Arriving in town (where my bachelor-rooms, long before this time, had
received some other occupant), I established myself, for a day or two,
in a certain, respectable hotel.  It was situated somewhat aloof from
my former track in life; my present mood inclining me to avoid most of
my old companions, from whom I was now sundered by other interests, and
who would have been likely enough to amuse themselves at the expense of
the amateur workingman.  The hotel-keeper put me into a back room of
the third story of his spacious establishment. The day was lowering,
with occasional gusts of rain, and an ugly tempered east wind, which
seemed to come right off the chill and melancholy sea, hardly mitigated
by sweeping over the roofs, and amalgamating itself with the dusky
element of city smoke.  All the effeminacy of past days had returned
upon me at once.  Summer as it still was, I ordered a coal fire in the
rusty grate, and was glad to find myself growing a little too warm with
an artificial temperature.

My sensations were those of a traveller, long sojourning in remote
regions, and at length sitting down again amid customs once familiar.
There was a newness and an oldness oddly combining themselves into one
impression.  It made me acutely sensible how strange a piece of
mosaic-work had lately been wrought into my life.  True, if you look at
it in one way, it had been only a summer in the country.  But,
considered in a profounder relation, it was part of another age, a
different state of society, a segment of an existence peculiar in its
aims and methods, a leaf of some mysterious volume interpolated into
the current history which time was writing off.  At one moment, the
very circumstances now surrounding me--my coal fire and the dingy room
in the bustling hotel--appeared far off and intangible; the next
instant Blithedale looked vague, as if it were at a distance both in
time and space, and so shadowy that a question might be raised whether
the whole affair had been anything more than the thoughts of a
speculative man.  I had never before experienced a mood that so robbed
the actual world of its solidity.  It nevertheless involved a charm, on
which--a devoted epicure of my own emotions--I resolved to pause, and
enjoy the moral sillabub until quite dissolved away.

Whatever had been my taste for solitude and natural scenery, yet the
thick, foggy, stifled element of cities, the entangled life of many men
together, sordid as it was, and empty of the beautiful, took quite as
strenuous a hold upon my mind.  I felt as if there could never be
enough of it.  Each characteristic sound was too suggestive to be
passed over unnoticed.  Beneath and around me, I heard the stir of the
hotel; the loud voices of guests, landlord, or bar-keeper; steps
echoing on the staircase; the ringing of a bell, announcing arrivals or
departures; the porter lumbering past my door with baggage, which he
thumped down upon the floors of neighboring chambers; the lighter feet
of chambermaids scudding along the passages;--it is ridiculous to think
what an interest they had for me! From the street came the tumult of
the pavements, pervading the whole house with a continual uproar, so
broad and deep that only an unaccustomed ear would dwell upon it.  A
company of the city soldiery, with a full military band, marched in
front of the hotel, invisible to me, but stirringly audible both by its
foot-tramp and the clangor of its instruments.  Once or twice all the
city bells jangled together, announcing a fire, which brought out the
engine-men and their machines, like an army with its artillery rushing
to battle. Hour by hour the clocks in many steeples responded one to
another.

In some public hall, not a great way off, there seemed to be an
exhibition of a mechanical diorama; for three times during the day
occurred a repetition of obstreperous music, winding up with the rattle
of imitative cannon and musketry, and a huge final explosion. Then
ensued the applause of the spectators, with clap of hands and thump of
sticks, and the energetic pounding of their heels.  All this was just
as valuable, in its way, as the sighing of the breeze among the
birch-trees that overshadowed Eliot's pulpit.

Yet I felt a hesitation about plunging into this muddy tide of human
activity and pastime.  It suited me better, for the present, to linger
on the brink, or hover in the air above it.  So I spent the first day,
and the greater part of the second, in the laziest manner possible, in
a rocking-chair, inhaling the fragrance of a series of cigars, with my
legs and slippered feet horizontally disposed, and in my hand a novel
purchased of a railroad bibliopolist.  The gradual waste of my cigar
accomplished itself with an easy and gentle expenditure of breath.  My
book was of the dullest, yet had a sort of sluggish flow, like that of
a stream in which your boat is as often aground as afloat.  Had there
been a more impetuous rush, a more absorbing passion of the narrative,
I should the sooner have struggled out of its uneasy current, and have
given myself up to the swell and subsidence of my thoughts.  But, as it
was, the torpid life of the book served as an unobtrusive accompaniment
to the life within me and about me.  At intervals, however, when its
effect grew a little too soporific,--not for my patience, but for the
possibility of keeping my eyes open, I bestirred myself, started from
the rocking-chair, and looked out of the window.

A gray sky; the weathercock of a steeple that rose beyond the opposite
range of buildings, pointing from the eastward; a sprinkle of small,
spiteful-looking raindrops on the window-pane.  In that ebb-tide of my
energies, had I thought of venturing abroad, these tokens would have
checked the abortive purpose.

After several such visits to the window, I found myself getting pretty
well acquainted with that little portion of the backside of the
universe which it presented to my view.  Over against the hotel and its
adjacent houses, at the distance of forty or fifty yards, was the rear
of a range of buildings which appeared to be spacious, modern, and
calculated for fashionable residences.  The interval between was
apportioned into grass-plots, and here and there an apology for a
garden, pertaining severally to these dwellings.  There were
apple-trees, and pear and peach trees, too, the fruit on which looked
singularly large, luxuriant, and abundant, as well it might, in a
situation so warm and sheltered, and where the soil had doubtless been
enriched to a more than natural fertility.  In two or three places
grapevines clambered upon trellises, and bore clusters already purple,
and promising the richness of Malta or Madeira in their ripened juice.
The blighting winds of our rigid climate could not molest these trees
and vines; the sunshine, though descending late into this area, and too
early intercepted by the height of the surrounding houses, yet lay
tropically there, even when less than temperate in every other region.
Dreary as was the day, the scene was illuminated by not a few sparrows
and other birds, which spread their wings, and flitted and fluttered,
and alighted now here, now there, and busily scratched their food out
of the wormy earth.  Most of these winged people seemed to have their
domicile in a robust and healthy buttonwood-tree.  It aspired upward,
high above the roofs of the houses, and spread a dense head of foliage
half across the area.

There was a cat--as there invariably is in such places--who evidently
thought herself entitled to the privileges of forest life in this close
heart of city conventionalisms.  I watched her creeping along the low,
flat roofs of the offices, descending a flight of wooden steps, gliding
among the grass, and besieging the buttonwood-tree, with murderous
purpose against its feathered citizens.  But, after all, they were
birds of city breeding, and doubtless knew how to guard themselves
against the peculiar perils of their position.

Bewitching to my fancy are all those nooks and crannies where Nature,
like a stray partridge, hides her head among the long-established
haunts of men!  It is likewise to be remarked, as a general rule, that
there is far more of the picturesque, more truth to native and
characteristic tendencies, and vastly greater suggestiveness in the
back view of a residence, whether in town or country, than in its
front.  The latter is always artificial; it is meant for the world's
eye, and is therefore a veil and a concealment.  Realities keep in the
rear, and put forward an advance guard of show and humbug.  The
posterior aspect of any old farmhouse, behind which a railroad has
unexpectedly been opened, is so different from that looking upon the
immemorial highway, that the spectator gets new ideas of rural life and
individuality in the puff or two of steam-breath which shoots him past
the premises.  In a city, the distinction between what is offered to
the public and what is kept for the family is certainly not less
striking.

