 8 A Modern Arcadia Mayday I forget whether by Zenobia's sole decree or by the unanimous vote of our community had been declared a movable festival. It was deferred until the sun should have had a reasonable time to clear away the snowdrifts along the lee of the stone walls and bring out a few of the readiest wildflowers. On the forenoon of the substituted day, after admitting some of the balmy air into my chamber, I decided that it was nonsense and defeminacy to keep myself a prisoner any longer. So I descended to the sitting-room and, finding nobody there, proceeded to the barn, whence I had already heard Zenobia's voice and, along with it, a girlish laugh which was not so certainly recognizable. Arriving at the spot, it a little surprised me to discover that these merry outbreaks came from Priscilla. The two had been amaying together. They had found anemones in abundance, Houstonias by the handful, some columbines, a few long-stocked violets, and a quantity of white everlasting flowers, and had filled up their basket with a delicate spray of shrubs and trees. None were prettier than the maple twigs, the leaf of which looks like a scarlet bud in May, and like a plate of vegetable gold in October. Zenobia, who showed no conscience in such matters, had also rifled a cherry-tree of one of its blossomed boughs, and with all this variety of silver ornament had been decking out Priscilla. Being done with a good deal of taste, it made her look more charming than I should have thought possible, with my recollection of the wan, frost-nipped girl as Heretofore described. Nevertheless, among those fragrant blossoms, and conspicuously too, had been stuck a weed of evil odor and ugly aspect, which as soon as I detected it, destroyed the effect of all the rest. There was a gleam of latent mischief, not to call it deviltry, in Zenobia's eye, which seemed to indicate a slightly malicious purpose in the arrangement. As for herself, she scorned the rural buds and leaflets, and wore nothing but her invariable flower of the tropics. What do you think of Priscilla now, Mr. Coverdale, asked she, surveying her as a child does its doll, is not she worth a verse or two? There is only one thing amiss, answered I. Zenobia laughed and flung the malignant weed away. Yes, she deserves some verses now, said I, and from a better poet than myself. She is the very picture of the New England spring, subdued in tint and rather cool, but with a capacity of sunshine, and bringing us a few alpine blossoms as earnest of something richer, though hardly more beautiful, hereafter. The best type of her is one of those anemones. What I find most singular in Priscilla as her health improves, observed Zenobia, is her wildness. Such a quiet little body as she seemed, one would not have expected that. Why, as we strolled the woods together, I could hardly keep her from scrambling up the trees like a squirrel. She has never before known what it is to live in the free air, and so it intoxicates her as if she were sipping wine. And she thinks it's such a paradise here, and all of us, particularly Mr. Hollingsworth and myself, are such angels. It is quite ridiculous and provokes one's malice almost to see a creature so happy, especially a feminine creature. They are always happier than male creatures, said I. You must correct that opinion, Mr. Coverdale replied Zenobia contemptuously, or I shall think you lack the poetic insight. Did you ever see a happy woman in your life? Of course I do not mean a girl like Priscilla and a thousand others, for they are all alike, while on the sunny side of experience. But a grown woman, how can she be happy after discovering that fate has assigned her but one single event which she must contrive to make the substance of her whole life? A man has his choice of innumerable events. A woman, I suppose, answered I, by constant repetition of her one event, may compensate for the lack of variety. Indeed, said Zenobia. While we were talking, Priscilla caught sight of Hollingsworth at a distance, in a blue frock and with a hoe over his shoulder, returning from the field. She immediately set out to meet him, running and skipping, with spirits as light as the breeze of the may morning, but with limbs too little exercised to be quite responsive. She clapped her hands, too, with great exuberance of gesture, as is the custom of young girls when their electricity overcharges them. But all at once, midway to Hollingsworth, she paused, looked round about her towards the river, the road, the woods, and back towards us, appearing to listen as if she heard someone calling her name, and knew not precisely in what direction. Have you bewitched her, I exclaimed? It is no sorcery of mindsets in Obia, but I have seen the girl do that identical thing once or twice before. Can you imagine what is the matter with her? No, unless, said I, she has the gift of hearing those airy tongues that syllable men's names, which Milton tells about. From whatever cause Priscilla's animation seemed entirely to have deserted her. She seated herself on a rock and remained there until Hollingsworth came up, and when he took her hand and led her back to us, she rather resembled my original image of the one and spiritless Priscilla than the flowery May Queen of a few moments ago. These sudden transformations, only to be accounted for by an extreme nervous susceptibility, always continued to characterize the girl, though with diminished frequency as her health progressively grew more robust. I was now on my legs again. My fit of illness had been an avenue between two existences, the low arched and dark-sum doorway through which I crept out of a life of old conventionalisms on my hands and knees as it were, and gained admittance into the freer region that lay beyond. In this respect it was like death, and as with death too it was good to have gone through it. No otherwise could I have rid myself of a thousand follies, fripperies, prejudices, habits, and other such worldly dust as inevitably settles upon the crowd along the broad highway, giving them all one sordid aspect before noontime, however freshly they may have begun their pilgrimage in the dewy morning. The very substance upon my bones had not been fit to live with in any better, truer, or more energetic mode than that to which I was accustomed. So it was taken off me and flung aside like any other worn-out or unseasonable garment, and after shivering a little while in my skeleton I began to be clothed anew and much more satisfactorily than in my previous suit. In literal and physical truth I was quite another man. I had a lively sense of the exultation with which the spirit will enter on the next stage of its eternal progress after leaving the heavy burden of its mortality in an early grave with as little concern for what may become of it as now affected me for the flesh which I had lost. Emerging into the genial sunshine I have fancied that the labours of the brotherhood had already realised some of Fourier's predictions. Their enlightened culture of the soil and the virtues with which they sanctified their life had begun to produce an effect upon the material world and its climate. In my new enthusiasm man looked strong and stately, and woman oh how beautiful, and the earth a green garden blossoming with many coloured delights. Thus Nature, whose laws I had broken in various artificial ways, comported herself towards me as a strict but loving mother who uses the rod upon her little boy for his naughtiness, and then gives him a smile, a kiss, and some pretty playthings to console the urchin for her severity. In the interval of my seclusion there had been a number of recruits to our little army of saints and martyrs. They were mostly individuals who had gone through such an experience as to disgust them with ordinary pursuits, but who were not yet so old nor had suffered so deeply as to lose their faith in the better time to come. On comparing their minds with one another they often discovered that this idea of a community had been growing up in silent and unknown sympathy for years. Thoughtful, strongly lined faces were among them, somber brows, but eyes that did not require spectacles unless prematurely dimmed by the student's lamp-light and hair that seldom showed a thread of silver. Age, wedded to the past, encrusted over with a stony layer of habits, and retaining nothing fluid in its possibilities, would have been absurdly out of place in an enterprise like this. Youth too, in its early dawn, was hardly more adapted to our purpose, for it would behold the morning radiance of its own spirit beaming over the very same spots of withered grass and barren sand whence most of us had seen it vanish. We had very young people with us, it is true, downy lads, rosy girls in their first teens, and children of all heights above one's knee. But these had chiefly been sent hither for education, which it was one of the objects and methods of our institution to supply. Then we had borders, from town and elsewhere, who lived with us in a familiar way, sympathized more or less in our theories and sometimes shared in our labours. On the whole it was a society such as has seldom met together, nor perhaps could it reasonably be expected to hold together long. Persons of marked individuality, crooked sticks as some of us might be called, are not exactly the easiest to bind up into a faggot. But so long as our union should subsist, a man of intellect and feeling with a free nature in him might have sought far and near without finding so many points of attraction as would allure him hitherward. We were of all creeds and opinions and generally tolerant of all on every imaginable subject. Our bond, it seems to me, was not affirmative but negative. We had individually found one thing or another to quarrel with in our past life, and were pretty well agreed as to the inexpediency of lumbering along with the old system any further. As to what should be substituted there was much less unanimity. We did not greatly care, at least I never did, for the written constitution under which our millennium had commenced. My hope was that between theory and practice a true and available mode of life might be struck out, and that even should we ultimately fail the months or years spent in the trial would not have been wasted, either as regarded passing enjoyment or the experience which makes men wise. Arcadians, though we were, our costume bore no resemblance to the bereabunded doublets, silk breeches and stockings, and slippers fastened with artificial roses that distinguished the pastoral people of poetry and the stage. In outward show, I humbly conceive, we looked rather like a gang of beggars or banditi than either a