One subject, about which--very impertinently, moreover--I perplexed
myself with a great many conjectures, was, whether Zenobia had ever
been married. The idea, it must be understood, was unauthorized by any
circumstance or suggestion that had made its way to my ears. So young
as I beheld her, and the freshest and rosiest woman of a thousand,
there was certainly no need of imputing to her a destiny already
accomplished; the probability was far greater that her coming years had
all life's richest gifts to bring.
If the great event of a woman's
existence had been consummated, the world knew nothing of it, although
the world seemed to know Zenobia well. It was a ridiculous piece of
romance, undoubtedly, to imagine that this beautiful personage, wealthy
as she was, and holding a position that might fairly enough be called
distinguished, could have given herself away so privately, but that
some whisper and suspicion, and by degrees a full understanding of the
fact, would eventually be blown abroad. But then, as I failed not to
consider, her original home was at a distance of many hundred miles.
Rumors might fill the social atmosphere, or might once have filled it,
there, which would travel but slowly, against the wind, towards our
Northeastern metropolis, and perhaps melt into thin air before reaching
it.
There was not--and I distinctly repeat it--the slightest foundation in
my knowledge for any surmise of the kind. But there is a species of
intuition,--either a spiritual lie or the subtile recognition of a
fact,--which comes to us in a reduced state of the corporeal system.
The soul gets the better of the body, after wasting illness, or when a
vegetable diet may have mingled too much ether in the blood. Vapors
then rise up to the brain, and take shapes that often image falsehood,
but sometimes truth. The spheres of our companions have, at such
periods, a vastly greater influence upon our own than when robust
health gives us a repellent and self-defensive energy. Zenobia's
sphere, I imagine, impressed itself powerfully on mine, and transformed
me, during this period of my weakness, into something like a mesmerical
clairvoyant.
Then, also, as anybody could observe, the freedom of her deportment
(though, to some tastes, it might commend itself as the utmost
perfection of manner in a youthful widow or a blooming matron) was not
exactly maiden-like. What girl had ever laughed as Zenobia did? What
girl had ever spoken in her mellow tones? Her unconstrained and
inevitable manifestation, I said often to myself, was that of a woman
to whom wedlock had thrown wide the gates of mystery. Yet sometimes I
strove to be ashamed of these conjectures. I acknowledged it as a
masculine grossness--a sin of wicked interpretation, of which man is
often guilty towards the other sex--thus to mistake the sweet, liberal,
but womanly frankness of a noble and generous disposition. Still, it
was of no avail to reason with myself nor to upbraid myself.
Pertinaciously the thought, "Zenobia is a wife; Zenobia has lived and
loved! There is no folded petal, no latent dewdrop, in this perfectly
developed rose!"--irresistibly that thought drove out all other
conclusions, as often as my mind reverted to the subject.