In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the
higher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized, and
that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of
that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to
comprise all of life within itself.
higher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized, and
that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of
that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to
comprise all of life within itself.
Hawthorne - Scarlett Letter
"
Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of the
hall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted with
closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt
at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have
relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of
the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for
subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening.
Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some
distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of
its gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window; as if to warn
the Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an
ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few
rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the
descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first
settler of the peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who rides
through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.
Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would
not be pacified.
"Hush, child, hush! " said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry, dear
little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, and
gentlemen along with him! "
In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons were
seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of her
mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then
became silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick
and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance
of these new personages.
[Illustration]
VIII.
THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.
Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap,--such as elderly
gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic
privacy,--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate,
and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference
of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated
fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little
like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his
aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal
age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment
wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it
is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers--though accustomed
to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and
warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life
at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such
means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp.
This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over
Governor Bellingham's shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears
and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and
that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against the
sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of
the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for
all good and comfortable things; and however stern he might show
himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions
as that of Hester Prynne, still the genial benevolence of his private
life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his
professional contemporaries.
Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests: one the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having
taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old Roger
Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or
three years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood that
this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young
minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too
unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral
relation.
The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps,
and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window, found himself
close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester
Prynne, and partially concealed her.
"What have we here? " said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise
at the scarlet little figure before him. "I profess, I have never seen
the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I
was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask!
There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time;
and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a
guest into my hall? "
"Ay, indeed! " cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of scarlet
plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures, when the
sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out
the golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the
old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy
mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian
child,--ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty
elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other
relics of Papistry, in merry old England? "
"I am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name is
Pearl! "
"Pearl? --Ruby, rather! --or Coral! --or Red Rose, at the very least,
judging from thy hue! " responded the old minister, putting forth his
hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. "But where is
this mother of thine? Ah! I see," he added; and, turning to Governor
Bellingham, whispered, "This is the selfsame child of whom we have
held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester
Prynne, her mother! "
"Sayest thou so? " cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged that
such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type
of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we will look into
this matter forthwith. "
Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed
by his three guests.
"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the
wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question
concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed,
whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our
consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder
child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the
pitfalls of this world. Speak thou, the child's own mother! Were it
not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare
that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined
strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst
thou do for the child, in this kind? "
"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this! " answered
Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.
"Woman, it is thy badge of shame! " replied the stern magistrate. "It
is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would
transfer thy child to other hands. "
"Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale,
"this badge hath taught me--it daily teaches me--it is teaching me at
this moment--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better,
albeit they can profit nothing to myself. "
"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we are
about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this
Pearl,--since that is her name,--and see whether she hath had such
Christian nurture as befits a child of her age. "
The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort to
draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch
or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window,
and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird, of
rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not
a little astonished at this outbreak,--for he was a grandfatherly sort
of personage, and usually a vast favorite with children,--essayed,
however, to proceed with the examination.
"Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to
instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the
pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee? "
Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the
daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child
about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths
which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with
such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments
of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in
the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster
Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of
those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have
more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now,
at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and
closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting
her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good
Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not
been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of
wild roses that grew by the prison-door.
This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the
Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window; together
with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in
coming hither.
Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something
in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of
skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was
startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,--how
much uglier they were,--how his dark complexion seemed to have grown
duskier, and his figure more misshapen,--since the days when she had
familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was
immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now
going forward.
"This is awful! " cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the
astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here is a
child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without
question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present
depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no
further. "
Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms,
confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce
expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole
treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed
indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to
the death.
"God gave me the child! " cried she. "He gave her in requital of all
things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness! --she is
my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes
me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being
loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for
my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first! "
[Illustration: "Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! "]
"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be
well cared for! --far better than thou canst do it! "
"God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising her
voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up! "--And here, by a
sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at
whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to
direct her eyes. --"Speak thou for me! " cried she. "Thou wast my
pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these
men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,--for
thou hast sympathies which these men lack! --thou knowest what is in my
heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they
are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look
thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it! "
At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's
situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young
minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his
heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament
was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciated
than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and
whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be,
his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and
melancholy depth.
"There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice
sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, and
the hollow armor rang with it,--"truth in what Hester says, and in the
feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too,
an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,--both
seemingly so peculiar,--which no other mortal being can possess. And,
moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation
between this mother and this child? "
"Ay! --how is that, good Master Dimmesdale? " interrupted the Governor.
