University of Virginia Library

18. 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 reäppearance. 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 dropt 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 color 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.