But, to return to my window at the back of the hotel.  Together with a
due contemplation of the fruit-trees, the grapevines, the
buttonwood-tree, the cat, the birds, and many other particulars, I
failed not to study the row of fashionable dwellings to which all these
appertained.  Here, it must be confessed, there was a general sameness.
From the upper story to the first floor, they were so much alike, that
I could only conceive of the inhabitants as cut out on one identical
pattern, like little wooden toy-people of German manufacture.  One
long, united roof, with its thousands of slates glittering in the rain,
extended over the whole.  After the distinctness of separate characters
to which I had recently been accustomed, it perplexed and annoyed me
not to be able to resolve this combination of human interests into
well-defined elements.  It seemed hardly worth while for more than one
of those families to be in existence, since they all had the same
glimpse of the sky, all looked into the same area, all received just
their equal share of sunshine through the front windows, and all
listened to precisely the same noises of the street on which they
boarded.  Men are so much alike in their nature, that they grow
intolerable unless varied by their circumstances.

Just about this time a waiter entered my room.  The truth was, I had
rung the bell and ordered a sherry-cobbler.

"Can you tell me," I inquired, "what families reside in any of those
houses opposite?"

"The one right opposite is a rather stylish boarding-house," said the
waiter.  "Two of the gentlemen boarders keep horses at the stable of
our establishment.  They do things in very good style, sir, the people
that live there."

I might have found out nearly as much for myself, on examining the
house a little more closely, in one of the upper chambers I saw a young
man in a dressing-gown, standing before the glass and brushing his hair
for a quarter of an hour together.  He then spent an equal space of
time in the elaborate arrangement of his cravat, and finally made his
appearance in a dress-coat, which I suspected to be newly come from the
tailor's, and now first put on for a dinner-party.  At a window of the
next story below, two children, prettily dressed, were looking out.  By
and by a middle-aged gentleman came softly behind them, kissed the
little girl, and playfully pulled the little boy's ear.  It was a papa,
no doubt, just come in from his counting-room or office; and anon
appeared mamma, stealing as softly behind papa as he had stolen behind
the children, and laying her hand on his shoulder to surprise him.
Then followed a kiss between papa and mamma; but a noiseless one, for
the children did not turn their heads.

"I bless God for these good folks!" thought I to myself.  "I have not
seen a prettier bit of nature, in all my summer in the country, than
they have shown me here, in a rather stylish boarding-house.  I will
pay them a little more attention by and by."

On the first floor, an iron balustrade ran along in front of the tall
and spacious windows, evidently belonging to a back drawing-room; and
far into the interior, through the arch of the sliding-doors, I could
discern a gleam from the windows of the front apartment.  There were no
signs of present occupancy in this suite of rooms; the curtains being
enveloped in a protective covering, which allowed but a small portion
of their crimson material to be seen.  But two housemaids were
industriously at work; so that there was good prospect that the
boarding-house might not long suffer from the absence of its most
expensive and profitable guests.  Meanwhile, until they should appear,
I cast my eyes downward to the lower regions.  There, in the dusk that
so early settles into such places, I saw the red glow of the kitchen
range.  The hot cook, or one of her subordinates, with a ladle in her
hand, came to draw a cool breath at the back door.  As soon as she
disappeared, an Irish man-servant, in a white jacket, crept slyly
forth, and threw away the fragments of a china dish, which,
unquestionably, he had just broken.  Soon afterwards, a lady, showily
dressed, with a curling front of what must have been false hair, and
reddish-brown, I suppose, in hue,--though my remoteness allowed me only
to guess at such particulars,--this respectable mistress of the
boarding-house made a momentary transit across the kitchen window, and
appeared no more.  It was her final, comprehensive glance, in order to
make sure that soup, fish, and flesh were in a proper state of
readiness, before the serving up of dinner.

There was nothing else worth noticing about the house, unless it be
that on the peak of one of the dormer windows which opened out of the
roof sat a dove, looking very dreary and forlorn; insomuch that I
wondered why she chose to sit there, in the chilly rain, while her
kindred were doubtless nestling in a warm and comfortable dove-cote.
All at once this dove spread her wings, and, launching herself in the
air, came flying so straight across the intervening space, that I fully
expected her to alight directly on my window-sill.  In the latter part
of her course, however, she swerved aside, flew upward, and vanished,
as did, likewise, the slight, fantastic pathos with which I had
invested her.

Coverdale stays a bit away from his former apartments in a hotel. He feels like a traveler coming home from foreign lands to something familiar. Blithedale seems distant in time and space. He remembers how much he likes the thick, crowded nature of cities and the tumult of the streets, but is reluctant to throw himself in it headlong. On his first day he smokes and reads, and stares outside the window to the rear of a range of buildings. He can watch the inhabitants and get an impression of their true lives, which is much easier to do from the back of a building than from the front. He remarks on the general sameness of the buildings and is frustrated he cannot easily separate out individuals, as he was able to do at Blithedale. He asks a waiter about the houses and then begins to examine them more closely himself. He sees a young man in a dressing gown in one, a family in another, and a couple of housemaids in another. Eventually he sees a forlorn dove sitting alone in the rain; she flies away but does not come to his window


The next day, as soon as I thought of looking again towards the
opposite house, there sat the dove again, on the peak of the same
dormer window!  It was by no means an early hour, for the preceding
evening I had ultimately mustered enterprise enough to visit the
theatre, had gone late to bed, and slept beyond all limit, in my
remoteness from Silas Foster's awakening horn.  Dreams had tormented me
throughout the night.  The train of thoughts which, for months past,
had worn a track through my mind, and to escape which was one of my
chief objects in leaving Blithedale, kept treading remorselessly to and
fro in their old footsteps, while slumber left me impotent to regulate
them.  It was not till I had quitted my three friends that they first
began to encroach upon my dreams.  In those of the last night,
Hollingsworth and Zenobia, standing on either side of my bed, had bent
across it to exchange a kiss of passion. Priscilla, beholding
this,--for she seemed to be peeping in at the chamber window,--had
melted gradually away, and left only the sadness of her expression in
my heart.  There it still lingered, after I awoke; one of those
unreasonable sadnesses that you know not how to deal with, because it
involves nothing for common-sense to clutch.

It was a gray and dripping forenoon; gloomy enough in town, and still
gloomier in the haunts to which my recollections persisted in
transporting me.  For, in spite of my efforts to think of something
else, I thought how the gusty rain was drifting over the slopes and
valleys of our farm; how wet must be the foliage that overshadowed the
pulpit rock; how cheerless, in such a day, my hermitage--the
tree-solitude of my owl-like humors--in the vine-encircled heart of the
tall pine!  It was a phase of homesickness.  I had wrenched myself too
suddenly out of an accustomed sphere.  There was no choice, now, but to
bear the pang of whatever heartstrings were snapt asunder, and that
illusive torment (like the ache of a limb long ago cut off) by which a
past mode of life prolongs itself into the succeeding one.  I was full
of idle and shapeless regrets.  The thought impressed itself upon me
that I had left duties unperformed. With the power, perhaps, to act in
the place of destiny and avert misfortune from my friends, I had
resigned them to their fate.  That cold tendency, between instinct and
intellect, which made me pry with a speculative interest into people's
passions and impulses, appeared to have gone far towards unhumanizing
my heart.

But a man cannot always decide for himself whether his own heart is
cold or warm.  It now impresses me that, if I erred at all in regard to
Hollingsworth, Zenobia, and Priscilla, it was through too much
sympathy, rather than too little.