company of honest laboring men or a conclave of philosophers. Whatever might be our points of difference we all of us seemed to have come to Blythdale with the one thrifty and laudable idea of wearing out our old clothes. Such garments as had an airing whenever we strode a field, coats with high collars and with no collars, broad-skirted or swallow-tailed, and with the waist at every point between the hip and arm pit, pantaloons of a dozen successive epochs, and greatly defaced at the knees by the humiliations of the wearer before his lady-love. In short, we were a living epitome of defunct fashions and the very raggedest presentment of men who had seen better days. It was gentility in tatters. Often retaining a scholar-like or clerical air you might have mistaken us for the denizens of Grubb Street, intent on getting a comfortable livelihood by agricultural labour, or coal ridges projected pantysocracy in full experiment, or candied and his motley associates at work in their cabbage garden, or anything else that was miserably out at elbows and most clumsily patched in the rear. We might have been sworn comrades to false staff's ragged regiment. Little skill as we boasted in other points of husbandry every mother's son of us would have served admirably to stick up for a scarecrow. And the worst of the matter was that the first energetic movement essential to one downright stroke of real labour was sure to put a finish to these poor habiliments. So we gradually flung them all aside and took to honest homespun and Lindsay Woolsey as preferable on the whole to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil, Ara Nudis, Sarah Nudis, which as Silas Foster remarked when I translated the maxim, would be apt to astonish the women folks. After a reasonable training the yeoman life throwed well with us. Our faces took the sunburn kindly, our chests gained in compass, and our shoulders in breadth and squareness. Our great brown fists looked as if they had never been capable of kid gloves. The plough, the hoe, the scythe, and the hayfork grew familiar to our grasp. The oxen responded to our voices. We could do almost as fair a day's work as Silas Foster himself, sleep dreamlessly after it, and awake at daybreak with only a little stiffness of the joints, which was usually quite gone by breakfast time. To be sure our next neighbours pretended to be incredulous as to our real proficiency in the business which we had taken in hand, they told slanderous fables about our inability to yoke our own oxen or to drive them afield when yoked or to release the poor brutes from their conjugal bond at nightfall. They had the face to say, too, that the cows laughed at our awkwardness at milking time and invariably kicked over the pails, partly in consequence of our putting the stool on the wrong side, and partly because, taking offence at the whisking of their tails, we were in the habit of holding these natural fly-flappers with one hand and milking with the other. They further averred that we hoed up whole acres of Indian corn and other crops and drew the earth carefully about the weeds, and that we raised five hundred tufts of burdock mistaking them for cabbages, and that by dint of unskillful planting few of our seeds ever came up at all, or if they did come up, it was stern foremost, and that we spent the better part of the month of June in reversing a field of beans which had thrust themselves out of the ground in this unseemly way. They quoted it as nothing more than an ordinary occurrence for one or other of us to crop off two or three fingers of a morning by our clumsy use of the hay-cutter. Finally, and as an ultimate catastrophe, these mendacious rogues circulated a report that we communitarians were exterminated to the last man by severing ourselves asunder with the sweep of our own sides, and that the world had lost nothing by this little accident. But this was pure envy and malice on the part of the neighbouring farmers. The peril of our new way of life was not lest we should fail in becoming practical agriculturists, but that we should probably cease to be anything else. While our enterprise lay all in theory, we had pleased ourselves with delectable visions of the spiritualisation of labour. It was to be our form of prayer and ceremonial worship. Each stroke of the hoe was to uncover some aromatic root of wisdom here to forehidden from the sun. Pausing in the field to let the wind exhale the moisture from our foreheads, we were to look upward and catch glimpses into the far-off soul of truth. In this point of view matters did not turn out quite so well as we anticipated. It is very true that sometimes gazing casually around me out of the midst of my toil I used to discern a richer picturesqueness in the visible scene of earth and sky. There was, at such moments, a novelty, an unwonted aspect on the face of nature as if she had been taken by surprise and seen at unawares, with no opportunity to put off her real look and assume the mask with which she mysteriously hides herself from mortals. But this was all. The clods of earth which we so constantly belabored and turned over and over were never etherealised into thought. Our thoughts on the contrary were fast becoming cloddish. Our labour symbolised nothing and left us mentally sluggish in the dusk of the evening. Intellectual activity is incompatible with any large amount of bodily exercise. The yeoman and the scholar, the yeoman and the man of finest moral culture, though not the man of sturdiest sense and integrity, are two distinct individuals and can never be melted or welded into one substance. Zenobia soon saw this truth and jibed me about it one evening as Hollingsworth and I lay on the grass after a hard day's work. I am afraid you did not make a song today while loading the hay-cart, said she, as Burns did when he was reaping barley. Burns never made a song in haying time, I answered very positively. He was no poet while a farmer and no farmer while a poet. And on the whole which of the two characters do you like best, asked Zenobia, for I have an idea that you cannot combine them any better than Burns did. Ah, I see in my mind's eye what sort of an individual you are to be two or three years hence. Grim Silas Foster is your prototype, with his palm of sole leather and his joints of rusty iron, which all through summer keep the stiffness of what he calls his winter's rheumatism, and his brain of, I don't know what his brain is made of unless it be a Savoy cabbage, but yours may be cauliflower as a rather more delicate variety. Your physical man will be transmuted into salt, beef and fried pork at the rate I should imagine of a pound and a half a day, that being about the average which we find necessary in the kitchen. You will make your toilet for the day, still like this delightful Silas Foster, by rinsing your fingers and the front part of your face in a little tin pan of water at the doorstep, and teasing your hair with a wooden pocket comb before a seven by nine inch looking glass. Your only pastime will be to smoke some very vile tobacco in the black stump of a pipe. Praise, bear me, cried I, but the pipe is not Silas's only mode of solacing himself with the weed. Your literature continued Zenobia, apparently delighted with her description, will be the farmer's almanac, for I observe our friend Foster never get so far as the newspaper. When you happen to sit down at odd moments you will fall asleep and make nasal proclamation of the fact as he does. And invariably you must be jogged out of a nap after supper by the future Mrs. Coverdale and persuaded to go regularly to bed. And on Sundays when you put on a blue coat with brass buttons you will think of nothing else to do but to go and lounge over the stone walls and rail fences and stare at the corn growing. And you will look with a knowing eye at oxen and will have a tendency to clamour over into pig-sties and feel of the hogs and give a guess how much they will weigh after you shall have stuck and dressed them. Already I have noticed you begin to speak through your nose and with a drawl. Pray if you really did make any poetry today let us hear it in that kind of utterance. Coverdale has given up making verses, now said Hollingsworth, who never had the slightest appreciation of my poetry. Just think of him penning a sonnet with a fist like that. There is at least this good in a life of toil that it takes the nonsense and fancy work out of a man and leaves nothing but what truly belongs to him. If a farmer can make poetry at the plough-tail it must be because his nature insists on it, and if that be the case let him make it in heaven's name. And how is it with you asked Zenobia in a different voice, for she never laughed at Hollingsworth as she often did at me? You, I think, cannot have ceased to live a life of thought and feeling. I have always been in earnest, answered Hollingsworth. I have hammered thought out of iron after heating the iron in my heart. It matters little what my outward toil may be. Were I a slave at the bottom of a mine I should keep the same purpose, the same faith in its ultimate accomplishment, that I do now. Myles Coverdale is not in earnest, either as a poet or a labourer. You give me hard measure Hollingsworth, said I, a little hurt. I have kept pace with you in the field, and my bones feel as if I had been in earnest, whatever may be the case with my brain. I cannot conceive, observed Zenobia with great emphasis, and no doubt she spoke fairly the feeling of the moment. I cannot conceive of being so continually as Mr. Coverdale is within the sphere of a strong and noble nature, without being strengthened and ennobled by its influence. This amiable remark of the fair Zenobia confirmed me in what I had already begun to suspect, that Hollingsworth, like many other illustrious prophets, reformers, and philanthropists, was likely to make at least two proselytes among the women to one among the men. Zenobia and Priscilla, these I believe, unless my unworthy self might be reckoned for a third, were the only disciples of his mission, and I spent a great deal of time, uselessly, in trying to conjecture what Hollingsworth meant to do with them, and they with him. