_ Our Sundays at Blithedale were not ordinarily kept with such rigid
observance as might have befitted the descendants of the Pilgrims,
whose high enterprise, as we sometimes flattered ourselves, we had
taken up, and were carrying it onward and aloft, to a point which
they never dreamed of attaining.
On that hallowed day, it is true, we rested from our labors. Our
oxen, relieved from their week-day yoke, roamed at large through the
pasture; each yoke-fellow, however, keeping close beside his mate,
and continuing to acknowledge, from the force of habit and sluggish
sympathy, the union which the taskmaster had imposed for his own hard
ends. As for us human yoke-fellows, chosen companions of toil, whose
hoes had clinked together throughout the week, we wandered off, in
various directions, to enjoy our interval of repose. Some, I believe,
went devoutly to the village church. Others, it may be, ascended a
city or a country pulpit, wearing the clerical robe with so much
dignity that you would scarcely have suspected the yeoman's frock to
have been flung off only since milking-time. Others took long
rambles among the rustic lanes and by-paths, pausing to look at black
old farmhouses, with their sloping roofs; and at the modern cottage,
so like a plaything that it seemed as if real joy or sorrow could
have no scope within; and at the more pretending villa, with its
range of wooden columns supporting the needless insolence of a great
portico. Some betook themselves into the wide, dusky barn, and lay
there for hours together on the odorous hay; while the sunstreaks and
the shadows strove together,--these to make the barn solemn, those to
make it cheerful,--and both were conquerors; and the swallows
twittered a cheery anthem, flashing into sight, or vanishing as they
darted to and fro among the golden rules of sunshine. And others
went a little way into the woods, and threw themselves on mother
earth, pillowing their heads on a heap of moss, the green decay of an
old log; and, dropping asleep, the bumblebees and mosquitoes sung and
buzzed about their ears, causing the slumberers to twitch and start,
without awaking.
With Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla, and myself, it grew to be a
custom to spend the Sabbath afternoon at a certain rock. It was
known to us under the name of Eliot's pulpit, from a tradition that
the venerable Apostle Eliot had preached there, two centuries gone by,
to an Indian auditory. The old pine forest, through which the
Apostle's voice was wont to sound, had fallen an immemorial time ago.
But the soil, being of the rudest and most broken surface, had
apparently never been brought under tillage; other growths, maple and
beech and birch, had succeeded to the primeval trees; so that it was
still as wild a tract of woodland as the great-great-great-great
grandson of one of Eliot's Indians (had any such posterity been in
existence) could have desired for the site and shelter of his wigwam.
These after-growths, indeed, lose the stately solemnity of the
original forest. If left in due neglect, however, they run into an
entanglement of softer wildness, among the rustling leaves of which
the sun can scatter cheerfulness as it never could among the
dark-browed pines.
The rock itself rose some twenty or thirty feet, a shattered granite
bowlder, or heap of bowlders, with an irregular outline and many
fissures, out of which sprang shrubs, bushes, and even trees; as if
the scanty soil within those crevices were sweeter to their roots
than any other earth. At the base of the pulpit, the broken bowlders
inclined towards each other, so as to form a shallow cave, within
which our little party had sometimes found protection from a summer
shower. On the threshold, or just across it, grew a tuft of pale
columbines, in their season, and violets, sad and shadowy recluses,
such as Priscilla was when we first knew her; children of the sun,
who had never seen their father, but dwelt among damp mosses, though
not akin to them. At the summit, the rock was overshadowed by the
canopy of a birch-tree, which served as a sounding-board for the
pulpit. Beneath this shade (with my eyes of sense half shut and
those of the imagination widely opened) I used to see the holy
Apostle of the Indians, with the sunlight flickering down upon him
through the leaves, and glorifying his figure as with the
half-perceptible glow of a transfiguration.
I the more minutely describe the rock, and this little Sabbath
solitude, because Hollingsworth, at our solicitation, often ascended
Eliot's pulpit, and not exactly preached, but talked to us, his few
disciples, in a strain that rose and fell as naturally as the wind's
breath among the leaves of the birch-tree. No other speech of man
has ever moved me like some of those discourses. It seemed most
pitiful--a positive calamity to the world--that a treasury of golden
thoughts should thus be scattered, by the liberal handful, down among
us three, when a thousand hearers might have been the richer for them;
and Hollingsworth the richer, likewise, by the sympathy of
multitudes. After speaking much or little, as might happen, he would
descend from his gray pulpit, and generally fling himself at full
length on the ground, face downward. Meanwhile, we talked around him
on such topics as were suggested by the discourse.
