Kabanata Kabanata 2 · A KNOT OF DREAMERS

Zenobia bade us welcome, in a fine, frank, mellow voice, and gave each

of us her hand, which was very soft and warm. She had something

appropriate, I recollect, to say to every individual; and what she said

to myself was this:--"I have long wished to know you, Mr. Coverdale,

and to thank you for your beautiful poetry, some of which I have

learned by heart; or rather it has stolen into my memory, without my

exercising any choice or volition about the matter. Of course--permit

me to say you do not think of relinquishing an occupation in which you

have done yourself so much credit. I would almost rather give you up

as an associate, than that the world should lose one of its true poets!"

"Ah, no; there will not be the slightest danger of that, especially

after this inestimable praise from Zenobia," said I, smiling, and

blushing, no doubt, with excess of pleasure. "I hope, on the contrary,

now to produce something that shall really deserve to be called

poetry,--true, strong, natural, and sweet, as is the life which we are

going to lead,--something that shall have the notes of wild birds

twittering through it, or a strain like the wind anthems in the woods,

as the case may be."

"Is it irksome to you to hear your own verses sung?" asked Zenobia,

with a gracious smile. "If so, I am very sorry, for you will certainly

hear me singing them sometimes, in the summer evenings."

"Of all things," answered I, "that is what will delight me most."

While this passed, and while she spoke to my companions, I was taking

note of Zenobia's aspect; and it impressed itself on me so distinctly,

that I can now summon her up, like a ghost, a little wanner than the

life but otherwise identical with it. She was dressed as simply as

possible, in an American print (I think the dry-goods people call it

so), but with a silken kerchief, between which and her gown there was

one glimpse of a white shoulder. It struck me as a great piece of good

fortune that there should be just that glimpse. Her hair, which was

dark, glossy, and of singular abundance, was put up rather soberly and

primly--without curls, or other ornament, except a single flower. It

was an exotic of rare beauty, and as fresh as if the hothouse gardener

had just clipt it from the stem. That flower has struck deep root into

my memory. I can both see it and smell it, at this moment. So

brilliant, so rare, so costly as it must have been, and yet enduring

only for a day, it was more indicative of the pride and pomp which had

a luxuriant growth in Zenobia's character than if a great diamond had

sparkled among her hair.

Her hand, though very soft, was larger than most women would like to

have, or than they could afford to have, though not a whit too large in

proportion with the spacious plan of Zenobia's entire development. It

did one good to see a fine intellect (as hers really was, although its

natural tendency lay in another direction than towards literature) so

fitly cased. She was, indeed, an admirable figure of a woman, just on

the hither verge of her richest maturity, with a combination of

features which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful, even if some

fastidious persons might pronounce them a little deficient in softness

and delicacy. But we find enough of those attributes everywhere.

Preferable--by way of variety, at least--was Zenobia's bloom, health,

and vigor, which she possessed in such overflow that a man might well

have fallen in love with her for their sake only. In her quiet moods,

she seemed rather indolent; but when really in earnest, particularly if

there were a spice of bitter feeling, she grew all alive to her

finger-tips.

"I am the first comer," Zenobia went on to say, while her smile beamed

warmth upon us all; "so I take the part of hostess for to-day, and

welcome you as if to my own fireside. You shall be my guests, too, at

supper. Tomorrow, if you please, we will be brethren and sisters, and

begin our new life from daybreak."

"Have we our various parts assigned?" asked some one.

"Oh, we of the softer sex," responded Zenobia, with her mellow, almost

broad laugh,--most delectable to hear, but not in the least like an

ordinary woman's laugh,--"we women (there are four of us here already)

will take the domestic and indoor part of the business, as a matter of

course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to stew,--to wash, and

iron, and scrub, and sweep,--and, at our idler intervals, to repose

ourselves on knitting and sewing,--these, I suppose, must be feminine

occupations, for the present. By and by, perhaps, when our individual

adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be that some of us who

wear the petticoat will go afield, and leave the weaker brethren to

take our places in the kitchen."

"What a pity," I remarked, "that the kitchen, and the housework

generally, cannot be left out of our system altogether! It is odd

enough that the kind of labor which falls to the lot of women is just

that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life--the life of

degenerated mortals--from the life of Paradise. Eve had no dinner-pot,

and no clothes to mend, and no washing-day."