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Blythe Dale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Chapter 9, Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla. It is not, I apprehend, a healthy kind of mental occupation to devote ourselves too exclusively to the study of individual men and women. If the person under examination be oneself, the result is pretty certain to be diseased action of the heart, almost before we can snatch a second glance. Or if we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. And wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster, which, after all, though we can point to every feature of his deformity in the real personage, may be said to have been created mainly by ourselves. Thus, as my conscience has often whispered me, I did Hollingsworth a great wrong by prying into his character, and am perhaps doing him as great a one at this moment by putting faith in the discoveries which I seemed to make. But I could not help it. Had I loved him less, I might have used him better. He and Zenobia and Priscilla, both for their own sakes and as connected with him, were separated from the rest of the community to my imagination, and stood forth as the indices of a problem which it was my business to solve. Other associates had a portion of my time, other matters amused me. Passing occurrences carried me along with them while they lasted. But here was the vortex of my meditations, around which they revolved, and witherward they too continually tended. In the midst of cheerful society I had often a feeling of loneliness, for it was impossible not to be sensible that while these three characters figured so largely on my private theatre, I, though probably reckoned as a friend by all, was at best but a secondary or tertiary personage with either of them. I loved Hollingsworth as has already been enough expressed, but it impressed me more and more that there was a stern and dreadful peculiarity in this man such as could not prove otherwise than pernicious to the happiness of those who should be drawn into too intimate a connection with him. He was not altogether human. There was something else in Hollingsworth besides flesh and blood and sympathies and affections and celestial spirit. This is always true of those men who have surrendered themselves to an overruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, or even operate as a motive power within, but grows in corporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle. When such begins to be the predicament, it is not cowardice but wisdom to avoid these victims. They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience. They will keep no friend unless he make himself the mirror of their purpose. They will smite and slay you and trample your dead corpse underfoot, all the more readily if you take the first step with them and cannot take the second and the third and every other step of their terribly straight path. They have an idol to which they consecrate themselves high priest and deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is most precious, and never once seem to suspect, so cunning has the devil been with them, that this false deity in whose iron features, immidicable to all the rest of mankind, they see only benignity and love, is but a spectrum of the very priest himself projected upon the surrounding darkness, and the higher and purer the original object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter is the probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which God-like benevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism. Of course I am perfectly aware that the above statement is exaggerated in the attempt to make it adequate. Professed philanthropists have gone far, but no originally good man, I presume, ever went quite so far as this. Let the reader abate whatever he deems fit. The paragraph may remain, however, both for its truth and its exaggeration, as strongly expressive of the tendencies which were really operative in Hollingsworth, and as exemplifying the kind of error into which my mode of observation was calculated to lead me. The issue was that in solitude I often shuddered at my friend, in my recollection of his dark and impressive countenance the features grew more sternly prominent than the reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more lurid in their light. The frown that had merely flitted across his brow seemed to have contorted it with an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him again I was often filled with remorse when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire that was burning in a cave. He is a man after all thought I, his maker's own truest image, a philanthropic man, not that steel engine of the devil's contrivance, a philanthropist. But in my woodwalks and in my silent chamber the dark face frowned at me again. When a young girl comes within the sphere of such a man she is as perilously situated as the maiden whom in the old classical myths the people used to expose to a dragon. If I had any duty whatever in reference to Hollingsworth it was to endeavor to save Priscilla from that kind of personal worship which her sex is generally prone to lavish upon saints and heroes. It often requires but one smile out of the hero's eyes into the girl's or woman's heart to transform this devotion from a sentiment of the highest approval and confidence into passionate love. Now Hollingsworth smiled much upon Priscilla, more than upon any other person. If she thought him beautiful it was no wonder. I often thought him so with the expression of tender human care and gentlest sympathy which she alone seemed to have power to call out upon his features. Zenobia I suspect would have given her eyes bright as they were for such a look. It was the least that our poor Priscilla could do to give her heart for a great many of them. There was the more danger of this in as much as the footing on which we all associated at Blythdale was widely different from that of conventional society. While inclining us to the soft defections of the Golden Age it seemed to authorize any individual of either sex to fall in love with any other regardless of what would elsewhere be judged suitable and prudent. Accordingly the tender passion was very rife among us, in various degrees of mildness or virulence but mostly passing away with the state of things that had given it origin. This was all well enough, but for a girl like Priscilla and a woman like Zenobia to jostle one another in their love of a man like Hollingsworth was likely to be no child's play. Had I been as cold-hearted as I sometimes thought myself nothing would have interested me more than to witness the play of passions that must thus have been evolved, but in honest truth I would really have gone far to save Priscilla at least from the catastrophe in which such a drama would be apt to terminate. Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl and still kept budding and blossoming and daily putting on some new charm which you no sooner became sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously possessed. So unformed, vague and without substance as she had come to us it seemed as if we could see nature shaping out a woman before our very eyes and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a woman's soul and frame. Yesterday her cheek was pale, today it had a bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's first one, was a wondrous novelty. Her imperfections and shortcomings affected me with a kind of playful pathos which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal spirits waxed high and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play and so giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely touch the ground. Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more untameable and regardless of rule and limit with an ever-shifting variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun yet with a harmonious propriety through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free as the wind but keep consonance with a strain of music inaudible to us. Young men and boys on the other hand play according to recognized law, old, traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy but with scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts. Whether young or old in play or in earnest, man is prone to be a brute. Especially is it delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race with her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than they need, and an air between that of a bird and a young colt. But Priscilla's peculiar charm in a foot race was the weakness and irregularity with which she ran. Growing up without exercise except to her poor little fingers, she had never yet acquired the perfect use of her legs. Setting buoyantly forth, therefore, as if no rival less swift than Atlanta could compete with her, she ran falteringly and often tumbled on the grass. Such an incident, though it seems too slight to think of, was a thing to laugh at but which brought the water into one's eyes and lingered in the memory after far greater joys and sorrows were wept out of it as antiquated trash. Priscilla's life as I beheld it was full of trifles that affected me in just this way. When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that Priscilla played more pranks and perpetrated more mischief than any other girl in the community. For example I once heard Silas Foster in a very gruff voice, threatening to rivet three horseshoes round Priscilla's neck and chain her to a post, because she, with some other young people, had clamored upon a load of hay and caused it to slide off the cart. How she made her peace I never knew, but very soon afterwards I saw old Silas with his brawny hands round Priscilla's waist, swinging her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the oxen to take her first lessons in riding. She met with terrible mishaps in her efforts to milk a cow, she let the poultry into the garden, she generally spoiled whatever part of the dinner she took in charge, she broke crockery, she dropped our biggest water-pitcher into the well, and, except with her needle and those little wooden instruments for purse-making, was as unserviceable a member of society as any young lady in the land. There was no other sort of efficiency about her. Yet everybody was kind to Priscilla, everybody loved her and laughed at her to her face and did not laugh behind her back. Everybody would have given her half of his last crust or the bigger share of his plum-cake. These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a pleasant weakness in the girl and considered her not quite able to look after her own interests or fight her battle with the world. And Hollingsworth, perhaps because he had been the means of introducing Priscilla to her new abode, appeared to recognize her as his own a special charge. Her simple, careless, childish, flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine and mistaking it for a broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to a stricter accountability than sorrow. It must show good cause