第 十四 章 · A CRISIS

Thus the summer was passing away,--a summer of toil, of interest, of

something that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and

there became a rich experience. I found myself looking forward to

years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent on the same system. The

Community were now beginning to form their permanent plans. One of our

purposes was to erect a Phalanstery (as I think we called it, after

Fourier; but the phraseology of those days is not very fresh in my

remembrance), where the great and general family should have its

abiding-place. Individual members, too, who made it a point of

religion to preserve the sanctity of an exclusive home, were selecting

sites for their cottages, by the wood-side, or on the breezy swells, or

in the sheltered nook of some little valley, according as their taste

might lean towards snugness or the picturesque. Altogether, by

projecting our minds outward, we had imparted a show of novelty to

existence, and contemplated it as hopefully as if the soil beneath our

feet had not been fathom-deep with the dust of deluded generations, on

every one of which, as on ourselves, the world had imposed itself as a

hitherto unwedded bride.

Hollingsworth and myself had often discussed these prospects. It was

easy to perceive, however, that he spoke with little or no fervor, but

either as questioning the fulfilment of our anticipations, or, at any

rate, with a quiet consciousness that it was no personal concern of

his. Shortly after the scene at Eliot's pulpit, while he and I were

repairing an old stone fence, I amused myself with sallying forward

into the future time.

"When we come to be old men," I said, "they will call us uncles, or

fathers,--Father Hollingsworth and Uncle Coverdale,--and we will look

back cheerfully to these early days, and make a romantic story for the

young People (and if a little more romantic than truth may warrant, it

will be no harm) out of our severe trials and hardships. In a century

or two, we shall, every one of us, be mythical personages, or

exceedingly picturesque and poetical ones, at all events. They will

have a great public hall, in which your portrait, and mine, and twenty

other faces that are living now, shall be hung up; and as for me, I

will be painted in my shirtsleeves, and with the sleeves rolled up, to

show my muscular development. What stories will be rife among them

about our mighty strength!" continued I, lifting a big stone and

putting it into its place, "though our posterity will really be far

stronger than ourselves, after several generations of a simple,

natural, and active life. What legends of Zenobia's beauty, and

Priscilla's slender and shadowy grace, and those mysterious qualities

which make her seem diaphanous with spiritual light! In due course of

ages, we must all figure heroically in an epic poem; and we will

ourselves--at least, I will--bend unseen over the future poet, and lend

him inspiration while he writes it."

"You seem," said Hollingsworth, "to be trying how much nonsense you can

pour out in a breath."

"I wish you would see fit to comprehend," retorted I, "that the

profoundest wisdom must be mingled with nine tenths of nonsense, else

it is not worth the breath that utters it. But I do long for the

cottages to be built, that the creeping plants may begin to run over

them, and the moss to gather on the walls, and the trees--which we will

set out--to cover them with a breadth of shadow. This spick-and-span

novelty does not quite suit my taste. It is time, too, for children to

be born among us. The first-born child is still to come. And I shall

never feel as if this were a real, practical, as well as poetical

system of human life, until somebody has sanctified it by death."

"A pretty occasion for martyrdom, truly!" said Hollingsworth.

"As good as any other," I replied. "I wonder, Hollingsworth, who, of

all these strong men, and fair women and maidens, is doomed the first

to die. Would it not be well, even before we have absolute need of it,

to fix upon a spot for a cemetery? Let us choose the rudest, roughest,

most uncultivable spot, for Death's garden ground; and Death shall

teach us to beautify it, grave by grave. By our sweet, calm way of

dying, and the airy elegance out of which we will shape our funeral

rites, and the cheerful allegories which we will model into tombstones,

the final scene shall lose its terrors; so that hereafter it may be

happiness to live, and bliss to die. None of us must die young. Yet,

should Providence ordain it so, the event shall not be sorrowful, but

affect us with a tender, delicious, only half-melancholy, and almost

smiling pathos!"

"That is to say," muttered Hollingsworth, "you will die like a heathen,

as you certainly live like one. But, listen to me, Coverdale. Your

fantastic anticipations make me discern all the more forcibly what a

wretched, unsubstantial scheme is this, on which we have wasted a

precious summer of our lives. Do you seriously imagine that any such

realities as you, and many others here, have dreamed of, will ever be

brought to pass?"

