Nathaniel Hawthorne/Nathaniel Hawthorne.iso/pc/articles/a1/t0016

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                                                        XIV                                                   191
                                        Hester and the Physician

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, and 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 say,--"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 she,--"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 yestereve, 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
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no, with safety to the common weal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off
your bosom. On my life, Hester, I made my entreaty to the worshipful
magistrate that it might be done forthwith!"
     "It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off this 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 gayly 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 vigor 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 an 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
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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 analyzed 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
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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. O, 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.
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     "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 sense,--for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as
this,--he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart-strings, 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 recognize, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was
one of those moments--which sometimes occur only at the interval of
years--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
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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 other,--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 himself,--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 am! 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 have 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
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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 thy hands.
Nor do I,--whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the
truth of red-hot iron, entering into the soul,--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 wellnigh 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.
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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, Hester, peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness. "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.