"Make that plain, I pray you! "
"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it
otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator
of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no
account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This
child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the
hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so
earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her.
It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life! It was
meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a
retribution too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment;
a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled
joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor
child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her
bosom? "
"Well said, again! " cried good Mr. Wilson. "I feared the woman had no
better thought than to make a mountebank of her child! "
"O, not so! --not so! " continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She recognizes,
believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought, in the
existence of that child. And may she feel, too,--what, methinks, is
the very truth,--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to
keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths
of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her!
Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an
infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow,
confided to her care,--to be trained up by her to righteousness,--to
remind her, at every moment, of her fall,--but yet to teach her, as it
were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to
heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is the
sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's
sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them
as Providence hath seen fit to place them! "
"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old Roger
Chillingworth, smiling at him.
"And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken,"
added the Reverend Mr. Wilson. "What say you, worshipful Master
Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman? "
"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate, "and hath adduced such
arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so
long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman.
Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated
examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale's.
Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she
go both to school and to meeting. "
The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had withdrawn a few steps
from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in the
heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his figure,
which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the
vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty little elf,
stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her
own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so
unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself,--"Is
that my Pearl? " Yet she knew that there was love in the child's heart,
although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her
lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. The
minister,--for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is
sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded
spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply
in us something truly worthy to be loved,--the minister looked round,
laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then
kissed her brow. Little Pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no
longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily, that
old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the
floor.
"The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess," said he to Mr.
Dimmesdale. "She needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal! "
"A strange child! " remarked old Roger Chillingworth. "It is easy to
see the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher's
research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyze that child's nature, and,
from its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father? "
"Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clew of
profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. "Better to fast and pray upon
it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it,
unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby, every good
Christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the
poor, deserted babe. "
The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with
Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it is
averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open, and
forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress Hibbins,
Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few
years later, was executed as a witch.
"Hist, hist! " said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed to
cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. "Wilt thou go
with us to-night? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I
wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make
one. "
"Make my excuse to him, so please you! " answered Hester, with a
triumphant smile. "I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little
Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with
thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too,
and that with mine own blood! "
"We shall have thee there anon! " said the witch-lady, frowning, as she
drew back her head.
But here--if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and
Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable--was already an
illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the
relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus
early had the child saved her from Satan's snare.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IX.
THE LEECH.
Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will
remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had
resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how, in the
crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure, stood a
man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous
wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the
warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the
people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy was
babbling around her in the public market-place. For her kindred,
should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her
unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her
dishonor; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance
and proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous
relationship. Then why--since the choice was with himself--should the
individual, whose connection with the fallen woman had been the most
intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim
to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried
beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all but Hester Prynne,
and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw
his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties
and interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay
at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him.
This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up,
and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of
force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.
In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritan
town, as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction than the
learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common
measure. As his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made
him extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was
as a physician that he presented himself, and as such was cordially
received. Skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were
of rare occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear,
partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the
Atlantic.
In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the
higher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized, and
that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of
that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to
comprise all of life within itself. At all events, the health of the
good town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had
hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary,
whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his
favor than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma.
The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of that
noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a
professional body Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He
soon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing
machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a
multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately
compounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In
his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the
properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his
patients, that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutored
savage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as the
European pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent
centuries in elaborating.
This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded, at least, the
outward forms of a religious life, and, early after his arrival, had
chosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young
divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was
considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a
heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for the
ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now feeble New
England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of
the Christian faith. About this period, however, the health of Mr.
Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with
his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted
for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of
parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which
he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this
earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some
declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it was
cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden
by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic
humility, avowed his belief, that, if Providence should see fit to
remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its
humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as
to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact.
His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a
certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on
any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his
heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.
Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect
that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when Roger
Chillingworth made his advent to the town. His first entry on the
scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as it were, out of
the sky, or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery,
which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be
a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and the
blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs from
the forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was
valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby,
and other famous men,--whose scientific attainments were esteemed
hardly less than supernatural,--as having been his correspondents or
associates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come
hither? What could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in
the wilderness? In answer to this query, a rumor gained ground,--and,
however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people,--that
Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent
Doctor of Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air,
and setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study!
Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its
purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called
miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in
Roger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival.
This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician
ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as
a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from
his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at his
pastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if
early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favorable result. The
elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair
maidens, of Mr. Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he
should make trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. Mr.
Dimmesdale gently repelled their entreaties.
"I need no medicine," said he.
