Part 19 (1/2)

Tell him he has murdered me! Tell him that I'll haunt him! ”--She spoke these words with the wildest energy.--”And give him--no, give Priscilla--this!”

Thus saying, she took the jewelled flower out of her hair; and it struck me as the act of a queen, when worsted in a combat, discrowning herself, as if she found a sort of relief in abasing all her pride.

”Bid her wear this for Zen.o.bia's sake,” she continued. ”She is a pretty little creature, and will make as soft and gentle a wife as the veriest Bluebeard could desire. Pity that she must fade so soon! These delicate and puny maidens always do. Ten years hence, let Hollingsworth look at my face and Priscilla's, and then choose betwixt them. Or, if he pleases, let him do it now.”

How magnificently Zen.o.bia looked as she said this! The effect of her beauty was even heightened by the over-consciousness and self-recognition of it, into which, I suppose, Hollingsworth's scorn had driven her. She understood the look of admiration in my face; and--Zen.o.bia to the last--it gave her pleasure.

”It is an endless pity,” said she, ”that I had not bethought myself of winning your heart, Mr. Coverdale, instead of Hollingsworth's. I think I should have succeeded, and many women would have deemed you the worthier conquest of the two. You are certainly much the handsomest man. But there is a fate in these things. And beauty, in a man, has been of little account with me since my earliest girlhood, when, for once, it turned my head. Now, farewell!”

”Zen.o.bia, whither are you going?” I asked.

”No matter where,” said she. ”But I am weary of this place, and sick to death of playing at philanthropy and progress. Of all varieties of mock-life, we have surely blundered into the very emptiest mockery in our effort to establish the one true system. I have done with it; and Blithedale must find another woman to superintend the laundry, and you, Mr. Coverdale, another nurse to make your gruel, the next time you fall ill. It was, indeed, a foolish dream! Yet it gave us some pleasant summer days, and bright hopes, while they lasted. It can do no more; nor will it avail us to shed tears over a broken bubble. Here is my hand! Adieu!”

She gave me her hand with the same free, whole-souled gesture as on the first afternoon of our acquaintance, and, being greatly moved, I bethought me of no better method of expressing my deep sympathy than to carry it to my lips. In so doing, I perceived that this white hand--so hospitably warm when I first touched it, five months since--was now cold as a veritable piece of snow.

”How very cold!” I exclaimed, holding it between both my own, with the vain idea of warming it.”What can be the reason? It is really deathlike!”

”The extremities die first, they say,” answered Zen.o.bia, laughing. ”And so you kiss this poor, despised, rejected hand! Well, my dear friend, I thank you. You have reserved your homage for the fallen. Lip of man will never touch my hand again. I intend to become a Catholic, for the sake of going into a nunnery. When you next hear of Zen.o.bia, her face will be behind the black veil; so look your last at it now,--for all is over. Once more, farewell!”

She withdrew her hand, yet left a lingering pressure, which I felt long afterwards. So intimately connected as I had been with perhaps the only man in whom she was ever truly interested, Zen.o.bia looked on me as the representative of all the past, and was conscious that, in bidding me adieu, she likewise took final leave of Hollingsworth, and of this whole epoch of her life. Never did her beauty s.h.i.+ne out more l.u.s.trously than in the last glimpse that I had of her. She departed, and was soon hidden among the trees. But, whether it was the strong impression of the foregoing scene, or whatever else the cause, I was affected with a fantasy that Zen.o.bia had not actually gone, but was still hovering about the spot and haunting it. I seemed to feel her eyes upon me. It was as if the vivid coloring of her character had left a brilliant stain upon the air. By degrees, however, the impression grew less distinct. I flung myself upon the fallen leaves at the base of Eliot's pulpit. The suns.h.i.+ne withdrew up the tree trunks and flickered on the topmost boughs; gray twilight made the wood obscure; the stars brightened out; the pendent boughs became wet with chill autumnal dews. But I was listless, worn out with emotion on my own behalf and sympathy for others, and had no heart to leave my comfortless lair beneath the rock.

I must have fallen asleep, and had a dream, all the circ.u.mstances of which utterly vanished at the moment when they converged to some tragical catastrophe, and thus grew too powerful for the thin sphere of slumber that enveloped them. Starting from the ground, I found the risen moon s.h.i.+ning upon the rugged face of the rock, and myself all in a tremble.

XXVII. MIDNIGHT

It could not have been far from midnight when I came beneath Hollingsworth's window, and, finding it open, flung in a tuft of gra.s.s with earth at the roots, and heard it fall upon the floor. He was either awake or sleeping very lightly; for scarcely a moment had gone by before he looked out and discerned me standing in the moonlight.

”Is it you, Coverdale?” he asked. ”What is the matter?”

”Come down to me, Hollingsworth!” I answered. ”I am anxious to speak with you.”

The strange tone of my own voice startled me, and him, probably, no less. He lost no time, and soon issued from the house-door, with his dress half arranged.

”Again, what is the matter?” he asked impatiently.

”Have you seen Zen.o.bia,” said I, ”since you parted from her at Eliot's pulpit?”

”No,” answered Hollingsworth; ”nor did I expect it.”

His voice was deep, but had a tremor in it,

Hardly had he spoken, when Silas Foster thrust his head, done up in a cotton handkerchief, out of another window, and took what he called as it literally was--a squint at us.

”Well, folks, what are ye about here?” he demanded. ”Aha! are you there, Miles Coverdale? You have been turning night into day since you left us, I reckon; and so you find it quite natural to come prowling about the house at this time o' night, frightening my old woman out of her wits, and making her disturb a tired man out of his best nap. In with you, you vagabond, and to bed!”

”Dress yourself quickly, Foster,” said I. ”We want your a.s.sistance.”

I could not, for the life of me, keep that strange tone out of my voice. Silas Foster, obtuse as were his sensibilities, seemed to feel the ghastly earnestness that was conveyed in it as well as Hollingsworth did. He immediately withdrew his head, and I heard him yawning, muttering to his wife, and again yawning heavily, while he hurried on his clothes. Meanwhile I showed Hollingsworth a delicate handkerchief, marked with a well-known cipher, and told where I had found it, and other circ.u.mstances, which had filled me with a suspicion so terrible that I left him, if he dared, to shape it out for himself.

By the time my brief explanation was finished, we were joined by Silas Foster in his blue woollen frock.

”Well, boys,” cried he peevishly, ”what is to pay now?”