Chương Chương 24 · THE THREE TOGETHER

Hollingsworth was in his ordinary working-dress. Priscilla wore a

pretty and simple gown, with a kerchief about her neck, and a calash,

which she had flung back from her head, leaving it suspended by the

strings. But Zenobia (whose part among the maskers, as may be

supposed, was no inferior one) appeared in a costume of fanciful

magnificence, with her jewelled flower as the central ornament of what

resembled a leafy crown, or coronet. She represented the Oriental

princess by whose name we were accustomed to know her. Her attitude

was free and noble; yet, if a queen's, it was not that of a queen

triumphant, but dethroned, on trial for her life, or, perchance,

condemned already. The spirit of the conflict seemed, nevertheless, to

be alive in her. Her eyes were on fire; her cheeks had each a crimson

spot, so exceedingly vivid, and marked with so definite an outline,

that I at first doubted whether it were not artificial. In a very

brief space, however, this idea was shamed by the paleness that ensued,

as the blood sunk suddenly away. Zenobia now looked like marble.

One always feels the fact, in an instant, when he has intruded on those

who love, or those who hate, at some acme of their passion that puts

them into a sphere of their own, where no other spirit can pretend to

stand on equal ground with them. I was confused,--affected even with a

species of terror,--and wished myself away. The intenseness of their

feelings gave them the exclusive property of the soil and atmosphere,

and left me no right to be or breathe there.

"Hollingsworth,--Zenobia,--I have just returned to Blithedale," said I,

"and had no thought of finding you here. We shall meet again at the

house. I will retire."

"This place is free to you," answered Hollingsworth.

"As free as to ourselves," added Zenobia. "This long while past, you

have been following up your game, groping for human emotions in the

dark corners of the heart. Had you been here a little sooner, you

might have seen them dragged into the daylight. I could even wish to

have my trial over again, with you standing by to see fair play! Do

you know, Mr. Coverdale, I have been on trial for my life?"

She laughed, while speaking thus. But, in truth, as my eyes wandered

from one of the group to another, I saw in Hollingsworth all that an

artist could desire for the grim portrait of a Puritan magistrate

holding inquest of life and death in a case of witchcraft; in Zenobia,

the sorceress herself, not aged, wrinkled, and decrepit, but fair

enough to tempt Satan with a force reciprocal to his own; and, in

Priscilla, the pale victim, whose soul and body had been wasted by her

spells. Had a pile of fagots been heaped against the rock, this hint

of impending doom would have completed the suggestive picture.

"It was too hard upon me," continued Zenobia, addressing Hollingsworth,

"that judge, jury, and accuser should all be comprehended in one man!

I demur, as I think the lawyers say, to the jurisdiction. But let the

learned Judge Coverdale seat himself on the top of the rock, and you

and me stand at its base, side by side, pleading our cause before him!

There might, at least, be two criminals instead of one."

"You forced this on me," replied Hollingsworth, looking her sternly in

the face. "Did I call you hither from among the masqueraders yonder?

Do I assume to be your judge? No; except so far as I have an

unquestionable right of judgment, in order to settle my own line of

behavior towards those with whom the events of life bring me in

contact. True, I have already judged you, but not on the world's

part,--neither do I pretend to pass a sentence!"

"Ah, this is very good!" cried Zenobia with a smile. "What strange

beings you men are, Mr. Coverdale!--is it not so? It is the simplest

thing in the world with you to bring a woman before your secret

tribunals, and judge and condemn her unheard, and then tell her to go

free without a sentence. The misfortune is, that this same secret

tribunal chances to be the only judgment-seat that a true woman stands

in awe of, and that any verdict short of acquittal is equivalent to a

death sentence!"

The more I looked at them, and the more I heard, the stronger grew my

impression that a crisis had just come and gone. On Hollingsworth's

brow it had left a stamp like that of irrevocable doom, of which his

own will was the instrument. In Zenobia's whole person, beholding her

more closely, I saw a riotous agitation; the almost delirious

disquietude of a great struggle, at the close of which the vanquished

one felt her strength and courage still mighty within her, and longed

to renew the contest. My sensations were as if I had come upon a

battlefield before the smoke was as yet cleared away.

And what subjects had been discussed here? All, no doubt, that for so

many months past had kept my heart and my imagination idly feverish.

Zenobia's whole character and history; the true nature of her

mysterious connection with Westervelt; her later purposes towards

Hollingsworth, and, reciprocally, his in reference to her; and,

finally, the degree in which Zenobia had been cognizant of the plot

against Priscilla, and what, at last, had been the real object of that

scheme. On these points, as before, I was left to my own conjectures.

