XV A CRISIS

The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

XV A CRISIS, THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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 abidingplace. 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
woodside, 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 commonsense."

"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
selfdevotion,--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.