University of Virginia Library

28. XXVIII.
BLITHEDALE PASTURE.

Blithedale, thus far in its progress, had never found
the necessity of a burial-ground. There was some consultation
among us in what spot Zenobia might most
fitly be laid. It was my own wish that she should sleep
at the base of Eliot's pulpit, and that on the rugged
front of the rock the name by which we familiarly knew
her, — Zenobia, — and not another word, should be
deeply cut, and left for the moss and lichens to fill up at
their long leisure. But Hollingsworth (to whose ideas
on this point great deference was due) made it his request
that her grave might be dug on the gently sloping hill-side,
in the wide pasture, where, as we once supposed,
Zenobia and he had planned to build their cottage. And
thus it was done, accordingly.

She was buried very much as other people have been
for hundreds of years gone by. In anticipation of a
death, we Blithedale colonists had sometimes set our
fancies at work to arrange a funereal ceremony, which
should be the proper symbolic expression of our spiritual
faith and eternal hopes; and this we meant to substitute
for those customary rites which were moulded originally
out of the Gothic gloom, and by long use, like an
old velvet pall, have so much more than their first death-smell
in them. But when the occasion came, we found
it the simplest and truest thing, after all, to content ourselves

with the old fashion, taking away what we could,
but interpolating no novelties, and particularly avoiding
all frippery of flowers and cheerful emblems. The procession
moved from the farm-house. Nearest the dead
walked an old man in deep mourning, his face mostly
concealed in a white handkerchief, and with Priscilla
leaning on his arm. Hollingsworth and myself came
next. We all stood around the narrow niche in the cold
earth; all saw the coffin lowered in; all heard the rattle
of the crumbly soil upon its lid, — that final sound, which
mortality awakens on the utmost verge of sense, as if in
the vain hope of bringing an echo from the spiritual
world.

I noticed a stranger, — a stranger to most of those
present, though known to me, — who, after the coffin
had descended, took up a handful of earth, and flung it
first into the grave. I had given up Hollingsworth's
arm, and now found myself near this man.

“It was an idle thing — a foolish thing — for Zenobia
to do,” said he. “She was the last woman in the
world to whom death could have been necessary. It was
too absurd! I have no patience with her.”

“Why so?” I inquired, smothering my horror at his
cold comment in my eager curiosity to discover some
tangible truth as to his relation with Zenobia. “If any
crisis could justify the sad wrong she offered to herself,
it was surely that in which she stood. Everything had
failed her; — prosperity in the world's sense, for her
opulence was gone, — the heart's prosperity, in love.
And there was a secret burthen on her, the nature of
which is best known to you. Young as she was, she
had tried life fully, had no more to hope, and something,

perhaps, to fear. Had Providence taken her away in its
own holy hand, I should have thought it the kindest
dispensation that could be awarded to one so wrecked.”

“You mistake the matter completely,” rejoined Westervelt.

“What, then, is your own view of it?” I asked.

“Her mind was active, and various in its powers,”
said he. “Her heart had a manifold adaptation; her
constitution an infinite buoyancy, which (had she possessed
only a little patience to await the reflux of her
troubles) would have borne her upward, triumphantly,
for twenty years to come. Her beauty would not have
waned — or scarcely so, and surely not beyond the reach
of art to restore it — in all that time. She had life's
summer all before her, and a hundred varieties of brilliant
success. What an actress Zenobia might have
been! It was one of her least valuable capabilities.
How forcibly she might have wrought upon the world,
either directly in her own person, or by her influence
upon some man, or a series of men, of controlling genius!
Every prize that could be worth a woman's having
— and many prizes which other women are too
timid to desire — lay within Zenobia's reach.”

“In all this,” I observed, “there would have been
nothing to satisfy her heart.”

“Her heart!” answered Westervelt, contemptuously.
“That troublesome organ (as she had hitherto found it)
would have been kept in its due place and degree, and
have had all the gratification it could fairly claim. She
would soon have established a control over it. Love
had failed her, you say! Had it never failed her before?
Yet she survived it, and loved again, — possibly

not once alone, nor twice either. And now to drown
herself for yonder dreamy philanthropist!”

“Who are you,” I exclaimed, indignantly, “that dare
to speak thus of the dead? You seem to intend a
eulogy, yet leave out whatever was noblest in her, and
blacken while you mean to praise. I have long considered
you as Zenobia's evil fate. Your sentiments confirm
me in the idea, but leave me still ignorant as to the
mode in which you have influenced her life. The connection
may have been indissoluble, except by death.
Then, indeed, — always in the hope of God's infinite
mercy, — I cannot deem it a misfortune that she sleeps
in yonder grave!”

“No matter what I was to her,” he answered, gloomily,
yet without actual emotion. “She is now beyond
my reach. Had she lived, and hearkened to my counsels,
we might have served each other well. But there
Zenobia lies in yonder pit, with the dull earth over her.
Twenty years of a brilliant lifetime thrown away for a
mere woman's whim!”