One thing, only, was certain. Zenobia and Hollingsworth were friends

no longer. If their heartstrings were ever intertwined, the knot had

been adjudged an entanglement, and was now violently broken.

But Zenobia seemed unable to rest content with the matter in the

posture which it had assumed.

"Ah! do we part so?" exclaimed she, seeing Hollingsworth about to

retire.

"And why not?" said he, with almost rude abruptness. "What is there

further to be said between us?"

"Well, perhaps nothing," answered Zenobia, looking him in the face, and

smiling. "But we have come many times before to this gray rock, and we

have talked very softly among the whisperings of the birch-trees. They

were pleasant hours! I love to make the latest of them, though not

altogether so delightful, loiter away as slowly as may be. And,

besides, you have put many queries to me at this, which you design to

be our last interview; and being driven, as I must acknowledge, into a

corner, I have responded with reasonable frankness. But now, with your

free consent, I desire the privilege of asking a few questions, in my

turn."

"I have no concealments," said Hollingsworth.

"We shall see," answered Zenobia. "I would first inquire whether you

have supposed me to be wealthy?"

"On that point," observed Hollingsworth, "I have had the opinion which

the world holds."

"And I held it likewise," said Zenobia. "Had I not, Heaven is my

witness the knowledge should have been as free to you as me. It is

only three days since I knew the strange fact that threatens to make me

poor; and your own acquaintance with it, I suspect, is of at least as

old a date. I fancied myself affluent. You are aware, too, of the

disposition which I purposed making of the larger portion of my

imaginary opulence,--nay, were it all, I had not hesitated. Let me ask

you, further, did I ever propose or intimate any terms of compact, on

which depended this--as the world would consider it--so important

sacrifice?"

"You certainly spoke of none," said Hollingsworth.

"Nor meant any," she responded. "I was willing to realize your dream

freely,--generously, as some might think,--but, at all events, fully,

and heedless though it should prove the ruin of my fortune. If, in your

own thoughts, you have imposed any conditions of this expenditure, it

is you that must be held responsible for whatever is sordid and

unworthy in them. And now one other question. Do you love this girl?"

"O Zenobia!" exclaimed Priscilla, shrinking back, as if longing for the

rock to topple over and hide her.

"Do you love her?" repeated Zenobia.

"Had you asked me that question a short time since," replied

Hollingsworth, after a pause, during which, it seemed to me, even the

birch-trees held their whispering breath, "I should have told

you--'No!' My feelings for Priscilla differed little from those of an

elder brother, watching tenderly over the gentle sister whom God has

given him to protect."

"And what is your answer now?" persisted Zenobia.

"I do love her!" said Hollingsworth, uttering the words with a deep

inward breath, instead of speaking them outright. "As well declare it

thus as in any other way. I do love her!"

"Now, God be judge between us," cried Zenobia, breaking into sudden

passion, "which of us two has most mortally offended Him! At least, I

am a woman, with every fault, it may be, that a woman ever had,--weak,

vain, unprincipled (like most of my sex; for our virtues, when we have

any, are merely impulsive and intuitive), passionate, too, and pursuing

my foolish and unattainable ends by indirect and cunning, though

absurdly chosen means, as an hereditary bond-slave must; false,

moreover, to the whole circle of good, in my reckless truth to the

little good I saw before me,--but still a woman! A creature whom only

a little change of earthly fortune, a little kinder smile of Him who

sent me hither, and one true heart to encourage and direct me, might

have made all that a woman can be! But how is it with you? Are you a

man? No; but a monster! A cold, heartless, self-beginning and

self-ending piece of mechanism!"

"With what, then, do you charge me!" asked Hollingsworth, aghast, and

greatly disturbed by this attack. "Show me one selfish end, in all I

ever aimed at, and you may cut it out of my bosom with a knife!"

"It is all self!" answered Zenobia with still intenser bitterness.

"Nothing else; nothing but self, self, self! The fiend, I doubt not,

has made his choicest mirth of you these seven years past, and

especially in the mad summer which we have spent together. I see it

now! I am awake, disenchanted, disinthralled! Self, self, self! You

have embodied yourself in a project. You are a better masquerader than

the witches and gypsies yonder; for your disguise is a self-deception.

