第 十三 章 · ELIOT'S PULPIT

Our Sundays at Blithedale were not ordinarily kept with such rigid

observance as might have befitted the descendants of the Pilgrims,

whose high enterprise, as we sometimes flattered ourselves, we had

taken up, and were carrying it onward and aloft, to a point which they

never dreamed of attaining.

On that hallowed day, it is true, we rested from our labors. Our oxen,

relieved from their week-day yoke, roamed at large through the pasture;

each yoke-fellow, however, keeping close beside his mate, and

continuing to acknowledge, from the force of habit and sluggish

sympathy, the union which the taskmaster had imposed for his own hard

ends. As for us human yoke-fellows, chosen companions of toil, whose

hoes had clinked together throughout the week, we wandered off, in

various directions, to enjoy our interval of repose. Some, I believe,

went devoutly to the village church. Others, it may be, ascended a

city or a country pulpit, wearing the clerical robe with so much

dignity that you would scarcely have suspected the yeoman's frock to

have been flung off only since milking-time. Others took long rambles

among the rustic lanes and by-paths, pausing to look at black old

farmhouses, with their sloping roofs; and at the modern cottage, so

like a plaything that it seemed as if real joy or sorrow could have no

scope within; and at the more pretending villa, with its range of

wooden columns supporting the needless insolence of a great portico.

Some betook themselves into the wide, dusky barn, and lay there for

hours together on the odorous hay; while the sunstreaks and the shadows

strove together,--these to make the barn solemn, those to make it

cheerful,--and both were conquerors; and the swallows twittered a

cheery anthem, flashing into sight, or vanishing as they darted to and

fro among the golden rules of sunshine. And others went a little way

into the woods, and threw themselves on mother earth, pillowing their

heads on a heap of moss, the green decay of an old log; and, dropping

asleep, the bumblebees and mosquitoes sung and buzzed about their ears,

causing the slumberers to twitch and start, without awaking.

With Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla, and myself, it grew to be a

custom to spend the Sabbath afternoon at a certain rock. It was known

to us under the name of Eliot's pulpit, from a tradition that the

venerable Apostle Eliot had preached there, two centuries gone by, to

an Indian auditory. The old pine forest, through which the Apostle's

voice was wont to sound, had fallen an immemorial time ago. But the

soil, being of the rudest and most broken surface, had apparently never

been brought under tillage; other growths, maple and beech and birch,

had succeeded to the primeval trees; so that it was still as wild a

tract of woodland as the great-great-great-great grandson of one of

Eliot's Indians (had any such posterity been in existence) could have

desired for the site and shelter of his wigwam. These after-growths,

indeed, lose the stately solemnity of the original forest. If left in

due neglect, however, they run into an entanglement of softer wildness,

among the rustling leaves of which the sun can scatter cheerfulness as

it never could among the dark-browed pines.

The rock itself rose some twenty or thirty feet, a shattered granite

bowlder, or heap of bowlders, with an irregular outline and many

fissures, out of which sprang shrubs, bushes, and even trees; as if the

scanty soil within those crevices were sweeter to their roots than any

other earth. At the base of the pulpit, the broken bowlders inclined

towards each other, so as to form a shallow cave, within which our

little party had sometimes found protection from a summer shower. On

the threshold, or just across it, grew a tuft of pale columbines, in

their season, and violets, sad and shadowy recluses, such as Priscilla

was when we first knew her; children of the sun, who had never seen

their father, but dwelt among damp mosses, though not akin to them. At

the summit, the rock was overshadowed by the canopy of a birch-tree,

which served as a sounding-board for the pulpit. Beneath this shade

(with my eyes of sense half shut and those of the imagination widely

opened) I used to see the holy Apostle of the Indians, with the

sunlight flickering down upon him through the leaves, and glorifying

his figure as with the half-perceptible glow of a transfiguration.

I the more minutely describe the rock, and this little Sabbath

solitude, because Hollingsworth, at our solicitation, often ascended

Eliot's pulpit, and not exactly preached, but talked to us, his few

disciples, in a strain that rose and fell as naturally as the wind's

breath among the leaves of the birch-tree. No other speech of man has

ever moved me like some of those discourses. It seemed most pitiful--a

positive calamity to the world--that a treasury of golden thoughts

should thus be scattered, by the liberal handful, down among us three,

when a thousand hearers might have been the richer for them; and

Hollingsworth the richer, likewise, by the sympathy of multitudes.

