Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem
village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to
exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was
aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the
wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman
Brown.
“Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips
were close to his ear, “prithee put off your journey until sunrise and
sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such
dreams and such thoughts that she’s afeard of herself sometimes. Pray
tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year.”
“My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in
the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as
thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done ’twixt now
and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already,
and we but three months married?”
“Then God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons; “and may you
find all well when you come back.”
“Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to
bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee.”
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to
turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head
of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her
pink ribbons.
“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a
wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too.
Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had
warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; ’twould kill
her to think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this
one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.”
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself
justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had
taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest,
which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and
closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there
is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not
who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs
overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through
an unseen multitude.
“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown
to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, “What if
the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking
forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire,
seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown’s approach
and walked onward side by side with him.
“You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was
striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes
agone.”
“Faith kept me back a while,” replied the young man, with a tremor in
his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not
wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it
where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the
second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank
of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to
him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might
have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person
was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had
an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have
felt abashed at the governor’s dinner table or in King William’s court,
were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only
thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff,
which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought
that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living
serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted
by the uncertain light.
“Come, Goodman Brown,” cried his fellow-traveller, “this is a dull pace
for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon
weary.”
“Friend,” said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop,
“having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to
return whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot’st
of.”
“Sayest thou so?” replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. “Let us
walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not
thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet.”
“Too far! too far!” exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his
walk. “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his
father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good
Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of
the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept—”
“Such company, thou wouldst say,” observed the elder person,
interpreting his pause. “Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well
acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and
that’s no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when
he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and
it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own
hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war. They
were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along
this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends
with you for their sake.”
“If it be as thou sayest,” replied Goodman Brown, “I marvel they never
spoke of these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least
rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England. We are a
people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such
wickedness.”
“Wickedness or not,” said the traveller with the twisted staff, “I have
a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a
church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers
towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General
Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too—But
these are state secrets.”
“Can this be so?” cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his
undisturbed companion. “Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor
and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple
husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet
the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his
voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day.”
Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now
burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently
that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.
“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted he again and again; then composing himself,
“Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don’t kill me with
laughing.”
“Well, then, to end the matter at once,” said Goodman Brown,
considerably nettled, “there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear
little heart; and I’d rather break my own.”
“Nay, if that be the case,” answered the other, “e’en go thy ways,
Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the one hobbling
before us that Faith should come to any harm.”
As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in
whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had
taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and
spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.
“A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness
at nightfall,” said he. “But with your leave, friend, I shall take a
cut through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind.
Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and
whither I was going.”
“Be it so,” said his fellow-traveller. “Betake you to the woods, and
let me keep the path.”
Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his
companion, who advanced softly along the road until he had come within
a staff’s length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best
of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some
indistinct words—a prayer, doubtless—as she went. The traveller put
forth his staff and touched her withered neck with what seemed the
serpent’s tail.
“The devil!” screamed the pious old lady.
“Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?” observed the traveller,
confronting her and leaning on his writhing stick.
“Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?” cried the good dame.
“Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman
Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But—would your
worship believe it?—my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen,
as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I
was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf’s
bane.”
“Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe,” said the
shape of old Goodman Brown.
“Ah, your worship knows the recipe,” cried the old lady, cackling
aloud. “So, as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no
horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me there
is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your
good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a
twinkling.”
“That can hardly be,” answered her friend. “I may not spare you my arm,
Goody Cloyse; but here is my staff, if you will.”
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed
life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the
Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take
cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down
again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his
fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had
happened.
“That old woman taught me my catechism,” said the young man; and there
was a world of meaning in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his
companion to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so
aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his
auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a
branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of
the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The
moment his fingers touched them they became strangely withered and
dried up as with a week’s sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good
free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman
Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any
farther.
“Friend,” said he, stubbornly, “my mind is made up. Not another step
will I budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to
go to the devil when I thought she was going to heaven: is that any
reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?”
“You will think better of this by and by,” said his acquaintance,
composedly. “Sit here and rest yourself a while; and when you feel like
moving again, there is my staff to help you along.”
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as
speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom.
The young man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself
greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the
minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old
Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his that very night, which
was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly now, in
the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations,
Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it
advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious
of the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so
happily turned from it.
On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old
voices, conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds
appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of the young man’s
hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that
particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible.
Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside, it could
not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint gleam
from the strip of bright sky athwart which they must have passed.
Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside
the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst without
discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could
have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices
of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were
wont to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council.
While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
“Of the two, reverend sir,” said the voice like the deacon’s, “I had
rather miss an ordination dinner than to-night’s meeting. They tell me
that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and
others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian
powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the
best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into
communion.”
“Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!” replied the solemn old tones of the
minister. “Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know,
until I get on the ground.”
The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the
empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been
gathered or solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy
men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman
Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink down on
the ground, faint and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his
heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a
heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars
brightening in it.
“With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the
devil!” cried Goodman Brown.
While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had
lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried
across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still
visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was
sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of
the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once the
listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people
of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had
met at the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern.
The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he
had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a
wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily
in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of
night There was one voice of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet
with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which,
perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude,
both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.
“Faith!” shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation;
and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying, “Faith! Faith!” as if
bewildered wretches were seeking her all through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the
unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream,
drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off
laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent
sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through
the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it,
and beheld a pink ribbon.
“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no
good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this
world given.”
And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did
Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that
he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk or run. The
road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at
length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing
onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil. The whole
forest was peopled with frightful sounds—the creaking of the trees, the
howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the
wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar
around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But
he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its
other horrors.
“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.
“Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with
your deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil
himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he
fear you.”
In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more
frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black
pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to
an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such
laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons
around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he
rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course,
until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as
when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on
fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of
midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him
onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly
from a distance with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it
was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The verse
died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices,
but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful
harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his cry was lost to his
own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full
upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark
wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural
resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and surrounded by four
blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles
at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that had overgrown the
summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and
fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy
festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numerous
congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and
again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the
solitary woods at once.
“A grave and dark-clad company,” quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom
and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council
board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked
devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the
holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor
was there. At least there were high dames well known to her, and wives
of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient
maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled
lest their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light
flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he
recognized a score of the church members of Salem village famous for
their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited
at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But,
irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people,
these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there
were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given
over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes.
It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor
were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among their
pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often
scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any
known to English witchcraft.
“But where is Faith?” thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his
heart, he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as
the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature
can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to
mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and
still the chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of
a mighty organ; and with the final peal of that dreadful anthem there
came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling
beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were
mingling and according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the
prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and
obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths
above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock
shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now
appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no
slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the
New England churches.
“Bring forth the converts!” cried a voice that echoed through the field
and rolled into the forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees
and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful
brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He
could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father
beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a
woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him
back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor
to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon
Gookin seized his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came
also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse,
that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had
received the devil’s promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was
she. And there stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.
“Welcome, my children,” said the dark figure, “to the communion of your
race. Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My
children, look behind you!”
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the
fiend worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on
every visage.
“There,” resumed the sable form, “are all whom ye have reverenced from
youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own
sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful
aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping
assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret
deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton
words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager
for widows’ weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him
sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste
to inherit their fathers’ wealth; and how fair damsels—blush not, sweet
ones—have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole
guest to an infant’s funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for
sin ye shall scent out all the places—whether in church, bedchamber,
street, field, or forest—where crime has been committed, and shall
exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood
spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every
bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and
which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power—than
my power at its utmost—can make manifest in deeds. And now, my
children, look upon each other.”
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the
wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling
before that unhallowed altar.
“Lo, there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and
solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once
angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. “Depending upon
one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a
dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must
be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of
your race.”
“Welcome,” repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and
triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet
hesitating on the verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin was
hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the
lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did
the shape of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism
upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of
sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and
thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look
at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the
next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they
disclosed and what they saw!
“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband, “look up to heaven, and resist the
wicked one.”
Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found
himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind
which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the
rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been
all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of
Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old
minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for
breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he
passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to
avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the
holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. “What God
doth the wizard pray to?” quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that
excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own
lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of
morning’s milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp
of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied
the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and
bursting into such joy at sight of him that she skipped along the
street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But
Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on
without a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild
dream of a witch-meeting?
Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young
Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if
not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.
On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he
could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear
and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the
pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open
Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives
and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then
did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down
upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly at
midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or
eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered
to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he
had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by
Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly
procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse
upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.