"I am afraid," said Zenobia, with mirth gleaming out of her eyes, "we

shall find some difficulty in adopting the paradisiacal system for at

least a month to come. Look at that snowdrift sweeping past the

window! Are there any figs ripe, do you think? Have the pineapples

been gathered to-day? Would you like a bread-fruit, or a cocoanut?

Shall I run out and pluck you some roses? No, no, Mr. Coverdale; the

only flower hereabouts is the one in my hair, which I got out of a

greenhouse this morning. As for the garb of Eden," added she,

shivering playfully, "I shall not assume it till after May-day!"

Assuredly Zenobia could not have intended it,--the fault must have been

entirely in my imagination. But these last words, together with

something in her manner, irresistibly brought up a picture of that

fine, perfectly developed figure, in Eve's earliest garment. Her free,

careless, generous modes of expression often had this effect of

creating images which, though pure, are hardly felt to be quite

decorous when born of a thought that passes between man and woman. I

imputed it, at that time, to Zenobia's noble courage, conscious of no

harm, and scorning the petty restraints which take the life and color

out of other women's conversation. There was another peculiarity about

her. We seldom meet with women nowadays, and in this country, who

impress us as being women at all,--their sex fades away and goes for

nothing, in ordinary intercourse. Not so with Zenobia. One felt an

influence breathing out of her such as we might suppose to come from

Eve, when she was just made, and her Creator brought her to Adam,

saying, "Behold! here is a woman!" Not that I would convey the idea of

especial gentleness, grace, modesty, and shyness, but of a certain warm

and rich characteristic, which seems, for the most part, to have been

refined away out of the feminine system.

"And now," continued Zenobia, "I must go and help get supper. Do you

think you can be content, instead of figs, pineapples, and all the

other delicacies of Adam's supper-table, with tea and toast, and a

certain modest supply of ham and tongue, which, with the instinct of a

housewife, I brought hither in a basket? And there shall be bread and

milk, too, if the innocence of your taste demands it."

The whole sisterhood now went about their domestic avocations, utterly

declining our offers to assist, further than by bringing wood for the

kitchen fire from a huge pile in the back yard. After heaping up more

than a sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting-room, drew our

chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk over our prospects.

Soon, with a tremendous stamping in the entry, appeared Silas Foster,

lank, stalwart, uncouth, and grizzly-bearded. He came from foddering

the cattle in the barn, and from the field, where he had been

ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it impossible to draw a

furrow. He greeted us in pretty much the same tone as if he were

speaking to his oxen, took a quid from his iron tobacco-box, pulled off

his wet cowhide boots, and sat down before the fire in his

stocking-feet. The steam arose from his soaked garments, so that the

stout yeoman looked vaporous and spectre-like.

"Well, folks," remarked Silas, "you'll be wishing yourselves back to

town again, if this weather holds."

And, true enough, there was a look of gloom, as the twilight fell

silently and sadly out of the sky, its gray or sable flakes

intermingling themselves with the fast-descending snow. The storm, in

its evening aspect, was decidedly dreary. It seemed to have arisen for

our especial behoof,--a symbol of the cold, desolate, distrustful

phantoms that invariably haunt the mind, on the eve of adventurous

enterprises, to warn us back within the boundaries of ordinary life.

But our courage did not quail. We would not allow ourselves to be

depressed by the snowdrift trailing past the window, any more than if

it had been the sigh of a summer wind among rustling boughs. There

have been few brighter seasons for us than that. If ever men might

lawfully dream awake, and give utterance to their wildest visions

without dread of laughter or scorn on the part of the audience,--yes,

and speak of earthly happiness, for themselves and mankind, as an

object to be hopefully striven for, and probably attained, we who made

that little semicircle round the blazing fire were those very men. We

had left the rusty iron framework of society behind us; we had broken

through many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep most people on

the weary treadmill of the established system, even while they feel its

irksomeness almost as intolerable as we did. We had stepped down from

the pulpit; we had flung aside the pen; we had shut up the ledger; we

had thrown off that sweet, bewitching, enervating indolence, which is

better, after all, than most of the enjoyments within mortal grasp. It

was our purpose--a generous one, certainly, and absurd, no doubt, in

full proportion with its generosity--to give up whatever we had

heretofore attained, for the sake of showing mankind the example of a

life governed by other than the false and cruel principles on which

human society has all along been based.

