Chương Chương 15 · LEAVE-TAKINGS

A few days after the tragic passage-at-arms between Hollingsworth and

me, I appeared at the dinner-table actually dressed in a coat, instead

of my customary blouse; with a satin cravat, too, a white vest, and

several other things that made me seem strange and outlandish to

myself. As for my companions, this unwonted spectacle caused a great

stir upon the wooden benches that bordered either side of our homely

board.

"What's in the wind now, Miles?" asked one of them. "Are you deserting

us?"

"Yes, for a week or two," said I. "It strikes me that my health demands

a little relaxation of labor, and a short visit to the seaside, during

the dog-days."

"You look like it!" grumbled Silas Foster, not greatly pleased with the

idea of losing an efficient laborer before the stress of the season was

well over. "Now, here's a pretty fellow! His shoulders have broadened

a matter of six inches since he came among us; he can do his day's

work, if he likes, with any man or ox on the farm; and yet he talks

about going to the seashore for his health! Well, well, old woman,"

added he to his wife, "let me have a plateful of that pork and cabbage!

I begin to feel in a very weakly way. When the others have had their

turn, you and I will take a jaunt to Newport or Saratoga!"

"Well, but, Mr. Foster," said I, "you must allow me to take a little

breath."

"Breath!" retorted the old yeoman. "Your lungs have the play of a pair

of blacksmith's bellows already. What on earth do you want more? But

go along! I understand the business. We shall never see your face

here again. Here ends the reformation of the world, so far as Miles

Coverdale has a hand in it!"

"By no means," I replied. "I am resolute to die in the last ditch, for

the good of the cause."

"Die in a ditch!" muttered gruff Silas, with genuine Yankee intolerance

of any intermission of toil, except on Sunday, the Fourth of July, the

autumnal cattle-show, Thanksgiving, or the annual Fast,--"die in a

ditch! I believe, in my conscience, you would, if there were no

steadier means than your own labor to keep you out of it!"

The truth was, that an intolerable discontent and irksomeness had come

over me. Blithedale was no longer what it had been. Everything was

suddenly faded. The sunburnt and arid aspect of our woods and

pastures, beneath the August sky, did but imperfectly symbolize the

lack of dew and moisture, that, since yesterday, as it were, had

blighted my fields of thought, and penetrated to the innermost and

shadiest of my contemplative recesses. The change will be recognized

by many, who, after a period of happiness, have endeavored to go on

with the same kind of life, in the same scene, in spite of the

alteration or withdrawal of some principal circumstance. They discover

(what heretofore, perhaps, they had not known) that it was this which

gave the bright color and vivid reality to the whole affair.

I stood on other terms than before, not only with Hollingsworth, but

with Zenobia and Priscilla. As regarded the two latter, it was that

dreamlike and miserable sort of change that denies you the privilege to

complain, because you can assert no positive injury, nor lay your

finger on anything tangible. It is a matter which you do not see, but

feel, and which, when you try to analyze it, seems to lose its very

existence, and resolve itself into a sickly humor of your own. Your

understanding, possibly, may put faith in this denial. But your heart

will not so easily rest satisfied. It incessantly remonstrates,

though, most of the time, in a bass-note, which you do not separately

distinguish; but, now and then, with a sharp cry, importunate to be

heard, and resolute to claim belief. "Things are not as they were!" it

keeps saying. "You shall not impose on me! I will never be quiet! I

will throb painfully! I will be heavy, and desolate, and shiver with

cold! For I, your deep heart, know when to be miserable, as once I

knew when to be happy! All is changed for us! You are beloved no

more!" And were my life to be spent over again, I would invariably

lend my ear to this Cassandra of the inward depths, however clamorous

the music and the merriment of a more superficial region.

