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_ Long since, in this part of our circumjacent wood, I had found out
for myself a little hermitage. It was a kind of leafy cave, high
upward into the air, among the midmost branches of a white-pine tree.
A wild grapevine, of unusual size and luxuriance, had twined and
twisted itself up into the tree, and, after wreathing the
entanglement of its tendrils around almost every bough, had caught
hold of three or four neighboring
trees, and married the whole clump with a perfectly inextricable knot
of polygamy. Once, while sheltering myself from a summer shower, the
fancy had taken me to clamber up into this seemingly impervious mass
of foliage. The branches yielded me a passage, and closed again
beneath, as if only a squirrel or a bird had passed. Far aloft,
around the stem of the central pine, behold a perfect nest for
Robinson Crusoe or King Charles! A hollow chamber of rare seclusion
had been formed by the decay of some of the pine branches, which the
vine had lovingly strangled with its embrace, burying them from the
light of day in an aerial sepulchre of its own leaves. It cost me
but little ingenuity to enlarge the interior, and open loopholes
through the verdant walls. Had it ever been my fortune to spend a
honeymoon, I should have thought seriously of inviting my bride up
thither, where our next neighbors would have been two orioles in
another part of the clump.
It was an admirable place to make verses, tuning the rhythm to the
breezy symphony that so often stirred among the vine leaves; or to
meditate an essay for "The Dial," in which the many tongues of Nature
whispered mysteries, and seemed to ask only a little stronger puff of
wind to speak out the solution of its riddle. Being so pervious to
air-currents, it was just the nook, too, for the enjoyment of a cigar.
This hermitage was my one exclusive possession while I counted
myself a brother of the socialists. It symbolized my individuality,
and aided me in keeping it inviolate. None ever found me out in it,
except, once, a squirrel. I brought thither no guest, because, after
Hollingsworth failed me, there was no longer the man alive with whom
I could think of sharing all. So there I used to sit, owl-like, yet
not without liberal and hospitable thoughts. I counted the
innumerable clusters of my vine, and fore-reckoned the abundance of
my vintage. It gladdened me to anticipate the surprise of the
Community, when, like an allegorical figure of rich October, I should
make my appearance, with shoulders bent beneath the burden of ripe
grapes, and some of the crushed ones crimsoning my brow as with a
bloodstain.
Ascending into this natural turret, I peeped in turn out of several
of its small windows. The pine-tree, being ancient, rose high above
the rest of the wood, which was of comparatively recent growth. Even
where I sat, about midway between the root and the topmost bough, my
position was lofty enough to serve as an observatory, not for starry
investigations, but for those sublunary matters in which lay a lore
as infinite as that of the planets. Through one loophole I saw the
river lapsing calmly onward, while in the meadow, near its brink, a
few of the brethren were digging peat for our winter's fuel. On the
interior cart-road of our farm I discerned Hollingsworth, with a yoke
of oxen hitched to a drag of stones, that were to be piled into a
fence, on which we employed ourselves at the odd intervals of other
labor. The harsh tones of his voice, shouting to the sluggish steers,
made me sensible, even at such a distance, that he was ill at ease,
and that the balked philanthropist had the battle-spirit in his heart.
"Haw, Buck!" quoth he. "Come along there, ye lazy ones! What are ye
about, now? Gee!"
"Mankind, in Hollingsworth's opinion," thought I, "is but another
yoke of oxen, as stubborn, stupid, and sluggish as our old Brown and
Bright. He vituperates us aloud, and curses us in his heart, and
will begin to prick us with the goad-stick, by and by. But are we
his oxen? And what right has he to be the driver? And why, when
there is enough else to do, should we waste our strength in dragging
home the ponderous load of his philanthropic absurdities? At my
height above the earth, the whole matter looks ridiculous!"
