XIX ZENOBIA'S DRAWING-ROOM

The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

XIX ZENOBIA'S DRAWING-ROOM, THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The remainder of the day, so far as I was concerned, was spent in
meditating on these recent incidents. I contrived, and alternately
rejected, innumerable methods of accounting for the presence of Zenobia
and Priscilla, and the connection of Westervelt with both. It must be
owned, too, that I had a keen, revengeful sense of the insult inflicted
by Zenobia's scornful recognition, and more particularly by her letting
down the curtain; as if such were the proper barrier to be interposed
between a character like hers and a perceptive faculty like mine. For,
was mine a mere vulgar curiosity? Zenobia should have known me better
than to suppose it. She should have been able to appreciate that quality
of the intellect and the heart which impelled me (often against my own
will, and to the detriment of my own comfort) to live in other lives, and
to endeavor--by generous sympathies, by delicate intuitions, by taking
note of things too slight for record, and by bringing my human spirit
into manifold accordance with the companions whom God assigned me--to
learn the secret which was hidden even from themselves.

Of all possible observers, methought a woman like Zenobia and a man like
Hollingsworth should have selected me. And now when the event has long
been past, I retain the same opinion of my fitness for the office. True,
I might have condemned them. Had I been judge as well as witness, my
sentence might have been stern as that of destiny itself. But, still, no
trait of original nobility of character, no struggle against temptation,
--no iron necessity of will, on the one hand, nor extenuating
circumstance to be derived from passion and despair, on the other,--no
remorse that might coexist with error, even if powerless to prevent it,
--no proud repentance that should claim retribution as a meed,--would go
unappreciated. True, again, I might give my full assent to the
punishment which was sure to follow. But it would be given mournfully,
and with undiminished love. And, after all was finished, I would come as
if to gather up the white ashes of those who had perished at the stake,
and to tell the world--the wrong being now atoned for--how much had
perished there which it had never yet known how to praise.

I sat in my rocking-chair, too far withdrawn from the window to expose
myself to another rebuke like that already inflicted. My eyes still
wandered towards the opposite house, but without effecting any new
discoveries. Late in the afternoon, the weathercock on the church spire
indicated a change of wind; the sun shone dimly out, as if the golden
wine of its beams were mingled half-and-half with water. Nevertheless,
they kindled up the whole range of edifices, threw a glow over the
windows, glistened on the wet roofs, and, slowly withdrawing upward,
perched upon the chimney-tops; thence they took a higher flight, and
lingered an instant on the tip of the spire, making it the final point of
more cheerful light in the whole sombre scene. The next moment, it was
all gone. The twilight fell into the area like a shower of dusky snow,
and before it was quite dark, the gong of the hotel summoned me to tea.

When I returned to my chamber, the glow of an astral lamp was penetrating
mistily through the white curtain of Zenobia's drawing-room. The shadow
of a passing figure was now and then cast upon this medium, but with too
vague an outline for even my adventurous conjectures to read the
hieroglyphic that it presented.

All at once, it occurred to me how very absurd was my behavior in thus
tormenting myself with crazy hypotheses as to what was going on within
that drawing-room, when it was at my option to be personally present
there, My relations with Zenobia, as yet unchanged,--as a familiar
friend, and associated in the same life-long enterprise,--gave me the
right, and made it no more than kindly courtesy demanded, to call on her.
Nothing, except our habitual independence of conventional rules at
Blithedale, could have kept me from sooner recognizing this duty. At all
events, it should now be performed.

In compliance with this sudden impulse, I soon found myself actually
within the house, the rear of which, for two days past, I had been so
sedulously watching. A servant took my card, and, immediately returning,
ushered me upstairs. On the way, I heard a rich, and, as it were,
triumphant burst of music from a piano, in which I felt Zenobia's
character, although heretofore I had known nothing of her skill upon the
instrument. Two or three canary-birds, excited by this gush of sound,
sang piercingly, and did their utmost to produce a kindred melody. A
bright illumination streamed through, the door of the front drawing-room;
and I had barely, stept across the threshold before Zenobia came forward
to meet me, laughing, and with an extended hand.