My outbreak with Hollingsworth, though never definitely known to our

associates, had really an effect upon the moral atmosphere of the

Community. It was incidental to the closeness of relationship into

which we had brought ourselves, that an unfriendly state of feeling

could not occur between any two members without the whole society being

more or less commoted and made uncomfortable thereby. This species of

nervous sympathy (though a pretty characteristic enough, sentimentally

considered, and apparently betokening an actual bond of love among us)

was yet found rather inconvenient in its practical operation, mortal

tempers being so infirm and variable as they are. If one of us happened

to give his neighbor a box on the ear, the tingle was immediately felt

on the same side of everybody's head. Thus, even on the supposition

that we were far less quarrelsome than the rest of the world, a great

deal of time was necessarily wasted in rubbing our ears.

Musing on all these matters, I felt an inexpressible longing for at

least a temporary novelty. I thought of going across the Rocky

Mountains, or to Europe, or up the Nile; of offering myself a volunteer

on the Exploring Expedition; of taking a ramble of years, no matter in

what direction, and coming back on the other side of the world. Then,

should the colonists of Blithedale have established their enterprise on

a permanent basis, I might fling aside my pilgrim staff and dusty

shoon, and rest as peacefully here as elsewhere. Or, in case

Hollingsworth should occupy the ground with his School of Reform, as he

now purposed, I might plead earthly guilt enough, by that time, to give

me what I was inclined to think the only trustworthy hold on his

affections. Meanwhile, before deciding on any ultimate plan, I

determined to remove myself to a little distance, and take an exterior

view of what we had all been about.

In truth, it was dizzy work, amid such fermentation of opinions as was

going on in the general brain of the Community. It was a kind of

Bedlam, for the time being, although out of the very thoughts that were

wildest and most destructive might grow a wisdom, holy, calm, and pure,

and that should incarnate itself with the substance of a noble and

happy life. But, as matters now were, I felt myself (and, having a

decided tendency towards the actual, I never liked to feel it) getting

quite out of my reckoning, with regard to the existing state of the

world. I was beginning to lose the sense of what kind of a world it

was, among innumerable schemes of what it might or ought to be. It was

impossible, situated as we were, not to imbibe the idea that everything

in nature and human existence was fluid, or fast becoming so; that the

crust of the earth in many places was broken, and its whole surface

portentously upheaving; that it was a day of crisis, and that we

ourselves were in the critical vortex. Our great globe floated in the

atmosphere of infinite space like an unsubstantial bubble. No

sagacious man will long retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively

among reformers and progressive people, without periodically returning

into the settled system of things, to correct himself by a new

observation from that old standpoint.

It was now time for me, therefore, to go and hold a little talk with

the conservatives, the writers of "The North American Review," the

merchants, the politicians, the Cambridge men, and all those

respectable old blockheads who still, in this intangibility and

mistiness of affairs, kept a death-grip on one or two ideas which had

not come into vogue since yesterday morning.

The brethren took leave of me with cordial kindness; and as for the

sisterhood, I had serious thoughts of kissing them all round, but

forbore to do so, because, in all such general salutations, the penance

is fully equal to the pleasure. So I kissed none of them; and nobody,

to say the truth, seemed to expect it.

"Do you wish me," I said to Zenobia, "to announce in town, and at the

watering-places, your purpose to deliver a course of lectures on the

rights of women?"

"Women possess no rights," said Zenobia, with a half-melancholy smile;

"or, at all events, only little girls and grandmothers would have the

force to exercise them."

She gave me her hand freely and kindly, and looked at me, I thought,

with a pitying expression in her eyes; nor was there any settled light

of joy in them on her own behalf, but a troubled and passionate flame,

flickering and fitful.

"I regret, on the whole, that you are leaving us," she said; "and all

the more, since I feel that this phase of our life is finished, and can

never be lived over again. Do you know, Mr. Coverdale, that I have

been several times on the point of making you my confidant, for lack of

a better and wiser one? But you are too young to be my father

confessor; and you would not thank me for treating you like one of

those good little handmaidens who share the bosom secrets of a

tragedy-queen."

"I would, at least, be loyal and faithful," answered I; "and would

counsel you with an honest purpose, if not wisely."

"Yes," said Zenobia, "you would be only too wise, too honest. Honesty

and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!"

"Ah, Zenobia," I exclaimed, "if you would but let me speak!"

