Her glance, wandering wildly to and fro, passed over me several times,
without appearing to inform her of my presence. But, finally, a look
of recognition gleamed from her eyes into mine.
"Is it you, Miles Coverdale?" said she, smiling. "Ah, I perceive what
you are about! You are turning this whole affair into a ballad. Pray
let me hear as many stanzas as you happen to have ready."
"Oh, hush, Zenobia!" I answered. "Heaven knows what an ache is in my
soul!"
"It is genuine tragedy, is it not?" rejoined Zenobia, with a sharp,
light laugh. "And you are willing to allow, perhaps, that I have had
hard measure. But it is a woman's doom, and I have deserved it like a
woman; so let there be no pity, as, on my part, there shall be no
complaint. It is all right, now, or will shortly be so. But, Mr.
Coverdale, by all means write this ballad, and put your soul's ache
into it, and turn your sympathy to good account, as other poets do, and
as poets must, unless they choose to give us glittering icicles instead
of lines of fire. As for the moral, it shall be distilled into the
final stanza, in a drop of bitter honey."
"What shall it be, Zenobia?" I inquired, endeavoring to fall in with
her mood.
"Oh, a very old one will serve the purpose," she replied. "There are
no new truths, much as we have prided ourselves on finding some. A
moral? Why, this: That, in the battlefield of life, the downright
stroke, that would fall only on a man's steel headpiece, is sure to
light on a woman's heart, over which she wears no breastplate, and
whose wisdom it is, therefore, to keep out of the conflict. Or, this:
That the whole universe, her own sex and yours, and Providence, or
Destiny, to boot, make common cause against the woman who swerves one
hair's-breadth out of the beaten track. Yes; and add (for I may as
well own it, now) that, with that one hair's-breadth, she goes all
astray, and never sees the world in its true aspect afterwards."
"This last is too stern a moral," I observed. "Cannot we soften it a
little?"
"Do it if you like, at your own peril, not on my responsibility," she
answered. Then, with a sudden change of subject, she went on: "After
all, he has flung away what would have served him better than the poor,
pale flower he kept. What can Priscilla do for him? Put passionate
warmth into his heart, when it shall be chilled with frozen hopes?
Strengthen his hands, when they are weary with much doing and no
performance? No! but only tend towards him with a blind, instinctive
love, and hang her little, puny weakness for a clog upon his arm! She
cannot even give him such sympathy as is worth the name. For will he
never, in many an hour of darkness, need that proud intellectual
sympathy which he might have had from me?--the sympathy that would
flash light along his course, and guide, as well as cheer him? Poor
Hollingsworth! Where will he find it now?"