The Blithedale Romance - Page 133/170

Well, I betook myself away, and wandered up and down, like an exorcised

spirit that had been driven from its old haunts after a mighty

struggle. It takes down the solitary pride of man, beyond most other

things, to find the impracticability of flinging aside affections that

have grown irksome. The bands that were silken once are apt to become

iron fetters when we desire to shake them off. Our souls, after all,

are not our own. We convey a property in them to those with whom we

associate; but to what extent can never be known, until we feel the

tug, the agony, of our abortive effort to resume an exclusive sway over

ourselves.

Thus, in all the weeks of my absence, my thoughts

continually reverted back, brooding over the bygone months, and

bringing up incidents that seemed hardly to have left a trace of

themselves in their passage. I spent painful hours in recalling these

trifles, and rendering them more misty and unsubstantial than at first

by the quantity of speculative musing thus kneaded in with them.

Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla! These three had absorbed my life

into themselves. Together with an inexpressible longing to know their

fortunes, there was likewise a morbid resentment of my own pain, and a

stubborn reluctance to come again within their sphere.

All that I learned of them, therefore, was comprised in a few brief and

pungent squibs, such as the newspapers were then in the habit of

bestowing on our socialist enterprise. There was one paragraph, which

if I rightly guessed its purport bore reference to Zenobia, but was too

darkly hinted to convey even thus much of certainty. Hollingsworth,

too, with his philanthropic project, afforded the penny-a-liners a

theme for some savage and bloody minded jokes; and, considerably to my

surprise, they affected me with as much indignation as if we had still

been friends.

Thus passed several weeks; time long enough for my brown and

toil-hardened hands to reaccustom themselves to gloves. Old habits,

such as were merely external, returned upon me with wonderful

promptitude. My superficial talk, too, assumed altogether a worldly

tone. Meeting former acquaintances, who showed themselves inclined to

ridicule my heroic devotion to the cause of human welfare, I spoke of

the recent phase of my life as indeed fair matter for a jest. But, I

also gave them to understand that it was, at most, only an experiment,

on which I had staked no valuable amount of hope or fear. It had

enabled me to pass the summer in a novel and agreeable way, had

afforded me some grotesque specimens of artificial simplicity, and

could not, therefore, so far as I was concerned, be reckoned a failure.

In no one instance, however, did I voluntarily speak of my three

friends. They dwelt in a profounder region. The more I consider

myself as I then was, the more do I recognize how deeply my connection

with those three had affected all my being.