she was. But a
character, so simply constituted as hers, has room only for a single predominant
affection. No other feeling can touch the heart's inmost core, nor do it any
deadly mischief. Thus, while we see that such a being responds to every breeze,
with tremulous vibration, and imagine that she must be shattered by the first
rude blast, we find her retaining her equilibrium amid shocks that might have
overthrown many a sturdier frame. So with Priscilla! Her one possible misfortune
was Hollingsworth's unkindness; and that was destined never to befall her -
never yet, at least - for Priscilla has not died.
    But, Hollingsworth! After all the evil that he did, are we to leave him
thus, blessed with the entire devotion of this one true heart, and with wealth at
his disposal, to execute the long contemplated project that had led him so far
astray? What retribution is there here? My mind being vexed with precisely this
query, I made a journey, some years since, for the sole purpose of catching a
last glimpse at Hollingsworth, and judging for myself whether he were a happy
man or no. I learned that he inhabited a small cottage, that his way of life was
exceedingly retired, and that my only chance of encountering him or Priscilla
was, to meet them in a secluded lane, where, in the latter part of the
afternoon, they were accustomed to walk. I did meet them, accordingly. As they
approached me, I observed in Hollingsworth's face a depressed and melancholy
look, that seemed habitual; the powerfully built man showed a self-distrustful
weakness, and a childlike, or childish, tendency to press close, and closer
still, to the side of the slender woman whose arm was within his. In Priscilla's
manner, there was a protective and watchful quality, as if she felt herself the
guardian of her companion, but, likewise, a deep, submissive, unquestioning
reverence, and also a veiled happiness in her fair and quiet countenance.
    Drawing nearer, Priscilla recognized me, and gave me a kind and friendly
smile, but with a slight gesture which I could not help interpreting as an
entreaty not to make myself known to Hollingsworth. Nevertheless, an impulse
took possession of me, and compelled me to address him.
    »I have come, Hollingsworth,« said I, »to view your grand edifice for the
reformation of criminals. Is it finished yet?«
    »No - nor begun!« answered he, without raising his eyes. »A very small one
answers all my purposes.«
    Priscilla threw me an upbraiding glance. But I spoke again, with a bitter
and revengeful emotion, as if flinging a poisoned arrow at Hollingsworth's
heart.
    »Up to this moment,« I inquired, »how many criminals have you reformed?«
    »Not one!« said Hollingsworth, with his eyes still fixed on the ground.
»Ever since we parted, I have been busy with a single murderer!«
    Then the tears gushed into my eyes, and I forgave him. For I remembered the
wild energy, the passionate shriek, with which Zenobia had spoken those words -
»Tell him he has murdered me! Tell him that I'll haunt him!« - and I knew what
murderer he meant, and whose vindictive shadow dogged the side where Priscilla
was not.
    The moral which presents itself to my reflections, as drawn from
Hollingsworth's character and errors, is simply this: - that, admitting what is
called Philanthropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often useful by its
energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the individual, whose
ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it thus becomes. It ruins, or is
fearfully apt to ruin, the heart; the rich juices of which God never meant
should be pressed violently out, and distilled into alcoholic liquor, by an
unnatural process; but should render life sweet, bland, and gently beneficent,
and insensibly influence other hearts and other lives to the same blessed end. I
see in Hollingsworth an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bunyan's book
of such; - from the very gate of Heaven, there is a by-way to the pit!
    But, all this while, we have been standing by Zenobia's grave. I have never
since beheld it, but make no question that the grass grew all the better, on
that little parallelogram of pasture-land, for the decay of the beautiful woman
who slept beneath. How much Nature seems to love us! And how readily,
nevertheless, without a sigh or a complaint, she converts us to a meaner
purpose, when her highest one - that of conscious, intellectual life, and
sensibility - has been untimely baulked! While Zenobia lived, Nature was proud
of her, and directed all eyes upon that radiant presence, as her fairest
handiwork. Zenobia perished. Will not Nature shed a tear? Ah, no! She adopts the
calamity at once into her system, and is just as well pleased, for aught we can
see, with the tuft of ranker vegetation that grew out of Zenobia's heart, as
with all the beauty which has bequeathed us no earthly representative, except in
this crop of weeds. It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless
body is so little valued.