Turning towards the farmhouse, I saw Priscilla (for, though a great
way off, the eye of faith assured me that it was she) sitting at
Zenobia's window, and making little purses, I suppose; or, perhaps,
mending the Community's old linen. A bird flew past my tree; and, as
it clove its way onward into the sunny atmosphere, I flung it a
message for Priscilla.
"Tell her," said I, "that her fragile thread of life has inextricably
knotted itself with other and tougher threads, and most likely it
will be broken. Tell her that Zenobia will not be long her friend.
Say that Hollingsworth's heart is on fire with his own purpose, but
icy for all human affection; and that, if she has given him her love,
it is like casting a flower into a sepulchre. And say that if any
mortal really cares for her, it is myself; and not even I for her
realities,--poor little seamstress, as Zenobia rightly called her!--
but for the fancy-work with which I have idly decked her out!"
The pleasant scent of the wood, evolved by the hot sun, stole up to
my nostrils, as if I had been an idol in its niche. Many trees
mingled their fragrance into a thousand-fold odor. Possibly there
was a sensual influence in the broad light of noon that lay beneath
me. It may have been the cause, in part, that I suddenly found
myself possessed by a mood of disbelief in moral beauty or heroism,
and a conviction of the folly of attempting to benefit the world.
Our especial scheme of reform, which, from my observatory, I could
take in with the bodily eye, looked so ridiculous that it was
impossible not to laugh aloud.
"But the joke is a little too heavy," thought I. "If I were wise, I
should get out of the scrape with all diligence, and then laugh at my
companions for remaining in it."
While thus musing, I heard with perfect distinctness, somewhere in
the wood beneath, the peculiar laugh which I have described as one of
the disagreeable characteristics of Professor Westervelt. It brought
my thoughts back to our recent interview. I recognized as chiefly
due to this man's influence the sceptical and sneering view which
just now had filled my mental vision in regard to all life's better
purposes. And it was through his eyes, more than my own, that I was
looking at Hollingsworth, with his glorious if impracticable dream,
and at the noble earthliness of Zenobia's character, and even at
Priscilla, whose impalpable grace lay so singularly between disease
and beauty. The essential charm of each had vanished. There are
some spheres the contact with which inevitably degrades the high,
debases the pure, deforms the beautiful. It must be a mind of
uncommon strength, and little impressibility, that can permit itself
the habit of such intercourse, and not be permanently deteriorated;
and yet the Professor's tone represented that of worldly society at
large, where a cold scepticism smothers what it can of our spiritual
aspirations, and makes the rest ridiculous. I detested this kind of
man; and all the more because a part of my own nature showed itself
responsive to him.
Voices were now approaching through the region of the wood which lay
in the vicinity of my tree. Soon I caught glimpses of two figures--a
woman and a man--Zenobia and the stranger--earnestly talking together
as they advanced.
Zenobia had a rich though varying color. It was, most of the while,
a flame, and anon a sudden paleness. Her eyes glowed, so that their
light sometimes flashed upward to me, as when the sun throws a dazzle
from some bright object on the ground. Her gestures were free, and
strikingly impressive. The whole woman was alive with a passionate
intensity, which I now perceived to be the phase in which her beauty
culminated. Any passion would have become her well; and passionate
love, perhaps, the best of all. This was not love, but anger,
largely intermixed with scorn. Yet the idea strangely forced itself
upon me, that there was a sort of familiarity between these two
companions, necessarily the result of an intimate love,--on Zenobia's
part, at least,--in days gone by, but which had prolonged itself into
as intimate a hatred, for all futurity. As they passed among the
trees, reckless as her movement was, she took good heed that even the
hem of her garment should not brush against the stranger's person. I
wondered whether there had always been a chasm, guarded so
religiously, betwixt these two.