See whither it has brought you! First, you aimed a death-blow, and a

treacherous one, at this scheme of a purer and higher life, which so

many noble spirits had wrought out. Then, because Coverdale could not

be quite your slave, you threw him ruthlessly away. And you took me,

too, into your plan, as long as there was hope of my being available,

and now fling me aside again, a broken tool! But, foremost and

blackest of your sins, you stifled down your inmost consciousness!--you

did a deadly wrong to your own heart!--you were ready to sacrifice this

girl, whom, if God ever visibly showed a purpose, He put into your

charge, and through whom He was striving to redeem you!"

"This is a woman's view," said Hollingsworth, growing deadly pale,--"a

woman's, whose whole sphere of action is in the heart, and who can

conceive of no higher nor wider one!"

"Be silent!" cried Zenobia imperiously. "You know neither man nor

woman! The utmost that can be said in your behalf--and because I would

not be wholly despicable in my own eyes, but would fain excuse my

wasted feelings, nor own it wholly a delusion, therefore I say it--is,

that a great and rich heart has been ruined in your breast. Leave me,

now. You have done with me, and I with you. Farewell!"

"Priscilla," said Hollingsworth, "come." Zenobia smiled; possibly I

did so too. Not often, in human life, has a gnawing sense of injury

found a sweeter morsel of revenge than was conveyed in the tone with

which Hollingsworth spoke those two words. It was the abased and

tremulous tone of a man whose faith in himself was shaken, and who

sought, at last, to lean on an affection. Yes; the strong man bowed

himself and rested on this poor Priscilla! Oh, could she have failed

him, what a triumph for the lookers-on!

And, at first, I half imagined that she was about to fail him. She

rose up, stood shivering like the birch leaves that trembled over her

head, and then slowly tottered, rather than walked, towards Zenobia.

Arriving at her feet, she sank down there, in the very same attitude

which she had assumed on their first meeting, in the kitchen of the old

farmhouse. Zenobia remembered it.

"Ah, Priscilla!" said she, shaking her head, "how much is changed since

then! You kneel to a dethroned princess. You, the victorious one!

But he is waiting for you. Say what you wish, and leave me."

"We are sisters!" gasped Priscilla.

I fancied that I understood the word and action. It meant the offering

of herself, and all she had, to be at Zenobia's disposal. But the

latter would not take it thus.

"True, we are sisters!" she replied; and, moved by the sweet word, she

stooped down and kissed Priscilla; but not lovingly, for a sense of

fatal harm received through her seemed to be lurking in Zenobia's

heart. "We had one father! You knew it from the first; I, but a

little while,--else some things that have chanced might have been

spared you. But I never wished you harm. You stood between me and an

end which I desired. I wanted a clear path. No matter what I meant.

It is over now. Do you forgive me?"

"O Zenobia," sobbed Priscilla, "it is I that feel like the guilty one!"

"No, no, poor little thing!" said Zenobia, with a sort of contempt.

"You have been my evil fate, but there never was a babe with less

strength or will to do an injury. Poor child! Methinks you have but a

melancholy lot before you, sitting all alone in that wide, cheerless

heart, where, for aught you know,--and as I, alas! believe,--the fire

which you have kindled may soon go out. Ah, the thought makes me

shiver for you! What will you do, Priscilla, when you find no spark

among the ashes?"

"Die!" she answered.

"That was well said!" responded Zenobia, with an approving smile.

"There is all a woman in your little compass, my poor sister.

Meanwhile, go with him, and live!"

She waved her away with a queenly gesture, and turned her own face to

the rock. I watched Priscilla, wondering what judgment she would pass

between Zenobia and Hollingsworth; how interpret his behavior, so as to

reconcile it with true faith both towards her sister and herself; how

compel her love for him to keep any terms whatever with her sisterly

affection! But, in truth, there was no such difficulty as I imagined.

Her engrossing love made it all clear. Hollingsworth could have no

fault. That was the one principle at the centre of the universe. And

the doubtful guilt or possible integrity of other people, appearances,

self-evident facts, the testimony of her own senses,--even

Hollingsworth's self-accusation, had he volunteered it,--would have

weighed not the value of a mote of thistledown on the other side. So

secure was she of his right, that she never thought of comparing it

with another's wrong, but left the latter to itself.

Hollingsworth drew her arm within his, and soon disappeared with her

among the trees. I cannot imagine how Zenobia knew when they were out

of sight; she never glanced again towards them. But, retaining a proud

attitude so long as they might have thrown back a retiring look, they

were no sooner departed,--utterly departed,--than she began slowly to

sink down. It was as if a great, invisible, irresistible weight were

pressing her to the earth. Settling upon her knees, she leaned her

forehead against the rock, and sobbed convulsively; dry sobs they

seemed to be, such as have nothing to do with tears.

XXVI.