Since her interview with Westervelt, Zenobia's continual inequalities
of temper had been rather difficult for her friends to bear. On the
first Sunday after that incident, when Hollingsworth had clambered
down from Eliot's pulpit, she declaimed with great earnestness and
passion, nothing short of anger, on the injustice which the world did
to women, and equally to itself, by not allowing them, in freedom and
honor, and with the fullest welcome, their natural utterance in
public.
"It shall not always be so!" cried she. "If I live another year, I
will lift up my own voice in behalf of woman's wider liberty!"
She perhaps saw me smile.
"What matter of ridicule do you find in this, Miles Coverdale?"
exclaimed Zenobia, with a flash of anger in her eyes. "That smile,
permit me to say, makes me suspicious of a low tone of feeling and
shallow thought. It is my belief--yes, and my prophecy, should I die
before it happens--that, when my sex shall achieve its rights, there
will be ten eloquent women where there is now one eloquent man. Thus
far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole heart
and her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of
society throttles us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats! We
mumble a few weak words, and leave a thousand better ones unsaid.
You let us write a little, it is true, on a limited range of subjects.
But the pen is not for woman. Her power is too natural and
immediate. It is with the living voice alone that she can compel the
world to recognize the light of her intellect and the depth of her
heart!"
Now,--though I could not well say so to Zenobia,--I had not smiled
from any unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims which
she is beginning to put forth. What amused and puzzled me was the
fact, that women, however intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet
themselves about the rights or wrongs of their sex, unless their own
individual affections chance to lie in idleness, or to be ill at ease.
They are not natural reformers, but become such by the pressure of
exceptional misfortune. I could measure Zenobia's inward trouble by
the animosity with which she now took up the general quarrel of woman
against man.
"I will give you leave, Zenobia," replied I, "to fling your utmost
scorn upon me, if you ever hear me utter a sentiment unfavorable to
the widest liberty which woman has yet dreamed of. I would give her
all she asks, and add a great deal more, which she will not be the
party to demand, but which men, if they were generous and wise, would
grant of their own free motion. For instance, I should love
dearly--for the next thousand years, at least--to have all government
devolve into the hands of women. I hate to be ruled by my own sex;
it excites my jealousy, and wounds my pride. It is the iron sway of
bodily force which abases us, in our compelled submission. But how
sweet the free, generous courtesy with which I would kneel before a
woman-ruler!"
"Yes, if she were young and beautiful," said Zenobia, laughing. "But
how if she were sixty, and a fright?"
"Ah! it is you that rate womanhood low," said I. "But let me go on.
I have never found it possible to suffer a bearded priest so near my
heart and conscience as to do me any spiritual good. I blush at the
very thought! Oh, in the better order of things, Heaven grant that
the ministry of souls may be left in charge of women! The gates of
the Blessed City will be thronged with the multitude that enter in,
when that day comes! The task belongs to woman. God meant it for
her. He has endowed her with the religious sentiment in its utmost
depth and purity, refined from that gross, intellectual alloy with
which every masculine theologist--save only One, who merely veiled
himself in mortal and masculine shape, but was, in truth, divine--has
been prone to mingle it. I have always envied the Catholics their
faith in that sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them
and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his awful splendor, but
permitting his love to stream upon the worshipper more intelligibly
to human comprehension through the medium of a woman's tenderness.
Have I not said enough, Zenobia?"
"I cannot think that this is true," observed Priscilla, who had been
gazing at me with great, disapproving eyes. "And I am sure I do not
wish it to be true!"
"Poor child!" exclaimed Zenobia, rather contemptuously. "She is the
type of womanhood, such as man has spent centuries in making it. He
is never content unless he can degrade himself by stooping towards
what he loves. In denying us our rights, he betrays even more
blindness to his own interests than profligate disregard of ours!"
"Is this true?" asked Priscilla with simplicity, turning to
Hollingsworth. "Is it all true, that Mr. Coverdale and Zenobia have
been saying?"
