IX HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA

The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

IX HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA, THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE by Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is not, I apprehend, a healthy kind of mental occupation to devote
ourselves too exclusively to the study of individual men and women. If
the person under examination be one's self, the result is pretty certain
to be diseased action of the heart, almost before we can snatch a second
glance. Or if we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope,
we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his
peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and of course patch him
very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened
by the aspect of a monster, which, after all,--though we can point to
every feature of his deformity in the real personage,--may be said to
have been created mainly by ourselves.

Thus, as my conscience has often whispered me, I did Hollingsworth a
great wrong by prying into his character; and am perhaps doing him as
great a one, at this moment, by putting faith in the discoveries which I
seemed to make. But I could not help it. Had I loved him less, I might
have used him better. He and Zenobia and Priscilla--both for their own
sakes and as connected with him--were separated from the rest of the
Community, to my imagination, and stood forth as the indices of a problem
which it was my business to solve. Other associates had a portion of my
time; other matters amused me; passing occurrences carried me along with
them, while they lasted. But here was the vortex of my meditations,
around which they revolved, and whitherward they too continually tended.
In the midst of cheerful society, I had often a feeling of loneliness.
For it was impossible not to be sensible that, while these three
characters figured so largely on my private theatre, I--though probably
reckoned as a friend by all--was at best but a secondary or tertiary
personage with either of them.

I loved Hollingsworth, as has already been enough expressed. But it
impressed me, more and more, that there was a stern and dreadful
peculiarity in this man, such as could not prove otherwise than
pernicious to the happiness of those who should be drawn into too
intimate a connection with him. He was not altogether human. There was
something else in Hollingsworth besides flesh and blood, and sympathies
and affections and celestial spirit.

This is always true of those men who have surrendered themselves to an
overruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor
even operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all
that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save
that one principle. When such begins to be the predicament, it is not
cowardice, but wisdom, to avoid these victims. They have no heart, no
sympathy, no reason, no conscience. They will keep no friend, unless he
make himself the mirror of their purpose; they will smite and slay you,
and trample your dead corpse under foot, all the more readily, if you
take the first step with them, and cannot take the second, and the third,
and every other step of their terribly strait path. They have an idol to
which they consecrate themselves high-priest, and deem it holy work to
offer sacrifices of whatever is most precious; and never once seem to
suspect--so cunning has the Devil been with them--that this false deity,
in whose iron features, immitigable to all the rest of mankind, they see
only benignity and love, is but a spectrum of the very priest himself,
projected upon the surrounding darkness. And the higher and purer the
original object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the
slighter is the probability that they can be led to recognize the process
by which godlike benevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism.

Of course I am perfectly aware that the above statement is exaggerated,
in the attempt to make it adequate. Professed philanthropists have gone
far; but no originally good man, I presume, ever went quite so far as
this. Let the reader abate whatever he deems fit. The paragraph may
remain, however, both for its truth and its exaggeration, as strongly
expressive of the tendencies which were really operative in Hollingsworth,
and as exemplifying the kind of error into which my mode of observation
was calculated to lead me. The issue was, that in solitude I often
shuddered at my friend. In my recollection of his dark and impressive
countenance, the features grew more sternly prominent than the reality,
duskier in their depth and shadow, and more lurid in their light; the
frown, that had merely flitted across his brow, seemed to have contorted
it with an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him again, I was often filled
with remorse, when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow
of a household fire that was burning in a cave. "He is a man after all,"
thought I; "his Maker's own truest image, a philanthropic man!---not that
steel engine of the Devil's contrivance, a philanthropist!" But in my
wood-walks, and in my silent chamber, the dark face frowned at me again.

When a young girl comes within the sphere of such a man, she is as
perilously situated as the maiden whom, in the old classical myths, the
people used to expose to a dragon. If I had any duty whatever, in
reference to Hollingsworth, it was to endeavor to save Priscilla from
that kind of personal worship which her sex is generally prone to lavish
upon saints and heroes. It often requires but one smile out of the
hero's eyes into the girl's or woman's heart, to transform this devotion,
from a sentiment of the highest approval and confidence, into passionate
love. Now, Hollingsworth smiled much upon Priscilla,--more than upon any
other person. If she thought him beautiful, it was no wonder. I often
thought him so, with the expression of tender human care and gentlest
sympathy which she alone seemed to have power to call out upon his
features. Zenobia, I suspect, would have given her eyes, bright as they
were, for such a look; it was the least that our poor Priscilla could do,
to give her heart for a great many of them. There was the more danger of
this, inasmuch as the footing on which we all associated at Blithedale
was widely different from that of conventional society. While inclining
us to the soft affections of the golden age, it seemed to authorize any
individual, of either sex, to fall in love with any other, regardless of
what would elsewhere be judged suitable and prudent. Accordingly the
tender passion was very rife among us, in various degrees of mildness or
virulence, but mostly passing away with the state of things that had
given it origin. This was all well enough; but, for a girl like
Priscilla and a woman like Zenobia to jostle one another in their love of
a man like Hollingsworth, was likely to be no child's play.

