The Blithedale Romance - Page 40/170

From whatever cause, Priscilla's animation seemed entirely to have

deserted her. She seated herself on a rock, and remained there until

Hollingsworth came up; and when he took her hand and led her back to

us, she rather resembled my original image of the wan and spiritless

Priscilla than the flowery May-queen of a few moments ago. These

sudden transformations, only to be accounted for by an extreme nervous

susceptibility, always continued to characterize the girl, though with

diminished frequency as her health progressively grew more robust.

I was now on my legs again. My fit of illness had been an avenue

between two existences; the low-arched and darksome doorway, through

which I crept out of a life of old conventionalisms, on my hands and

knees, as it were, and gained admittance into the freer region that lay

beyond. In this respect, it was like death. And, as with death, too,

it was good to have gone through it. No otherwise could I have rid

myself of a thousand follies, fripperies, prejudices, habits, and other

such worldly dust as inevitably settles upon the crowd along the broad

highway, giving them all one sordid aspect before noon-time, however

freshly they may have begun their pilgrimage in the dewy morning.

The very substance upon my bones had not been fit to live with in any

better, truer, or more energetic mode than that to which I was

accustomed. So it was taken off me and flung aside, like any other

worn-out or unseasonable garment; and, after shivering a little while

in my skeleton, I began to be clothed anew, and much more

satisfactorily than in my previous suit. In literal and physical

truth, I was quite another man. I had a lively sense of the exultation

with which the spirit will enter on the next stage of its eternal

progress after leaving the heavy burden of its mortality in an early

grave, with as little concern for what may become of it as now affected

me for the flesh which I had lost.

Emerging into the genial sunshine, I half fancied that the labors of

the brotherhood had already realized some of Fourier's predictions.

Their enlightened culture of the soil, and the virtues with which they

sanctified their life, had begun to produce an effect upon the material

world and its climate. In my new enthusiasm, man looked strong and

stately,--and woman, oh, how beautiful!--and the earth a green garden,

blossoming with many-colored delights. Thus Nature, whose laws I had

broken in various artificial ways, comported herself towards me as a

strict but loving mother, who uses the rod upon her little boy for his

naughtiness, and then gives him a smile, a kiss, and some pretty

playthings to console the urchin for her severity.