The Blithedale Romance

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> The Blithedale Romance

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

"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, commonplace, 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 commonsense."

"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 overestimated 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 dovetail 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 purser 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 loath 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 honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some
point of his course--I know not exactly when or 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
cooperation 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
selfdevotion,--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
unbiassed 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 labor, 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 laborer 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 plateful 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 labor 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 sunburnt 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 endeavored 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 color 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 analyze it, seems to lose its very existence, and
resolve itself into a sickly humor 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
neighbor 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 standpoint.

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 strait-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 to-morrow 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-by, 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 doorstep 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 commonplace 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 pigsty, 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 dropt 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!"

"O cruel Silas, what a horrible ideal" cried I. "All the rest of us, men,
women, and livestock, 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!"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17