C 14
Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the water, and play
with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talked
awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a
bird, and, making bare her small white feet went pattering along the
moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a full stop, ad
peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for
Pearl to see her face in. Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with
dark, glistening curls around her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes,
the image of a little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate,
invited to take her hand and run a race with her. But the visionary
little maid on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to sayÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯”This is a
better place; come thou into the pool.” And Pearl, stepping in mid-leg
deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while, out of a still
lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating
to and fro in the agitated water.
Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. “I would speak
a word with you,” said sheÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯”a word that concerns us much.”
“Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word for old Roger
Chillingworth?” answered he, raising himself from his stooping
posture. “With all my heart! Why, mistress, I hear good tidings of you
on all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve, a magistrate, a wise
and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Mistress Hester, and
whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the
council. It was debated whether or no, with safety to the
commonweal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your bosom.
On my life, Hester, I made my intreaty to the worshipful magistrate
that it might be done forthwith.”
“It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off the badge,”
calmly replied Hester. “Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall
away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should
speak a different purport.”
“Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better,” rejoined he, “A woman
must needs follow her own fancy touching the adornment of her
person. The letter is gaily embroidered, and shows right bravely on
your bosom!”
All this while Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and
was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a change
had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. It was not
so much that he had grown older; for though the traces of advancing
life were visible he bore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry
vigour and alertness. But the former aspect of an intellectual and
studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best
remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded
by a eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It
seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a
smile, but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so
derisively that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for
it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes,
as if the old man’s soul were on fire and kept on smouldering duskily
within his breast, until by some casual puff of passion it was blown
into a momentary flame. This he repressed as speedily as possible,
and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had happened.
In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of
man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a
reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office. This unhappy
person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself for
seven years to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and
deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures
which he analysed and gloated over.
The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne’s bosom. Here was
another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her.
“What see you in my face,” asked the physician, “that you look at it
so earnestly?”
“Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears
bitter enough for it,” answered she. “But let it pass! It is of yonder
miserable man that I would speak.”
“And what of him?” cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly, as if he
loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the
only person of whom he could make a confidant. “Not to hide the
truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with
the gentleman. So speak freely and I will make answer.”
“When we last spake together,” said Hester, “now seven years
ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy as touching
the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and good
fame of yonder man were in your hands there seemed no choice to
me, save to be silent in accordance with your behest. Yet it was not
without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for, having cast
off all duty towards other human beings, there remained a duty
towards him, and something whispered me that I was betraying it in
pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since that day no man is so
near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are
beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You
burrow and rankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you
cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. In
permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man to
whom the power was left me to be true!”
“What choice had you?” asked Roger Chillingworth. “My finger,
pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a
dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!”
“It had been better so!” said Hester Prynne.
“What evil have I done the man?” asked Roger Chillingworth
again. “I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician
earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have
wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid his life would have
burned away in torments within the first two years after the
perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the
strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden
like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough.
What art can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes
and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!”
“Better he had died at once!” said Hester Prynne.
“Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!” cried old Roger Chillingworth,
letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. “Better had
he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered.
And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious
of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a
curse. He knew, by some spiritual senseÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯for the Creator never
made another being so sensitive as thisÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯he knew that no friendly
hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking
curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew
not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common
to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be
tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of
remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him
beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence,
the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely
wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison
of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend
at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a
fiend for his especial torment.”
The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his
hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape,
which he could not recognise, usurping the place of his own image in
a glass. It was one of those momentsÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯which sometimes occur only
at the interval of yearsÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯when a man’s moral aspect is faithfully
revealed to his mind’s eye. Not improbably he had never before
viewed himself as he did now.
“Hast thou not tortured him enough?” said Hester, noticing the old
man’s look. “Has he not paid thee all?”
“No, no! He has but increased the debt!” answered the physician,
and as he proceeded, his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and
subsided into gloom. “Dost thou remember me, Hester, as I was nine
years agone? Even then I was in the autumn of my days, nor was it
the early autumn. But all my life had been made up of earnest,
studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase
of mine own knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object
was but casual to the otherÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯faithfully for the advancement of human
welfare. No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few
lives so rich with benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? Was I
not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful
for others, craving little for himselfÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯kind, true, just and of constant, if
not warm affections? Was I not all this?”
“All this, and more,” said Hester.
“And what am I now?” demanded he, looking into her face, and
permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. “I
have already told thee what I amÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯a fiend! Who made me so?”
“It was myself,” cried Hester, shuddering. “It was I, not less than
he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?”
“I have left thee to the scarlet letter,” replied Roger Chillingworth.
“If that has not avenged me, I can do no more!”
He laid his finger on it with a smile.
“It has avenged thee,” answered Hester Prynne.
“I judged no less,” said the physician. “And now what wouldst thou
with me touching this man?”
“I must reveal the secret,” answered Hester, firmly. “He must
discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result I know not.
But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane
and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far as concerns the
overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and
perchance his life, he is in my hands. Nor do IÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯whom the scarlet
letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron
entering into the soulÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯nor do I perceive such advantage in his living
any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore
thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him, no
good for me, no good for thee. There is no good for little Pearl. There
is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze.”
“Woman, I could well-nigh pity thee,” said Roger Chillingworth,
unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too, for there was a quality
almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. “Thou hadst
great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better
love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that
has been wasted in thy nature.”
“And I thee,” answered Hester Prynne, “for the hatred that has
transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out
of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly
for thine own! Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the Power
that claims it! I said, but now, that there could be no good event for
him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy
maze of evil, and stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we
have strewn our path. It is not so! There might be good for thee, and
thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged and hast it at thy
will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject
that priceless benefit?”
“Peace, HesterÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯peace!” replied the old man, with gloomy
sternnessÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯”it is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as
thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me,
and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry,
thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all
been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save
in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have
snatched a fiend’s office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black
flower blossom as it may! Now, go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt
with yonder man.”
He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment
of gathering herbs.
