 | VI.
COVERDALE'S SICK-CHAMBER. The Blithedale romance |  |
6. VI.
COVERDALE'S SICK-CHAMBER.
The horn sounded at daybreak, 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 clamor, 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
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-parlor,
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
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 chamber-maid 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 furnance 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-day?”
“Neither to-day nor to-morrow,” 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 homœopathic, gave me as much medicine,
in the course of a fortnight's attendance, as would have
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 falter 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 night 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
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 bed-side, 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
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 bed-side, 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
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 coloring 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
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 favorite ornament was actually a
subtile 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,
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
maiden-like. 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
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
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.
| VI.
COVERDALE'S SICK-CHAMBER. The Blithedale romance | |