or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily. Priscilla's gaiety, moreover, was of a nature that showed me how delicate an instrument she was and what fragile harp strings were her nerves. As they made sweet music at the airiest touch it would require but a stronger one to burst them all asunder. Absurd as it might be I tried to reason with her and persuade her not to be so joyous, thinking that if she would draw less lavishly upon her fund of happiness it would last the longer. I remember doing so one summer evening when we tired laborers sat looking on like goldsmiths old folks under the village thorn tree while the young people were at their sports. What is the use or sense of being so very gay, I said to Priscilla while she was taking breath after a great frolic? I love to see a sufficient cause for everything and I can see none for this. Pray tell me now what kind of a world you imagine this to be which you are so merry in. I never think about it at all, answered Priscilla, laughing, but this I am sure of, that it is a world where everybody is kind to me and where I love everybody. My heart keeps dancing within me and all the foolish things which you see me do are only the motions of my heart. How can I be dismal if my heart will not let me? Have you nothing dismal to remember, I suggest it? If not, then indeed you are very fortunate. Ah! said Priscilla slowly, and then came that unintelligible gesture when she seemed to be listening to a distant voice. For my part I continued, beneficently seeking to overshadow her with my own somber humor. My past life has been a tiresome one enough, yet I would rather look backward ten times than forward once. For little as we know of our life to come we may be very sure for one thing that the good we aim at will not be attained. People never do get just the good they seek. If it come at all it is something else which they never dreamed of and did not particularly want. Then again we may rest certain that our friends of today will not be our friends of a few years hence, but if we keep one of them it will be at the expense of the others and most probably we shall keep none. To be sure there are more to be had, but who cares about making a new set of friends even should they be better than those around us. Not I, said Priscilla, I will live and die with these. Well, but let the future go, resumed I. As for the present moment if we could look into the hearts where we wish to be most valued what should you expect to see, one's own likeness in the innermost holiest niche? Ah, I don't know, it may not be there at all. It may be a dusty image thrust aside into a corner and by and by to be flung out of doors where any foot may trample upon it. If not today then to-morrow, and so Priscilla I do not see much wisdom in being so very merry in this kind of a world. It had taken me nearly seven years of worldly life to hive up the bitter honey which I here offered to Priscilla and she rejected it. I don't believe one word of what you say, she replied, laughing anew. You made me sad for a minute by talking about the past, but the past never comes back again. Do we dream the same dream twice? There is nothing else that I am afraid of. So away she ran and fell down on the green grass as it was often her luck to do, but got up again without any harm. Priscilla, Priscilla cried Hollingsworth who was sitting on the doorstep, you had better not run any more tonight, you will weary yourself too much and do not sit down out of doors for there is a heavy dew beginning to fall. At his first word she went and sat down under the porch at Hollingsworth's feet, entirely contented and happy. What charm was there in his rude massiveness that so attracted and soothed this shadow-like girl? It appeared to me who have always been curious in such matters that Priscilla's vague and seemingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that with which love blesses inexperienced hearts before they begin to suspect what is going on within them. It transports them to the seventh heaven and if you ask what brought them thither they neither can tell nor care to learn, but cherish an ecstatic faith that there they shall abide forever. Zenobia was in the doorway not far from Hollingsworth. She gazed at Priscilla in a very singular way. Indeed it was a sight worth gazing at and a beautiful sight too as the fair girl sat at the feet of that dark powerful figure. Her air, while perfectly modest, delicate and virgin-like, denoted her as swayed by Hollingsworth, attracted to him and unconsciously seeking to rest upon his strength. I could not turn away my own eyes, but hoped that nobody, save Zenobia and myself, was witnessing this picture. It is before me now, with the evening twilight a little deepened by the dusk of memory. Come hither, Priscilla, said Zenobia, I have something to say to you. She spoke in little more than a whisper, but it is strange how expressive of moods a whisper may often be. Priscilla felt at once that something had gone wrong. Are you angry with me, she asked, rising slowly and standing before Zenobia in a drooping attitude? What have I done? I hope you are not angry. No, no, Priscilla, said Hollingsworth smiling. I will answer for it, she is not. You are the one little person in the world with whom nobody can be angry. Angry with you, child, what a silly idea exclaimed Zenobia, laughing. No indeed, but my dear Priscilla, you are getting to be so very pretty that you absolutely need a duena, and as I am older than you and have had my own little experience of life and think myself exceedingly sage, I intend to fill the place of a maiden aunt. Every day I shall give you a lecture a quarter of an hour in length on the morals, manners, and proprieties of social life. When our pastoral shall be quite played out, Priscilla, my worldly wisdom may stand you in good stead. I am afraid you are angry with me, repeated Priscilla sadly, for while she seemed as impressible as wax, the girl often showed a persistency in her own ideas, as stubborn as it was gentle. Dear me, what can I say to the child? cried Zenobia in a tone of humorous vexation. Well-well, since you insist on my being angry, come to my room this moment and let me beat you. Zenobia bad Hollingsworth good-night very sweetly and nodded to me with a smile, but just as she turned aside with Priscilla into the dimness of the porch, I caught another glance at her countenance. It would have made the fortune of a tragic actress, could she have borrowed it for the moment when she fumbles in her bosom for the concealed dagger or the exceedingly sharp bodkin, or mingles the rat's bane in her lover's bowl of wine or her rival's cup of tea. Not that I in the least anticipated any such catastrophe, but being a remarkable truth that custom has in no one point a greater sway than over our modes of reeking our wild passions. And besides, had we been in Italy instead of New England, it was hardly yet a crisis for the dagger or the bowl. It often amazed me, however, that Hollingsworth should show himself so recklessly tender towards Priscilla and never once seemed to think of the effect which it might have upon her heart. But the man, as I have endeavored to explain, was thrown completely off his moral balance and quite bewildered as to his personal relations by his great excrescence of a philanthropic scheme. I used to see, or fancy, indications that he was not altogether obtuse to Zenobia's influence as a woman. No doubt, however, he had a still more exquisite enjoyment of Priscilla's silent sympathy with his purposes, so unalloyed with criticism, and therefore more grateful than any intellectual approbation which always involves a possible reserve of latent censure. A man, poet, prophet, or whatever he may be, readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered. In requital of so rich benefits as he was to confer upon mankind, it would have been hard to deny Hollingsworth the simple solace of a young girl's heart which he held in his hand and smelled, too, like a rosebud. But what if, while pressing out its fragrance, he should crush the tender rosebud in his grasp? As for Zenobia, I saw no occasion to give myself any trouble with her native strength and her experience of the world, she could not be supposed to need any help of mine. Nevertheless I was really generous enough to feel some little interest likewise for Zenobia, with all her faults which might have been a great many besides the abundance that I knew of, she possessed noble traits, and a heart which must at least have been valuable while new. She seemed ready to fling it away as uncalculatingly as Priscilla herself. I could not but suspect that, if merely at play with Hollingsworth, she was sporting with a power which she did not fully estimate. Or, if in earnest it might chance between Zenobia's passionate force and his dark self-delusive egotism, to turn out such earnest as would develop itself in some sufficiently tragic catastrophe, though the dagger and the bowl should go for nothing in it. Meantime the gossip of the community set them down as a pair of lovers. They took walks together and were not seldom encountered in the wood paths, Hollingsworth deeply discoursing in tone solemn and sternly pathetic. Zenobia with a rich glow on her cheeks, and her eyes softened from their ordinary brightness looked so beautiful that had her companion been ten times a philanthropist, it seemed impossible but that one glance should melt him back into a man. Oftener than anywhere else they went to a certain point on the slope of a pasture commanding nearly the whole of our own domain besides a view of the river and an airy prospect of many distant hills. The bond of our community was such that the members had the privilege of building cottages for their own residents within our precincts, thus laying a hearthstone and fencing in a home private and peculiar to all desirable extent, while yet the inhabitants should continue to share the advantages of an associated life. It was inferred that Hollingsworth and Zenobia intended to rear their dwelling on this favorite spot. I mentioned these rumors to Hollingsworth in a playful way. Had you consulted me I went on to observe, I should have recommended a site farther to the left, just a little withdrawn into the wood with two or three peeps at the prospect among the trees. You will be in the shady veil of years long before you can raise any better kind of shade around your cottage if you build it on this bare slope. But I offer my edifice as a spectacle to the world, said Hollingsworth, that it may take example and build many another like it. Therefore I mean to set it on the open hillside. Twist these words