Kabanata Kabanata 17 · THE BOARDING-HOUSE

might not long suffer from the absence of its most

expensive and profitable guests. Meanwhile, until they should appear,

I cast my eyes downward to the lower regions. There, in the dusk that

so early settles into such places, I saw the red glow of the kitchen

range. The hot cook, or one of her subordinates, with a ladle in her

hand, came to draw a cool breath at the back door. As soon as she

disappeared, an Irish man-servant, in a white jacket, crept slyly

forth, and threw away the fragments of a china dish, which,

unquestionably, he had just broken. Soon afterwards, a lady, showily

dressed, with a curling front of what must have been false hair, and

reddish-brown, I suppose, in hue,--though my remoteness allowed me only

to guess at such particulars,--this respectable mistress of the

boarding-house made a momentary transit across the kitchen window, and

appeared no more. It was her final, comprehensive glance, in order to

make sure that soup, fish, and flesh were in a proper state of

readiness, before the serving up of dinner.

There was nothing else worth noticing about the house, unless it be

that on the peak of one of the dormer windows which opened out of the

roof sat a dove, looking very dreary and forlorn; insomuch that I

wondered why she chose to sit there, in the chilly rain, while her

kindred were doubtless nestling in a warm and comfortable dove-cote.

All at once this dove spread her wings, and, launching herself in the

air, came flying so straight across the intervening space, that I fully

expected her to alight directly on my window-sill. In the latter part

of her course, however, she swerved aside, flew upward, and vanished,

as did, likewise, the slight, fantastic pathos with which I had

invested her.

XVIII. THE BOARDING-HOUSE

The next day, as soon as I thought of looking again towards the

opposite house, there sat the dove again, on the peak of the same

dormer window! It was by no means an early hour, for the preceding

evening I had ultimately mustered enterprise enough to visit the

theatre, had gone late to bed, and slept beyond all limit, in my

remoteness from Silas Foster's awakening horn. Dreams had tormented me

throughout the night. The train of thoughts which, for months past,

had worn a track through my mind, and to escape which was one of my

chief objects in leaving Blithedale, kept treading remorselessly to and

fro in their old footsteps, while slumber left me impotent to regulate

them. It was not till I had quitted my three friends that they first

began to encroach upon my dreams. In those of the last night,

Hollingsworth and Zenobia, standing on either side of my bed, had bent

across it to exchange a kiss of passion. Priscilla, beholding

this,--for she seemed to be peeping in at the chamber window,--had

melted gradually away, and left only the sadness of her expression in

my heart. There it still lingered, after I awoke; one of those

unreasonable sadnesses that you know not how to deal with, because it

involves nothing for common-sense to clutch.

It was a gray and dripping forenoon; gloomy enough in town, and still

gloomier in the haunts to which my recollections persisted in

transporting me. For, in spite of my efforts to think of something

else, I thought how the gusty rain was drifting over the slopes and

valleys of our farm; how wet must be the foliage that overshadowed the

pulpit rock; how cheerless, in such a day, my hermitage--the

tree-solitude of my owl-like humors--in the vine-encircled heart of the

tall pine! It was a phase of homesickness. I had wrenched myself too

suddenly out of an accustomed sphere. There was no choice, now, but to

bear the pang of whatever heartstrings were snapt asunder, and that

illusive torment (like the ache of a limb long ago cut off) by which a

past mode of life prolongs itself into the succeeding one. I was full

of idle and shapeless regrets. The thought impressed itself upon me

that I had left duties unperformed. With the power, perhaps, to act in

the place of destiny and avert misfortune from my friends, I had

resigned them to their fate. That cold tendency, between instinct and

intellect, which made me pry with a speculative interest into people's

passions and impulses, appeared to have gone far towards unhumanizing

my heart.

But a man cannot always decide for himself whether his own heart is

cold or warm. It now impresses me that, if I erred at all in regard to

Hollingsworth, Zenobia, and Priscilla, it was through too much

sympathy, rather than too little.