After speaking much or little, as might happen, he would descend from

his gray pulpit, and generally fling himself at full length on the

ground, face downward. Meanwhile, we talked around him on such topics

as were suggested by the discourse.

Since her interview with Westervelt, Zenobia's continual inequalities

of temper had been rather difficult for her friends to bear. On the

first Sunday after that incident, when Hollingsworth had clambered down

from Eliot's pulpit, she declaimed with great earnestness and passion,

nothing short of anger, on the injustice which the world did to women,

and equally to itself, by not allowing them, in freedom and honor, and

with the fullest welcome, their natural utterance in public.

"It shall not always be so!" cried she. "If I live another year, I

will lift up my own voice in behalf of woman's wider liberty!"

She perhaps saw me smile.

"What matter of ridicule do you find in this, Miles Coverdale?"

exclaimed Zenobia, with a flash of anger in her eyes. "That smile,

permit me to say, makes me suspicious of a low tone of feeling and

shallow thought. It is my belief--yes, and my prophecy, should I die

before it happens--that, when my sex shall achieve its rights, there

will be ten eloquent women where there is now one eloquent man. Thus

far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole heart and

her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of

society throttles us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats! We

mumble a few weak words, and leave a thousand better ones unsaid. You

let us write a little, it is true, on a limited range of subjects. But

the pen is not for woman. Her power is too natural and immediate. It

is with the living voice alone that she can compel the world to

recognize the light of her intellect and the depth of her heart!"

Now,--though I could not well say so to Zenobia,--I had not smiled from

any unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims which she is

beginning to put forth. What amused and puzzled me was the fact, that

women, however intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves

about the rights or wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual

affections chance to lie in idleness, or to be ill at ease. They are

not natural reformers, but become such by the pressure of exceptional

misfortune. I could measure Zenobia's inward trouble by the animosity

with which she now took up the general quarrel of woman against man.

"I will give you leave, Zenobia," replied I, "to fling your utmost

scorn upon me, if you ever hear me utter a sentiment unfavorable to the

widest liberty which woman has yet dreamed of. I would give her all

she asks, and add a great deal more, which she will not be the party to

demand, but which men, if they were generous and wise, would grant of

their own free motion. For instance, I should love dearly--for the

next thousand years, at least--to have all government devolve into the

hands of women. I hate to be ruled by my own sex; it excites my

jealousy, and wounds my pride. It is the iron sway of bodily force

which abases us, in our compelled submission. But how sweet the free,

generous courtesy with which I would kneel before a woman-ruler!"

"Yes, if she were young and beautiful," said Zenobia, laughing. "But

how if she were sixty, and a fright?"

"Ah! it is you that rate womanhood low," said I. "But let me go on. I

have never found it possible to suffer a bearded priest so near my

heart and conscience as to do me any spiritual good. I blush at the

very thought! Oh, in the better order of things, Heaven grant that the

ministry of souls may be left in charge of women! The gates of the

Blessed City will be thronged with the multitude that enter in, when

that day comes! The task belongs to woman. God meant it for her. He

has endowed her with the religious sentiment in its utmost depth and

purity, refined from that gross, intellectual alloy with which every

masculine theologist--save only One, who merely veiled himself in

mortal and masculine shape, but was, in truth, divine--has been prone

to mingle it. I have always envied the Catholics their faith in that

sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them and the Deity,

intercepting somewhat of his awful splendor, but permitting his love to

stream upon the worshipper more intelligibly to human comprehension

through the medium of a woman's tenderness. Have I not said enough,

Zenobia?"

"I cannot think that this is true," observed Priscilla, who had been

gazing at me with great, disapproving eyes. "And I am sure I do not

wish it to be true!"

"Poor child!" exclaimed Zenobia, rather contemptuously. "She is the

type of womanhood, such as man has spent centuries in making it. He is

never content unless he can degrade himself by stooping towards what he

loves. In denying us our rights, he betrays even more blindness to his

own interests than profligate disregard of ours!"

"Is this true?" asked Priscilla with simplicity, turning to

Hollingsworth. "Is it all true, that Mr. Coverdale and Zenobia have

been saying?"