Had I been as cold-hearted as I sometimes thought myself, nothing would
have interested me more than to witness the play of passions that must
thus have been evolved. But, in honest truth, I would really have gone
far to save Priscilla, at least, from the catastrophe in which such a
drama would be apt to terminate.

Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding
and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner
became sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously.
possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to
us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our
very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a
woman's soul and frame. Yesterday, her cheek was pale, to-day, it had a
bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's first one, was a wondrous
novelty. Her imperfections and shortcomings affected me with a kind of
playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I
experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal
spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble
and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet
strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls
out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as
that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so
giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely
touch the ground.

Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more
untamable and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting variety,
breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a harmonious
propriety through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free as the
wind, but keep consonance with a strain of music inaudible to us. Young
men and boys, on the other hand, play, according to recognized law, old,
traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with scope
enough for the outbreak of savage instincts. For, young or old, in play
or in earnest, man is prone to be a brute.

Especially is it delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race, with
her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than they need, and
an air between that of a bird and a young colt. But Priscilla's peculiar
charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and irregularity with which she
ran. Growing up without exercise, except to her poor little fingers, she
had never yet acquired the perfect use of her legs. Setting buoyantly
forth, therefore, as if no rival less swift than Atalanta could compete
with her, she ran falteringly, and often tumbled on the grass. Such an
incident--though it seems too slight to think of--was a thing to laugh at,
but which brought the water into one's eyes, and lingered in the memory
after far greater joys and sorrows were wept out of it, as antiquated
trash. Priscilla's life, as I beheld it, was full of trifles that
affected me in just this way.

When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that
Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than any
other girl in the Community. For example, I once heard Silas Foster, in
a very gruff voice, threatening to rivet three horseshoes round
Priscilla's neck and chain her to a post, because she, with some other
young people, had clambered upon a load of hay, and caused it to slide
off the cart. How she made her peace I never knew; but very soon
afterwards I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands round Priscilla's waist,
swinging her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the oxen,
to take her first lessons in riding. She met with terrible mishaps in
her efforts to milk a cow; she let the poultry into the garden; she
generally spoilt whatever part of the dinner she took in charge; she
broke crockery; she dropt our biggest water pitcher into the well;
and---except with her needle, and those little wooden instruments for
purse-making--was as unserviceable a member of society as any young lady
in the land. There was no other sort of efficiency about her. Yet
everybody was kind to Priscilla; everybody loved her and laughed at her
to her face, and did not laugh behind her back; everybody would have
given her half of his last crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake.
These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a
pleasant weakness in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look
after her own interests or fight her battle with the world. And
Hollingsworth--perhaps because he had been the means of introducing
Priscilla to her new abode--appeared to recognize her as his own especial
charge.

Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She
seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine,
and mistaking it for a broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth
to a stricter accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the
echo of its laughter comes back drearily. Priscilla's gayety, moreover,
was of a nature that showed me how delicate an instrument she was, and
what fragile harp-strings were her nerves. As they made sweet music at
the airiest touch, it would require but a stronger one to burst them all
asunder. Absurd as it might be, I tried to reason with her, and persuade
her not to be so joyous, thinking that, if she would draw less lavishly
upon her fund of happiness, it would last the longer. I remember doing
so, one summer evening, when we tired laborers sat looking on, like
Goldsmith's old folks under the village thorn-tree, while the young
people were at their sports.

"What is the use or sense of being so very gay?" I said to Priscilla,
while she was taking breath, after a great frolic. "I love to see a
sufficient cause for everything, and I can see none for this. Pray tell
me, now, what kind of a world you imagine this to be, which you are so
merry in."