And, first of all, we had divorced ourselves from pride, and were

striving to supply its place with familiar love. We meant to lessen

the laboring man's great burden of toil, by performing our due share of

it at the cost of our own thews and sinews. We sought our profit by

mutual aid, instead of wresting it by the strong hand from an enemy, or

filching it craftily from those less shrewd than ourselves (if, indeed,

there were any such in New England), or winning it by selfish

competition with a neighbor; in one or another of which fashions every

son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of the common evil,

whether he chooses it or no. And, as the basis of our institution, we

purposed to offer up the earnest toil of our bodies, as a prayer no

less than an effort for the advancement of our race.

Therefore, if we built splendid castles (phalansteries perhaps they

might be more fitly called), and pictured beautiful scenes, among the

fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if all

went to rack with the crumbling embers and have never since arisen out

of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I

rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability

than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in

a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus

magnanimously persist in error.

Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation; but when he did

speak, it was very much to some practical purpose. For

instance:--"Which man among you," quoth he, "is the best judge of

swine? Some of us must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half a

dozen pigs."

Pigs! Good heavens! had we come out from among the swinish multitude

for this? And again, in reference to some discussion about raising

early vegetables for the market:--"We shall never make any hand at

market gardening," said Silas Foster, "unless the women folks will

undertake to do all the weeding. We haven't team enough for that and

the regular farm-work, reckoning three of your city folks as worth one

common field-hand. No, no; I tell you, we should have to get up a

little too early in the morning, to compete with the market gardeners

round Boston."

It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised,

after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world,

should relate to the possibility of getting the advantage over the

outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But, to own the truth,

I very soon became sensible that, as regarded society at large, we

stood in a position of new hostility, rather than new brotherhood. Nor

could this fail to be the case, in some degree, until the bigger and

better half of society should range itself on our side. Constituting so

pitiful a minority as now, we were inevitably estranged from the rest

of mankind in pretty fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual

bond among ourselves.

This dawning idea, however, was driven back into my inner consciousness

by the entrance of Zenobia. She came with the welcome intelligence

that supper was on the table. Looking at herself in the glass, and

perceiving that her one magnificent flower had grown rather languid

(probably by being exposed to the fervency of the kitchen fire), she

flung it on the floor, as unconcernedly as a village girl would throw

away a faded violet. The action seemed proper to her character,

although, methought, it would still more have befitted the bounteous

nature of this beautiful woman to scatter fresh flowers from her hand,

and to revive faded ones by her touch. Nevertheless, it was a singular

but irresistible effect; the presence of Zenobia caused our heroic

enterprise to show like an illusion, a masquerade, a pastoral, a

counterfeit Arcadia, in which we grown-up men and women were making a

play-day of the years that were given us to live in. I tried to

analyze this impression, but not with much success.

"It really vexes me," observed Zenobia, as we left the room, "that Mr.

Hollingsworth should be such a laggard. I should not have thought him

at all the sort of person to be turned back by a puff of contrary wind,

or a few snowflakes drifting into his face."

"Do you know Hollingsworth personally?" I inquired.

"No; only as an auditor--auditress, I mean--of some of his lectures,"

said she. "What a voice he has! and what a man he is! Yet not so much

an intellectual man, I should say, as a great heart; at least, he moved

me more deeply than I think myself capable of being moved, except by

the stroke of a true, strong heart against my own. It is a sad pity

that he should have devoted his glorious powers to such a grimy,

unbeautiful, and positively hopeless object as this reformation of

criminals, about which he makes himself and his wretchedly small

audiences so very miserable. To tell you a secret, I never could

tolerate a philanthropist before. Could you?"

"By no means," I answered; "neither can I now."

"They are, indeed, an odiously disagreeable set of mortals," continued

Zenobia. "I should like Mr. Hollingsworth a great deal better if the

philanthropy had been left out. At all events, as a mere matter of

taste, I wish he would let the bad people alone, and try to benefit

those who are not already past his help. Do you suppose he will be

content to spend his life, or even a few months of it, among tolerably

virtuous and comfortable individuals like ourselves?"

"Upon my word, I doubt it," said I. "If we wish to keep him with us, we

must systematically commit at least one crime apiece! Mere peccadillos

will not satisfy him."

Zenobia turned, sidelong, a strange kind of a glance upon me; but,

before I could make out what it meant, we had entered the kitchen,

where, in accordance with the rustic simplicity of our new life,