As for Westervelt, he was not a whit more warmed by Zenobia's passion
than a salamander by the heat of its native furnace. He would have
been absolutely statuesque, save for a look of slight perplexity,
tinctured strongly with derision. It was a crisis in which his
intellectual perceptions could not altogether help him out. He
failed to comprehend, and cared but little for comprehending, why
Zenobia should put herself into such a fume; but satisfied his mind
that it was all folly, and only another shape of a woman's manifold
absurdity, which men can never understand. How many a woman's evil
fate has yoked her with a man like this! Nature thrusts some of us
into the world miserably incomplete on the emotional side, with
hardly any sensibilities except what pertain to us as animals. No
passion, save of the senses; no holy tenderness, nor the delicacy
that results from this. Externally they bear a close resemblance to
other men, and have perhaps all save the finest grace; but when a
woman wrecks herself on such a being, she ultimately finds that the
real womanhood within her has no corresponding part in him. Her
deepest voice lacks a response; the deeper her cry, the more dead his
silence. The fault may be none of his; he cannot give her what never
lived within his soul. But the wretchedness on her side, and the
moral deterioration attendant on a false and shallow life, without
strength enough to keep itself sweet, are among the most pitiable
wrongs that mortals suffer.
Now, as I looked down from my upper region at this man and woman,--
outwardly so fair a sight, and wandering like two lovers in the
wood,--I imagined that Zenobia, at an earlier period of youth, might
have fallen into the misfortune above indicated. And when her
passionate womanhood, as was inevitable, had discovered its mistake,
here had ensued the character of eccentricity and defiance which
distinguished the more public portion of her life.
Seeing how aptly matters had chanced thus far, I began to think it
the design of fate to let me into all Zenobia's secrets, and that
therefore the couple would sit down beneath my tree, and carry on a
conversation which would leave me nothing to inquire. No doubt,
however, had it so happened, I should have deemed myself honorably
bound to warn them of a listener's presence by flinging down a
handful of unripe grapes, or by sending an unearthly groan out of my
hiding-place, as if this were one of the trees of Dante's ghostly
forest. But real life never arranges itself exactly like a romance.
In the first place, they did not sit down at all. Secondly, even
while they passed beneath the tree, Zenobia's utterance was so hasty
and broken, and Westervelt's so cool and low, that I hardly could
make out an intelligible sentence on either side. What I seem to
remember, I yet suspect, may have been patched together by my fancy,
in brooding over the matter afterwards.
"Why not fling the girl off," said Westervelt, "and let her go?"
"She clung to me from the first," replied Zenobia. "I neither know
nor care what it is in me that so attaches her. But she loves me,
and I will not fail her."
"She will plague you, then," said he, "in more ways than one."
"The poor child!" exclaimed Zenobia. "She can do me neither good nor
harm. How should she?"
I know not what reply Westervelt whispered; nor did Zenobia's
subsequent exclamation give me any clew, except that it evidently
inspired her with horror and disgust.
"With what kind of a being am I linked?" cried she. "If my Creator
cares aught for my soul, let him release me from this miserable bond!"
"I did not think it weighed so heavily," said her companion..
"Nevertheless," answered Zenobia, "it will strangle me at last!"
And then I heard her utter a helpless sort of moan; a sound which,
struggling out of the heart of a person of her pride and strength,
affected me more than if she had made the wood dolorously vocal with
a thousand shrieks and wails.
Other mysterious words, besides what are above written, they spoke
together; but I understood no more, and even question whether I
fairly understood so much as this. By long brooding over our
recollections, we subtilize them into something akin to imaginary
stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from it. In a few
moments they were completely beyond ear-shot. A breeze stirred after
them, and awoke the leafy tongues of the surrounding trees, which
forthwith began to babble, as if innumerable gossips had all at once
got wind of Zenobia's secret. But, as the breeze grew stronger, its
voice among the branches was as if it said, "Hush! Hush!" and I
resolved that to no mortal would I disclose what I had heard. And,
though there might be room for casuistry, such, I conceive, is the
most equitable rule in all similar conjunctures. _
Read next: CHAPTER XIII - ZENOBIA'S LEGEND
Read previous: CHAPTER XI - THE WOOD-PATH
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