As for Westervelt, he was not a whit more warmed by Zenobia's passion than a salamander by the heat of its native furnace.He would have been absolutely statuesque, save for a look of slight perplexity, tinctured strongly with derision.It was a crisis in which his intellectual perceptions could not altogether help him out.He failed to comprehend, and cared but little for comprehending, why Zenobia should put herself into such a fume; but satisfied his mind that it was all folly, and only another shape of a woman's manifold absurdity, which men can never understand.How many a woman's evil fate has yoked her with a man like this! Nature thrusts some of us into the world miserably incomplete on the emotional side, with hardly any sensibilities except what pertain to us as animals.No passion, save of the senses; no holy tenderness, nor the delicacy that results from this.Externally they bear a close resemblance to other men, and have perhaps all save the finest grace; but when a woman wrecks herself on such a being, she ultimately finds that the real womanhood within her has no corresponding part in him.Her deepest voice lacks a response; the deeper her cry, the more dead his silence.The fault may be none of his; he cannot give her what never lived within his soul.But the wretchedness on her side, and the moral deterioration attendant on a false and shallow life, without strength enough to keep itself sweet, are among the most pitiable wrongs that mortals suffer.
Now, as I looked down from my upper region at this man and woman, --outwardly so fair a sight, and wandering like two lovers in the wood, --I imagined that Zenobia, at an earlier period of youth, might have fallen into the misfortune above indicated.And when her passionate womanhood, as was inevitable, had discovered its mistake, here had ensued the character of eccentricity and defiance which distinguished the more public portion of her life.
Seeing how aptly matters had chanced thus far, I began to think it the design of fate to let me into all Zenobia's secrets, and that therefore the couple would sit down beneath my tree, and carry on a conversation Which would leave me nothing to inquire.No doubt, however, had it so happened, I should have deemed myself honorably bound to warn them of a listener's presence by flinging down a handful of unripe grapes, or by sending an unearthly groan out of my hiding-place, as if this were one of the trees of Dante's ghostly forest.But real life never arranges itself exactly like a romance.In the first place, they did not sit down at all.
Secondly, even while they passed beneath the tree, Zenobia's utterance was so hasty and broken, and Westervelt's so cool and low, that I hardly could make out an intelligible sentence on either side.What I seem to remember, I yet suspect, may have been patched together by my fancy, in brooding over the matter afterwards.
"Why not fling the girl off," said Westervelt, "and let her go?""She clung to me from the first," replied Zenobia."I neither know nor care what it is in me that so attaches her.But she loves me, and I will not fail her.""She will plague you, then," said he, "in more ways than one.""The poor child!" exclaimed Zenobia."She can do me neither good nor harm.How should she?"I know not what reply Westervelt whispered; nor did Zenobia's subsequent exclamation give me any clew, except that it evidently inspired her with horror and disgust.
"With what kind of a being am I linked?" cried she."If my Creator cares aught for my soul, let him release me from this miserable bond!""I did not think it weighed so heavily," said her companion..
"Nevertheless," answered Zenobia, "it will strangle me at last!"And then I heard her utter a helpless sort of moan; a sound which, struggling out of the heart of a person of her pride and strength, affected me more than if she had made the wood dolorously vocal with a thousand shrieks and wails.
Other mysterious words, besides what are above written, they spoke together; but I understood no more, and even question whether I fairly understood so much as this.By long brooding over our recollections, we subtilize them into something akin to imaginary stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from it.In a few moments they were completely beyond ear-shot.A breeze stirred after them, and awoke the leafy tongues of the surrounding trees, which forthwith began to babble, as if innumerable gossips had all at once got wind of Zenobia's secret.But, as the breeze grew stronger, its voice among the branches was as if it said, "Hush! Hush!" and I resolved that to no mortal would I disclose what I had heard.And, though there might be room for casuistry, such, Iconceive, is the most equitable rule in all similar conjunctures.
