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He was either awake or sleeping very lightly; for scarcely a moment had gone by before he looked out and discerned me standing in the moonlight. "Is it you, Coverdale?" he asked. "What is the matter?" "Come down to me, Hollingsworth!" I answered. "I am anxious to speak with you." The strange tone of my own voice startled me, and him, probably, no less.
The change will be recognized by many, who, after a period of happiness, have endeavored to go on with the same kind of life, in the same scene, in spite of the alteration or withdrawal of some principal circumstance. I stood on other terms than before, not only with Hollingsworth, but with Zenobia and Priscilla.
We cannot but feel rejoiced, when Hollingsworth steps onto the platform and releases Priscilla from the psychological net-work in which she is involved, and from which she has not sufficient will-power to free herself. He certainly deserves her hand and fortune; but, as to his condemnatory charges against Zenobia, which led directly to her suicide, what could they have been?
"Oh, that's the way with these philanthropists," said Annie, thinking of Hollingsworth, in The Blithedale Romance, the only philanthropist whom she had really ever known, "They are always ready to sacrifice the happiness and comfort of any one to the general good." Mrs. Bolton stood a moment, and then went out without replying; but she looked as offended as Annie could have wished.
These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a pleasant weakness in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look after her own interests or fight her battle with the world. And Hollingsworth perhaps because he had been the means of introducing Priscilla to her new abode appeared to recognize her as his own especial charge.
How many years ago it seems since we last sat beneath Eliot's pulpit, with Hollingsworth extended on the fallen leaves, and Priscilla at his feet! Can it be, Zenobia, that you ever really numbered yourself with our little band of earnest, thoughtful, philanthropic laborers?" "Those ideas have their time and place," she answered coldly.
"Coverdale has given up making verses now," said Hollingsworth, who never had the slightest appreciation of my poetry. "Just think of him penning a sonnet with a fist like that! There is at least this good in a life of toil, that it takes the nonsense and fancy-work out of a man, and leaves nothing but what truly belongs to him.
If I had any duty whatever, in reference to Hollingsworth, it was to endeavor to save Priscilla from that kind of personal worship which her sex is generally prone to lavish upon saints and heroes. It often requires but one smile out of the hero's eyes into the girl's or woman's heart, to transform this devotion, from a sentiment of the highest approval and confidence, into passionate love.
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 talked about Fourier to Hollingsworth, and translated, for his benefit, some of the passages that chiefly impressed me. "When, as a consequence of human improvement," said I, "the globe shall arrive at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be converted into a particular kind of lemonade, such as was fashionable at Paris in Fourier's time. He calls it limonade a cedre.
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