To escape the irksomeness of these meditations, I resumed my post at
the window.  At first sight, there was nothing new to be noticed. The
general aspect of affairs was the same as yesterday, except that the
more decided inclemency of to-day had driven the sparrows to shelter,
and kept the cat within doors; whence, however, she soon emerged,
pursued by the cook, and with what looked like the better half of a
roast chicken in her mouth.  The young man in the dress-coat was
invisible; the two children, in the story below, seemed to be romping
about the room, under the superintendence of a nursery-maid.  The
damask curtains of the drawing-room, on the first floor, were now fully
displayed, festooned gracefully from top to bottom of the windows,
which extended from the ceiling to the carpet. A narrower window, at
the left of the drawing-room, gave light to what was probably a small
boudoir, within which I caught the faintest imaginable glimpse of a
girl's figure, in airy drapery.  Her arm was in regular movement, as if
she were busy with her German worsted, or some other such pretty and
unprofitable handiwork.

While intent upon making out this girlish shape, I became sensible that
a figure had appeared at one of the windows of the drawing-room. There
was a presentiment in my mind; or perhaps my first glance, imperfect
and sidelong as it was, had sufficed to convey subtile information of
the truth.  At any rate, it was with no positive surprise, but as if I
had all along expected the incident, that, directing my eyes
thitherward, I beheld--like a full-length picture, in the space between
the heavy festoons of the window curtains--no other than Zenobia!  At
the same instant, my thoughts made sure of the identity of the figure
in the boudoir.  It could only be Priscilla.

Zenobia was attired, not in the almost rustic costume which she had
heretofore worn, but in a fashionable morning-dress.  There was,
nevertheless, one familiar point.  She had, as usual, a flower in her
hair, brilliant and of a rare variety, else it had not been Zenobia.
After a brief pause at the window, she turned away, exemplifying, in
the few steps that removed her out of sight, that noble and beautiful
motion which characterized her as much as any other personal charm. Not
one woman in a thousand could move so admirably as Zenobia.  Many women
can sit gracefully; some can stand gracefully; and a few, perhaps, can
assume a series of graceful positions.  But natural movement is the
result and expression of the whole being, and cannot be well and nobly
performed unless responsive to something in the character.  I often
used to think that music--light and airy, wild and passionate, or the
full harmony of stately marches, in accordance with her varying
mood--should have attended Zenobia's footsteps.

I waited for her reappearance.  It was one peculiarity, distinguishing
Zenobia from most of her sex, that she needed for her moral well-being,
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.

Coverdale notices the dove again as he looks out his window. He remembers the dreams he had last night, where Hollingsworth and Zenobia shared a passionate kiss and Priscilla faded away. In order to forget such scenes, he spends time looking at the boardinghouse across the way. The young man is gone and the children are playing. He sees a young woman in airy drapery, then sees another one who he is shocked to discover is actually Zenobia. He realizes the other must be Priscilla. The flower is in Zenobia's hair, and he marvels at how she moves in such a beautiful fashion. To his surprise he also sees Westervelt in the apartment, noticing how he and Zenobia seem to have a mutual dislike of each other. Coverdale knows that Zenobia has maintained a place in town, and retired to it occasionally with Priscilla, but feels that it is a odd coincidence that the place he chose is right across from it and he is now looking at these Blithedale residents. He becomes uncomfortable and "began to long for a catastrophe" to jolt everyone and let everything come to fruition. He sees Priscilla dressed more elegantly and fancifully than usual, and that she has that common expression of seeming to be listening to something. He looks at Westervelt and compares the man's smile to that of the Devil; he also notes his "cat-like circumspection" , which at that moment led him to look across the way and see Coverdale. Embarrassed, he knows he cannot pull away so he keeps looking. Zenobia looks across and sends barbs of scorn. She then salutes and dismisses him with brief gesture, and lowers the shades pertly

Theater, masks, stories, and art pervade the text. Despite the Community's lofty purposes, and their stated goal to till the earth, they are mostly artists and intellectuals who derive more pleasure from their games and leisure activities. Zenobia's story and Coverdale's exit to the city mark a turning point in the novel, where the narrative becomes more dreamlike, fragmented, unreliable, and infused with the language of the spiritual and the dramatic. Eliot's Pulpit is a fascinating yet often overlooked component of the novel, one that is tied in with larger questions about the relationship between the past and the present. It is related to the Puritans, who were moral and convicted but at the same time hypocritical and deluded. Critic Byron Stay writes of Eliot's Pulpit, explaining that the author "uses the wilderness setting...to represent Puritan strength in order to contrast the Blithedalers with their seventeenth-century counterparts." The Pulpit "mirrors and distorts the self-perceptions of the characters" and shows how they have very flimsy identities. It is a "neutral territory" where the characters inability to embody early ideals becomes plain. First, Stay explains who Eliot was: a Puritan apostle to the Indians and a writer, whom Hawthorne admired as a man with true character and a representative of "the survival of Puritan integrity in a world dominated by Puritan brutality." The Blithedalers may think that they are like him, but Hawthorne makes it clear that they are not. They think they are beyond "Puritan frigidity" but they truly aren't. Hollingsworth's philanthropy is false, and overall the Blithedalers have much more in common with the nonsectarian founders of Massachusetts Bay than they do with the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Their vision is much more self-interested than spiritual. Stay writes that the characteristics of the rock itself are telling; "The jaggedness of the rock suggests the Puritan-like callousness which undergirds the Blithedale experiment and foreshadows its impending disintegration. It also points to the psychological fissures which threaten each character from within." Since Coverdale only notices its softness, it is clear he cannot see the real truth behind appearances. If there is a focus on softness in the beginning, the shift to hardness later reveals the breakdowns each character is experiencing. The return to Eliot's Pulpit at the end of the novel, in which Zenobia holds sway, alludes to the witch trials of Salem and failures of Puritanism. Stay concludes, "Against the backdrop of Eliot's Pulpit, the utopians repeat Puritan history, but because they lack the Puritans' sense of moral direction, they are ultimately reduced to playing out a parody of Puritan barbarism." The characters' disintegration is the "decline that Hawthorne saw in the character of the mid-century American." Leo B. Levy also looks at the novel in its historical context, noting how "the extinction of predominantly rural America at the moment of its proposed revival at Blithedale threatens all traditional ties and institutions." Coverdale is between the old and the new, judging his friends according to traditional standards but aware of the changes imposing themselves on him as well. Both Coverdale and Hollingsworth embody "the sternness of the Puritan age", while Coverdale is indicative of the ultimate failure of uniting urban culture with the country -he is "a new kind of individual" and "the displaced person". Hawthorne is making his views  clear through Coverdale; the author "saw the value of an internal narrator whose integrity could be doubted precisely because he was so damaged by the conditions he describes as any of the other characters." Coverdale displays his voyeuristic tendencies to full effect here, obsessing over his friends across the way. His position at the window mirrors that of the hermitage. The vortex, the voyage into chaos that is Coverdale's obsession, manifests strongly here. Zenobia's story of the Veiled Lady is important, as it foreshadows the revelation of Priscilla later in the novel, and is also a part of the general theme of veiling and masks in the novel. The Blithedalers love to dress up, play roles and act, and, less in a spirit of fun, mask their true intentions and identities. Everyone has a secret, and ambiguity reigns.


The remainder of the day, so far as I was concerned, was spent in
meditating on these recent incidents.  I contrived, and alternately
rejected, innumerable methods of accounting for the presence of Zenobia
and Priscilla, and the connection of Westervelt with both. It must be
owned, too, that I had a keen, revengeful sense of the insult inflicted
by Zenobia's scornful recognition, and more particularly by her letting
down the curtain; as if such were the proper barrier to be interposed
between a character like hers and a perceptive faculty like mine.  For,
was mine a mere vulgar curiosity? Zenobia should have known me better
than to suppose it.  She should have been able to appreciate that
quality of the intellect and the heart which impelled me (often against
my own will, and to the detriment of my own comfort) to live in other
lives, and to endeavor--by generous sympathies, by delicate intuitions,
by taking note of things too slight for record, and by bringing my
human spirit into manifold accordance with the companions whom God
assigned me--to learn the secret which was hidden even from themselves.

