XXV THE THREE TOGETHER

The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

XXV THE THREE TOGETHER, THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hollingsworth was in his ordinary working-dress. Priscilla wore a pretty
and simple gown, with a kerchief about her neck, and a calash, which she
had flung back from her head, leaving it suspended by the strings. But
Zenobia (whose part among the maskers, as may be supposed, was no
inferior one) appeared in a costume of fanciful magnificence, with her
jewelled flower as the central ornament of what resembled a leafy crown,
or coronet. She represented the Oriental princess by whose name we were
accustomed to know her. Her attitude was free and noble; yet, if a
queen's, it was not that of a queen triumphant, but dethroned, on trial
for her life, or, perchance, condemned already. The spirit of the
conflict seemed, nevertheless, to be alive in her. Her eyes were on fire;
her cheeks had each a crimson spot, so exceedingly vivid, and marked
with so definite an outline, that I at first doubted whether it were not
artificial. In a very brief space, however, this idea was shamed by the
paleness that ensued, as the blood sunk suddenly away. Zenobia now looked
like marble.

One always feels the fact, in an instant, when he has intruded on those
who love, or those who hate, at some acme of their passion that puts them
into a sphere of their own, where no other spirit can pretend to stand on
equal ground with them. I was confused,--affected even with a species of
terror,--and wished myself away. The intenseness of their feelings gave
them the exclusive property of the soil and atmosphere, and left me no
right to be or breathe there.

"Hollingsworth,--Zenobia,--I have just returned to Blithedale," said I,
"and had no thought of finding you here. We shall meet again at the
house. I will retire."

"This place is free to you," answered Hollingsworth.

"As free as to ourselves," added Zenobia. "This long while past, you have
been following up your game, groping for human emotions in the dark
corners of the heart. Had you been here a little sooner, you might have
seen them dragged into the daylight. I could even wish to have my trial
over again, with you standing by to see fair play! Do you know, Mr.
Coverdale, I have been on trial for my life?"

She laughed, while speaking thus. But, in truth, as my eyes wandered
from one of the group to another, I saw in Hollingsworth all that an
artist could desire for the grim portrait of a Puritan magistrate holding
inquest of life and death in a case of witchcraft; in Zenobia, the
sorceress herself, not aged, wrinkled, and decrepit, but fair enough to
tempt Satan with a force reciprocal to his own; and, in Priscilla, the
pale victim, whose soul and body had been wasted by her spells. Had a
pile of fagots been heaped against the rock, this hint of impending doom
would have completed the suggestive picture.

"It was too hard upon me," continued Zenobia, addressing Hollingsworth,
"that judge, jury, and accuser should all be comprehended in one man! I
demur, as I think the lawyers say, to the jurisdiction. But let the
learned Judge Coverdale seat himself on the top of the rock, and you and
me stand at its base, side by side, pleading our cause before him! There
might, at least, be two criminals instead of one."

"You forced this on me," replied Hollingsworth, looking her sternly in
the face. "Did I call you hither from among the masqueraders yonder? Do
I assume to be your judge? No; except so far as I have an unquestionable
right of judgment, in order to settle my own line of behavior towards
those with whom the events of life bring me in contact. True, I have
already judged you, but not on the world's part,--neither do I pretend to
pass a sentence!"

"Ah, this is very good!" cried Zenobia with a smile. "What strange
beings you men are, Mr. Coverdale!--is it not so? It is the simplest
thing in the world with you to bring a woman before your secret tribunals,
and judge and condemn her unheard, and then tell her to go free without
a sentence. The misfortune is, that this same secret tribunal chances to
be the only judgment-seat that a true woman stands in awe of, and that
any verdict short of acquittal is equivalent to a death sentence!"

The more I looked at them, and the more I heard, the stronger grew my
impression that a crisis had just come and gone. On Hollingsworth's brow
it had left a stamp like that of irrevocable doom, of which his own will
was the instrument. In Zenobia's whole person, beholding her more
closely, I saw a riotous agitation; the almost delirious disquietude of a
great struggle, at the close of which the vanquished one felt her
strength and courage still mighty within her, and longed to renew the
contest. My sensations were as if I had come upon a battlefield before
the smoke was as yet cleared away.

And what subjects had been discussed here? All, no doubt, that for so
many months past had kept my heart and my imagination idly feverish.
Zenobia's whole character and history; the true nature of her mysterious
connection with Westervelt; her later purposes towards Hollingsworth, and,
reciprocally, his in reference to her; and, finally, the degree in which
Zenobia had been cognizant of the plot against Priscilla, and what, at
last, had been the real object of that scheme. On these points, as
before, I was left to my own conjectures. One thing, only, was certain.
Zenobia and Hollingsworth were friends no longer. If their heartstrings
were ever intertwined, the knot had been adjudged an entanglement, and
was now violently broken.