"By no means," she replied, "especially when you have just resumed the

whole series of social conventionalisms, together with that

strait-bodied coat. I would as lief open my heart to a lawyer or a

clergyman! No, no, Mr. Coverdale; if I choose a counsellor, in the

present aspect of my affairs, it must be either an angel or a madman;

and I rather apprehend that the latter would be likeliest of the two to

speak the fitting word. It needs a wild steersman when we voyage

through chaos! The anchor is up,--farewell!"

Priscilla, as soon as dinner was over, had betaken herself into a

corner, and set to work on a little purse. As I approached her, she

let her eyes rest on me with a calm, serious look; for, with all her

delicacy of nerves, there was a singular self-possession in Priscilla,

and her sensibilities seemed to lie sheltered from ordinary commotion,

like the water in a deep well.

"Will you give me that purse, Priscilla," said I, "as a parting

keepsake?"

"Yes," she answered, "if you will wait till it is finished."

"I must not wait, even for that," I replied. "Shall I find you here,

on my return?"

"I never wish to go away," said she.

"I have sometimes thought," observed I, smiling, "that you, Priscilla,

are a little prophetess, or, at least, that you have spiritual

intimations respecting matters which are dark to us grosser people. If

that be the case, I should like to ask you what is about to happen; for

I am tormented with a strong foreboding that, were I to return even so

soon as to-morrow morning, I should find everything changed. Have you

any impressions of this nature?"

"Ah, no," said Priscilla, looking at me apprehensively. "If any such

misfortune is coming, the shadow has not reached me yet. Heaven

forbid! I should be glad if there might never be any change, but one

summer follow another, and all just like this."

"No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike," said I,

with a degree of Orphic wisdom that astonished myself. "Times change,

and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much

the worse for us. Good-by, Priscilla!"

I gave her hand a pressure, which, I think, she neither resisted nor

returned. Priscilla's heart was deep, but of small compass; it had

room but for a very few dearest ones, among whom she never reckoned me.

On the doorstep I met Hollingsworth. I had a momentary impulse to hold

out my hand, or at least to give a parting nod, but resisted both.

When a real and strong affection has come to an end, it is not well to

mock the sacred past with any show of those commonplace civilities that

belong to ordinary intercourse. Being dead henceforth to him, and he

to me, there could be no propriety in our chilling one another with the

touch of two corpse-like hands, or playing at looks of courtesy with

eyes that were impenetrable beneath the glaze and the film. We passed,

therefore, as if mutually invisible.

I can nowise explain what sort of whim, prank, or perversity it was,

that, after all these leave-takings, induced me to go to the pigsty,

and take leave of the swine! There they lay, buried as deeply among

the straw as they could burrow, four huge black grunters, the very

symbols of slothful ease and sensual comfort. They were asleep,

drawing short and heavy breaths, which heaved their big sides up and

down. Unclosing their eyes, however, at my approach, they looked dimly

forth at the outer world, and simultaneously uttered a gentle grunt;

not putting themselves to the trouble of an additional breath for that

particular purpose, but grunting with their ordinary inhalation. They

were involved, and almost stifled and buried alive, in their own

corporeal substance. The very unreadiness and oppression wherewith

these greasy citizens gained breath enough to keep their life-machinery

in sluggish movement appeared to make them only the more sensible of

the ponderous and fat satisfaction of their existence. Peeping at me

an instant out of their small, red, hardly perceptible eyes, they dropt

asleep again; yet not so far asleep but that their unctuous bliss was

still present to them, betwixt dream and reality.

"You must come back in season to eat part of a spare-rib," said Silas

Foster, giving my hand a mighty squeeze. "I shall have these fat

fellows hanging up by the heels, heads downward, pretty soon, I tell

you!"

"O cruel Silas, what a horrible idea!" cried I. "All the rest of us,

men, women, and livestock, save only these four porkers, are bedevilled

with one grief or another; they alone are happy,--and you mean to cut

their throats and eat them! It would be more for the general comfort

to let them eat us; and bitter and sour morsels we should be!"

XVII.