"No, Priscilla!" answered Hollingsworth with his customary bluntness.

"They have neither of them spoken one true word yet."

"Do you despise woman?" said Zenobia.

"Ah, Hollingsworth, that would be most ungrateful!"

"Despise her? No!" cried Hollingsworth, lifting his great shaggy head

and shaking it at us, while his eyes glowed almost fiercely. "She is

the most admirable handiwork of God, in her true place and character.

Her place is at man's side. Her office, that of the sympathizer; the

unreserved, unquestioning believer; the recognition, withheld in every

other manner, but given, in pity, through woman's heart, lest man

should utterly lose faith in himself; the echo of God's own voice,

pronouncing, 'It is well done!' All the separate action of woman is,

and ever has been, and always shall be, false, foolish, vain,

destructive of her own best and holiest qualities, void of every good

effect, and productive of intolerable mischiefs! Man is a wretch

without woman; but woman is a monster--and, thank Heaven, an almost

impossible and hitherto imaginary monster--without man as her

acknowledged principal! As true as I had once a mother whom I loved,

were there any possible prospect of woman's taking the social stand

which some of them,--poor, miserable, abortive creatures, who only

dream of such things because they have missed woman's peculiar

happiness, or because nature made them really neither man nor

woman!--if there were a chance of their attaining the end which these

petticoated monstrosities have in view, I would call upon my own sex to

use its physical force, that unmistakable evidence of sovereignty, to

scourge them back within their proper bounds! But it will not be

needful. The heart of time womanhood knows where its own sphere is,

and never seeks to stray beyond it!"

Never was mortal blessed--if blessing it were--with a glance of such

entire acquiescence and unquestioning faith, happy in its completeness,

as our little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on Hollingsworth. She

seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into her heart, and brood

over it in perfect content. The very woman whom he pictured--the

gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a more powerful existence--sat

there at his feet.

I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent--as I felt,

by the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought this

outrageous affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of masculine

egotism. It centred everything in itself, and deprived woman of her

very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to make it a mere

incident in the great sum of man. Hollingsworth had boldly uttered

what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt. Without

intending it, he had disclosed the wellspring of all these troubled

waters. Now, if ever, it surely behooved Zenobia to be the champion of

her sex.

But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled. Some

tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not anger.

"Well, be it so," was all she said. "I, at least, have deep cause to

think you right. Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only

too ready to become to him what you say!"

I smiled--somewhat bitterly, it is true--in contemplation of my own

ill-luck. How little did these two women care for me, who had freely

conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness of

my heart; while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible

injustice, seemed to have brought them both to his feet!

"Women almost invariably behave thus," thought I. "What does the fact

mean? Is it their nature? Or is it, at last, the result of ages of

compelled degradation? And, in either case, will it be possible ever

to redeem them?"

An intuition now appeared to possess all the party, that, for this

time, at least, there was no more to be said. With one accord, we

arose from the ground, and made our way through the tangled undergrowth

towards one of those pleasant wood-paths that wound among the

overarching trees. Some of the branches hung so low as partly to

conceal the figures that went before from those who followed. Priscilla

had leaped up more lightly than the rest of us, and ran along in

advance, with as much airy activity of spirit as was typified in the

motion of a bird, which chanced to be flitting from tree to tree, in

the same direction as herself. Never did she seem so happy as that

afternoon. She skipt, and could not help it, from very playfulness of

heart.

Zenobia and Hollingsworth went next, in close contiguity, but not with

arm in arm. Now, just when they had passed the impending bough of a

birch-tree, I plainly saw Zenobia take the hand of Hollingsworth in

both her own, press it to her bosom, and let it fall again!

The gesture was sudden, and full of passion; the impulse had evidently

taken her by surprise; it expressed all! Had Zenobia knelt before him,

or flung herself upon his breast, and gasped out, "I love you,

Hollingsworth!" I could not have been more certain of what it meant.

They then walked onward, as before. But, methought, as the declining

sun threw Zenobia's magnified shadow along the path, I beheld it

tremulous; and the delicate stem of the flower which she wore in her

hair was likewise responsive to her agitation.