Of all possible observers, methought a woman like Zenobia and a man
like Hollingsworth should have selected me.  And now when the event has
long been past, I retain the same opinion of my fitness for the office.
True, I might have condemned them.  Had I been judge as well as
witness, my sentence might have been stern as that of destiny itself.
But, still, no trait of original nobility of character, no struggle
against temptation,--no iron necessity of will, on the one hand, nor
extenuating circumstance to be derived from passion and despair, on the
other,--no remorse that might coexist with error, even if powerless to
prevent it,--no proud repentance that should claim retribution as a
meed,--would go unappreciated.  True, again, I might give my full
assent to the punishment which was sure to follow. But it would be
given mournfully, and with undiminished love.  And, after all was
finished, I would come as if to gather up the white ashes of those who
had perished at the stake, and to tell the world--the wrong being now
atoned for--how much had perished there which it had never yet known
how to praise.

I sat in my rocking-chair, too far withdrawn from the window to expose
myself to another rebuke like that already inflicted.  My eyes still
wandered towards the opposite house, but without effecting any new
discoveries.  Late in the afternoon, the weathercock on the church
spire indicated a change of wind; the sun shone dimly out, as if the
golden wine of its beams were mingled half-and-half with water.
Nevertheless, they kindled up the whole range of edifices, threw a glow
over the windows, glistened on the wet roofs, and, slowly withdrawing
upward, perched upon the chimney-tops; thence they took a higher
flight, and lingered an instant on the tip of the spire, making it the
final point of more cheerful light in the whole sombre scene.  The next
moment, it was all gone.  The twilight fell into the area like a shower
of dusky snow, and before it was quite dark, the gong of the hotel
summoned me to tea.

When I returned to my chamber, the glow of an astral lamp was
penetrating mistily through the white curtain of Zenobia's
drawing-room.  The shadow of a passing figure was now and then cast
upon this medium, but with too vague an outline for even my adventurous
conjectures to read the hieroglyphic that it presented.

All at once, it occurred to me how very absurd was my behavior in thus
tormenting myself with crazy hypotheses as to what was going on within
that drawing-room, when it was at my option to be personally present
there, My relations with Zenobia, as yet unchanged,--as a familiar
friend, and associated in the same life-long enterprise,--gave me the
right, and made it no more than kindly courtesy demanded, to call on
her.  Nothing, except our habitual independence of conventional rules
at Blithedale, could have kept me from sooner recognizing this duty.
At all events, it should now be performed.

In compliance with this sudden impulse, I soon found myself actually
within the house, the rear of which, for two days past, I had been so
sedulously watching.  A servant took my card, and, immediately
returning, ushered me upstairs.  On the way, I heard a rich, and, as it
were, triumphant burst of music from a piano, in which I felt Zenobia's
character, although heretofore I had known nothing of her skill upon
the instrument.  Two or three canary-birds, excited by this gush of
sound, sang piercingly, and did their utmost to produce a kindred
melody.  A bright illumination streamed through, the door of the front
drawing-room; and I had barely stept across the threshold before
Zenobia came forward to meet me, laughing, and with an extended hand.

"Ah, Mr. Coverdale," said she, still smiling, but, as I thought, with a
good deal of scornful anger underneath, "it has gratified me to see the
interest which you continue to take in my affairs!  I have long
recognized you as a sort of transcendental Yankee, with all the native
propensity of your countrymen to investigate matters that come within
their range, but rendered almost poetical, in your case, by the refined
methods which you adopt for its gratification.  After all, it was an
unjustifiable stroke, on my part,--was it not?--to let down the window
curtain!"

"I cannot call it a very wise one," returned I, with a secret
bitterness, which, no doubt, Zenobia appreciated.  "It is really
impossible to hide anything in this world, to say nothing of the next.
All that we ought to ask, therefore, is, that the witnesses of our
conduct, and the speculators on our motives, should be capable of
taking the highest view which the circumstances of the case may admit.
So much being secured, I, for one, would be most happy in feeling
myself followed everywhere by an indefatigable human sympathy."

"We must trust for intelligent sympathy to our guardian angels, if any
there be," said Zenobia.  "As long as the only spectator of my poor
tragedy is a young man at the window of his hotel, I must still claim
the liberty to drop the curtain."

While this passed, as Zenobia's hand was extended, I had applied the
very slightest touch of my fingers to her own.  In spite of an external
freedom, her manner made me sensible that we stood upon no real terms
of confidence.  The thought came sadly across me, how great was the
contrast betwixt this interview and our first meeting. Then, in the
warm light of the country fireside, Zenobia had greeted me cheerily and
hopefully, with a full sisterly grasp of the hand, conveying as much
kindness in it as other women could have evinced by the pressure of
both arms around my neck, or by yielding a cheek to the brotherly
salute.  The difference was as complete as between her appearance at
that time--so simply attired, and with only the one superb flower in
her hair--and now, when her beauty was set off by all that dress and
ornament could do for it.  And they did much.  Not, indeed, that they
created or added anything to what Nature had lavishly done for Zenobia.
But, those costly robes which she had on, those flaming jewels on her
neck, served as lamps to display the personal advantages which required
nothing less than such an illumination to be fully seen.  Even her
characteristic flower, though it seemed to be still there, had
undergone a cold and bright transfiguration; it was a flower
exquisitely imitated in jeweller's work, and imparting the last touch
that transformed Zenobia into a work of art.

"I scarcely feel," I could not forbear saying, "as if we had ever met
before.  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.  "But I
fancy it must be a very circumscribed mind that can find room for no
other."

Her manner bewildered me.  Literally, moreover, I was dazzled by the
brilliancy of the room.  A chandelier hung down in the centre, glowing
with I know not how many lights; there were separate lamps, also, on
two or three tables, and on marble brackets, adding their white
radiance to that of the chandelier.  The furniture was exceedingly
rich.  Fresh from our old farmhouse, with its homely board and benches
in the dining-room, and a few wicker chairs in the best parlor, it
struck me that here was the fulfilment of every fantasy of an
imagination revelling in various methods of costly self-indulgence and
splendid ease.  Pictures, marbles, vases,--in brief, more shapes of
luxury than there could be any object in enumerating, except for an
auctioneer's advertisement,--and the whole repeated and doubled by the
reflection of a great mirror, which showed me Zenobia's proud figure,
likewise, and my own.  It cost me, I acknowledge, a bitter sense of
shame, to perceive in myself a positive effort to bear up against the
effect which Zenobia sought to impose on me.  I reasoned against her,
in my secret mind, and strove so to keep my footing.  In the
gorgeousness with which she had surrounded herself,--in the redundance
of personal ornament, which the largeness of her physical nature and
the rich type of her beauty caused to seem so suitable,--I malevolently
beheld the true character of the woman, passionate, luxurious, lacking
simplicity, not deeply refined, incapable of pure and perfect taste.
But, the next instant, she was too powerful for all my opposing
struggles.  I saw how fit it was that she should make herself as
gorgeous as she pleased, and should do a thousand things that would
have been ridiculous in the poor, thin, weakly characters of other
women.  To this day, however, I hardly know whether I then beheld
Zenobia in her truest attitude, or whether that were the truer one in
which she had presented herself at Blithedale.  In both, there was
something like the illusion which a great actress flings around her.