But Zenobia seemed unable to rest content with the matter in the posture
which it had assumed.

"Ah! do we part so?" exclaimed she, seeing Hollingsworth about to
retire.

"And why not?" said he, with almost rude abruptness. "What is there
further to be said between us?"

"Well, perhaps nothing," answered Zenobia, looking him in the face, and
smiling. "But we have come many times before to this gray rock, and we
have talked very softly among the whisperings of the birch-trees. They
were pleasant hours! I love to make the latest of them, though not
altogether so delightful, loiter away as slowly as may be. And, besides,
you have put many queries to me at this, which you design to be our last
interview; and being driven, as I must acknowledge, into a corner, I have
responded with reasonable frankness. But now, with your free consent, I
desire the privilege of asking a few questions, in my turn."

"I have no concealments," said Hollingsworth.

"We shall see," answered Zenobia. "I would first inquire whether you
have supposed me to be wealthy?"

"On that point," observed Hollingsworth, "I have had the opinion which
the world holds."

"And I held it likewise," said Zenobia. "Had I not, Heaven is my witness
the knowledge should have been as free to you as me. It is only three
days since I knew the strange fact that threatens to make me poor; and
your own acquaintance with it, I suspect, is of at least as old a date.
I fancied myself affluent. You are aware, too, of the disposition which I
purposed making of the larger portion of my imaginary opulence,--nay,
were it all, I had not hesitated. Let me ask you, further, did I ever
propose or intimate any terms of compact, on which depended this--as the
world would consider it--so important sacrifice?"

"You certainly spoke of none," said Hollingsworth.

"Nor meant any," she responded. "I was willing to realize your dream
freely,--generously, as some might think,--but, at all events, fully, and
heedless though it should prove the ruin of my fortune.

If, in your own thoughts, you have imposed any conditions of this
expenditure, it is you that must be held responsible for whatever is
sordid and unworthy in them. And now one other question. Do you love
this girl?"

"O Zenobia!" exclaimed Priscilla, shrinking back, as if longing for the
rock to topple over and hide her.

"Do you love her?" repeated Zenobia.

"Had you asked me that question a short time since," replied
Hollingsworth, after a pause, during which, it seemed to me, even the
birch-trees held their whispering breath, "I should have told you--'No!'
My feelings for Priscilla differed little from those of an elder brother,
watching tenderly over the gentle sister whom God has given him to
protect."

"And what is your answer now?" persisted Zenobia.

"I do love her!" said Hollingsworth, uttering the words with a deep
inward breath, instead of speaking them outright. "As well declare it
thus as in any other way. I do love her!"

"Now, God be judge between us," cried Zenobia, breaking into sudden
passion, "which of us two has most mortally offended Him! At least, I am
a woman, with every fault, it may be, that a woman ever had,--weak, vain,
unprincipled (like most of my sex; for our virtues, when we have any, are
merely impulsive and intuitive), passionate, too, and pursuing my foolish
and unattainable ends by indirect and cunning, though absurdly chosen
means, as an hereditary bond-slave must; false, moreover, to the whole
circle of good, in my reckless truth to the little good I saw before me,
--but still a woman! A creature whom only a little change of earthly
fortune, a little kinder smile of Him who sent me hither, and one true
heart to encourage and direct me, might have made all that a woman can be!
But how is it with you? Are you a man? No; but a monster! A cold,
heartless, self-beginning and self-ending piece of mechanism!"

"With what, then, do you charge me!" asked Hollingsworth, aghast, and
greatly disturbed by this attack. "Show me one selfish end, in all I
ever aimed at, and you may cut it out of my bosom with a knife!"

"It is all self!" answered Zenobia with still intenser bitterness.
"Nothing else; nothing but self, self, self! The fiend, I doubt not, has
made his choicest mirth of you these seven years past, and especially in
the mad summer which we have spent together. I see it now! I am awake,
disenchanted, disinthralled! Self, self, self! You have embodied
yourself in a project. You are a better masquerader than the witches and
gypsies yonder; for your disguise is a self-deception. See whither it
has brought you! First, you aimed a death-blow, and a treacherous one,
at this scheme of a purer and higher life, which so many noble spirits
had wrought out. Then, because Coverdale could not be quite your slave,
you threw him ruthlessly away. And you took me, too, into your plan, as
long as there was hope of my being available, and now fling me aside
again, a broken tool! But, foremost and blackest of your sins, you
stifled down your inmost consciousness!--you did a deadly wrong to your
own heart!--you were ready to sacrifice this girl, whom, if God ever
visibly showed a purpose, He put into your charge, and through whom He
was striving to redeem you!"