To escape the irksomeness of these meditations, I resumed my post at

the window. At first sight, there was nothing new to be noticed. The

general aspect of affairs was the same as yesterday, except that the

more decided inclemency of to-day had driven the sparrows to shelter,

and kept the cat within doors; whence, however, she soon emerged,

pursued by the cook, and with what looked like the better half of a

roast chicken in her mouth. The young man in the dress-coat was

invisible; the two children, in the story below, seemed to be romping

about the room, under the superintendence of a nursery-maid. The

damask curtains of the drawing-room, on the first floor, were now fully

displayed, festooned gracefully from top to bottom of the windows,

which extended from the ceiling to the carpet. A narrower window, at

the left of the drawing-room, gave light to what was probably a small

boudoir, within which I caught the faintest imaginable glimpse of a

girl's figure, in airy drapery. Her arm was in regular movement, as if

she were busy with her German worsted, or some other such pretty and

unprofitable handiwork.

While intent upon making out this girlish shape, I became sensible that

a figure had appeared at one of the windows of the drawing-room. There

was a presentiment in my mind; or perhaps my first glance, imperfect

and sidelong as it was, had sufficed to convey subtile information of

the truth. At any rate, it was with no positive surprise, but as if I

had all along expected the incident, that, directing my eyes

thitherward, I beheld--like a full-length picture, in the space between

the heavy festoons of the window curtains--no other than Zenobia! At

the same instant, my thoughts made sure of the identity of the figure

in the boudoir. It could only be Priscilla.

Zenobia was attired, not in the almost rustic costume which she had

heretofore worn, but in a fashionable morning-dress. There was,

nevertheless, one familiar point. She had, as usual, a flower in her

hair, brilliant and of a rare variety, else it had not been Zenobia.

After a brief pause at the window, she turned away, exemplifying, in

the few steps that removed her out of sight, that noble and beautiful

motion which characterized her as much as any other personal charm. Not

one woman in a thousand could move so admirably as Zenobia. Many women

can sit gracefully; some can stand gracefully; and a few, perhaps, can

assume a series of graceful positions. But natural movement is the

result and expression of the whole being, and cannot be well and nobly

performed unless responsive to something in the character. I often

used to think that music--light and airy, wild and passionate, or the

full harmony of stately marches, in accordance with her varying

mood--should have attended Zenobia's footsteps.

I waited for her reappearance. It was one peculiarity, distinguishing

Zenobia from most of her sex, that she needed for her moral well-being,

and never would forego, a large amount of physical exercise. At

Blithedale, no inclemency of sky or muddiness of earth had ever impeded

her daily walks. Here in town, she probably preferred to tread the

extent of the two drawing-rooms, and measure out the miles by spaces of

forty feet, rather than bedraggle her skirts over the sloppy pavements.

Accordingly, in about the time requisite to pass through the arch of

the sliding-doors to the front window, and to return upon her steps,

there she stood again, between the festoons of the crimson curtains.

But another personage was now added to the scene. Behind Zenobia

appeared that face which I had first encountered in the wood-path; the

man who had passed, side by side with her, in such mysterious

familiarity and estrangement, beneath my vine curtained hermitage in

the tall pine-tree. It was Westervelt. And though he was looking

closely over her shoulder, it still seemed to me, as on the former

occasion, that Zenobia repelled him,--that, perchance, they mutually

repelled each other, by some incompatibility of their spheres.

This impression, however, might have been altogether the result of

fancy and prejudice in me. The distance was so great as to obliterate

any play of feature by which I might otherwise have been made a

partaker of their counsels.

