Here the stranger seemed to be so much amused with his sketch of
Hollingsworth's character and purposes, that he burst into a fit of
merriment, of the same nature as the brief, metallic laugh already
alluded to, but immensely prolonged and enlarged. In the excess of his
delight, he opened his mouth wide, and disclosed a gold band around the
upper part of his teeth, thereby making it apparent that every one of
his brilliant grinders and incisors was a sham. This discovery
affected me very oddly.
I felt as if the whole man were a moral and physical humbug; his
wonderful beauty of face, for aught I knew, might be removable like a
mask; and, tall and comely as his figure looked, he was perhaps but a
wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with nothing genuine about him
save the wicked expression of his grin. The fantasy of his spectral
character so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his
strange mirth on my sympathies, that I soon began to laugh as loudly as
himself.
By and by, he paused all at once; so suddenly, indeed, that my own
cachinnation lasted a moment longer.
"Ah, excuse me!" said he. "Our interview seems to proceed more merrily
than it began."
"It ends here," answered I. "And I take shame to myself that my folly
has lost me the right of resenting your ridicule of a friend."
"Pray allow me," said the stranger, approaching a step nearer, and
laying his gloved hand on my sleeve. "One other favor I must ask of
you. You have a young person here at Blithedale, of whom I have
heard,--whom, perhaps, I have known,--and in whom, at all events, I
take a peculiar interest. She is one of those delicate, nervous young
creatures, not uncommon in New England, and whom I suppose to have
become what we find them by the gradual refining away of the physical
system among your women. Some philosophers choose to glorify this
habit of body by terming it spiritual; but, in my opinion, it is rather
the effect of unwholesome food, bad air, lack of outdoor exercise, and
neglect of bathing, on the part of these damsels and their female
progenitors, all resulting in a kind of hereditary dyspepsia. Zenobia,
even with her uncomfortable surplus of vitality, is far the better
model of womanhood. But--to revert again to this young person--she
goes among you by the name of Priscilla. Could you possibly afford me
the means of speaking with her?"
"You have made so many inquiries of me," I observed, "that I may at
least trouble you with one. What is your name?"