"This is a woman's view," said Hollingsworth, growing deadly pale,--"a
woman's, whose whole sphere of action is in the heart, and who can
conceive of no higher nor wider one!"

"Be silent!" cried Zenobia imperiously. "You know neither man nor woman!
The utmost that can be said in your behalf--and because I would not be
wholly despicable in my own eyes, but would fain excuse my wasted
feelings, nor own it wholly a delusion, therefore I say it--is, that a
great and rich heart has been ruined in your breast. Leave me, now. You
have done with me, and I with you. Farewell!"

"Priscilla," said Hollingsworth, "come." Zenobia smiled; possibly I did
so too. Not often, in human life, has a gnawing sense of injury found a
sweeter morsel of revenge than was conveyed in the tone with which
Hollingsworth spoke those two words. It was the abased and tremulous
tone of a man whose faith in himself was shaken, and who sought, at last,
to lean on an affection. Yes; the strong man bowed himself and rested on
this poor Priscilla! Oh, could she have failed him, what a triumph for
the lookers-on!

And, at first, I half imagined that she was about to fail him. She rose
up, stood shivering like the birch leaves that trembled over her head,
and then slowly tottered, rather than walked, towards Zenobia. Arriving
at her feet, she sank down there, in the very same attitude which she had
assumed on their first meeting, in the kitchen of the old farmhouse.
Zenobia remembered it.

"Ah, Priscilla!" said she, shaking her head, "how much is changed since
then! You kneel to a dethroned princess. You, the victorious one! But
he is waiting for you. Say what you wish, and leave me."

"We are sisters!" gasped Priscilla.

I fancied that I understood the word and action. It meant the offering
of herself, and all she had, to be at Zenobia's disposal. But the latter
would not take it thus.

"True, we are sisters!" she replied; and, moved by the sweet word, she
stooped down and kissed Priscilla; but not lovingly, for a sense of fatal
harm received through her seemed to be lurking in Zenobia's heart. "We
had one father! You knew it from the first; I, but a little while,--else
some things that have chanced might have been spared you. But I never
wished you harm. You stood between me and an end which I desired. I
wanted a clear path. No matter what I meant. It is over now. Do you
forgive me?"

"O Zenobia," sobbed Priscilla, "it is I that feel like the guilty one!"

"No, no, poor little thing!" said Zenobia, with a sort of contempt.
"You have been my evil fate, but there never was a babe with less
strength or will to do an injury. Poor child! Methinks you have but a
melancholy lot before you, sitting all alone in that wide, cheerless
heart, where, for aught you know,--and as I, alas! believe,--the fire
which you have kindled may soon go out. Ah, the thought makes me shiver
for you! What will you do, Priscilla, when you find no spark among the
ashes?"

"Die!" she answered.

"That was well said!" responded Zenobia, with an approving smile.
"There is all a woman in your little compass, my poor sister. Meanwhile,
go with him, and live!"

She waved her away with a queenly gesture, and turned her own face to the
rock. I watched Priscilla, wondering what judgment she would pass
between Zenobia and Hollingsworth; how interpret his behavior, so as to
reconcile it with true faith both towards her sister and herself; how
compel her love for him to keep any terms whatever with her sisterly
affection! But, in truth, there was no such difficulty as I imagined.
Her engrossing love made it all clear. Hollingsworth could have no fault.
That was the one principle at the centre of the universe. And the
doubtful guilt or possible integrity of other people, appearances,
self-evident facts, the testimony of her own senses,--even
Hollingsworth's self-accusation, had he volunteered it,--would have
weighed not the value of a mote of thistledown on the other side. So
secure was she of his right, that she never thought of comparing it with
another's wrong, but left the latter to itself.

Hollingsworth drew her arm within his, and soon disappeared with her
among the trees. I cannot imagine how Zenobia knew when they were out of
sight; she never glanced again towards them. But, retaining a proud
attitude so long as they might have thrown back a retiring look, they
were no sooner departed,--utterly departed,--than she began slowly to
sink down. It was as if a great, invisible, irresistible weight were
pressing her to the earth. Settling upon her knees, she leaned her
forehead against the rock, and sobbed convulsively; dry sobs they seemed
to be, such as have nothing to do with tears.