It seemed his intention to say no more. But, after he had quite broken
off, his deep eyes filled with tears, and he held out both his hands to
me.
"Coverdale," he murmured, "there is not the man in this wide world whom
I can love as I could you. Do not forsake me!"
As I look back upon this scene, through the coldness and dimness of so
many years, there is still a sensation as if Hollingsworth had caught
hold of my heart, and were pulling it towards him with an almost
irresistible force. It is a mystery to me how I withstood it. But, in
truth, I saw in his scheme of philanthropy nothing but what was odious.
A loathsomeness that was to be forever in my daily work! A great black
ugliness of sin, which he proposed to collect out of a thousand human
hearts, and that we should spend our lives in an experiment of
transmuting it into virtue! Had I but touched his extended hand,
Hollingsworth's magnetism would perhaps have penetrated me with his own
conception of all these matters. But I stood aloof. I fortified
myself with doubts whether his strength of purpose had not been too
gigantic for his integrity, impelling him to trample on considerations
that should have been paramount to every other.
"Is Zenobia to take a part in your enterprise?" I asked.
"She is," said Hollingsworth.
"She!--the beautiful!--the gorgeous!" I exclaimed. "And how have you
prevailed with such a woman to work in this squalid element?"
"Through no base methods, as you seem to suspect," he answered; "but by
addressing whatever is best and noblest in her."
Hollingsworth was looking on the ground. But, as he often did
so,--generally, indeed, in his habitual moods of thought,--I could not
judge whether it was from any special unwillingness now to meet my
eyes. What it was that dictated my next question, I cannot precisely
say. Nevertheless, it rose so inevitably into my mouth, and, as it
were, asked itself so involuntarily, that there must needs have been an
aptness in it.
"What is to become of Priscilla?"
Hollingsworth looked at me fiercely, and with glowing eyes. He could
not have shown any other kind of expression than that, had he meant to
strike me with a sword.
"Why do you bring in the names of these women?" said he, after a moment
of pregnant silence. "What have they to do with the proposal which I
make you? I must have your answer! Will you devote yourself, and
sacrifice all to this great end, and be my friend of friends forever?"