第57章 THE BOARDING-HOUSE(2)

I waited for her reappearance.It was one peculiarity, distinguishing Zenobia from most of her sex, that she needed for her moral wellbeing, and never would forego, a large amount of physical exercise.At Blithedale, no inclemency of sky or muddiness of earth had ever impeded her daily walks.Here in town, she probably preferred to tread the extent of the two drawing-rooms, and measure out the miles by spaces of forty feet, rather than bedraggle her skirts over the sloppy pavements.

Accordingly, in about the time requisite to pass through the arch of the sliding-doors to the front window, and to return upon her steps, there she stood again, between the festoons of the crimson curtains.But another personage was now added to the scene.Behind Zenobia appeared that face which I had first encountered in the wood-path; the man who had passed, side by side with her, in such mysterious familiarity and estrangement, beneath my vine curtained hermitage in the tall pine-tree.

It was Westervelt.And though he was looking closely over her shoulder, it still seemed to me, as on the former occasion, that Zenobia repelled him,--that, perchance, they mutually repelled each other, by some incompatibility of their spheres.

This impression, however, might have been altogether the result of fancy and prejudice in me.The distance was so great as to obliterate any play of feature by which I might otherwise have been made a partaker of their counsels.

There now needed only Hollingsworth and old Moodie to complete the knot of characters, whom a real intricacy of events, greatly assisted by my method of insulating them from other relations, had kept so long upon my mental stage, as actors in a drama.In itself, perhaps, it was no very remarkable event that they should thus come across me, at the moment when I imagined myself free.Zenobia, as I well knew, had retained an establishment in town, and had not unfrequently withdrawn herself from Blithedale during brief intervals, on one of which occasions she had taken Priscilla along with her.Nevertheless, there seemed something fatal in the coincidence that had borne me to this one spot, of all others in a great city, and transfixed me there, and compelled me again to waste my already wearied sympathies on affairs which were none of mine, and persons who cared little for me.It irritated my nerves; it affected me with a kind of heart-sickness.After the effort which it cost me to fling them off,--after consummating my escape, as I thought, from these goblins of flesh and blood, and pausing to revive myself with a breath or two of an atmosphere in which they should have no share,--it was a positive despair to find the same figures arraying themselves before me, and presenting their old problem in a shape that made it more insoluble than ever.

I began to long for a catastrophe.If the noble temper of Hollingsworth's soul were doomed to be utterly corrupted by the too powerful purpose which had grown out of what was noblest in him; if the rich and generous qualities of Zenobia's womanhood might not save her; if Priscilla must perish by her tenderness and faith, so simple and so devout, then be it so! Let it all come! As for me, I would look on, as it seemed my part to do, understandingly, if my intellect could fathom the meaning and the moral, and, at all events, reverently and sadly.The curtain fallen, I would pass onward with my poor individual life, which was now attenuated of much of its proper substance, and diffused among many alien interests.

Meanwhile, Zenobia and her companion had retreated from the window.Then followed an interval, during which I directed my eves towards the figure in the boudoir.Most certainly it was Priscilla, although dressed with a novel and fanciful elegance.The vague perception of it, as viewed so far off, impressed me as if she had suddenly passed out of a chrysalis state and put forth wings.Her hands were not now in motion.She had dropt her work, and sat with her head thrown back, in the same attitude that I had seen several times before, when she seemed to be listening to an imperfectly distinguished sound.

Again the two figures in the drawing-room became visible.They were now a little withdrawn from the window, face to face, and, as I could see by Zenobia's emphatic gestures, were discussing some subject in which she, at least, felt a passionate concern.By and by she broke away, and vanished beyond my ken.Westervelt approached the window, and leaned his forehead against a pane of glass, displaying the sort of smile on his handsome features which, when I before met him, had let me into the secret of his gold-bordered teeth.Every human being, when given over to the Devil, is sure to have the wizard mark upon him, in one form or another.I fancied that this smile, with its peculiar revelation, was the Devil's signet on the Professor.

This man, as I had soon reason to know, was endowed with a cat-like circumspection; and though precisely the most unspiritual quality in the world, it was almost as effective as spiritual insight in making him acquainted with whatever it suited him to discover.He now proved it, considerably to my discomfiture, by detecting and recognizing me, at my post of observation.Perhaps I ought to have blushed at being caught in such an evident scrutiny of Professor Westervelt and his affairs.

Perhaps I did blush.Be that as it might, I retained presence of mind enough not to make my position yet more irksome by the poltroonery of drawing back.

Westervelt looked into the depths of the drawing-room, and beckoned.

Immediately afterwards Zenobia appeared at the window, with color much heightened, and eyes which, as my conscience whispered me, were shooting bright arrows, barbed with scorn, across the intervening space, directed full at my sensibilities as a gentleman.If the truth must be told, far as her flight-shot was, those arrows hit the mark.She signified her recognition of me by a gesture with her head and hand, comprising at once a salutation and dismissal.The next moment she administered one of those pitiless rebukes which a woman always has at hand, ready for any offence (and which she so seldom spares on due occasion), by letting down a white linen curtain between the festoons of the damask ones.It fell like the drop-curtain of a theatre, in the interval between the acts.

Priscilla had disappeared from the boudoir.But the dove still kept her desolate perch on the peak of the attic window.