"Have you given up Blithedale forever?"  I inquired.

"Why should you think so?" asked she.

"I cannot tell," answered I; "except that it appears all like a dream
that we were ever there together."

"It is not so to me," said Zenobia.  "I should think it a poor and
meagre nature that is capable of but one set of forms, and must convert
all the past into a dream merely because the present happens to be
unlike it.  Why should we be content with our homely life of a few
months past, to the exclusion of all other modes?  It was good; but
there are other lives as good, or better.  Not, you will understand,
that I condemn those who give themselves up to it more entirely than I,
for myself, should deem it wise to do."

It irritated me, this self-complacent, condescending, qualified
approval and criticism of a system to which many individuals--perhaps
as highly endowed as our gorgeous Zenobia--had contributed their all of
earthly endeavor, and their loftiest aspirations.  I determined to make
proof if there were any spell that would exorcise her out of the part
which she seemed to be acting.  She should be compelled to give me a
glimpse of something true; some nature, some passion, no matter whether
right or wrong, provided it were real.

"Your allusion to that class of circumscribed characters who can live
only in one mode of life," remarked I coolly, "reminds me of our poor
friend Hollingsworth.  Possibly he was in your thoughts when you spoke
thus.  Poor fellow!  It is a pity that, by the fault of a narrow
education, he should have so completely immolated himself to that one
idea of his, especially as the slightest modicum of common-sense would
teach him its utter impracticability.  Now that I have returned into
the world, and can look at his project from a distance, it requires
quite all my real regard for this respectable and well-intentioned man
to prevent me laughing at him,--as I find society at large does."

Zenobia's eyes darted lightning, her cheeks flushed, the vividness of
her expression was like the effect of a powerful light flaming up
suddenly within her.  My experiment had fully succeeded.  She had shown
me the true flesh and blood of her heart, by thus involuntarily
resenting my slight, pitying, half-kind, half-scornful mention of the
man who was all in all with her.  She herself probably felt this; for
it was hardly a moment before she tranquillized her uneven breath, and
seemed as proud and self-possessed as ever.

"I rather imagine," said she quietly, "that your appreciation falls
short of Mr. Hollingsworth's just claims.  Blind enthusiasm, absorption
in one idea, I grant, is generally ridiculous, and must be fatal to the
respectability of an ordinary man; it requires a very high and powerful
character to make it otherwise.  But a great man--as, perhaps, you do
not know--attains his normal condition only through the inspiration of
one great idea.  As a friend of Mr. Hollingsworth, and, at the same
time, a calm observer, I must tell you that he seems to me such a man.
But you are very pardonable for fancying him ridiculous.  Doubtless, he
is so--to you!  There can be no truer test of the noble and heroic, in
any individual, than the degree in which he possesses the faculty of
distinguishing heroism from absurdity."

I dared make no retort to Zenobia's concluding apothegm.  In truth, I
admired her fidelity.  It gave me a new sense of Hollingsworth's native
power, to discover that his influence was no less potent with this
beautiful woman here, in the midst of artificial life, than it had been
at the foot of the gray rock, and among the wild birch-trees of the
wood-path, when she so passionately pressed his hand against her heart.
The great, rude, shaggy, swarthy man!  And Zenobia loved him!

"Did you bring Priscilla with you?"  I resumed.  "Do you know I have
sometimes fancied it not quite safe, considering the susceptibility of
her temperament, that she should be so constantly within the sphere of
a man like Hollingsworth.  Such tender and delicate natures, among your
sex, have often, I believe, a very adequate appreciation of the heroic
element in men.  But then, again, I should suppose them as likely as
any other women to make a reciprocal impression. Hollingsworth could
hardly give his affections to a person capable of taking an independent
stand, but only to one whom he might absorb into himself.  He has
certainly shown great tenderness for Priscilla."

Zenobia had turned aside.  But I caught the reflection of her face in
the mirror, and saw that it was very pale,--as pale, in her rich
attire, as if a shroud were round her.

"Priscilla is here," said she, her voice a little lower than usual.
"Have not you learnt as much from your chamber window?  Would you like
to see her?"

She made a step or two into the back drawing-room, and
called,--"Priscilla!  Dear Priscilla!"

Coverdale is stung by Zenobia's lowering of the shades, and that she does not seem to know the purity of his intentions. She should have selected him for the holder of her secrets, not Hollingsworth. He might still have to judge, and to deliver punishment, but he would do it out of love. He glimpses an astral light in her room across the way, and chides himself for being silly - he ought to go over there and pay his respects. After all, they were friends. He arrives and she greets him with a face of smiling scorn, laughing that he seems to take such an interest in her affairs. He realizes they actually have no real intimacy between them, and things are very different from their first meeting. He looks at her jewels and costly garments and the cold, bright flower in her hair. He asks her if she ever was a part of Blithedale, and she scoffs that those ideas have their time and place but "it must be a very circumscribed mind that can find room fro no others". The brightness of the room is dazzling; the furniture is sumptuous and sets off Zenobia's proud figure. She appears powerful and stunningly beautiful. Coverdale asks if she has given up Blithedale, to which she replies that she has not but that there are other worlds as good or better. To provoke her, as he is now annoyed, he mentions Hollingsworth's singular vision. She becomes flushed and he thinks he has succeeded in revealing her true feelings. She hotly defends Hollingsworth's greatness, as a great man often has the inspiration of only one idea. Despite her scorn of him, Coverdale admires her fidelity to the man. He asks Zenobia if Priscilla is there, and remarks that it is dangerous for the young woman to be near a man like Hollingsworth. With a low voice, Zenobia calls for Priscilla

This set of chapters features incredible revelations : Priscilla is the Veiled Lady; Priscilla and Zenobia are sisters; Hollingsworth chooses Priscilla over Zenobia; Westervelt's role as manipulative mesmerist is made clear. Coverdale also reveals himself as an unreliable narrator, and the tone of the work shifts markedly into one that is more fragmented and dreamlike. Coverdale is one of critics' favorite topics, and with good reason. He is a voyeur, looking out panoptically, part of the action to an extent but more a watcher and a commenter. His preoccupation with his friends is unhealthy; he is jealous and embittered by their triangle and thus we cannot totally trust his observations. Kelley Griffith Jr. writes, "the narrator is biased, unreliable, unlikeable, and he distorts his characters" and that he has "a highly sensitive, ironical, intelligent, though disturbed mind". His narrative is reminiscent of those of postmodern writers in that it is like an interior monologue. The dream is the primary device Hawthorne uses to give form to the novel. While the first half of the novel moves logically, the second half starting from Coverdale's removal to the city is dreamlike, with "chaotic ordering of events and  refusal to fructify many of the crucial developments in the first half." Griffith notes three types of dreams -the utopian dream of the Blithedalers; the dream created by imagination and memory; and the dream one has when sleeping. Coverdale has the second two quite often, and threads the first part of his narrative with references to daydreams and dreams. Hawthorne also "equates Coverdale's fits of imagination with a dream state"; the meeting with Westervelt can come under scrutiny. Coverdale's dreams cannot be trusted, especially as they intrude on his daily life. There is certainly a shift in the second part of the novel, which Griffith calls "literally a different story" and "a voyage through chaos - mental chaos". Coverdale falls into the same stupefied state as the pigs he marvels at on his way out; his total lack of surprise at seeing his friends in the boarding house across the way is also consistent with a dream rather than reality. His sluggish, languid existence is dreamlike to say the least, and we cannot fully trust what he is recounting. The episode with Moodie-as-Fauntleroy is also suspicious. Griffith writes, "the saloon contains art works which either idealize reality or overemphasize it". Moodie's story is told while drunk, and Coverdale admits to some artistic license. Coverdale's return to Blithedale is also dreamlike and hellish, a phantasmagoria of strange creatures and interludes. Overall, Coverdale works his friends and their situations up in his imagination and "brings in his own guilt resulting from his moral obligation to them ." John Harmon McElroy and Edward L. McDonald agree, writing in their article that the coincidences in the second half of the novel defy rationality. Coverdale knew Zenobia had an apartment in the city, yet he marvels that he manages to look right into it from his hotel. Anther "coincidence" is that he happens to be at the Lyceum hall where Hollingsworth is. There are many questions about Coverdale's role in passing along information, such as Moodie's plan to take the money from Zenobia and give it to Priscilla. The authors also find it odd that Coverdale has such a somber attitude about visiting Blithedale again when he is there ostensibly to visit friends. Finally, mesmerism was something that Hawthorne despised, and its ridiculousness and dangerousness are revealed in the chapter with Priscilla-as-the-Veiled-Lady. Westervelt, with consent from Moodie, brought her into it against her will, and it seems likely that Zenobia and Hollingsworth helped push her back into it. Hollingsworth then becomes her savior, but it is likely that that happens because he knows he can use her fortune  to build his visionary edifice.