"Ah, Mr. Coverdale," said she, still smiling, but, as I thought, with a
good deal of scornful anger underneath, "it has gratified me to see the
interest which you continue to take in my affairs! I have long
recognized you as a sort of transcendental Yankee, with all the native
propensity of your countrymen to investigate matters that come within
their range, but rendered almost poetical, in your case, by the refined
methods which you adopt for its gratification. After all, it was an
unjustifiable stroke, on my part,--was it not?--to let down the window
curtain!"

"I cannot call it a very wise one," returned I, with a secret bitterness,
which, no doubt, Zenobia appreciated. "It is really impossible to hide
anything in this world, to say nothing of the next. All that we ought to
ask, therefore, is, that the witnesses of our conduct, and the
speculators on our motives, should be capable of taking the highest view
which the circumstances of the case may admit. So much being secured, I,
for one, would be most happy in feeling myself followed everywhere by an
indefatigable human sympathy."

"We must trust for intelligent sympathy to our guardian angels, if any
there be," said Zenobia. "As long as the only spectator of my poor
tragedy is a young man at the window of his hotel, I must still claim the
liberty to drop the curtain."

While this passed, as Zenobia's hand was extended, I had applied the very
slightest touch of my fingers to her own. In spite of an external
freedom, her manner made me sensible that we stood upon no real terms of
confidence. The thought came sadly across me, how great was the contrast
betwixt this interview and our first meeting. Then, in the warm light of
the country fireside, Zenobia had greeted me cheerily and hopefully, with
a full sisterly grasp of the hand, conveying as much kindness in it as
other women could have evinced by the pressure of both arms around my
neck, or by yielding a cheek to the brotherly salute. The difference was
as complete as between her appearance at that time--so simply attired,
and with only the one superb flower in her hair--and now, when her beauty
was set off by all that dress and ornament could do for it. And they did
much. Not, indeed, that they created or added anything to what Nature
had lavishly done for Zenobia. But, those costly robes which she had on,
those flaming jewels on her neck, served as lamps to display the personal
advantages which required nothing less than such an illumination to be
fully seen. Even her characteristic flower, though it seemed to be still
there, had undergone a cold and bright transfiguration; it was a flower
exquisitely imitated in jeweller's work, and imparting the last touch
that transformed Zenobia into a work of art.

"I scarcely feel," I could not forbear saying, "as if we had ever met
before. How many years ago it seems since we last sat beneath Eliot's
pulpit, with Hollingsworth extended on the fallen leaves, and Priscilla
at his feet! Can it be, Zenobia, that you ever really numbered yourself
with our little band of earnest, thoughtful, philanthropic laborers?"

"Those ideas have their time and place," she answered coldly. "But I
fancy it must be a very circumscribed mind that can find room for no
other."

Her manner bewildered me. Literally, moreover, I was dazzled by the
brilliancy of the room. A chandelier hung down in the centre, glowing
with I know not how many lights; there were separate lamps, also, on two
or three tables, and on marble brackets, adding their white radiance to
that of the chandelier. The furniture was exceedingly rich. Fresh from
our old farmhouse, with its homely board and benches in the dining-room,
and a few wicker chairs in the best parlor, it struck me that here was
the fulfilment of every fantasy of an imagination revelling in various
methods of costly self-indulgence and splendid ease. Pictures, marbles,
vases,--in brief, more shapes of luxury than there could be any object in
enumerating, except for an auctioneer's advertisement,--and the whole
repeated and doubled by the reflection of a great mirror, which showed me
Zenobia's proud figure, likewise, and my own. It cost me, I acknowledge,
a bitter sense of shame, to perceive in myself a positive effort to bear
up against the effect which Zenobia sought to impose on me. I reasoned
against her, in my secret mind, and strove so to keep my footing. In the
gorgeousness with which she had surrounded herself,--in the redundance of
personal ornament, which the largeness of her physical nature and the
rich type of her beauty caused to seem so suitable,--I malevolently
beheld the true character of the woman, passionate, luxurious, lacking
simplicity, not deeply refined, incapable of pure and perfect taste. But,
the next instant, she was too powerful for all my opposing struggles. I
saw how fit it was that she should make herself as gorgeous as she
pleased, and should do a thousand things that would have been ridiculous
in the poor, thin, weakly characters of other women. To this day,
however, I hardly know whether I then beheld Zenobia in her truest
attitude, or whether that were the truer one in which she had presented
herself at Blithedale. In both, there was something like the illusion
which a great actress flings around her.