Priscilla--through the medium of her eyes, at least could not possibly

have been aware of the gesture above described. Yet, at that instant,

I saw her droop. The buoyancy, which just before had been so

bird-like, was utterly departed; the life seemed to pass out of her,

and even the substance of her figure to grow thin and gray. I almost

imagined her a shadow, tiding gradually into the dimness of the wood.

Her pace became so slow that Hollingsworth and Zenobia passed by, and

I, without hastening my footsteps, overtook her.

"Come, Priscilla," said I, looking her intently in the face, which was

very pale and sorrowful, "we must make haste after our friends. Do you

feel suddenly ill? A moment ago, you flitted along so lightly that I

was comparing you to a bird. Now, on the contrary, it is as if you had

a heavy heart, and a very little strength to bear it with. Pray take my

arm!"

"No," said Priscilla, "I do not think it would help me. It is my

heart, as you say, that makes me heavy; and I know not why. Just now,

I felt very happy."

No doubt it was a kind of sacrilege in me to attempt to come within her

maidenly mystery; but, as she appeared to be tossed aside by her other

friends, or carelessly let fall, like a flower which they had done

with, I could not resist the impulse to take just one peep beneath her

folded petals.

"Zenobia and yourself are dear friends of late," I remarked. "At

first,--that first evening when you came to us,--she did not receive

you quite so warmly as might have been wished."

"I remember it," said Priscilla. "No wonder she hesitated to love me,

who was then a stranger to her, and a girl of no grace or beauty,--she

being herself so beautiful!"

"But she loves you now, of course?" suggested I. "And at this very

instant you feel her to be your dearest friend?"

"Why do you ask me that question?" exclaimed Priscilla, as if

frightened at the scrutiny into her feelings which I compelled her to

make. "It somehow puts strange thoughts into my mind. But I do love

Zenobia dearly! If she only loves me half as well, I shall be happy!"

"How is it possible to doubt that, Priscilla?" I rejoined. "But

observe how pleasantly and happily Zenobia and Hollingsworth are

walking together. I call it a delightful spectacle. It truly rejoices

me that Hollingsworth has found so fit and affectionate a friend! So

many people in the world mistrust him,--so many disbelieve and

ridicule, while hardly any do him justice, or acknowledge him for the

wonderful man he is,--that it is really a blessed thing for him to have

won the sympathy of such a woman as Zenobia. Any man might be proud of

that. Any man, even if he be as great as Hollingsworth, might love so

magnificent a woman. How very beautiful Zenobia is! And Hollingsworth

knows it, too."

There may have been some petty malice in what I said. Generosity is a

very fine thing, at a proper time and within due limits. But it is an

insufferable bore to see one man engrossing every thought of all the

women, and leaving his friend to shiver in outer seclusion, without

even the alternative of solacing himself with what the more fortunate

individual has rejected. Yes, it was out of a foolish bitterness of

heart that I had spoken.

"Go on before," said Priscilla abruptly, and with true feminine

imperiousness, which heretofore I had never seen her exercise. "It

pleases me best to loiter along by myself. I do not walk so fast as

you."

With her hand she made a little gesture of dismissal. It provoked me;

yet, on the whole, was the most bewitching thing that Priscilla had

ever done. I obeyed her, and strolled moodily homeward, wondering--as

I had wondered a thousand times already--how Hollingsworth meant to

dispose of these two hearts, which (plainly to my perception, and, as I

could not but now suppose, to his) he had engrossed into his own huge

egotism.

There was likewise another subject hardly less fruitful of speculation.

In what attitude did Zenobia present herself to Hollingsworth? Was it

in that of a free woman, with no mortgage on her affections nor

claimant to her hand, but fully at liberty to surrender both, in

exchange for the heart and hand which she apparently expected to

receive? But was it a vision that I had witnessed in the wood? Was

Westervelt a goblin? Were those words of passion and agony, which

Zenobia had uttered in my hearing, a mere stage declamation? Were they

formed of a material lighter than common air? Or, supposing them to

bear sterling weight, was it a perilous and dreadful wrong which she

was meditating towards herself and Hollingsworth?

Arriving nearly at the farmhouse, I looked back over the long slope of

pasture land, and beheld them standing together, in the light of

sunset, just on the spot where, according to the gossip of the

Community, they meant to build their cottage. Priscilla, alone and

forgotten, was lingering in the shadow of the wood.

XV.