The heart of time womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!"Never was mortal blessed--if blessing it were--with a glance of such entire acquiescence and unquestioning faith, happy in its completeness, as our little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on Hollingsworth.She seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into her heart, and brood over it in perfect content.The very woman whom he pictured--the gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a more powerful existence--sat there at his feet.
I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent--as I felt, by the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought this outrageous affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of masculine egotism.It centred everything in itself, and deprived woman of her very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to make it a mere incident in the great sum of man.Hollingsworth had boldly uttered what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt.Without intending it, he had disclosed the wellspring of all these troubled waters.Now, if ever, it surely behooved Zenobia to be the champion of her sex.
But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled.Some tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not anger.
"Well, be it so," was all she said."I, at least, have deep cause to think you right.Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only too ready to become to him what you say!"I smiled--somewhat bitterly, it is true--in contemplation of my own ill-luck.How little did these two women care for me, who had freely conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness of my heart; while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible injustice, seemed to have brought them both to his feet!
"Women almost invariably behave thus," thought I."What does the fact mean? Is it their nature? Or is it, at last, the result of ages of compelled degradation? And, in either case, will it be possible ever to redeem them?"An intuition now appeared to possess all the party, that, for this time, at least, there was no more to be said.With one accord, we arose from the ground, and made our way through the tangled undergrowth towards one of those pleasant wood-paths that wound among the overarching trees.
Some of the branches hung so low as partly to conceal the figures that went before from those who followed.Priscilla had leaped up more lightly than the rest of us, and ran along in advance, with as much airy activity of spirit as was typified in the motion of a bird, which chanced to be flitting from tree to tree, in the same direction as herself.
Never did she seem so happy as that afternoon.She skipt, and could not help it, from very playfulness of heart.
Zenobia and Hollingsworth went next, in close contiguity, but not with arm in arm.Now, just when they had passed the impending bough of a birch-tree, I plainly saw Zenobia take the hand of Hollingsworth in both her own, press it to her bosom, and let it fall again!
The gesture was sudden, and full of passion; the impulse had evidently taken her by surprise; it expressed all! Had Zenobia knelt before him, or flung herself upon his breast, and gasped out," I love you, Hollingsworth!" I could not have been more certain of what it meant.
They then walked onward, as before.But, methought, as the declining sun threw Zenobia's magnified shadow along the path, I beheld it tremulous;and the delicate stem of the flower which she wore in her hair was likewise responsive to her agitation.
Priscilla--through the medium of her eyes, at least could not possibly have been aware of the gesture above described.Yet, at that instant, Isaw her droop.The buoyancy, which just before had been so bird-like, was utterly departed; the life seemed to pass out of her, and even the substance of her figure to grow thin and gray.I almost imagined her a shadow, tiding gradually into the dimness of the wood.Her pace became so slow that Hollingsworth and Zenobia passed by, and I, without hastening my footsteps, overtook her.