But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive
Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous
than before,--when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a
casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? Was he weary of his
labors? Did he wish to die? These questions were solemnly propounded
to Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston and the deacons of
his church, who, to use their own phrase, "dealt with him" on the sin
of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He
listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the
physician.
"Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in
fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth's
professional advice, "I could be well content, that my labors, and my
sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and
what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go
with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your
skill to the proof in my behalf. "
"Ah," replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness which, whether
imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, "it is thus that a
young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deep
root, give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walk
with God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden
pavements of the New Jerusalem. "
"Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart,
with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, "were I worthier to walk
there, I could be better content to toil here. "
"Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the physician.
[Illustration: The Minister and Leech]
In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the
medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the
disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look
into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so
different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. For the
sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather
plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the
sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and
murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops.
Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other, in his place of
study and retirement. There was a fascination for the minister in the
company of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual
cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range and
freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the
members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not
shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a
true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment
largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself
powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage
continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society
would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would
always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about
him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. Not
the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the
occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of
another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held
converse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer
atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was
wasting itself away, amid lamplight, or obstructed day-beams, and the
musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But
the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. So
the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the
limits of what their church defined as orthodox.
Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient carefully, both as he
saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the
range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown
amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out
something new to the surface of his character. He deemed it essential,
it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good.
Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the
physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur
Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so
intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its
groundwork there. So Roger Chillingworth--the man of skill, the kind
and friendly physician--strove to go deep into his patient's bosom,
delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and
probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a
dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has
opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow
it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the
intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and
a nameless something more,--let us call it intuition; if he show no
intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent characteristics of his
own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his
mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall
unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if
such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so
often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath,
and here and there a word, to indicate that all is understood; if to
these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded
by his recognized character as a physician;--then, at some inevitable
moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in
a dark, but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the
daylight.
Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above
enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have
said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a
field as the whole sphere of human thought and study, to meet upon;
they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairs
and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters
that seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the
physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's
consciousness into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions,
indeed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bodily disease had
never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!
After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr.
Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the
same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide
might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. There
was much joy throughout the town, when this greatly desirable object
was attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the
young clergyman's welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as
felt authorized to do so, he had selected some one of the many
blooming damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted
wife. This latter step, however, there was no present prospect that
Arthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all
suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his
articles of church-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as
Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always at
another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot
who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it truly seemed
that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his
concord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the
very man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.
The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good
social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site on
which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since been built.
It had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's home-field, on one
side, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suited
to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic.
The motherly care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front
apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create
a noontide shadow, when desirable. The walls were hung round with
tapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events,
representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan
the Prophet, in colors still unfaded, but which made the fair woman
of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer.
Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with
parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and
monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they
vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often
to avail themselves. On the other side of the house old Roger
Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory; not such as a modern
man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with
a distilling apparatus, and the means of compounding drugs and
chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to
purpose. With such commodiousness of situation, these two learned
persons sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarly
passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and
not incurious inspection into one another's business.
And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as we
have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of Providence
had done all this, for the purpose--besought in so many public, and
domestic, and secret prayers--of restoring the young minister to
health. But--it must now be said--another portion of the community had
latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr.
Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed
multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be
deceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on
the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus
attained are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess the
character of truths supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case
of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger
Chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation.
There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen
of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some
thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under
some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in
company with Doctor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was
implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted,
that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his
medical attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage
priests; who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters,
often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the
black art. A large number--and many of these were persons of such
sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have
been valuable, in other matters--affirmed that Roger Chillingworth's
aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town,
and especially since his abode with Mr. Dimmesdale. At first, his
expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was
something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously
noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener
they looked upon him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his
laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with
infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting
sooty with the smoke.
To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that
the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial
sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by
Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger
Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a
season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his
soul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the
victory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see
the minister come forth out of the conflict, transfigured with the
glory which he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it
was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must
struggle towards his triumph.
Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of the poor
minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one and the victory anything
but secure.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
X.
THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT.
Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in
temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in
all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun
an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity
of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved
no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem,
instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he
proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still
calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and never set
him free again, until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the
poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather,
like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that
had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing
save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these were
what he sought!
Sometimes, a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue
and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like
one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful
doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. The soil
where this dark miner was working had perchance shown indications that
encouraged him.