how I might, they offered no very satisfactory import. It seemed hardly probable that Hollingsworth should care about educating the public taste in the Department of Cottage Architecture desirable as such improvement certainly was. CHAPTER 10 a visitor from town Hollingsworth and I, we had been hoeing potatoes that forenoon while the rest of the fraternity were engaged in a distant quarter of the farm, sat under a clump of maples eating our eleven o'clock lunch when we saw a stranger approaching along the edge of the field. He had admitted himself from the roadside through a turnstile and seemed to have a purpose of speaking with us. And by the by we were favored with many visits at Blythdale especially from people who sympathized with our theories and perhaps held themselves ready to unite in our actual experiment as soon as there should appear a reliable promise of its success. It was rather ludicrous indeed to me at least whose enthusiasm had insensibly been exhaled together with the perspiration of many a hard day's toil, it was absolutely funny therefore to observe what a glory was shed about our life and labors in the imaginations of these longing proselytes. In their view we were as poetical as Arcadians, besides being as practical as the hard-fisted husbandmen in Massachusetts. We did not, it is true, spend much time in piping to our sheep or warbling our innocent loves to the sisterhood, but they gave us credit for imbuing the ordinary rustic occupations with a kind of religious poetry in so much that our very cow-yards and pig-sties were as delightfully fragrant as a flower garden. Nothing used to please me more than to see one of these lay enthusiasts snatch up a hoe as they were very prone to do, and set to work with a vigor that perhaps carried him through a dozen ill-directed strokes. Men are wonderfully soon satisfied in this day of shameful bodily innervation when, from one end of life to the other, such multitudes never taste the sweet weariness that follows a customed toil. I seldom saw the new enthusiasm that did not grow as flimsy and flaccid as the proselytes moistened shirt-collar with a quarter of an hour's active labour under a July sun. But the person now at hand had not at all the air of one of these amiable visionaries. He was an elderly man dressed rather shabbily yet decently enough in a grey frock coat faded towards a brown hue and wore a broad-brimmed white hat of the fashion of several years gone by. His hair was perfect silver without a dark thread in the whole of it. His nose, though it had a scarlet tip, by no means indicated the jollity of which a red nose is the generally admitted symbol. He was a subdued, undemonstrative old man, who would doubtless drink a glass of liquor now and then, and probably more than was good for him, not, however, with a purpose of undue exhilaration, but in the hope of bringing his spirits up to the ordinary level of the world's cheerfulness. Drawing nearer there was a shy look about him, as if he were ashamed of his poverty, or at any rate for some reason or other, would rather have us glance at him side-long than take a full front view. He had a queer appearance of hiding himself behind the patch on his left eye. I know this old gentleman said eye to Hollingsworth as we sat observing him. That is, I have met him a hundred times in town, and have often amused my fancy with wondering what he was before he came to be what he is. He haunts restaurants and such places, and has an odd way of lurking in corners or getting behind a door whenever practicable, and holding out his hand with some little article in it which he wishes you to buy. The eye of the world seems to trouble him, although he necessarily lives so much in it. I never expected to see him in an open field. Have you learned anything of his history, asked Hollingsworth? Not a circumstance, I answered, but there must be something curious in it. I take him to be a harmless sort of a person, and a tolerably honest one, but his manners being so furtive remind me of those of a rat, a rat without the mischief, the fierce eye, the teeth to bite with or the desire to bite. See now he means to skulk along that fringe of bushes and approach us on the other side of our clump of maples. We soon heard the old man's velvet tread on the grass, indicating that he had arrived within a few feet of where we sat. Good morning, Mr. Moody said Hollingsworth, addressing the stranger as an acquaintance. You must have had a hot and tiresome walk from the city. Sit down and take a morsel of our bread and cheese. The visitor made a grateful little murmur of acquiescence and sat down in a spot somewhat removed, so that glancing round I could see his gray pantaloons and dusty shoes, while his upper part was mostly hidden behind the shrubbery. Nor did he come forth from his retirement during the whole of the interview that followed. We handed him such food as we had, together with a brown jug of molasses and water, wood that it had been brandy or something better for the sake of his chill old heart, like priests offering dainty sacrifice to an enshrined and invisible idol. I have no idea that he really lacked sustenance, but it was quite touching, nevertheless, to hear him nibbling away at our crusts. Mr. Moody said I, do you remember selling me one of those very pretty little silk purses of which you seemed to have a monopoly in the market? I keep it to this day I can assure you. Ah, thank you, said our guest. Yes, Mr. Coverdale, I used to sell a good many of those little purses. He spoke languidly and only those few words like a watch within inelastic spring that just ticks a moment or two and stops again. He seemed a very forlorn old man. In the wantonness of youth, strength and comfortable condition, making my prey of people's individualities as my custom was, I tried to identify my mind with the old fellows and take his view of the world as if looking through a smoke-blackened glass at the sun. It robbed the landscape of all its life. Those pleasantly swelling slopes of our farm descending towards the wide meadows, through which sluggishly circled the brimful tide of the charles, bathing the long sedges on its hither and farther shores, the broad sunny gleam over the winding water, that peculiar picturesqueness of the scene where capes and headlands put themselves boldly forth upon the perfect level of the meadow, as into a green lake with inlets between the promontories, the shadowy woodland with twinkling showers of light falling into its depths, the sultry heat-faper which rose everywhere like incense and in which my soul delighted as indicating so rich a fervor in the passionate day and in the earth that was burning with its love. I beheld all these things as through old moody's eyes. When my eyes are dimmer than they have yet come to be, I will go thither again and see if I did not catch the tone of his mind aright, and if the cold and lifeless tint of his perceptions be not then repeated in my own. Yet it was unaccountable to myself the interest that I felt in him. Have you any objections, said I, to telling me who made those little purses? Gentlemen have often asked me that, said Moody slowly, but I shake my head, and say little or nothing, and creep out of the way as well as I can. I am a man of few words, and if gentlemen were to be told one thing they would be very apt, I suppose, to ask me another. But it happens just now, Mr. Coverdale, that you can tell me more about the maker of those little purses than I can tell you. Why do you trouble him with needless questions, Coverdale, interrupted Hollingsworth? You must have known long ago that it was Priscilla. And so, my good friend, you've come to see her? Well I'm glad of it. You will find her altered very much for the better since that winter evening when you put her in my charge. Why, Priscilla, has a bloom in her cheeks now. Has my pale little girl a bloom, repeated Moody with a kind of slow wonder, Priscilla with a bloom in her cheeks? Ah, I am afraid I shall not know my little girl. And is she happy? Is it as happy as a bird? answered Hollingsworth. Then, gentlemen, said our guest apprehensively, I don't think it well for me to go any farther. I crept hitherward only to ask about Priscilla, and now that you have told me such good news, perhaps I can do no better than to creep back again. If she were to see this old face of mine, the child would remember some very sad times which we spent together. Some very sad times, indeed. She has forgotten them I know, them and me, else she could not be so happy, nor have a bloom in her cheeks. Yes, yes, yes, continued he, still with the same torpid utterance. With many thanks to you, Mr. Hollingsworth, I will creep back to town again. You shall do no such thing, Mr. Moody, said Hollingsworth bluffly. Priscilla often speaks of you, and if there lacks anything to make her cheeks bloom like two damask roses, I'll venture to say it is just the sight of your face. Come, we will go and find her. Mr. Hollingsworth, said the old man in his hesitating way. Well, answered Hollingsworth, has there been any call for Priscilla, asked Moody, and though his face was hidden from us, his tone gave a sure indication of the mysterious nod and wink with which he put the question. You know, I think, sir, what I mean. I have not the remotest suspicion what you mean, Mr. Moody, replied Hollingsworth. Nobody, to my knowledge, has called for Priscilla except yourself. But come, we are losing time, and I have several things to say to you, by the way. And Mr. Hollingsworth repeated Moody. Well, again cried my friend rather impatiently. What now? There is a lady here, said the old man, and his voice lost some of its wearysome hesitation. You will account it a very strange matter for me to talk about, but I chanced to know this lady when she was but a little child. If I am rightly informed, she has grown to be a very fine woman and makes a brilliant figure in the world with her beauty and her talents and her noble way of spending her riches. I should recognize this lady, so people tell me, by a magnificent flower in her hair. What a rich tinge it gives to his colorless ideas when he speaks of Zenobia, I whispered to Hollingsworth, but how can there possibly be any interest or connecting link between him and her? The old man for past years, whispered Hollingsworth, has been a little out of his right mind, as you probably see. What I would inquire resumed Moody is whether this beautiful lady is kind to my poor Priscilla. Very kind, said Hollingsworth. Does she love her, asked Moody? It should seem so, answered my friend, they are all waisted together. Like a gentle woman and her maidsurfing, I fancy, suggested