"I never think about it at all," answered Priscilla, laughing. "But this
I am sure of, that it is a world where everybody is kind to me, and where
I love everybody. My heart keeps dancing within me, and all the foolish
things which you see me do are only the motions of my heart. How can I
be dismal, if my heart will not let me?"

"Have you nothing dismal to remember?" I suggested. "If not, then,
indeed, you are very fortunate!"

"Ah!" said Priscilla slowly.

And then came that unintelligible gesture, when she seemed to be
listening to a distant voice.

"For my part," I continued, beneficently seeking to overshadow her with
my own sombre humor, "my past life has been a tiresome one enough; yet I
would rather look backward ten times than forward once. For, little as
we know of our life to come, we may be very sure, for one thing, that the
good we aim at will not be attained. People never do get just the good
they seek. If it come at all, it is something else, which they never
dreamed of, and did not particularly want. Then, again, we may rest
certain that our friends of to-day will not be our friends of a few years
hence; but, if we keep one of them, it will be at the expense of the
others; and most probably we shall keep none. To be sure, there are more
to be had; but who cares about making a new set of friends, even should
they be better than those around us?"

"Not I!" said Priscilla. "I will live and die with these!"

"Well; but let the future go," resumed I. "As for the present moment, if
we could look into the hearts where we wish to be most valued, what
should you expect to see? One's own likeness, in the innermost, holiest
niche? Ah! I don't know! It may not be there at all. It may be a dusty
image, thrust aside into a corner, and by and by to be flung out of doors,
where any foot may trample upon it. If not to-day, then to-morrow! And
so, Priscilla, I do not see much wisdom in being so very merry in this
kind of a world."

It had taken me nearly seven years of worldly life to hive up the bitter
honey which I here offered to Priscilla. And she rejected it!

"I don't believe one word of what you say!" she replied, laughing anew.
"You made me sad, for a minute, by talking about the past; but the past
never comes back again. Do we dream the same dream twice? There is
nothing else that I am afraid of."

So away she ran, and fell down on the green grass, as it was often her
luck to do, but got up again, without any harm.

"Priscilla, Priscilla!" cried Hollingsworth, who was sitting on the
doorstep; "you had better not run any more to-night. You will weary
yourself too much. And do not sit down out of doors, for there is a
heavy dew beginning to fall."

At his first word, she went and sat down under the porch, at
Hollingsworth's feet, entirely contented and happy. What charm was there
in his rude massiveness that so attracted and soothed this shadow-like
girl? It appeared to me, who have always been curious in such matters,
that Priscilla's vague and seemingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling
was that with which love blesses inexperienced hearts, before they begin
to suspect what is going on within them. It transports them to the
seventh heaven; and if you ask what brought them thither, they neither
can tell nor care to learn, but cherish an ecstatic faith that there they
shall abide forever.

Zenobia was in the doorway, not far from Hollingsworth. She gazed at
Priscilla in a very singular way. Indeed, it was a sight worth gazing at,
and a beautiful sight, too, as the fair girl sat at the feet of that
dark, powerful figure. Her air, while perfectly modest, delicate, and
virgin-like, denoted her as swayed by Hollingsworth, attracted to him,
and unconsciously seeking to rest upon his strength. I could not turn
away my own eyes, but hoped that nobody, save Zenobia and myself, was
witnessing this picture. It is before me now, with the evening twilight
a little deepened by the dusk of memory.

"Come hither, Priscilla," said Zenobia. "I have something to say to you."

She spoke in little more than a whisper. But it is strange how
expressive of moods a whisper may often be. Priscilla felt at once that
something had gone wrong.

"Are you angry with me?" she asked, rising slowly, and standing before
Zenobia in a drooping attitude. "What have I done? I hope you are not
angry!"

"No, no, Priscilla!" said Hollingsworth, smiling. "I will answer for it,
she is not. You are the one little person in the world with whom nobody
can be angry!"

"Angry with you, child? What a silly idea!" exclaimed Zenobia, laughing.
"No, indeed! But, my dear Priscilla, you are getting to be so very
pretty that you absolutely need a duenna; and, as I am older than you,
and have had my own little experience of life, and think myself
exceedingly sage, I intend to fill the place of a maiden aunt. Every day,
I shall give you a lecture, a quarter of an hour in length, on the
morals, manners, and proprieties of social life. When our pastoral shall
be quite played out, Priscilla, my worldly wisdom may stand you in good
stead."