"This man," said he, at one such moment, to himself, "pure as they
deem him,--all spiritual as he seems,--hath inherited a strong animal
nature from his father or his mother. Let us dig a little further in
the direction of this vein! "
Then, after long search into the minister's dim interior, and turning
over many precious materials, in the shape of high aspirations for the
welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure sentiments, natural
piety, strengthened by thought and study, and illuminated by
revelation,--all of which invaluable gold was perhaps no better than
rubbish to the seeker,--he would turn back, discouraged, and begin his
quest towards another point. He groped along as stealthily, with as
cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a
chamber where a man lies only half asleep,--or, it may be, broad
awake,--with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guards
as the apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the
floor would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow
of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his
victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve
often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely
aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into
relation with him. But old Roger Chillingworth, too, had perceptions
that were almost intuitive; and when the minister threw his startled
eyes towards him, there the physician sat; his kind, watchful,
sympathizing, but never intrusive friend.
Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's character
more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which, sick hearts are
liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind. Trusting no
man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter
actually appeared. He therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse
with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study; or visiting
the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by
which weeds were converted into drugs of potency.
One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill
of the open window, that looked towards the graveyard, he talked with
Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of
unsightly plants.
"Where," asked he, with a look askance at them,--for it was the
clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, nowadays, looked straightforth
at any object, whether human or inanimate,--"where, my kind doctor,
did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf? "
"Even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician,
continuing his employment. "They are new to me. I found them growing
on a grave, which bore no tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead
man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep
him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be,
some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done
better to confess during his lifetime. "
"Perchance," said Mr. Dimmesdale, "he earnestly desired it, but could
not. "
"And wherefore? " rejoined the physician. "Wherefore not; since all the
powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that
these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make
manifest an unspoken crime? "
"That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours," replied the minister.
"There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine
mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem,
the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making
itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day
when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or
interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human
thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the
retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these
revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the
intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand
waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain.
A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution
of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding
such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that
last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable. "
"Then why not reveal them here? " asked Roger Chillingworth, glancing
quietly aside at the minister. "Why should not the guilty ones sooner
avail themselves of this unutterable solace? "
"They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast as if
afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. "Many, many a poor soul
hath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while
strong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after such an
outpouring, O, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful
brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after long
stifling with his own polluted breath. How can it be otherwise? Why
should a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer to keep
the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at
once, and let the universe take care of it! "
"Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm physician.
"True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But, not to
suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by
the very constitution of their nature. Or,--can we not suppose
it? --guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's
glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black
and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be
achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service.
So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their
fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow while their hearts
are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid
themselves. "
"These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with
somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with
his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame that rightfully
belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for God's
service,--these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts
with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and
which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if they
seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands!
If they would serve their fellow-men, let them do it by making
manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to
penitential self-abasement! Wouldst thou have me to believe, O wise
and pious friend, that a false show can be better--can be more for
God's glory, or man's welfare--than God's own truth? Trust me, such
men deceive themselves! "
"It may be so," said the young clergyman, indifferently, as waiving a
discussion that he considered irrelevant or unseasonable. He had a
ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his
too sensitive and nervous temperament. --"But, now, I would ask of my
well-skilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have
profited by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine? "
Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear, wild
laughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the adjacent
burial-ground. Looking instinctively from the open window,--for it was
summer-time,--the minister beheld Hester Prynne and little Pearl
passing along the footpath that traversed the enclosure. Pearl looked
as beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perverse
merriment which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirely
out of the sphere of sympathy or human contact. She now skipped
irreverently from one grave to another; until, coming to the broad,
flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy,--perhaps of Isaac
Johnson himself,--she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's
command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little
Pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which
grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged them
along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal
bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously adhered.
Hester did not pluck them off.
Roger Chillingworth had by this time approached the window, and smiled
grimly down.
"There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human
ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that child's
composition," remarked he, as much to himself as to his companion. "I
saw her, the other day, bespatter the Governor himself with water, at
the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in Heaven's name, is she? Is
the imp altogether evil? Hath she affections? Hath she any
discoverable principle of being? "
"None, save the freedom of a broken law," answered Mr. Dimmesdale, in
a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the point within himself.
"Whether capable of good, I know not. "
The child probably overheard their voices; for, looking up to the
window, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence,
she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The
sensitive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the light
missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little hands, in the
most extravagant ecstasy. Hester Prynne, likewise, had involuntarily
looked up; and all these four persons, old and young, regarded one
another in silence, till the child laughed aloud, and shouted,--"Come
away, mother! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you! He
hath got hold of the minister already. Come away, mother, or he will
catch you! But he cannot catch little Pearl! "
So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking
fantastically, among the hillocks of the dead people, like a creature
that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried generation, nor
owned herself akin to it.
Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of the
hall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted with
closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt
at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have
relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of
the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for
subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening.
Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some
distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of
its gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window; as if to warn
the Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an
ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few
rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the
descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first
settler of the peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who rides
through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.
Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would
not be pacified.
"Hush, child, hush! " said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry, dear
little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, and
gentlemen along with him! "
In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons were
seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of her
mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then
became silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick
and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance
of these new personages.
[Illustration]
VIII.
THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.
Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap,--such as elderly
gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic
privacy,--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate,
and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference
of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated
fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little
like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his
aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal
age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment
wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it
is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers--though accustomed
to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and
warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life
at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such
means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp.
This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over
Governor Bellingham's shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears
and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and
that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against the
sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of
the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for
all good and comfortable things; and however stern he might show
himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions
as that of Hester Prynne, still the genial benevolence of his private
life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his
professional contemporaries.
Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests: one the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having
taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old Roger
Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or
three years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood that
this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young
minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too
unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral
relation.
The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps,
and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window, found himself
close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester
Prynne, and partially concealed her.
"What have we here? " said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise
at the scarlet little figure before him. "I profess, I have never seen
the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I
was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask!
There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time;
and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a
guest into my hall? "
"Ay, indeed! " cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of scarlet
plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures, when the
sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out
the golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the
old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy
mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian
child,--ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty
elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other
relics of Papistry, in merry old England? "
"I am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name is
Pearl! "
"Pearl? --Ruby, rather! --or Coral! --or Red Rose, at the very least,
judging from thy hue! " responded the old minister, putting forth his
hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. "But where is
this mother of thine? Ah! I see," he added; and, turning to Governor
Bellingham, whispered, "This is the selfsame child of whom we have
held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester
Prynne, her mother! "
"Sayest thou so? " cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged that
such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type
of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we will look into
this matter forthwith. "
Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed
by his three guests.
"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the
wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question
concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed,
whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our
consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder
child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the
pitfalls of this world. Speak thou, the child's own mother! Were it
not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare
that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined
strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst
thou do for the child, in this kind? "
"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this! " answered
Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.
"Woman, it is thy badge of shame! " replied the stern magistrate. "It
is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would
transfer thy child to other hands. "
"Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale,
"this badge hath taught me--it daily teaches me--it is teaching me at
this moment--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better,
albeit they can profit nothing to myself. "
"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we are
about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this
Pearl,--since that is her name,--and see whether she hath had such
Christian nurture as befits a child of her age. "
The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort to
draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch
or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window,
and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird, of
rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not
a little astonished at this outbreak,--for he was a grandfatherly sort
of personage, and usually a vast favorite with children,--essayed,
however, to proceed with the examination.
"Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to
instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the
pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee? "
Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the
daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child
about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths
which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with
such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments
of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in
the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster
Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of
those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have
more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now,
at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and
closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting
her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good
Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not
been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of
wild roses that grew by the prison-door.
This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the
Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window; together
with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in
coming hither.
Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something
in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of
skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was
startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,--how
much uglier they were,--how his dark complexion seemed to have grown
duskier, and his figure more misshapen,--since the days when she had
familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was
immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now
going forward.
"This is awful! " cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the
astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here is a
child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without
question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present
depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no
further. "
Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms,
confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce
expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole
treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed
indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to
the death.
"God gave me the child! " cried she. "He gave her in requital of all
things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness! --she is
my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes
me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being
loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for
my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first! "
[Illustration: "Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! "]
"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be
well cared for! --far better than thou canst do it! "
"God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising her
voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up! "--And here, by a
sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at
whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to
direct her eyes. --"Speak thou for me! " cried she. "Thou wast my
pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these
men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,--for
thou hast sympathies which these men lack! --thou knowest what is in my
heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they
are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look
thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it! "
At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's
situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young
minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his
heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament
was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciated
than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and
whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be,
his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and
melancholy depth.
"There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice
sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, and
the hollow armor rang with it,--"truth in what Hester says, and in the
feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too,
an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,--both
seemingly so peculiar,--which no other mortal being can possess. And,
moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation
between this mother and this child? "
"Ay! --how is that, good Master Dimmesdale? " interrupted the Governor.
"Make that plain, I pray you! "
"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it
otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator
of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no
account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This
child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the
hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so
earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her.