Priscilla immediately answered the summons, and made her appearance
through the door of the boudoir.  I had conceived the idea, which I now
recognized as a very foolish one, that Zenobia would have taken
measures to debar me from an interview with this girl, between whom and
herself there was so utter an opposition of their dearest interests,
that, on one part or the other, a great grief, if not likewise a great
wrong, seemed a matter of necessity.  But, as Priscilla was only a leaf
floating on the dark current of events, without influencing them by her
own choice or plan, as she probably guessed not whither the stream was
bearing her, nor perhaps even felt its inevitable movement,--there
could be no peril of her communicating to me any intelligence with
regard to Zenobia's purposes.

On perceiving me, she came forward with great quietude of manner; and
when I held out my hand, her own moved slightly towards it, as if
attracted by a feeble degree of magnetism.

"I am glad to see you, my dear Priscilla," said I, still holding her
hand; "but everything that I meet with nowadays makes me wonder whether
I am awake.  You, especially, have always seemed like a figure in a
dream, and now more than ever."

"Oh, there is substance in these fingers of mine," she answered, giving
my hand the faintest possible pressure, and then taking away her own.
"Why do you call me a dream?  Zenobia is much more like one than I; she
is so very, very beautiful!  And, I suppose," added Priscilla, as if
thinking aloud, "everybody sees it, as I do."

But, for my part, it was Priscilla's beauty, not Zenobia's, of which I
was thinking at that moment.  She was a person who could be quite
obliterated, so far as beauty went, by anything unsuitable in her
attire; her charm was not positive and material enough to bear up
against a mistaken choice of color, for instance, or fashion.  It was
safest, in her case, to attempt no art of dress; for it demanded the
most perfect taste, or else the happiest accident in the world, to give
her precisely the adornment which she needed.  She was now dressed in
pure white, set off with some kind of a gauzy fabric, which--as I bring
up her figure in my memory, with a faint gleam on her shadowy hair, and
her dark eyes bent shyly on mine, through all the vanished years--seems
to be floating about her like a mist.  I wondered what Zenobia meant by
evolving so much loveliness out of this poor girl.  It was what few
women could afford to do; for, as I looked from one to the other, the
sheen and splendor of Zenobia's presence took nothing from Priscilla's
softer spell, if it might not rather be thought to add to it.

"What do you think of her?" asked Zenobia.

I could not understand the look of melancholy kindness with which
Zenobia regarded her.  She advanced a step, and beckoning Priscilla
near her, kissed her cheek; then, with a slight gesture of repulse, she
moved to the other side of the room.  I followed.

"She is a wonderful creature," I said.  "Ever since she came among us,
I have been dimly sensible of just this charm which you have brought
out.  But it was never absolutely visible till now.  She is as lovely
as a flower!"

"Well, say so if you like," answered Zenobia.  "You are a poet,--at
least, as poets go nowadays,--and must be allowed to make an
opera-glass of your imagination, when you look at women.  I wonder, in
such Arcadian freedom of falling in love as we have lately enjoyed, it
never occurred to you to fall in love with Priscilla.  In society,
indeed, a genuine American never dreams of stepping across the
inappreciable air-line which separates one class from another.  But
what was rank to the colonists of Blithedale?"

"There were other reasons," I replied, "why I should have demonstrated
myself an ass, had I fallen in love with Priscilla.  By the bye, has
Hollingsworth ever seen her in this dress?"

"Why do you bring up his name at every turn?" asked Zenobia in an
undertone, and with a malign look which wandered from my face to
Priscilla's.  "You know not what you do!  It is dangerous, sir, believe
me, to tamper thus with earnest human passions, out of your own mere
idleness, and for your sport.  I will endure it no longer!  Take care
that it does not happen again!  I warn you!"

"You partly wrong me, if not wholly," I responded.  "It is an uncertain
sense of some duty to perform, that brings my thoughts, and therefore
my words, continually to that one point."

"Oh, this stale excuse of duty!" said Zenobia, in a whisper so full of
scorn that it penetrated me like the hiss of a serpent.  "I have often
heard it before, from those who sought to interfere with me, and I know
precisely what it signifies.  Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent
curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a cold-blooded criticism, founded on a
shallow interpretation of half-perceptions; a monstrous scepticism in
regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's own; a most
irreverent propensity to thrust Providence aside, and substitute one's
self in its awful place,--out of these, and other motives as miserable
as these, comes your idea of duty!  But, beware, sir!  With all your
fancied acuteness, you step blindfold into these affairs.  For any
mischief that may follow your interference, I hold you responsible!"

It was evident that, with but a little further provocation, the lioness
would turn to bay; if, indeed, such were not her attitude already.  I
bowed, and not very well knowing what else to do, was about to
withdraw.  But, glancing again towards Priscilla, who had retreated
into a corner, there fell upon my heart an intolerable burden of
despondency, the purport of which I could not tell, but only felt it to
bear reference to her.  I approached and held out my hand; a gesture,
however, to which she made no response.  It was always one of her
peculiarities that she seemed to shrink from even the most friendly
touch, unless it were Zenobia's or Hollingsworth's. Zenobia, all this
while, stood watching us, but with a careless expression, as if it
mattered very little what might pass.

"Priscilla," I inquired, lowering my voice, "when do you go back to
Blithedale?"

"Whenever they please to take me," said she.

"Did you come away of your own free will?"  I asked.

"I am blown about like a leaf," she replied.  "I never have any free
will."

"Does Hollingsworth know that you are here?" said I.

"He bade me come," answered Priscilla.

She looked at me, I thought, with an air of surprise, as if the idea
were incomprehensible that she should have taken this step without his
agency.

"What a gripe this man has laid upon her whole being!" muttered I
between my teeth.

"Well, as Zenobia so kindly intimates, I have no more business here. I
wash my hands of it all.  On Hollingsworth's head be the consequences!
Priscilla," I added aloud, "I know not that ever we may meet again.
Farewell!"

As I spoke the word, a carriage had rumbled along the street, and stopt
before the house.  The doorbell rang, and steps were immediately
afterwards heard on the staircase.  Zenobia had thrown a shawl over her
dress.

"Mr. Coverdale," said she, with cool courtesy, "you will perhaps excuse
us.  We have an engagement, and are going out."

"Whither?"  I demanded.

