The connection may have been indissoluble, except by death.Then, indeed, --always in the hope of God's infinite mercy,--I cannot deem it a misfortune that she sleeps in yonder grave!""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.I did meet them, accordingly.As they approached me, I observed in Hollingsworth's face a depressed and melancholy look, that seemed habitual; the powerfully built man showed a self-distrustful weakness, and a childlike or childish tendency to press close, and closer still, to the side of the slender woman whose arm was within his.In Priscilla's manner there was a protective and watchful quality, as if she felt herself the guardian of her companion; but, likewise, a deep, submissive, unquestioning reverence, and also a veiled happiness in her fair and quiet countenance.
Drawing nearer, Priscilla recognized me, and gave me a kind and friendly smile, but with a slight gesture, which I could not help interpreting as an entreaty not to make myself known to Hollingsworth.Nevertheless, an impulse took possession of me, and compelled me to address him.
"I have come, Hollingsworth," said I, "to view your grand edifice for the reformation of criminals.Is it finished yet?""No, nor begun," answered he, without raising his eyes."A very small one answers all my purposes."Priscilla threw me an upbraiding glance.But I spoke again, with a bitter and revengeful emotion, as if flinging a poisoned arrow at Hollingsworth's heart.
"Up to this moment," I inquired, "how many criminals have you reformed?""Not one," said Hollingsworth, with his eyes still fixed on the ground.
"Ever since we parted, I have been busy with a single murderer."Then the tears gushed into my eyes, and I forgave him; for I remembered the wild energy, the passionate shriek, with which Zenobia had spoken those words, "Tell him he has murdered me! Tell him that I'll haunt him!"--and I knew what murderer he meant, and whose vindictive shadow dogged the side where Priscilla was not.
The moral which presents itself to my reflections, as drawn from Hollingsworth's character and errors, is simply this, that, admitting what is called philanthropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often useful by its energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the individual whose ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it thus becomes.It ruins, or is fearfully apt to ruin, the heart, the rich juices of which God never meant should be pressed violently out and distilled into alcoholic liquor by an unnatural process, but should render life sweet, bland, and gently beneficent, and insensibly influence other hearts and other lives to the same blessed end.I see in Hollingsworth an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bunyan's book of such, from the very gate of heaven there is a by-way to the pit!
But, all this while, we have been standing by Zenobia's grave.I have never since beheld it, but make no question that the grass grew all the better, on that little parallelogram of pasture land, for the decay of the beautiful woman who slept beneath.How Nature seems to love us! And how readily, nevertheless, without a sigh or a complaint, she converts us to a meaner purpose, when her highest one--that of a conscious intellectual life and sensibility has been untimely balked! While Zenobia lived, Nature was proud of her, and directed all eyes upon that radiant presence, as her fairest handiwork.Zenobia perished.Will not Nature shed a tear? Ah, no!--she adopts the calamity at once into her system, and is just as well pleased, for aught we can see, with the tuft of ranker vegetation that grew out of Zenobia's heart, as with all the beauty which has bequeathed us no earthly representative except in this crop of weeds.It is because the spirit is inestimable that the lifeless body is so little valued.