It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life! It was
meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a
retribution too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment;
a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled
joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor
child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her
bosom? "
"Well said, again! " cried good Mr. Wilson. "I feared the woman had no
better thought than to make a mountebank of her child! "
"O, not so! --not so! " continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She recognizes,
believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought, in the
existence of that child. And may she feel, too,--what, methinks, is
the very truth,--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to
keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths
of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her!
Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an
infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow,
confided to her care,--to be trained up by her to righteousness,--to
remind her, at every moment, of her fall,--but yet to teach her, as it
were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to
heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is the
sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's
sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them
as Providence hath seen fit to place them! "
"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old Roger
Chillingworth, smiling at him.
"And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken,"
added the Reverend Mr. Wilson. "What say you, worshipful Master
Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman? "
"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate, "and hath adduced such
arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so
long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman.
Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated
examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale's.
Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she
go both to school and to meeting. "
The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had withdrawn a few steps
from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in the
heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his figure,
which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the
vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty little elf,
stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her
own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so
unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself,--"Is
that my Pearl? " Yet she knew that there was love in the child's heart,
although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her
lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. The
minister,--for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is
sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded
spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply
in us something truly worthy to be loved,--the minister looked round,
laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then
kissed her brow. Little Pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no
longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily, that
old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the
floor.
"The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess," said he to Mr.
Dimmesdale. "She needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal! "
"A strange child! " remarked old Roger Chillingworth. "It is easy to
see the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher's
research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyze that child's nature, and,
from its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father? "
"Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clew of
profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. "Better to fast and pray upon
it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it,
unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby, every good
Christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the
poor, deserted babe. "
The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with
Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it is
averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open, and
forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress Hibbins,
Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few
years later, was executed as a witch.
"Hist, hist! " said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed to
cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. "Wilt thou go
with us to-night? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I
wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make
one. "
"Make my excuse to him, so please you! " answered Hester, with a
triumphant smile. "I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little
Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with
thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too,
and that with mine own blood! "
"We shall have thee there anon! " said the witch-lady, frowning, as she
drew back her head.
But here--if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and
Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable--was already an
illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the
relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus
early had the child saved her from Satan's snare.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IX.
THE LEECH.
Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will
remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had
resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how, in the
crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure, stood a
man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous
wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the
warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the
people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy was
babbling around her in the public market-place. For her kindred,
should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her
unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her
dishonor; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance
and proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous
relationship. Then why--since the choice was with himself--should the
individual, whose connection with the fallen woman had been the most
intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim
to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried
beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all but Hester Prynne,
and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw
his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties
and interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay
at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him.
This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up,
and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of
force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.
In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritan
town, as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction than the
learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common
measure. As his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made
him extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was
as a physician that he presented himself, and as such was cordially
received. Skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were
of rare occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear,
partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the
Atlantic.
In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the
higher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized, and
that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of
that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to
comprise all of life within itself. At all events, the health of the
good town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had
hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary,
whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his
favor than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma.
The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of that
noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a
professional body Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He
soon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing
machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a
multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately
compounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In
his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the
properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his
patients, that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutored
savage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as the
European pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent
centuries in elaborating.
This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded, at least, the
outward forms of a religious life, and, early after his arrival, had
chosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young
divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was
considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a
heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for the
ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now feeble New
England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of
the Christian faith. About this period, however, the health of Mr.
Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with
his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted
for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of
parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which
he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this
earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some
declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it was
cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden
by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic
humility, avowed his belief, that, if Providence should see fit to
remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its
humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as
to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact.
His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a
certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on
any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his
heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.
Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect
that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when Roger
Chillingworth made his advent to the town. His first entry on the
scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as it were, out of
the sky, or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery,
which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be
a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and the
blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs from
the forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was
valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby,
and other famous men,--whose scientific attainments were esteemed
hardly less than supernatural,--as having been his correspondents or
associates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come
hither? What could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in
the wilderness? In answer to this query, a rumor gained ground,--and,
however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people,--that
Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent
Doctor of Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air,
and setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study!
Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its
purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called
miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in
Roger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival.
This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician
ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as
a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from
his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at his
pastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if
early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favorable result. The
elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair
maidens, of Mr. Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he
should make trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. Mr.
Dimmesdale gently repelled their entreaties.
"I need no medicine," said he.