"Is not that a little more than you are entitled to inquire?" said she,
with a smile.  "At all events, it does not suit me to tell you."

The door of the drawing-room opened, and Westervelt appeared.  I
observed that he was elaborately dressed, as if for some grand
entertainment.  My dislike for this man was infinite.  At that moment
it amounted to nothing less than a creeping of the flesh, as when,
feeling about in a dark place, one touches something cold and slimy,
and questions what the secret hatefulness may be.  And still I could
not but acknowledge that, for personal beauty, for polish of manner,
for all that externally befits a gentleman, there was hardly another
like him.  After bowing to Zenobia, and graciously saluting Priscilla
in her corner, he recognized me by a slight but courteous inclination.

"Come, Priscilla," said Zenobia; "it is time.  Mr. Coverdale,
good-evening."

As Priscilla moved slowly forward, I met her in the middle of the
drawing-room.

"Priscilla," said I, in the hearing of them all, "do you know whither
you are going?"

"I do not know," she answered.

"Is it wise to go, and is it your choice to go?"  I asked.  "If not, I
am your friend, and Hollingsworth's friend.  Tell me so, at once."

"Possibly," observed Westervelt, smiling, "Priscilla sees in me an
older friend than either Mr. Coverdale or Mr. Hollingsworth.  I shall
willingly leave the matter at her option."

While thus speaking, he made a gesture of kindly invitation, and
Priscilla passed me, with the gliding movement of a sprite, and took
his offered arm.  He offered the other to Zenobia; but she turned her
proud and beautiful face upon him with a look which--judging from what
I caught of it in profile--would undoubtedly have smitten the man dead,
had he possessed any heart, or had this glance attained to it.  It
seemed to rebound, however, from his courteous visage, like an arrow
from polished steel.  They all three descended the stairs; and when I
likewise reached the street door, the carriage was already rolling away.

Coverdale compares Pricilla to a leaf, "floating on the dark current of events". She enters, and her beauty strikes him, which he has not noticed before. She is dressed in gauzy fabric. Zenobia asks what he thinks of her and he says she is marvelous. Zenobia wonders why he never fell in love with her, and suggests it may be class. Coverdale asks if Hollingsworth has seen Priscilla in that dress, and Zenobia becomes annoyed that he always mentions that man. Coverdale replies that he has a duty, which Zenobia says in disgust is often an excuse for bigotry, self-conceit, inappropriate curiosity, etc. Coverdale asks Priscilla if she is going to go back to Blithedale and she replies softly that she will if they take her there, as she has no free will. She says Hollingsworth made her come here. Zenobia announces that they have another engagement and must leave; Coverdale then demands to know where they are going. Irritated, Zenobia says it is not his place to ask. Westervelt enters, and Coverdale feels the customary unease and distaste steal over him. He asks Priscilla where she is going and she shrugs that she does not know. Westervelt offers an arm to Priscilla, then one to Zenobia, who spurns it


Thus excluded from everybody's confidence, and attaining no further, by
my most earnest study, than to an uncertain sense of something hidden
from me, it would appear reasonable that I should have flung off all
these alien perplexities.  Obviously, my best course was to betake
myself to new scenes.  Here I was only an intruder.  Elsewhere there
might be circumstances in which I could establish a personal interest,
and people who would respond, with a portion of their sympathies, for
so much as I should bestow of mine.

Nevertheless, there occurred to me one other thing to be done.
Remembering old Moodie, and his relationship with Priscilla, I
determined to seek an interview, for the purpose of ascertaining
whether the knot of affairs was as inextricable on that side as I found
it on all others.  Being tolerably well acquainted with the old man's
haunts, I went, the next day, to the saloon of a certain establishment
about which he often lurked.  It was a reputable place enough,
affording good entertainment in the way of meat, drink, and fumigation;
and there, in my young and idle days and nights, when I was neither
nice nor wise, I had often amused myself with watching the staid humors
and sober jollities of the thirsty souls around me.

At my first entrance, old Moodie was not there.  The more patiently to
await him, I lighted a cigar, and establishing myself in a corner, took
a quiet, and, by sympathy, a boozy kind of pleasure in the customary
life that was going forward.  The saloon was fitted up with a good deal
of taste.  There were pictures on the walls, and among them an
oil-painting of a beefsteak, with such an admirable show of juicy
tenderness, that the beholder sighed to think it merely visionary, and
incapable of ever being put upon a gridiron.  Another work of high art
was the lifelike representation of a noble sirloin; another, the
hindquarters of a deer, retaining the hoofs and tawny fur; another, the
head and shoulders of a salmon; and, still more exquisitely finished, a
brace of canvasback ducks, in which the mottled feathers were depicted
with the accuracy of a daguerreotype. Some very hungry painter, I
suppose, had wrought these subjects of still-life, heightening his
imagination with his appetite, and earning, it is to be hoped, the
privilege of a daily dinner off whichever of his pictorial viands he
liked best.

Then there was a fine old cheese, in which you could almost discern the
mites; and some sardines, on a small plate, very richly done, and
looking as if oozy with the oil in which they had been smothered. All
these things were so perfectly imitated, that you seemed to have the
genuine article before you, and yet with an indescribable, ideal charm;
it took away the grossness from what was fleshiest and fattest, and
thus helped the life of man, even in its earthliest relations, to
appear rich and noble, as well as warm, cheerful, and substantial.
There were pictures, too, of gallant revellers, those of the old time,
Flemish, apparently, with doublets and slashed sleeves, drinking their
wine out of fantastic, long-stemmed glasses; quaffing joyously,
quaffing forever, with inaudible laughter and song; while the champagne
bubbled immortally against their moustaches, or the purple tide of
Burgundy ran inexhaustibly down their throats.

But, in an obscure corner of the saloon, there was a little Picture
excellently done, moreover of a ragged, bloated, New England toper,
stretched out on a bench, in the heavy, apoplectic sleep of
drunkenness.  The death-in-life was too well portrayed.  You smelt the
fumy liquor that had brought on this syncope.  Your only comfort lay in
the forced reflection, that, real as he looked, the poor caitiff was
but imaginary, a bit of painted canvass, whom no delirium tremens, nor
so much as a retributive headache, awaited, on the morrow.

By this time, it being past eleven o'clock, the two bar-keepers of the
saloon were in pretty constant activity.  One of these young men had a
rare faculty in the concoction of gin-cocktails.  It was a spectacle to
behold, how, with a tumbler in each hand, he tossed the contents from
one to the other.  Never conveying it awry, nor spilling the least
drop, he compelled the frothy liquor, as it seemed to me, to spout
forth from one glass and descend into the other, in a great parabolic
curve, as well-defined and calculable as a planet's orbit.  He had a
good forehead, with a particularly large development just above the
eyebrows; fine intellectual gifts, no doubt, which he had educated to
this profitable end; being famous for nothing but gin-cocktails, and
commanding a fair salary by his one accomplishment. These cocktails,
and other artificial combinations of liquor, (of which there were at
least a score, though mostly, I suspect, fantastic in their
differences,) were much in favor with the younger class of customers,
who, at farthest, had only reached the second stage of potatory life.
The staunch, old soakers, on the other hand men who, if put on tap,
would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor, by way of blood usually
confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water, gin, or West India rum;
and, oftentimes, they prefaced their dram with some medicinal remark as
to the wholesomeness and stomachic qualities of that particular drink.
Two or three appeared to have bottles of their own behind the counter;
and, winking one red eye to the bar-keeper, he forthwith produced these
choicest and peculiar cordials, which it was a matter of great interest
and favor, among their acquaintances, to obtain a sip of.