Heaven deal with Westervelt according to his nature
and deserts! — that is to say, annihilate him. He was
altogether earthy, worldly, made for time and its gross
objects, and incapable — except by a sort of dim reflection
caught from other minds — of so much as one spiritual
idea. Whatever stain Zenobia had was caught
from him; nor does it seldom happen that a character
of admirable qualities loses its better life because the
atmosphere that should sustain it is rendered poisonous
by such breath as this man mingled with Zenobia's.
Yet his reflections possessed their share of truth. It
was a woful thought, that a woman of Zenobia's diversified

capacity should have fancied herself irretrievably
defeated on the broad battle-field of life, and with no
refuge, save to fall on her own sword, merely because
Love had gone against her. It is nonsense, and a
miserable wrong, — the result, like so many others, of
masculine egotism, — that the success or failure of
woman's existence should be made to depend wholly on
the affections, and on one species of affection, while
man has such a multitude of other chances, that this
seems but an incident. For its own sake, if it will do
no more, the world should throw open all its avenues to
the passport of a woman's bleeding heart.

As we stood around the grave, I looked often towards
Priscilla, dreading to see her wholly overcome with
grief. And deeply grieved, in truth, she was. But a
character so simply constituted as hers has room only
for a single predominant affection. No other feeling
can touch the heart's inmost core, nor do it any deadly
mischief. Thus, while we see that such a being responds
to every breeze with tremulous vibration, and imagine
that she must be shattered by the first rude blast, we
find her retaining her equilibrium amid shocks that
might have overthrown many a sturdier frame. So
with Priscilla; — her one possible misfortune was Hollingsworth's
unkindness; and that was destined never to
befall her, — never yet, at least, — for Priscilla has not
died.

But Hollingsworth! After all the evil that he did,
are we to leave him thus, blest with the entire devotion
of this one true heart, and with wealth at his disposal,
to execute the long-contemplated project that had led
him so far astray? What retribution is there here?

My mind being vexed with precisely this query, I made
a journey, some years since, for the sole purpose of
catching a last glimpse at Hollingsworth, and judging
for myself whether he were a happy man or no. I
learned that he inhabited a small cottage, that his way
of life was exceedingly retired, and that my only chance
of encountering him or Priscilla was to meet them in a
secluded lane, where, in the latter part of the afternoon,
they were accustomed to walk. I did meet them, accordingly.
As they approached me, I observed in Hollingsworth's
face a depressed and melancholy look, that
seemed habitual; — the powerfully-built man showed
a self-distrustful weakness, and a childlike or childish
tendency to press close, and closer still, to the side of the
slender woman whose arm was within his. In Priscilla's
manner there was a protective and watchful quality, as
if she felt herself the guardian of her companion; but,
likewise, a deep, submissive, unquestioning reverence,
and also a veiled happiness in her fair and quiet countenance.

Drawing nearer, Priscilla recognized me, and gave
me a kind and friendly smile, but with a slight gesture,
which I could not help interpreting as an entreaty not to
make myself known to Hollingsworth. Nevertheless,
an impulse took possession of me, and compelled me to
address him.

“I have come, Hollingsworth,” said I, “to view your
grand edifice for the reformation of criminals. Is it
finished yet?”

“No, nor begun,” answered he, without raising his
eyes. “A very small one answers all my purposes.”

Priscilla threw me an upbraiding glance. But I

spoke again, with a bitter and revengeful emotion, as if
flinging a poisoned arrow at Hollingsworth's heart.

“Up to this moment,” I inquired, “how many criminals
have you reformed?”

“Not one,” said Hollingsworth, with his eyes still
fixed on the ground. “Ever since we parted, I have
been busy with a single murderer.”

Then the tears gushed into my eyes, and I forgave
him; for I remembered the wild energy, the passionate
shriek, with which Zenobia had spoken those words, —
“Tell him he has murdered me! Tell him that I 'll
haunt him!” — and I knew what murderer he meant,
and whose vindictive shadow degged the side where
Priscilla was not.

The moral which presents itself to my reflections, as
drawn from Hollingsworth's character and errors, is
simply this, — that, admitting what is called philanthropy,
when adopted as a profession, to be often useful
by its energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous
to the individual whose ruling passion, in one exclusive
channel, it thus becomes. It ruins, or is fearfully apt to
ruin, the heart, the rich juices of which God never
meant should be pressed violently out, and distilled into
alcoholic liquor, by an unnatural process, but should
render life sweet, bland, and gently beneficent, and
insensibly influence other hearts and other lives to the
same blessed end. I see in Hollingsworth an exemplification
of the most awful truth in Bunyan's book of such;
— from the very gate of heaven there is a by-way to
the pit!

But, all this while, we have been standing by Zenobia's
grave. I have never since beheld it, but make no question

that the grass grew all the better, on that little
parallelogram of pasture-land, for the decay of the beautiful
woman who slept beneath. How much Nature seems
to love us! And how readily, nevertheless, without a sigh
or a complaint, she converts us to a meaner purpose, when
her highest one — that of conscious intellectual life and
sensibility — has been untimely balked! While Zenobia
lived, Nature was proud of her, and directed all
eyes upon that radiant presence, as her fairest handiwork.
Zenobia perished. Will not Nature shed a
tear? Ah, no! — she adopts the calamity at once into
her system, and is just as well pleased, for aught we
can see, with the tuft of ranker vegetation that grew out
of Zenobia's heart, as with all the beauty which has
bequeathed us no earthly representative except in this
crop of weeds. It is because the spirit is inestimable
that the lifeless body is so little valued.