Well, I betook myself away, and wandered up and down, like an exorcised
spirit that had been driven from its old haunts after a mighty
struggle. It takes down the solitary pride of man, beyond most other
things, to find the impracticability of flinging aside affections that
have grown irksome. The bands that were silken once are apt to become
iron fetters when we desire to shake them off. Our souls, after all,
are not our own. We convey a property in them to those with whom we
associate; but to what extent can never be known, until we feel the
tug, the agony, of our abortive effort to resume an exclusive sway over
ourselves.
Thus, in all the weeks of my absence, my thoughts
continually reverted back, brooding over the bygone months, and
bringing up incidents that seemed hardly to have left a trace of
themselves in their passage. I spent painful hours in recalling these
trifles, and rendering them more misty and unsubstantial than at first
by the quantity of speculative musing thus kneaded in with them.
Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla! These three had absorbed my life
into themselves. Together with an inexpressible longing to know their
fortunes, there was likewise a morbid resentment of my own pain, and a
stubborn reluctance to come again within their sphere.
All that I learned of them, therefore, was comprised in a few brief and
pungent squibs, such as the newspapers were then in the habit of
bestowing on our socialist enterprise. There was one paragraph, which
if I rightly guessed its purport bore reference to Zenobia, but was too
darkly hinted to convey even thus much of certainty. Hollingsworth,
too, with his philanthropic project, afforded the penny-a-liners a
theme for some savage and bloody minded jokes; and, considerably to my
surprise, they affected me with as much indignation as if we had still
been friends.
Thus passed several weeks; time long enough for my brown and
toil-hardened hands to reaccustom themselves to gloves. Old habits,
such as were merely external, returned upon me with wonderful
promptitude. My superficial talk, too, assumed altogether a worldly
tone. Meeting former acquaintances, who showed themselves inclined to
ridicule my heroic devotion to the cause of human welfare, I spoke of
the recent phase of my life as indeed fair matter for a jest. But, I
also gave them to understand that it was, at most, only an experiment,
on which I had staked no valuable amount of hope or fear. It had
enabled me to pass the summer in a novel and agreeable way, had
afforded me some grotesque specimens of artificial simplicity, and
could not, therefore, so far as I was concerned, be reckoned a failure.
In no one instance, however, did I voluntarily speak of my three
friends. They dwelt in a profounder region. The more I consider
myself as I then was, the more do I recognize how deeply my connection
with those three had affected all my being.