"I am afraid you are angry with me!" repeated Priscilla sadly; for,
while she seemed as impressible as wax, the girl often showed a
persistency in her own ideas as stubborn as it was gentle.

"Dear me, what can I say to the child!" cried Zenobia in a tone of
humorous vexation. "Well, well; since you insist on my being angry, come
to my room this moment, and let me beat you!"

Zenobia bade Hollingsworth good-night very sweetly, and nodded to me with
a smile. But, just as she turned aside with Priscilla into the dimness
of the porch, I caught another glance at her countenance. It would have
made the fortune of a tragic actress, could she have borrowed it for the
moment when she fumbles in her bosom for the concealed dagger, or the
exceedingly sharp bodkin, or mingles the ratsbane in her lover's bowl of
wine or her rival's cup of tea. Not that I in the least anticipated any
such catastrophe,--it being a remarkable truth that custom has in no one
point a greater sway than over our modes of wreaking our wild passions.
And besides, had we been in Italy, instead of New England, it was hardly
yet a crisis for the dagger or the bowl.

It often amazed me, however, that Hollingsworth should show himself so
recklessly tender towards Priscilla, and never once seem to think of the
effect which it might have upon her heart. But the man, as I have
endeavored to explain, was thrown completely off his moral balance, and
quite bewildered as to his personal relations, by his great excrescence
of a philanthropic scheme. I used to see, or fancy, indications that he
was not altogether obtuse to Zenobia's influence as a woman. No doubt,
however, he had a still more exquisite enjoyment of Priscilla's silent
sympathy with his purposes, so unalloyed with criticism, and therefore
more grateful than any intellectual approbation, which always involves a
possible reserve of latent censure. A man--poet, prophet, or whatever he
may be--readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is
voluntarily tendered. In requital of so rich benefits as he was to
confer upon mankind, it would have been hard to deny Hollingsworth the
simple solace of a young girl's heart, which he held in his hand, and
smelled too, like a rosebud. But what if, while pressing out its
fragrance, he should crush the tender rosebud in his grasp!

As for Zenobia, I saw no occasion to give myself any trouble. With her
native strength, and her experience of the world, she could not be
supposed to need any help of mine. Nevertheless, I was really generous
enough to feel some little interest likewise for Zenobia. With all her
faults (which might have been a great many besides the abundance that I
knew of), she possessed noble traits, and a heart which must, at least,
have been valuable while new. And she seemed ready to fling it away as
uncalculatingly as Priscilla herself. I could not but suspect that, if
merely at play with Hollingsworth, she was sporting with a power which
she did not fully estimate. Or if in earnest, it might chance, between
Zenobia's passionate force and his dark, self-delusive egotism, to turn
out such earnest as would develop itself in some sufficiently tragic
catastrophe, though the dagger and the bowl should go for nothing in it.

Meantime, the gossip of the Community set them down as a pair of lovers.
They took walks together, and were not seldom encountered in the
wood-paths: Hollingsworth deeply discoursing, in tones solemn and sternly
pathetic; Zenobia, with a rich glow on her cheeks, and her eyes softened
from their ordinary brightness, looked so beautiful, that had her
companion been ten times a philanthropist, it seemed impossible but that
one glance should melt him back into a man. Oftener than anywhere else,
they went to a certain point on the slope of a pasture, commanding nearly
the whole of our own domain, besides a view of the river, and an airy
prospect of many distant hills. The bond of our Community was such, that
the members had the privilege of building cottages for their own
residence within our precincts, thus laying a hearthstone and fencing in
a home private and peculiar to all desirable extent, while yet the
inhabitants should continue to share the advantages of an associated life.
It was inferred that Hollingsworth and Zenobia intended to rear their
dwelling on this favorite spot.

I mentioned those rumors to Hollingsworth in a playful way.

"Had you consulted me," I went on to observe, "I should have recommended
a site farther to the left, just a little withdrawn into the wood, with
two or three peeps at the prospect among the trees. You will be in the
shady vale of years long before you can raise any better kind of shade
around your cottage, if you build it on this bare slope."

"But I offer my edifice as a spectacle to the world," said Hollingsworth,
"that it may take example and build many another like it. Therefore, I
mean to set it on the open hillside."

Twist these words how I might, they offered no very satisfactory import.
It seemed hardly probable that Hollingsworth should care about educating
the public taste in the department of cottage architecture, desirable as
such improvement certainly was.