"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.