 | XXV.
THE THREE TOGETHER. The Blithedale romance |  |
25. 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 maskers, 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 sunk
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
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 fagots 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
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 behavior 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
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,
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?”
“O, 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 by this attack.
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 gypsies
yonder; for your disguise is a self-deception. See
whither it has brought you! First, you aimed a deathblow,
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
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! O!
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?”
“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
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.
| XXV.
THE THREE TOGETHER. The Blithedale romance | |