 

                       XXIX. Miles Coverdale's Confession

It remains only to say a few words about myself. Not improbably, the reader
might be willing to spare me the trouble; for I have made but a poor and dim
figure in my own narrative, establishing no separate interest, and suffering my
colourless life to take its hue from other lives. But one still retains some
little consideration for one's self; so I keep these last two or three pages for
my individual and sole behove.
    But what, after all, have I to tell? Nothing, nothing, nothing! I left
Blithedale within the week after Zenobia's death, and went back thither no more.
The whole soil of our farm, for a long time afterwards, seemed but the sodded
earth over her grave. I could not toil there, nor live upon its products. Often,
however, in these years that are darkening around me, I remember our beautiful
scheme of a noble and unselfish life, and how fair, in that first summer,
appeared the prospect that it might endure for generations, and be perfected, as
the ages rolled away, into the system of a people, and a world. Were my former
associates now there - were there only three or four of those true-hearted men,
still labouring in the sun - I sometimes fancy that I should direct my
world-weary footsteps thitherward, and entreat them to receive me, for old
friendship's sake. More and more, I feel that we had struck upon what ought to
be a truth. Posterity may dig it up, and profit by it. The experiment, so far as
its original projectors were concerned, proved long ago a failure, first lapsing
into Fourierism, and dying, as it well deserved, for this infidelity to its own
higher spirit. Where once we toiled with our whole hopeful hearts, the
town-paupers, aged, nerveless, and disconsolate, creep sluggishly a-field. Alas,
what faith is requisite to bear up against such results of generous effort!
    My subsequent life has passed - I was going to say, happily - but, at all
events, tolerably enough. I am now at middle-age - well, well, a step or two
beyond the midmost point, and I care not a fig who knows it! - a bachelor, with
no very decided purpose of ever being otherwise. I have been twice to Europe,
and spent a year or two, rather agreeably, at each visit. Being well to do in
the world, and having nobody but myself to care for, I live very much at my
ease, and fare sumptuously every day. As for poetry, I have given it up,
notwithstanding that Doctor Griswold - as the reader, of course, knows - has
placed me at a fair elevation among our minor minstrelsy, on the strength of my
pretty little volume, published ten years ago. As regards human progress, (in
spite of my irrepressible yearnings over the Blithedale reminiscences,) let them
believe in it who can, and aid in it who choose! If I could earnestly do either,
it might be all the better for my comfort. As Hollingsworth once told me, I lack
a purpose. How strange! He was ruined, morally, by an overplus of the very same
ingredient, the want of which, I occasionally suspect, has rendered my own life
all an emptiness. I by no means wish to die. Yet, were there any cause, in this
whole chaos of human struggle, worth a sane man's dying for, and which my death
would benefit, then - provided, however, the effort did not involve an
unreasonable amount of trouble - methinks I might be bold to offer up my life.
If Kossuth, for example, would pitch the battle-field of Hungarian rights within
an easy ride of my abode, and choose a mild, sunny morning, after breakfast, for
the conflict, Miles Coverdale would gladly be his man, for one brave rush upon
the levelled bayonets. Farther than that, I should be loth to pledge myself.
    I exaggerate my own defects. The reader must not take my own word for it,
nor believe me altogether changed from the young man, who once hoped
strenuously, and struggled, not so much amiss. Frostier heads than mine have
gained honour in the world; frostier hearts have imbibed new warmth, and been
newly happy. Life, however, it must be owned, has come to rather an idle pass
with me. Would my friends like to know what brought it thither? There is one
secret - I have concealed it all along, and never meant to let the least whisper
of it escape - one foolish little secret, which possibly may have had something
to do with these inactive years of meridian manhood, with my bachelorship, with
the unsatisfied retrospect that I fling back on life, and my listless glance
towards the future. Shall I reveal it? It is an absurd thing for a man in his
afternoon - a man of the world, moreover, with these three white hairs in his
brown moustache, and that deepening track of a crow's foot on each temple - an
absurd thing ever to have happened, and quite the absurdest for an old bachelor,
like me, to talk about. But it rises in my throat; so let it come.
    I perceive, moreover, that the confession, brief as it shall be, will throw
a gleam of light over my behaviour throughout the foregoing incidents, and is,
indeed, essential to the full understanding of my story. The reader, therefore,
since I have disclosed so much, is entitled to this one word more. As I write
it, he will charitably suppose me to blush, and turn away my face: -
    I - I myself - was in love - with - PRISCILLA!