"Have you given up Blithedale forever?" I inquired.

"Why should you think so?" asked she.

"I cannot tell," answered I; "except that it appears all like a dream
that we were ever there together."

"It is not so to me," said Zenobia. "I should think it a poor and meagre
nature that is capable of but one set of forms, and must convert all the
past into a dream merely because the present happens to be unlike it.
Why should we be content with our homely life of a few months past, to
the exclusion of all other modes? It was good; but there are other lives
as good, or better. Not, you will understand, that I condemn those who
give themselves up to it more entirely than I, for myself, should deem it
wise to do."

It irritated me, this self-complacent, condescending, qualified approval
and criticism of a system to which many individuals--perhaps as highly
endowed as our gorgeous Zenobia--had contributed their all of earthly
endeavor, and their loftiest aspirations. I determined to make proof if
there were any spell that would exorcise her out of the part which she
seemed to be acting. She should be compelled to give me a glimpse of
something true; some nature, some passion, no matter whether right or
wrong, provided it were real.

"Your allusion to that class of circumscribed characters who can live
only in one mode of life," remarked I coolly, "reminds me of our poor
friend Hollingsworth. Possibly he was in your thoughts when you spoke
thus. Poor fellow! It is a pity that, by the fault of a narrow
education, he should have so completely immolated himself to that one
idea of his, especially as the slightest modicum of commonsense would
teach him its utter impracticability. Now that I have returned into the
world, and can look at his project from a distance, it requires quite all
my real regard for this respectable and well-intentioned man to prevent
me laughing at him,--as I find society at large does."

Zenobia's eyes darted lightning, her cheeks flushed, the vividness of her
expression was like the effect of a powerful light flaming up suddenly
within her. My experiment had fully succeeded. She had shown me the
true flesh and blood of her heart, by thus involuntarily resenting my
slight, pitying, half-kind, half-scornful mention of the man who was all
in all with her. She herself probably felt this; for it was hardly a
moment before she tranquillized her uneven breath, and seemed as proud
and self-possessed as ever.

"I rather imagine," said she quietly, "that your appreciation falls short
of Mr. Hollingsworth's just claims. Blind enthusiasm, absorption in one
idea, I grant, is generally ridiculous, and must be fatal to the
respectability of an ordinary man; it requires a very high and powerful
character to make it otherwise. But a great man--as, perhaps, you do not
know--attains his normal condition only through the inspiration of one
great idea. As a friend of Mr. Hollingsworth, and, at the same time, a
calm observer, I must tell you that he seems to me such a man. But you
are very pardonable for fancying him ridiculous. Doubtless, he is so
--to you! There can be no truer test of the noble and heroic, in any
individual, than the degree in which he possesses the faculty of
distinguishing heroism from absurdity."

I dared make no retort to Zenobia's concluding apothegm. In truth, I
admired her fidelity. It gave me a new sense of Hollingsworth's native
power, to discover that his influence was no less potent with this
beautiful woman here, in the midst of artificial life, than it had been
at the foot of the gray rock, and among the wild birch-trees of the
wood-path, when she so passionately pressed his hand against her heart.
The great, rude, shaggy, swarthy man! And Zenobia loved him!

"Did you bring Priscilla with you?" I resumed. "Do you know I have
sometimes fancied it not quite safe, considering the susceptibility of
her temperament, that she should be so constantly within the sphere of a
man like Hollingsworth. Such tender and delicate natures, among your sex,
have often, I believe, a very adequate appreciation of the heroic
element in men. But then, again, I should suppose them as likely as any
other women to make a reciprocal impression. Hollingsworth could hardly
give his affections to a person capable of taking an independent stand,
but only to one whom he might absorb into himself. He has certainly
shown great tenderness for Priscilla."

Zenobia had turned aside. But I caught the reflection of her face in the
mirror, and saw that it was very pale,--as pale, in her rich attire, as
if a shroud were round her.

"Priscilla is here," said she, her voice a little lower than usual.
"Have not you learnt as much from your chamber window? Would you like to
see her?"

She made a step or two into the back drawing-room, and called,
--"Priscilla! Dear Priscilla!"