บทที่ บทที่ 11 · COVERDALE'S HERMITAGE

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 wreathing the entanglement of its

tendrils around almost every bough, 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 clamber 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 sepulchre 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 admirable 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 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 inviolate. 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 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 fore-reckoned 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 bough, my position

was lofty enough to serve as an observatory, not for starry

investigations, but for those sublunary matters in which lay a lore 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 labor. 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.

"Haw, Buck!" quoth 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 goad-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 farmhouse, 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 be long 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 thousand-fold odor. Possibly there was a

sensual 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 musing, 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 sceptical 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 scepticism 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 whit 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 but 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 passion, 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 save 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 it 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 honorably 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's 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 clew, 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 aught for my soul, let him release me from this miserable bond!"

"I did not think it weighed so heavily," said her companion..

"Nevertheless," 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 dolorously 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 subtilize 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.

XIII.