the old man. There was something so singular in his way of saying this that I could not resist the impulse to turn quite round so as to catch a glimpse of his face, almost imagining that I should see another person than old Moody. But there he sat with the patched side of his face towards me. Like an elder and younger sister, rather, replied Hollingsworth. Ah, said Moody more complacently, for his latter tones had harshness and acidity in them. It would gladden my old heart to witness that. If one thing would make me happier than another, Mr. Hollingsworth, it would be to see that beautiful lady holding my little girl by the hand. Come along, said Hollingsworth, and perhaps you may. After a little more delay on the part of our freakish visitor, they set forth together, old Moody keeping a step or two behind Hollingsworth, so that the latter could not very conveniently look him in the face. I remained under the tuft of maples doing my utmost to draw an inference from the scene that had just passed. In spite of Hollingsworth's offhand explanation, it did not strike me that our strange guest was really beside himself, but only that his mind needed screwing up like an instrument long out of tune, the strings of which have ceased to vibrate smartly and sharply. Me thought it would be profitable for us projectors of a happy life to welcome this old gray shadow and cherish him as one of us and let him creep about our domain in order that he might be a little merrier for our sakes, and we sometimes a little sadder for his. Human destinies look ominous without some perceptible intermixture of the sable or the gray, and then, too, should any of our fraternity grow feverish with an over-exalting sense of prosperity, it would be a sort of cooling regimen to slink off into the woods and spend an hour or a day or as many days as might be requisite to the cure in uninterrupted communion with this deplorable old moody. Going homeward to dinner I had a glimpse of him behind the trunk of a tree gazing earnestly towards a particular window of the farmhouse, and by and by Priscilla appeared at this window, playfully drawing along Zenobia, who looked as bright as the very day that was blazing down upon us, only not by many degrees, so well advanced towards her noon. I was convinced that this pretty sight must have been purposely arranged by Priscilla for the old man to see, but either the girl held her too long, or her fondness was resented as too great of freedom, for Zenobia suddenly put Priscilla decidedly away and gave her a haughty look as from a mistress to a dependent. Old Moody shook his head, and again and again I saw him shake it as he withdrew along the road, and at the last point once the farmhouse was visible he turned and shook his uplifted staff. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of the Blythe Dale Romance This LibriVox recording is in the public domain The Blythe Dale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 11 The Woodpath Not long after the preceding incident, in order to get the ache of two constant labor out of my bones, and to relieve my spirit of the irksomeness of a settled routine, I took a holiday. It was my purpose to spend it all alone from breakfast time till twilight in the deepest wood seclusion that lay anywhere around us. Though fond of society, I was so constituted as to need these occasional retirements, even in a life like that of Blythe Dale, which was itself characterized by a remoteness from the world. Unless renewed by a yet further withdrawal towards the inner circle of self-communion, I lost the better part of my individuality. My thoughts became of little worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid as a tuft of moss, a thing whose life is in the shade, the rain or the noontide dew, crumbling in the sunshine after long expectance of a shower. So with my heart full of a drowsy pleasure and cautious not to dissipate my mood by previous intercourse with any one, I hurried away, and was soon pacing a woodpath, arched overhead with boughs, and dusky brown beneath my feet. At first I walked very swiftly, as if the heavy floodtide of social life were roaring at my heels, and would outstrip and overwhelm me without all the better diligence in my escape. But threading the more distant windings of the track, I abated my pace and looked about me for some side aisle that should admit me into the innermost sanctuary of this green cathedral, just as in human acquaintanceship a casual opening sometimes lets us all of a sudden into the long sought intimacy of a mysterious heart. So much was I absorbed in my reflections or rather in my mood, the substance of which was as yet too shapeless to be called thought, that footsteps wrestled on the leaves and a figure passed me by almost without impressing either the sound or sight upon my consciousness. A moment afterwards I heard a voice at a little distance behind me, speaking so sharply and impertently that it made a complete discord with my spiritual state and caused the latter to vanish as abruptly as when you thrust a finger into a soap-bubble. Hello, friend! cried this most unseasonable voice. Stop a moment I say! I must have a word with you. I turned about in a humor ludicrously I rate. In the first place the interruption at any rate was a grievous injury. Then the tone displeased me. And finally unless there be real affection in his heart a man cannot, such as the bad state to which the world has brought itself, cannot more effectually show his contempt for a brother mortal nor more gallingly assume a position of superiority than by addressing him as friend. Especially does the misapplication of this phrase bring out that latent hostility which is sure to animate peculiar sets, and those who, with however generous a purpose, have sequestered themselves from the crowd. A feeling it is true which may be hidden in some dog kennel of the heart grumbling there in the darkness, but is never quite extinct until the dissenting party have gained power and scope enough to treat the world generously. For my part I should have taken it as far less an insult to be styled fellow, clown, or bumpkin. To either of these appellations my rustic garb, it was a linen blouse with checked shirt and striped pantaloons, a chip hat on my head and a rough hickory stick in my hand, very fairly entitled me. As the case stood my temper darted at once to the opposite pole, not friend, but enemy. What do you want with me, said I, facing about? Come a little nearer, friend, said the stranger, beckoning. No, answered I, if I can do anything for you without too much trouble to myself, say so, but recollect, if you please, that you are not speaking to an acquaintance much less a friend. Upon my word I believe not retorted he, looking at me with some curiosity, and lifting his hat he made me a salute which had enough of sarcasm to be offensive, and just enough of doubtful courtesy to render any resentment of it absurd. But I ask your pardon, I recognize a little mistake, if I may take the liberty to suppose it, you, sir, are probably one of the aesthetic, or shall I rather say ecstatic, laborers, who have planted themselves hereabouts. This is your forest of Arden, and you are either the banished duke in person, or one of the chief nobles in his train, the melancholy Jacques, perhaps? Be it so, in that case you can probably do me a favour. I never in my life felt less inclined to confer a favour on any man. I am busy, said I. So unexpectedly had the stranger made me sensible of his presence that he had almost the effect of an apparition, and certainly a less appropriate one, taking into view the dim woodland solitude about us, than if the savage man of antiquity, hearsuit and sinchard with a leafy girdle, had started out of a thicket. He was still young, seemingly a little under thirty, of a tall and well-developed figure, and as handsome a man as ever I beheld. The style of his beauty, however, though a masculine style, did not at all commend itself to my taste. His countenance, I hardly know how to describe the peculiarity, had an endicorum in it, a kind of rudeness, a hard course, forth-putting freedom of expression, which no degree of external polish could have abated one single jot. Not that it was vulgar, but he had no fineness of nature. There was in his eyes, although they might have artifice enough of another sort, the naked exposure of something that ought not to be left prominent. With these vague allusions to what I have seen in other faces as well as his, I leave the quality to be comprehended best, because within intuitive repugnance, by those who possess least of it. His hair, as well as his beard and mustache, was cold black, his eyes, too, were black and sparkling, and his teeth remarkably brilliant. He was rather carelessly but well and fashionably dressed in a summer morning costume. There was a gold chain exquisitely wrought across his vest. I never saw a smoother or whiter gloss than that upon his shirt bosom, which had a pin in it set with a gem that glimmered in the leafy shadow where he stood, like a living tip of fire. He carried a stick with a wooden head, carved in vivid imitation of that of a serpent. I hated him partly, I do believe, from a comparison of my own homely garb with his well-ordered foppishness. Well, sir, said I, a little ashamed of my first irritation, but still with no waste of civility, be pleased to speak at once as I have my own business in hand. I regret that my mode of addressing you was a little unfortunate, said the stranger, smiling, for he seemed a very acute sort of person, and saw in some degree how I stood affected towards him. I intended no offence and shall certainly comport myself with due ceremony hereafter. I merely wished to make a few inquiries respecting a lady, formerly of my acquaintance, who is now resident in your community, and I believe largely concerned in your social enterprise. You call her, I think, Zenobia. That is her name in literature, observed I, a name too which possibly she may permit her private friends to know and dress her by, but not one which they feel at liberty to recognize when used of her personally by a stranger or casual acquaintance. Indeed answered this disagreeable person, and he turned aside his face for an instant with a brief laugh which struck me as a noteworthy expression of his character. Perhaps I might put forward a claim on your own grounds to call the lady by a name so appropriate to her splendid qualities, but I am willing to know her by any cognomen that you may suggest. Heartily wishing that he would be either a little more offensive or a good deal less so, or break off our intercourse altogether, I mentioned