There now needed only Hollingsworth and old Moodie to complete the knot

of characters, whom a real intricacy of events, greatly assisted by my

method of insulating them from other relations, had kept so long upon

my mental stage, as actors in a drama. In itself, perhaps, it was no

very remarkable event that they should thus come across me, at the

moment when I imagined myself free. Zenobia, as I well knew, had

retained an establishment in town, and had not unfrequently withdrawn

herself from Blithedale during brief intervals, on one of which

occasions she had taken Priscilla along with her. Nevertheless, there

seemed something fatal in the coincidence that had borne me to this one

spot, of all others in a great city, and transfixed me there, and

compelled me again to waste my already wearied sympathies on affairs

which were none of mine, and persons who cared little for me. It

irritated my nerves; it affected me with a kind of heart-sickness.

After the effort which it cost me to fling them off,--after

consummating my escape, as I thought, from these goblins of flesh and

blood, and pausing to revive myself with a breath or two of an

atmosphere in which they should have no share,--it was a positive

despair to find the same figures arraying themselves before me, and

presenting their old problem in a shape that made it more insoluble

than ever.

I began to long for a catastrophe. If the noble temper of

Hollingsworth's soul were doomed to be utterly corrupted by the too

powerful purpose which had grown out of what was noblest in him; if the

rich and generous qualities of Zenobia's womanhood might not save her;

if Priscilla must perish by her tenderness and faith, so simple and so

devout, then be it so! Let it all come! As for me, I would look on,

as it seemed my part to do, understandingly, if my intellect could

fathom the meaning and the moral, and, at all events, reverently and

sadly. The curtain fallen, I would pass onward with my poor individual

life, which was now attenuated of much of its proper substance, and

diffused among many alien interests.

Meanwhile, Zenobia and her companion had retreated from the window.

Then followed an interval, during which I directed my eves towards the

figure in the boudoir. Most certainly it was Priscilla, although

dressed with a novel and fanciful elegance. The vague perception of

it, as viewed so far off, impressed me as if she had suddenly passed

out of a chrysalis state and put forth wings. Her hands were not now

in motion. She had dropt her work, and sat with her head thrown back,

in the same attitude that I had seen several times before, when she

seemed to be listening to an imperfectly distinguished sound.

Again the two figures in the drawing-room became visible. They were

now a little withdrawn from the window, face to face, and, as I could

see by Zenobia's emphatic gestures, were discussing some subject in

which she, at least, felt a passionate concern. By and by she broke

away, and vanished beyond my ken. Westervelt approached the window,

and leaned his forehead against a pane of glass, displaying the sort of

smile on his handsome features which, when I before met him, had let me

into the secret of his gold-bordered teeth. Every human being, when

given over to the Devil, is sure to have the wizard mark upon him, in

one form or another. I fancied that this smile, with its peculiar

revelation, was the Devil's signet on the Professor.

This man, as I had soon reason to know, was endowed with a cat-like

circumspection; and though precisely the most unspiritual quality in

the world, it was almost as effective as spiritual insight in making

him acquainted with whatever it suited him to discover. He now proved

it, considerably to my discomfiture, by detecting and recognizing me,

at my post of observation. Perhaps I ought to have blushed at being

caught in such an evident scrutiny of Professor Westervelt and his

affairs. Perhaps I did blush. Be that as it might, I retained

presence of mind enough not to make my position yet more irksome by the

poltroonery of drawing back.

Westervelt looked into the depths of the drawing-room, and beckoned.

Immediately afterwards Zenobia appeared at the window, with color much

heightened, and eyes which, as my conscience whispered me, were

shooting bright arrows, barbed with scorn, across the intervening

space, directed full at my sensibilities as a gentleman. If the truth

must be told, far as her flight-shot was, those arrows hit the mark.

She signified her recognition of me by a gesture with her head and

hand, comprising at once a salutation and dismissal. The next moment

she administered one of those pitiless rebukes which a woman always has

at hand, ready for any offence (and which she so seldom spares on due

occasion), by letting down a white linen curtain between the festoons

of the damask ones. It fell like the drop-curtain of a theatre, in the

interval between the acts.

Priscilla had disappeared from the boudoir. But the dove still kept

her desolate perch on the peak of the attic window.

XIX.