"Certainly I do," said I. "Of course, when the reality comes, it will

wear the every-day, commonplace, dusty, and rather homely garb that

reality always does put on. But, setting aside the ideal charm, I hold

that our highest anticipations have a solid footing on common sense."

"You only half believe what you say," rejoined Hollingsworth; "and as

for me, I neither have faith in your dream, nor would care the value of

this pebble for its realization, were that possible. And what more do

you want of it? It has given you a theme for poetry. Let that content

you. But now I ask you to be, at last, a man of sobriety and

earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which is worth all our

strength, and the strength of a thousand mightier than we."

There can be no need of giving in detail the conversation that ensued.

It is enough to say that Hollingsworth once more brought forward his

rigid and unconquerable idea,--a scheme for the reformation of the

wicked by methods moral, intellectual, and industrial, by the sympathy

of pure, humble, and yet exalted minds, and by opening to his pupils

the possibility of a worthier life than that which had become their

fate. It appeared, unless he overestimated his own means, that

Hollingsworth held it at his choice (and he did so choose) to obtain

possession of the very ground on which we had planted our Community,

and which had not yet been made irrevocably ours, by purchase. It was

just the foundation that he desired. Our beginnings might readily be

adapted to his great end. The arrangements already completed would

work quietly into his system. So plausible looked his theory, and, more

than that, so practical,--such an air of reasonableness had he, by

patient thought, thrown over it,--each segment of it was contrived to

dovetail into all the rest with such a complicated applicability, and

so ready was he with a response for every objection, that, really, so

far as logic and argument went, he had the matter all his own way.

"But," said I, "whence can you, having no means of your own, derive the

enormous capital which is essential to this experiment? State Street,

I imagine, would not draw its purser strings very liberally in aid of

such a speculation."

"I have the funds--as much, at least, as is needed for a

commencement--at command," he answered. "They can be produced within a

month, if necessary."

My thoughts reverted to Zenobia. It could only be her wealth which

Hollingsworth was appropriating so lavishly. And on what conditions

was it to be had? Did she fling it into the scheme with the

uncalculating generosity that characterizes a woman when it is her

impulse to be generous at all? And did she fling herself along with

it? But Hollingsworth did not volunteer an explanation.

"And have you no regrets," I inquired, "in overthrowing this fair

system of our new life, which has been planned so deeply, and is now

beginning to flourish so hopefully around us? How beautiful it is,

and, so far as we can yet see, how practicable! The ages have waited

for us, and here we are, the very first that have essayed to carry on

our mortal existence in love and mutual help! Hollingsworth, I would

be loath to take the ruin of this enterprise upon my conscience."

"Then let it rest wholly upon mine!" he answered, knitting his black

brows. "I see through the system. It is full of

defects,--irremediable and damning ones!--from first to last, there is

nothing else! I grasp it in my hand, and find no substance whatever.

There is not human nature in it."

"Why are you so secret in your operations?" I asked. "God forbid that

I should accuse you of intentional wrong; but the besetting sin of a

philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His

sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some

point of his course--I know not exactly when or where--he is tempted to

palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that

the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside

his private conscience. Oh, my dear friend, beware this error! If you

meditate the overthrow of this establishment, call together our

companions, state your design, support it with all your eloquence, but

allow them an opportunity of defending themselves."

"It does not suit me," said Hollingsworth. "Nor is it my duty to do

so."

"I think it is," replied I.

Hollingsworth frowned; not in passion, but, like fate, inexorably.

"I will not argue the point," said he. "What I desire to know of you

is,--and you can tell me in one word,--whether I am to look for your

cooperation in this great scheme of good? Take it up with me! Be my

brother in it! It offers you (what you have told me, over and over

again, that you most need) a purpose in life, worthy of the extremest

self-devotion,--worthy of martyrdom, should God so order it! In this

view, I present it to you. You can greatly benefit mankind. Your

peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are capable of being so

wrought into this enterprise that not one of them need lie idle. Strike

hands with me, and from this moment you shall never again feel the

languor and vague wretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied man.

There may be no more aimless beauty in your life; but, in its stead,

there shall be strength, courage, immitigable will,--everything that a

manly and generous nature should desire! We shall succeed! We shall

have done our best for this miserable world; and happiness (which never

comes but incidentally) will come to us unawares."

