"Do you love her?" repeated Zen.o.bia.
"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 G.o.d has given him to protect."
"And what is your answer now?" persisted Zen.o.bia.
"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, G.o.d be judge between us," cried Zen.o.bia, breaking into sudden pa.s.sion, "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 s.e.x; for our virtues, when we have any, are merely impulsive and intuitive), pa.s.sionate, 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. "Show me one selfish end, in all I ever aimed at, and you may cut it out of my bosom with a knife!"
"It is all self!" answered Zen.o.bia 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, disinthralled! 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 death-blow, and a treacherous one, at this scheme of a purer and higher life, which so many n.o.ble 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 G.o.d 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 Zen.o.bia 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 excuse my wasted feelings, nor own it wholly a delusion, 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." Zen.o.bia 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! Oh, 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 Zen.o.bia.
Arriving at her feet, she sank down there, in the very same att.i.tude which she had a.s.sumed on their first meeting, in the kitchen of the old farmhouse. Zen.o.bia 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 Zen.o.bia"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 Zen.o.bia"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 Zen.o.bia," sobbed Priscilla, "it is I that feel like the guilty one!"
"No, no, poor little thing!" said Zen.o.bia, 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 Zen.o.bia, with an approving smile.
"There is all a woman in your little compa.s.s, 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 pa.s.s between Zen.o.bia and Hollingsworth; how interpret his behavior, so as to reconcile it with true faith both towards her sister and herself; how compel her love for him to keep 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 thistledown 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 Zen.o.bia knew when they were out of sight; she never glanced again towards them. But, retaining a proud att.i.tude 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.
XXVI. ZEn.o.bIA AND COVERDALE
Zen.o.bia 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion of their recent debate.
It suits me not to explain what was the a.n.a.logy that I saw or imagined between Zen.o.bia"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 Zen.o.bia 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 heartstrings 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 Zen.o.bia, in the way of quick relief; than to cause the impending rock to impend a little farther, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 deathlike 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, pa.s.sed 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."
"Oh, hush, Zen.o.bia!" I answered. "Heaven knows what an ache is in my soul!"
"It is genuine tragedy, is it not?" rejoined Zen.o.bia, 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, Zen.o.bia?" I inquired, endeavoring to fall in with her mood.
"Oh, 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 battlefield of life, the downright stroke, that would fall only on a man"s steel headpiece, 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sionate 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 Zen.o.bia, 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. G.o.d 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, Zen.o.bia," 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 s.e.x 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 Zen.o.bia. "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.