University of Virginia Library

26. 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
heart-strings 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 further, 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 death-like 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!”

“O, 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.

“O, 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 battle-field of life, the downright
stroke, that would fall only on a man's steel head-piece,
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? A
miserable, 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 death-like!”

“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.