It seemed his intention to say no more. But, after he had quite broken

off, his deep eyes filled with tears, and he held out both his hands to

me.

"Coverdale," he murmured, "there is not the man in this wide world whom

I can love as I could you. Do not forsake me!"

As I look back upon this scene, through the coldness and dimness of so

many years, there is still a sensation as if Hollingsworth had caught

hold of my heart, and were pulling it towards him with an almost

irresistible force. It is a mystery to me how I withstood it. But, in

truth, I saw in his scheme of philanthropy nothing but what was odious.

A loathsomeness that was to be forever in my daily work! A great black

ugliness of sin, which he proposed to collect out of a thousand human

hearts, and that we should spend our lives in an experiment of

transmuting it into virtue! Had I but touched his extended hand,

Hollingsworth's magnetism would perhaps have penetrated me with his own

conception of all these matters. But I stood aloof. I fortified

myself with doubts whether his strength of purpose had not been too

gigantic for his integrity, impelling him to trample on considerations

that should have been paramount to every other.

"Is Zenobia to take a part in your enterprise?" I asked.

"She is," said Hollingsworth.

"She!--the beautiful!--the gorgeous!" I exclaimed. "And how have you

prevailed with such a woman to work in this squalid element?"

"Through no base methods, as you seem to suspect," he answered; "but by

addressing whatever is best and noblest in her."

Hollingsworth was looking on the ground. But, as he often did

so,--generally, indeed, in his habitual moods of thought,--I could not

judge whether it was from any special unwillingness now to meet my

eyes. What it was that dictated my next question, I cannot precisely

say. Nevertheless, it rose so inevitably into my mouth, and, as it

were, asked itself so involuntarily, that there must needs have been an

aptness in it.

"What is to become of Priscilla?"

Hollingsworth looked at me fiercely, and with glowing eyes. He could

not have shown any other kind of expression than that, had he meant to

strike me with a sword.

"Why do you bring in the names of these women?" said he, after a moment

of pregnant silence. "What have they to do with the proposal which I

make you? I must have your answer! Will you devote yourself, and

sacrifice all to this great end, and be my friend of friends forever?"

"In Heaven's name, Hollingsworth," cried I, getting angry, and glad to

be angry, because so only was it possible to oppose his tremendous

concentrativeness and indomitable will, "cannot you conceive that a man

may wish well to the world, and struggle for its good, on some other

plan than precisely that which you have laid down? And will you cast

off a friend for no unworthiness, but merely because he stands upon his

right as an individual being, and looks at matters through his own

optics, instead of yours?"

"Be with me," said Hollingsworth, "or be against me! There is no third

choice for you."

"Take this, then, as my decision," I answered. "I doubt the wisdom of

your scheme. Furthermore, I greatly fear that the methods by which you

allow yourself to pursue it are such as cannot stand the scrutiny of an

unbiassed conscience."

"And you will not join me?"

"No!"

I never said the word--and certainly can never have it to say

hereafter--that cost me a thousandth part so hard an effort as did that

one syllable. The heart-pang was not merely figurative, but an

absolute torture of the breast. I was gazing steadfastly at

Hollingsworth. It seemed to me that it struck him, too, like a bullet.

A ghastly paleness--always so terrific on a swarthy face--overspread

his features. There was a convulsive movement of his throat, as if he

were forcing down some words that struggled and fought for utterance.

Whether words of anger, or words of grief, I cannot tell; although many

and many a time I have vainly tormented myself with conjecturing which

of the two they were. One other appeal to my friendship,--such as

once, already, Hollingsworth had made,--taking me in the revulsion that

followed a strenuous exercise of opposing will, would completely have

subdued me. But he left the matter there. "Well!" said he.

And that was all! I should have been thankful for one word more, even

had it shot me through the heart, as mine did him. But he did not

speak it; and, after a few moments, with one accord, we set to work

again, repairing the stone fence. Hollingsworth, I observed, wrought

like a Titan; and, for my own part, I lifted stones which at this

day--or, in a calmer mood, at that one--I should no more have thought

it possible to stir than to carry off the gates of Gaza on my back.

XVI.