The Blithedale Romance - Page 166/170

"No matter what I was to her," he answered gloomily, yet without actual

emotion. "She is now beyond my reach. Had she lived, and hearkened to

my counsels, we might have served each other well. But there Zenobia

lies in yonder pit, with the dull earth over her. Twenty years of a

brilliant lifetime thrown away for a mere woman's whim!"

Heaven deal with Westervelt according to his nature and deserts!--that

is to say, annihilate him. He was altogether earthy, worldly, made for

time and its gross objects, and incapable--except by a sort of dim

reflection caught from other minds--of so much as one spiritual idea.

Whatever stain Zenobia had was caught from him; nor does it seldom

happen that a character of admirable qualities loses its better life

because the atmosphere that should sustain it is rendered poisonous by

such breath as this man mingled with Zenobia's.

Yet his reflections

possessed their share of truth. It was a woeful thought, that a woman

of Zenobia's diversified capacity should have fancied herself

irretrievably defeated on the broad battlefield of life, and with no

refuge, save to fall on her own sword, merely because Love had gone

against her. It is nonsense, and a miserable wrong,--the result, like

so many others, of masculine egotism,--that the success or failure of

woman's existence should be made to depend wholly on the affections,

and on one species of affection, while man has such a multitude of

other chances, that this seems but an incident. For its own sake, if

it will do no more, the world should throw open all its avenues to the

passport of a woman's bleeding heart.

As we stood around the grave, I looked often towards Priscilla,

dreading to see her wholly overcome with grief. And deeply grieved, in

truth, she was. But a character so simply constituted as hers has room

only for a single predominant affection. No other feeling can touch

the heart's inmost core, nor do it any deadly mischief. Thus, while we

see that such a being responds to every breeze with tremulous

vibration, and imagine that she must be shattered by the first rude

blast, we find her retaining her equilibrium amid shocks that might

have overthrown many a sturdier frame. So with Priscilla; her one

possible misfortune was Hollingsworth's unkindness; and that was

destined never to befall her, never yet, at least, for Priscilla has

not died.

But Hollingsworth! After all the evil that he did, are we to leave him

thus, blest with the entire devotion of this one true heart, and with

wealth at his disposal to execute the long-contemplated project that

had led him so far astray? What retribution is there here? My mind

being vexed with precisely this query, I made a journey, some years

since, for the sole purpose of catching a last glimpse of

Hollingsworth, and judging for myself whether he were a happy man or

no. I learned that he inhabited a small cottage, that his way of life

was exceedingly retired, and that my only chance of encountering him or

Priscilla was to meet them in a secluded lane, where, in the latter

part of the afternoon, they were accustomed to walk.