Agreeably to the Yankee habit, under whatever circumstances, the
deportment of all these good fellows, old or young, was decorous and
thoroughly correct.  They grew only the more sober in their cups; there
was no confused babble nor boisterous laughter.  They sucked in the
joyous fire of the decanters and kept it smouldering in their inmost
recesses, with a bliss known only to the heart which it warmed and
comforted.  Their eyes twinkled a little, to be sure; they hemmed
vigorously after each glass, and laid a hand upon the pit of the
stomach, as if the pleasant titillation there was what constituted the
tangible part of their enjoyment.  In that spot, unquestionably, and
not in the brain, was the acme of the whole affair.  But the true
purpose of their drinking--and one that will induce men to drink, or do
something equivalent, as long as this weary world shall endure--was the
renewed youth and vigor, the brisk, cheerful sense of things present
and to come, with which, for about a quarter of an hour, the dram
permeated their systems.  And when such quarters of an hour can be
obtained in some mode less baneful to the great sum of a man's
life,--but, nevertheless, with a little spice of impropriety, to give
it a wild flavor,--we temperance people may ring out our bells for
victory!

The prettiest object in the saloon was a tiny fountain, which threw up
its feathery jet through the counter, and sparkled down again into an
oval basin, or lakelet, containing several goldfishes.  There was a bed
of bright sand at the bottom, strewn with coral and rock-work; and the
fishes went gleaming about, now turning up the sheen of a golden side,
and now vanishing into the shadows of the water, like the fanciful
thoughts that coquet with a poet in his dream.  Never before, I
imagine, did a company of water-drinkers remain so entirely
uncontaminated by the bad example around them; nor could I help
wondering that it had not occurred to any freakish inebriate to empty a
glass of liquor into their lakelet.  What a delightful idea!  Who would
not be a fish, if he could inhale jollity with the essential element of
his existence!

I had begun to despair of meeting old Moodie, when, all at once, I
recognized his hand and arm protruding from behind a screen that was
set up for the accommodation of bashful topers.  As a matter of course,
he had one of Priscilla's little purses, and was quietly insinuating it
under the notice of a person who stood near.  This was always old
Moodie's way.  You hardly ever saw him advancing towards you, but
became aware of his proximity without being able to guess how he had
come thither.  He glided about like a spirit, assuming visibility close
to your elbow, offering his petty trifles of merchandise, remaining
long enough for you to purchase, if so disposed, and then taking
himself off, between two breaths, while you happened to be thinking of
something else.

By a sort of sympathetic impulse that often controlled me in those more
impressible days of my life, I was induced to approach this old man in
a mode as undemonstrative as his own.  Thus, when, according to his
custom, he was probably just about to vanish, he found me at his elbow.

"Ah!" said he, with more emphasis than was usual with him.  "It is Mr.
Coverdale!"

"Yes, Mr. Moodie, your old acquaintance," answered I. "It is some time
now since we ate luncheon together at Blithedale, and a good deal
longer since our little talk together at the street corner."

"That was a good while ago," said the old man.

And he seemed inclined to say not a word more.  His existence looked so
colorless and torpid,--so very faintly shadowed on the canvas of
reality,--that I was half afraid lest he should altogether disappear,
even while my eyes were fixed full upon his figure.  He was certainly
the wretchedest old ghost in the world, with his crazy hat, the dingy
handkerchief about his throat, his suit of threadbare gray, and
especially that patch over his right eye, behind which he always seemed
to be hiding himself.  There was one method, however, of bringing him
out into somewhat stronger relief.  A glass of brandy would effect it.
Perhaps the gentler influence of a bottle of claret might do the same.
Nor could I think it a matter for the recording angel to write down
against me, if--with my painful consciousness of the frost in this old
man's blood, and the positive ice that had congealed about his heart--I
should thaw him out, were it only for an hour, with the summer warmth
of a little wine.  What else could possibly be done for him?  How else
could he be imbued with energy enough to hope for a happier state
hereafter?  How else be inspired to say his prayers?  For there are
states of our spiritual system when the throb of the soul's life is too
faint and weak to render us capable of religious aspiration.

"Mr. Moodie," said I, "shall we lunch together?  And would you like to
drink a glass of wine?"

His one eye gleamed.  He bowed; and it impressed me that he grew to be
more of a man at once, either in anticipation of the wine, or as a
grateful response to my good fellowship in offering it.

"With pleasure," he replied.

The bar-keeper, at my request, showed us into a private room, and soon
afterwards set some fried oysters and a bottle of claret on the table;
and I saw the old man glance curiously at the label of the bottle, as
if to learn the brand.

"It should be good wine," I remarked, "if it have any right to its
label."

"You cannot suppose, sir," said Moodie, with a sigh, "that a poor old
fellow like me knows any difference in wines."

And yet, in his way of handling the glass, in his preliminary snuff at
the aroma, in his first cautious sip of the wine, and the gustatory
skill with which he gave his palate the full advantage of it, it was
impossible not to recognize the connoisseur.

"I fancy, Mr. Moodie," said I, "you are a much better judge of wines
than I have yet learned to be.  Tell me fairly,--did you never drink it
where the grape grows?"

"How should that have been, Mr. Coverdale?" answered old Moodie shyly;
but then he took courage, as it were, and uttered a feeble little
laugh.  "The flavor of this wine," added he, "and its perfume still
more than its taste, makes me remember that I was once a young man."

"I wish, Mr. Moodie," suggested I,--not that I greatly cared about it,
however, but was only anxious to draw him into some talk about
Priscilla and Zenobia,--"I wish, while we sit over our wine, you would
favor me with a few of those youthful reminiscences."

"Ah," said he, shaking his head, "they might interest you more than you
suppose.  But I had better be silent, Mr. Coverdale.  If this good
wine,--though claret, I suppose, is not apt to play such a trick,--but
if it should make my tongue run too freely, I could never look you in
the face again."

"You never did look me in the face, Mr. Moodie," I replied, "until this
very moment."

"Ah!" sighed old Moodie.

It was wonderful, however, what an effect the mild grape-juice wrought
upon him.  It was not in the wine, but in the associations which it
seemed to bring up.  Instead of the mean, slouching, furtive, painfully
depressed air of an old city vagabond, more like a gray kennel-rat than
any other living thing, he began to take the aspect of a decayed
gentleman.  Even his garments--especially after I had myself quaffed a
glass or two--looked less shabby than when we first sat down.  There
was, by and by, a certain exuberance and elaborateness of gesture and
manner, oddly in contrast with all that I had hitherto seen of him.
Anon, with hardly any impulse from me, old Moodie began to talk.  His
communications referred exclusively to a long-past and more fortunate
period of his life, with only a few unavoidable allusions to the
circumstances that had reduced him to his present state.  But, having
once got the clew, my subsequent researches acquainted me with the main
facts of the following narrative; although, in writing it out, my pen
has perhaps allowed itself a trifle of romantic and legendary license,
worthier of a small poet than of a grave biographer.

Being no one's confidant, Coverdale decides to find new scenes. He remembers Old Moodie and considers he might talk to him of his former friends. He finds a saloon he knows the man frequents and settles in to see if he shows up. While waiting, he reflects on how alcohol is good for humans, and can make the cold world look warmer. He praises the paintings on the wall, which are still lifes of food that look very real. There are many people in the bar, all of whom have upstanding behavior. Finally Moodie enters, and although he is pale and quiet at first, he consents to a drink with Coverdale in a private room. The drink relaxes him, and Coverdale encourages him to tell stories of his life. Moodie consents, and tells the story of Fauntleroy