Zenobia's real name. True said he, and in general society I have never heard her called otherwise, and after all our discussion of the point has been gratuitous, my object is only to inquire when, where, and how this lady may most conveniently be seen. At her present residence, of course, I replied, you have but to go thither and ask for her. This very path will lead you within sight of the house, so I wish you good morning. One moment if you please, said the stranger. The course you indicate would certainly be the proper one in an ordinary morning call, but my business is private, personal, and somewhat peculiar. Now in a community like this I should judge that any little occurrence is likely to be discussed rather more minutely than would quite suit my views. I refer solely to myself you understand, and without intimating that it would be other than a matter of entire indifference to the lady. In short, I especially desire to see her in private. If her habits are such as I have known them, she is probably often to be met with in the woods or by the riverside, and I think you could do me the favour to point out some favourite walk where, about this hour, I might be fortunate enough to gain an interview. I reflected that it would be quite a super-erogatory piece of kihotism in me to undertake the guardianship of Zenobia, who for my pains would only make me the butt of endless ridicule should the fact ever come to her knowledge. I therefore described a spot which as often as any other was Zenobia's resort at this period of the day. Nor was it so remote from the farmhouse as to leave her in much peril, whatever might be the stranger's character. A single word more said he, and his black eyes sparkled at me, whether with fun or malice I knew not, but certainly as if the devil were peeping out of them. Among your fraternity I understand there is a certain holy and benevolent blacksmith, a man of iron in more senses than one, a rough, cross-grained, well-meaning individual, rather boorish in his manners as might be expected, and by no means of the highest intellectual cultivation. He is a philanthropical lecturer with two or three disciples, and a scheme of his own, the preliminary step in which involves a large purchase of land and the erection of a spacious edifice at an expense considerably beyond his means, in as much as these are to be reckoned in copper or old iron much more conveniently than in gold or silver. He hammers away upon his one topic as lustily as ever he did upon a horseshoe. Do you know such a person? I shook my head and was turning away. Our friend, he continued, is described to me as a brawny, shaggy, grim and ill-favored personage, not particularly well calculated, one would say, to insinuate himself with a softer sex. Yet so far has this honest fellow succeeded with one lady whom we want of that he anticipates from her abundant resources the necessary funds for realizing his plan in brick-and-mortar. Here the stranger seemed to be so much amused with his sketch of Hauling's worth's character and purposes that he burst into a fit of merriment of the same nature as the brief metallic laugh already alluded to, but immensely prolonged and enlarged. In the excess of his delight he opened his mouth wide and disclosed a gold band around the upper part of his teeth, thereby making it apparent that every one of his brilliant grinders and incisors was a sham. This discovery affected me very oddly. I felt as if the whole man were a moral and physical humbug. His wonderful beauty of face, for ought I knew, might be a removable mask. And tall and comely as his figure looked, he was perhaps but a wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with nothing genuine about him saved the wicked expression of his grin. The fantasy of his spectral character so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his strange mirth on my sympathies, that I soon began to laugh as loudly as himself. By and by he paused all at once, so suddenly indeed that my own cackination lasted a moment longer. Ah, excuse me, said he, our interview seems to proceed more merrily than it began. It ends here, answered I, and I take shame to myself that my folly has lost me the right of resenting your ridicule of a friend. Pray allow me, said the stranger, approaching a step nearer and laying his gloved hand on my sleeve, one other favour I must ask of you. You have a young person here at Blythdale, of whom I have heard, whom perhaps I have known, and in whom at all events I take a peculiar interest. She is one of those delicate nervous young creatures not uncommon in New England, and whom I suppose to have become what we find them by the gradual refining away of the physical system among your women. Some philosophers choose to glorify this habit of body by terming it spiritual, but in my opinion it is rather the effect of unwholesome food, bad air, lack of outdoor exercise, and neglect of bathing, on the part of these damsels and their female progenitors, all resulting in a kind of hereditary dyspepsia. Xenobia, even with her uncomfortable surplus of vitality, is far the better model of womanhood. But to revert again to this young person, she goes among you by the name of Priscilla. Could you possibly afford me the means of speaking with her? You have made so many inquiries of me, I observed, that I may at least trouble you with one. What is your name? He offered me a card with Professor Westervelt engraved on it. At the same time as if to vindicate his claim to the professorial dignity so often assumed on very questionable grounds, he put on a pair of spectacles which so altered the character of his face that I hardly knew him again. But I liked the present aspect no better than the former one. I must decline any further connection with your affairs, said I, drawing back. I have told you where to find Xenobia. As for Priscilla, she has closer friends than myself, through whom if they see fit you can gain access to her. In that case returned the Professor ceremoniously raising his hat. Good morning to you. He took his departure and was soon out of sight among the windings of the woodpath. But after a little reflection I could not help regretting that I had so peremptorily broken off the interview, while the stranger seemed inclined to continue it. His evident knowledge of matters affecting my three friends might have led to disclosures or inferences that would perhaps have been serviceable. I was particularly struck with the fact that ever since the appearance of Priscilla it had been the tendency of events to suggest and establish a connection between Xenobia and her. She had come in the first instance as if with the sole purpose of claiming Xenobia's protection. Old Moody's visit it appeared was chiefly to ascertain whether this object had been accomplished. And here today was the questionable Professor linking one with the other in his inquiries and seeking communication with both. Meanwhile my inclination for a ramble having been balked I lingered in the vicinity of the farm with perhaps a vague idea that some new event would grow out of Westervelt's proposed interview with Xenobia. My own part in these transactions was singularly subordinate. It resembled that of the chorus in a classic play which seems to be set aloof from the possibility of personal concernment and bestows the whole measure of its hope or fear, its exultation or sorrow, on the fortunes of others, between whom and itself this sympathy is the only bond. Destiny it may be, the most skillful of stage managers. Seldom chooses to arrange its scenes and carry forward its drama without securing the presence of at least one calm observer. It is his office to give applause when due and sometimes an inevitable tear to detect the final fitness of incident to character and to still in his long brooding thought the whole morality of the performance. Not to be out of the way in case there were need of me in my vocation and at the same time to avoid thrusting myself where neither destiny nor mortals might desire my presence, I remained pretty near the verge of the woodlands. My position was off the track of Zenobia's customary walk, yet not so remote but that a recognized occasion might speedily have brought me thither. Long since in this part of our circumjacent wood I had found out for myself a little hermitage. It was a kind of leafy cave high upward into the air among the midmost branches of a white pine tree. A wild grapevine of unusual size and luxuriance had twined and twisted itself up into the tree and, after rething the entanglement of its tendrils around almost every bow, had caught hold of three or four neighboring trees and married the whole clump with a perfectly inextricable knot of polygamy. Once while sheltering myself from a summer shower the fancy had taken me to clamor up into this seemingly impervious mass of foliage. The branches yielded me a passage and closed again beneath as if only a squirrel or a bird had passed. Far aloft around the stem of the central pine behold a perfect nest for Robinson Crusoe or King Charles. A hollow chamber of rare seclusion had been formed by the decay of some of the pine branches which the vine had lovingly strangled with its embrace, burying them from the light of day in an aerial sepulcher of its own leaves. It cost me but little ingenuity to enlarge the interior and open loopholes through the verdant walls. Had it ever been my fortune to spend a honeymoon I should have thought seriously of inviting my bride up thither where our next neighbors would have been two orioles in another part of the clump. It was an amiable place to make verses tuning the rhythm to the breezy symphony that so often stirred among the vine leaves or to meditate an essay for the dial in which the many tongues of nature whispered in mysteries and seemed to ask only a little stronger puff of wind to speak out the solution of its riddle. Being so pervious to air currents it was just the nook too for the enjoyment of a cigar. This hermitage was my one exclusive possession while I counted myself a brother of the socialists. It symbolized my individuality and aided me in keeping it in violet. None ever found me out in it except once a squirrel. I brought thither no guest because after Hollingsworth failed me there was no longer the man alive with whom I could think of sharing it all. So there I used to sit, owl-like, yet not without liberal and hospitable thoughts. I counted the innumerable clusters of my vine and forereckoned the abundance of my vintage. It gladdened me to anticipate the surprise of the community when, like an allegorical figure of rich October, I should make my appearance with shoulders bent