But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive
Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous
than before,--when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a
casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? Was he weary of his
labors? Did he wish to die? These questions were solemnly propounded
to Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston and the deacons of
his church, who, to use their own phrase, "dealt with him" on the sin
of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He
listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the
physician.
"Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in
fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth's
professional advice, "I could be well content, that my labors, and my
sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and
what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go
with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your
skill to the proof in my behalf. "
"Ah," replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness which, whether
imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, "it is thus that a
young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deep
root, give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walk
with God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden
pavements of the New Jerusalem. "
"Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart,
with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, "were I worthier to walk
there, I could be better content to toil here. "
"Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the physician.
[Illustration: The Minister and Leech]
In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the
medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the
disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look
into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so
different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. For the
sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather
plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the
sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and
murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops.
Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other, in his place of
study and retirement. There was a fascination for the minister in the
company of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual
cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range and
freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the
members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not
shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a
true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment
largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself
powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage
continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society
would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would
always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about
him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. Not
the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the
occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of
another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held
converse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer
atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was
wasting itself away, amid lamplight, or obstructed day-beams, and the
musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But
the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. So
the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the
limits of what their church defined as orthodox.
Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient carefully, both as he
saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the
range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown
amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out
something new to the surface of his character. He deemed it essential,
it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good.
Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the
physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur
Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so
intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its
groundwork there. So Roger Chillingworth--the man of skill, the kind
and friendly physician--strove to go deep into his patient's bosom,
delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and
probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a
dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has
opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow
it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the
intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and
a nameless something more,--let us call it intuition; if he show no
intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent characteristics of his
own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his
mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall
unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if
such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so
often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath,
and here and there a word, to indicate that all is understood; if to
these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded
by his recognized character as a physician;--then, at some inevitable
moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in
a dark, but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the
daylight.
Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above
enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have
said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a
field as the whole sphere of human thought and study, to meet upon;
they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairs
and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters
that seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the
physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's
consciousness into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions,
indeed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bodily disease had
never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!
After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr.
Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the
same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide
might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. There
was much joy throughout the town, when this greatly desirable object
was attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the
young clergyman's welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as
felt authorized to do so, he had selected some one of the many
blooming damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted
wife. This latter step, however, there was no present prospect that
Arthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all
suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his
articles of church-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as
Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always at
another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot
who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it truly seemed
that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his
concord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the
very man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.
The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good
social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site on
which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since been built.
It had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's home-field, on one
side, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suited
to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic.
The motherly care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front
apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create
a noontide shadow, when desirable. The walls were hung round with
tapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events,
representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan
the Prophet, in colors still unfaded, but which made the fair woman
of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer.
Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with
parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and
monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they
vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often
to avail themselves. On the other side of the house old Roger
Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory; not such as a modern
man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with
a distilling apparatus, and the means of compounding drugs and
chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to
purpose. With such commodiousness of situation, these two learned
persons sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarly
passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and
not incurious inspection into one another's business.
And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as we
have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of Providence
had done all this, for the purpose--besought in so many public, and
domestic, and secret prayers--of restoring the young minister to
health. But--it must now be said--another portion of the community had
latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr.
Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed
multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be
deceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on
the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus
attained are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess the
character of truths supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case
of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger
Chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation.
There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen
of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some
thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under
some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in
company with Doctor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was
implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted,
that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his
medical attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage
priests; who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters,
often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the
black art. A large number--and many of these were persons of such
sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have
been valuable, in other matters--affirmed that Roger Chillingworth's
aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town,
and especially since his abode with Mr. Dimmesdale. At first, his
expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was
something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously
noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener
they looked upon him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his
laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with
infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting
sooty with the smoke.
To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that
the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial
sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by
Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger
Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a
season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his
soul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the
victory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see
the minister come forth out of the conflict, transfigured with the
glory which he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it
was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must
struggle towards his triumph.
Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of the poor
minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one and the victory anything
but secure.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
X.
THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT.
Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in
temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in
all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun
an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity
of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved
no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem,
instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he
proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still
calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and never set
him free again, until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the
poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather,
like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that
had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing
save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these were
what he sought!
Sometimes, a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue
and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like
one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful
doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. The soil
where this dark miner was working had perchance shown indications that
encouraged him.