"No, Priscilla!" answered Hollingsworth with his customary bluntness.
"They have neither of them spoken one true word yet."
"Do you despise woman?" said Zenobia.
"Ah, Hollingsworth, that would be most ungrateful!"
"Despise her? No!" cried Hollingsworth, lifting his great shaggy
head and shaking it at us, while his eyes glowed almost fiercely.
"She is the most admirable handiwork of God, in her true place and
character. Her place is at man's side. Her office, that of the
sympathizer; the unreserved, unquestioning believer; the recognition,
withheld in every other manner, but given, in pity, through woman's
heart, lest man should utterly lose faith in himself; the echo of
God's own voice, pronouncing, 'It is well done!' All the separate
action of woman is, and ever has been, and always shall be, false,
foolish, vain, destructive of her own best and holiest qualities,
void of every good effect, and productive of intolerable mischiefs!
Man is a wretch without woman; but woman is a monster--and, thank
Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster--without
man as her acknowledged principal! As true as I had once a mother
whom I loved, were there any possible prospect of woman's taking the
social stand which some of them,--poor, miserable, abortive creatures,
who only dream of such things because they have missed woman's
peculiar happiness, or because nature made them really neither man
nor woman!--if there were a chance of their attaining the end which
these petticoated monstrosities have in view, I would call upon my
own sex to use its physical force, that unmistakable evidence of
sovereignty, to scourge them back within their proper bounds! But it
will not be needful. The heart of time womanhood knows where its own
sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!"
Never was mortal blessed--if blessing it were--with a glance of such
entire acquiescence and unquestioning faith, happy in its
completeness, as our little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on
Hollingsworth. She seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into
her heart, and brood over it in perfect content. The very woman whom
he pictured--the gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a more
powerful existence--sat there at his feet.
I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent--as I
felt, by the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought
this outrageous affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of
masculine egotism. It centred everything in itself, and deprived
woman of her very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to
make it a mere incident in the great sum of man. Hollingsworth had
boldly uttered what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt.
Without intending it, he had disclosed the wellspring of all these
troubled waters. Now, if ever, it surely behooved Zenobia to be the
champion of her sex.
But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled.
Some tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not
anger.
"Well, be it so," was all she said. "I, at least, have deep cause to
think you right. Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only
too ready to become to him what you say!"
I smiled--somewhat bitterly, it is true--in contemplation of my own
ill-luck. How little did these two women care for me, who had freely
conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness
of my heart; while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible
injustice, seemed to have brought them both to his feet!
"Women almost invariably behave thus," thought I. "What does the fact
mean? Is it their nature? Or is it, at last, the result of ages of
compelled degradation? And, in either case, will it be possible ever
to redeem them?"
An intuition now appeared to possess all the party, that, for this
time, at least, there was no more to be said. With one accord, we
arose from the ground, and made our way through the tangled
undergrowth towards one of those pleasant wood-paths that wound among
the overarching trees. Some of the branches hung so low as partly to
conceal the figures that went before from those who followed.
Priscilla had leaped up more lightly than the rest of us, and ran
along in advance, with as much airy activity of spirit as was
typified in the motion of a bird, which chanced to be flitting from
tree to tree, in the same direction as herself. Never did she seem
so happy as that afternoon. She skipt, and could not help it, from
very playfulness of heart.
Zenobia and Hollingsworth went next, in close contiguity, but not
with arm in arm. Now, just when they had passed the impending bough
of a birch-tree, I plainly saw Zenobia take the hand of Hollingsworth
in both her own, press it to her bosom, and let it fall again!
The gesture was sudden, and full of passion; the impulse had
evidently taken her by surprise; it expressed all! Had Zenobia knelt
before him, or flung herself upon his breast, and gasped out, "I love
you, Hollingsworth!" I could not have been more certain of what it
meant. They then walked onward, as before. But, methought, as the
declining sun threw Zenobia's magnified shadow along the path, I
beheld it tremulous; and the delicate stem of the flower which she
wore in her hair was likewise responsive to her agitation.
Priscilla--through the medium of her eyes, at least could not
possibly have been aware of the gesture above described. Yet, at
that instant, I saw her droop. The buoyancy, which just before had
been so bird-like, was utterly departed; the life seemed to pass out
of her, and even the substance of her figure to grow thin and gray.
