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_ 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
abiding-place. 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 wood-side, 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 common
sense."
"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
self-devotion,--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. _
Read next: CHAPTER XVI - LEAVE-TAKINGS
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