"This man," said he, at one such moment, to himself, "pure as they
deem him,--all spiritual as he seems,--hath inherited a strong animal
nature from his father or his mother. Let us dig a little further in
the direction of this vein! "
Then, after long search into the minister's dim interior, and turning
over many precious materials, in the shape of high aspirations for the
welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure sentiments, natural
piety, strengthened by thought and study, and illuminated by
revelation,--all of which invaluable gold was perhaps no better than
rubbish to the seeker,--he would turn back, discouraged, and begin his
quest towards another point. He groped along as stealthily, with as
cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a
chamber where a man lies only half asleep,--or, it may be, broad
awake,--with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guards
as the apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the
floor would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow
of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his
victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve
often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely
aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into
relation with him. But old Roger Chillingworth, too, had perceptions
that were almost intuitive; and when the minister threw his startled
eyes towards him, there the physician sat; his kind, watchful,
sympathizing, but never intrusive friend.
Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's character
more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which, sick hearts are
liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind. Trusting no
man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter
actually appeared. He therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse
with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study; or visiting
the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by
which weeds were converted into drugs of potency.
One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill
of the open window, that looked towards the graveyard, he talked with
Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of
unsightly plants.
"Where," asked he, with a look askance at them,--for it was the
clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, nowadays, looked straightforth
at any object, whether human or inanimate,--"where, my kind doctor,
did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf? "
"Even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician,
continuing his employment. "They are new to me. I found them growing
on a grave, which bore no tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead
man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep
him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be,
some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done
better to confess during his lifetime. "
"Perchance," said Mr. Dimmesdale, "he earnestly desired it, but could
not. "
"And wherefore? " rejoined the physician. "Wherefore not; since all the
powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that
these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make
manifest an unspoken crime? "
"That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours," replied the minister.
"There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine
mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem,
the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making
itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day
when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or
interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human
thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the
retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these
revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the
intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand
waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain.
A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution
of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding
such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that
last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable. "
"Then why not reveal them here? " asked Roger Chillingworth, glancing
quietly aside at the minister. "Why should not the guilty ones sooner
avail themselves of this unutterable solace? "
"They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast as if
afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. "Many, many a poor soul
hath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while
strong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after such an
outpouring, O, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful
brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after long
stifling with his own polluted breath. How can it be otherwise? Why
should a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer to keep
the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at
once, and let the universe take care of it! "
"Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm physician.
"True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But, not to
suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by
the very constitution of their nature. Or,--can we not suppose
it? --guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's
glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black
and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be
achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service.
So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their
fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow while their hearts
are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid
themselves. "
"These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with
somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with
his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame that rightfully
belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for God's
service,--these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts
with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and
which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if they
seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands!
If they would serve their fellow-men, let them do it by making
manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to
penitential self-abasement! Wouldst thou have me to believe, O wise
and pious friend, that a false show can be better--can be more for
God's glory, or man's welfare--than God's own truth? Trust me, such
men deceive themselves! "
"It may be so," said the young clergyman, indifferently, as waiving a
discussion that he considered irrelevant or unseasonable. He had a
ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his
too sensitive and nervous temperament. --"But, now, I would ask of my
well-skilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have
profited by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine? "
Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear, wild
laughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the adjacent
burial-ground. Looking instinctively from the open window,--for it was
summer-time,--the minister beheld Hester Prynne and little Pearl
passing along the footpath that traversed the enclosure. Pearl looked
as beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perverse
merriment which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirely
out of the sphere of sympathy or human contact. She now skipped
irreverently from one grave to another; until, coming to the broad,
flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy,--perhaps of Isaac
Johnson himself,--she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's
command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little
Pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which
grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged them
along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal
bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously adhered.
Hester did not pluck them off.
Roger Chillingworth had by this time approached the window, and smiled
grimly down.
"There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human
ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that child's
composition," remarked he, as much to himself as to his companion. "I
saw her, the other day, bespatter the Governor himself with water, at
the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in Heaven's name, is she? Is
the imp altogether evil? Hath she affections? Hath she any
discoverable principle of being? "
"None, save the freedom of a broken law," answered Mr. Dimmesdale, in
a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the point within himself.
"Whether capable of good, I know not. "
The child probably overheard their voices; for, looking up to the
window, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence,
she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The
sensitive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the light
missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little hands, in the
most extravagant ecstasy. Hester Prynne, likewise, had involuntarily
looked up; and all these four persons, old and young, regarded one
another in silence, till the child laughed aloud, and shouted,--"Come
away, mother! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you! He
hath got hold of the minister already. Come away, mother, or he will
catch you! But he cannot catch little Pearl! "
So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking
fantastically, among the hillocks of the dead people, like a creature
that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried generation, nor
owned herself akin to it.
