The Blithedale Romance
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> The Blithedale Romance
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"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 farmhouse.
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?"
"O 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 behavior, 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 thistledown 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 heartstrings 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 farther, 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, endeavoring 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 headpiece, 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? Amiserable, 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 honor 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 coloring 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 quickly, 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 cipher, 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 standstill. 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 stept 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 bark 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 hornpouts 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!
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