beneath the burden of ripe grapes and some of the crushed ones crimsoning my brow as with a bloodstain. Ascending into this natural turret I peeped in turn out of several of its small windows. The pine tree being ancient rose high above the rest of the wood, which was of comparatively recent growth. Even where I sat about midway between the root and the topmost bow, my position was lofty enough to serve as an observatory, not for starry investigations, but for those sub-lunary matters in which lay allure as infinite as that of the planets. Through one loophole I saw the river lapsing calmly onward while in the meadow near its brink a few of the brethren were digging peat for our winter's fuel. On the interior cart-road of our farm I discerned Hollingsworth with a yoke of oxen hitched to a drag of stones that were to be piled into a fence on which we employed ourselves at the odd intervals of other labour. The harsh tones of his voice shouting to the sluggish steers made me sensible even at such a distance that he was ill at ease, and that the balked philanthropist had the battle spirit in his heart. Ha, buck, quote he, come along there ye lazy ones, what are ye about now? Gee! Mankind in Hollingsworth's opinion, thought I, is but another yoke of oxen, as stubborn, stupid, and sluggish as our old brown and bright. He vituperates us aloud and curses us in his heart, and will begin to prick us with the goat-stick by and by. But are we his oxen? And what right has he to be the driver? And why, when there is enough else to do, should we waste our strength in dragging home the ponderous load of his philanthropic absurdities? At my height above the earth the whole matter looks ridiculous. Turning towards the farm-house I saw Priscilla, for though a great way off the eye of faith assured me that it was she, sitting at Zenobia's window and making little purses, I suppose, or perhaps mending the community's old linen. A bird flew past my tree, and as it clove its way onward into the sunny atmosphere I flung it a message for Priscilla. Tell her, said I, that her fragile thread of life has inextricably knotted itself with other and tougher threads, and most likely it will be broken. Tell her that Zenobia will not long be her friend. Say that Hollingsworth's heart is on fire with his own purpose, but icy for all human affection, and that if she has given him her love it is like casting a flower into a sepulchre. And say that if any mortal really cares for her it is myself, and not even I for her realities poor little seamstress as Zenobia rightly called her, but for the fancy work with which I have idly decked her out. The pleasant scent of the wood, evolved by the hot sun, stole up to my nostrils as if I had been an idol in its niche. Many trees mingled their fragrance into a thousandfold odor. Possibly there was essential influence in the broad light of noon that lay beneath me. It may have been the cause in part that I suddenly found myself possessed by a mood of disbelief in moral beauty or heroism, and a conviction of the folly of attempting to benefit the world. Our especial scheme of reform which from my observatory I could take in with the bodily eye looked so ridiculous that it was impossible not to laugh aloud. But the joke is a little too heavy, thought I. If I were wise I should get out of the scrape with all diligence and then laugh at my companions for remaining in it. While thus amusing I heard with perfect distinctness somewhere in the wood beneath, the peculiar laugh which I have described as one of the disagreeable characteristics of Professor Westervelt. It brought my thoughts back to our recent interview. I recognized as chiefly due to this man's influence, the skeptical and sneering view which just now had filled my mental vision in regard to all life's better purposes. And it was through his eyes, more than my own, that I was looking at Hollingsworth with his glorious if impracticable dream, and at the noble earthliness of Zenobia's character, and even at Priscilla whose impalpable grace lay so singularly between disease and beauty. The essential charm of each had vanished. There are some spheres the contact with which inevitably degrades the high, debases the pure, deforms the beautiful. It must be a mind of uncommon strength and little impressibility that can permit itself the habit of such intercourse and not be permanently deteriorated. And yet the Professor's tone represented that of worldly society at large, where a cold skepticism smothers what it can of our spiritual aspirations and makes the rest ridiculous. I detested this kind of man and all the more because a part of my own nature showed itself responsive to him. Voices were now approaching through the region of the wood which lay in the vicinity of my tree. Soon I caught glimpses of two figures, a woman and a man, Zenobia and the stranger, earnestly talking together as they advanced. Zenobia had a rich though varying color. It was most of the while a flame and anon a sudden paleness. Her eyes glowed so that their light sometimes flashed upward to me as when the sun throws a dazzle from some bright object on the ground. Her gestures were free and strikingly impressive. The whole woman was alive with a passionate intensity which I now perceived to be the phase in which her beauty culminated. Any passion would have become her well and passionate love perhaps the best of all. This was not love but anger largely intermixed with scorn. Yet the idea strangely forced itself upon me that there was a sort of familiarity between these two companions, necessarily the result of an intimate love, on Zenobia's part at least, in days gone by, but which had prolonged itself into as intimate a hatred for all futurity. As they passed among the trees, reckless as her movement was, she took good heed that even the hem of her garment should not brush against the stranger's person. I wondered whether there had always been a chasm guarded so religiously betwixt these two. As for Westervelt he was not a wit more warmed by Zenobia's passion than a salamander by the heat of its native furnace. He would have been absolutely statuesque, save for a look of slight perplexity, tinctured strongly with derision. It was a crisis in which his intellectual perceptions could not altogether help him out. He failed to comprehend and cared little for comprehending, why Zenobia should put herself into such a fume, but satisfied his mind that it was all folly and only another shape of a woman's manifold absurdity which men can never understand. How many a woman's evil fate has yoked her with a man like this. Nature thrusts some of us into the world miserably incomplete on the emotional side, with hardly any sensibilities except what pertain to us as animals, no passions save of the senses, no holy tenderness nor the delicacy that results from this. Externally they bear a close resemblance to other men and have perhaps all saved the finest grace, but when a woman wrecks herself on such a being, she ultimately finds that the real womanhood within her has no corresponding part in him. Her deepest voice lacks a response. The deeper her cry, the more dead his silence. The fault may be none of his, he cannot give her what never lived within his soul, but the wretchedness on her side and the moral deterioration attendant on a false and shallow life without strength enough to keep itself sweet are among the most pitiable wrongs that mortals suffer. Now as I looked down from my upper region at this man and woman outwardly so fair a sight and wandering like two lovers in the wood, I imagined that Zenobia at an earlier period of youth might have fallen into the misfortune above indicated. And when her passionate womanhood as was inevitable had discovered its mistake, here had ensued the character of eccentricity and defiance which distinguished the more public portion of her life. Seeing how aptly matters had chanced thus far I began to think at the design of fate to let me into all Zenobia's secrets and that therefore the couple would sit down beneath my tree and carry on a conversation which would leave me nothing to inquire. No doubt however had it so happened I should have deemed myself honourably bound to warn them of a listener's presence by flinging down a handful of unripe grapes or by sending an unearthly groan out of my hiding place as if this were one of the trees of Dante's ghostly forest. But real life never arranges itself exactly like a romance. In the first place they did not sit down at all. Secondly, even while they passed beneath the tree, Zenobia's utterance was so hasty and broken and Westervelt so cool and low that I hardly could make out an intelligible sentence on either side. What I seem to remember, I yet suspect, may have been patched together by my fancy in brooding over the matter afterwards. Why not fling the girl off, said Westervelt, and let her go? She clung to me from the first, replied Zenobia. I neither know nor care what it is in me that so attaches her. But she loves me and I will not fail her. She will plague you then, said he, in more ways than one. The poor child exclaimed Zenobia. She can do me neither good nor harm. How should she? I know not what reply Westervelt whispered, nor did Zenobia's subsequent exclamation give me any clue, except that it evidently inspired her with horror and disgust. With what kind of a being am I linked? cried she. If my creator cares ought for my soul, let him release me from this miserable bond. I did not think it weighed so heavily, said her companion. For the less answered, Zenobia, it will strangle me at last. And then I heard her utter a helpless sort of moan, a sound which, struggling out of the heart of a person of her pride and strength, affected me more than if she had made the wood dolerously vocal with a thousand shrieks and wails. Other mysterious words, besides what are above written, they spoke together, but I understood no more, and even question whether I fairly understood so much as this. By long brooding over our recollections, we subtleized them into something akin to imaginary stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from it. In a few moments they were completely beyond ear shot. A breeze stirred after them, and awoke the leafy tongues of the surrounding trees, which forthwith began to babble as if innumerable gossips had all at once got wind of Zenobia's secret. But as the breeze grew stronger, its voice among the branches was as if it said, Hush, Hush. And I resolved that to no mortal would I disclose what I had heard. And though there might be room for casuistry, such I conceive is the most equitable rule in all similar conjunctures. End of chapter 12