I almost imagined her a shadow, tiding gradually into the dimness of
the wood. Her pace became so slow that Hollingsworth and Zenobia
passed by, and I, without hastening my footsteps, overtook her.
"Come, Priscilla," said I, looking her intently in the face, which
was very pale and sorrowful, "we must make haste after our friends.
Do you feel suddenly ill? A moment ago, you flitted along so lightly
that I was comparing you to a bird. Now, on the contrary, it is as
if you had a heavy heart, and a very little strength to bear it with.
Pray take my arm!"
"No," said Priscilla, "I do not think it would help me. It is my
heart, as you say, that makes me heavy; and I know not why. Just now,
I felt very happy."
No doubt it was a kind of sacrilege in me to attempt to come within
her maidenly mystery; but, as she appeared to be tossed aside by her
other friends, or carelessly let fall, like a flower which they had
done with, I could not resist the impulse to take just one peep
beneath her folded petals.
"Zenobia and yourself are dear friends of late," I remarked. "At
first,--that first evening when you came to us,--she did not receive
you quite so warmly as might have been wished."
"I remember it," said Priscilla. "No wonder she hesitated to love me,
who was then a stranger to her, and a girl of no grace or beauty,--
she being herself so beautiful!"
"But she loves you now, of course?" suggested I. "And at this very
instant you feel her to be your dearest friend?"
"Why do you ask me that question?" exclaimed Priscilla, as if
frightened at the scrutiny into her feelings which I compelled her to
make. "It somehow puts strange thoughts into my mind. But I do love
Zenobia dearly! If she only loves me half as well, I shall be happy!"
"How is it possible to doubt that, Priscilla?" I rejoined. "But
observe how pleasantly and happily Zenobia and Hollingsworth are
walking together. I call it a delightful spectacle. It truly
rejoices me that Hollingsworth has found so fit and affectionate a
friend! So many people in the world mistrust him,--so many
disbelieve and ridicule, while hardly any do him justice, or
acknowledge him for the wonderful man he is,--that it is really a
blessed thing for him to have won the sympathy of such a woman as
Zenobia. Any man might be proud of that. Any man, even if he be as
great as Hollingsworth, might love so magnificent a woman. How very
beautiful Zenobia is! And Hollingsworth knows it, too."
There may have been some petty malice in what I said. Generosity is
a very fine thing, at a proper time and within due limits. But it is
an insufferable bore to see one man engrossing every thought of all
the women, and leaving his friend to shiver in outer seclusion,
without even the alternative of solacing himself with what the more
fortunate individual has rejected. Yes, it was out of a foolish
bitterness of heart that I had spoken.
"Go on before," said Priscilla abruptly, and with true feminine
imperiousness, which heretofore I had never seen her exercise. "It
pleases me best to loiter along by myself. I do not walk so fast as
you."
With her hand she made a little gesture of dismissal. It provoked me;
yet, on the whole, was the most bewitching thing that Priscilla had
ever done. I obeyed her, and strolled moodily homeward,
wondering--as I had wondered a thousand times already--how
Hollingsworth meant to dispose of these two hearts, which (plainly to
my perception, and, as I could not but now suppose, to his) he had
engrossed into his own huge egotism.
There was likewise another subject hardly less fruitful of
speculation. In what attitude did Zenobia present herself to
Hollingsworth? Was it in that of a free woman, with no mortgage on
her affections nor claimant to her hand, but fully at liberty to
surrender both, in exchange for the heart and hand which she
apparently expected to receive? But was it a vision that I had
witnessed in the wood? Was Westervelt a goblin? Were those words of
passion and agony, which Zenobia had uttered in my hearing, a mere
stage declamation? Were they formed of a material lighter than
common air? Or, supposing them to bear sterling weight, was it a
perilous and dreadful wrong which she was meditating towards herself
and Hollingsworth?
Arriving nearly at the farmhouse, I looked back over the long slope
of pasture land, and beheld them standing together, in the light of
sunset, just on the spot where, according to the gossip of the
Community, they meant to build their cottage. Priscilla, alone and
forgotten, was lingering in the shadow of the wood. _