Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often

came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so

dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate

tears. Then, perhaps—for there was no foreseeing how it might affect

her—Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and harden her small

features into a stern, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom

she would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable

and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or—but this more rarely happened—she

would be convulsed with rage of grief and sob out her love for her

mother in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart

by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardly safe in confiding herself to that

gusty tenderness: it passed as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all

these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but,

by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win

the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible

intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child lay in the

placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of

quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until—perhaps with that perverse

expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids—little Pearl awoke!

How soon—with what strange rapidity, indeed—did Pearl arrive at an age

that was capable of social intercourse beyond the mother’s ever-ready

smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would it have been

could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with

the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and

unravelled her own darling’s tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a

group of sportive children. But this could never be. Pearl was a born

outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of

sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more

remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child

comprehended her loneliness: the destiny that had drawn an inviolable

circle round about her: the whole peculiarity, in short, of her

position in respect to other children. Never since her release from

prison had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her walks

about the town, Pearl, too, was there: first as the babe in arms, and

afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a

forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of

three or four footsteps to one of Hester’s. She saw the children of the

settlement on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic

thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashions as the

Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance,

or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham fight with the

Indians, or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft.

Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance.

If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about

her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her

puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill,

incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because they had

so much the sound of a witch’s anathemas in some unknown tongue.

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant

brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish,

unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and

child, and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfrequently

reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt the sentiment, and requited

it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a

childish bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value,

and even comfort for the mother; because there was at least an

intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitful caprice

that so often thwarted her in the child’s manifestations. It appalled

her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the

evil that had existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl

inherited, by inalienable right, out of Hester’s heart. Mother and

daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human

society; and in the nature of the child seemed to be perpetuated those

unquiet elements that had distracted Hester Prynne before Pearl’s

birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by the softening

influences of maternity.

At home, within and around her mother’s cottage, Pearl wanted not a

wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forth

from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand

objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The

unlikeliest materials—a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower—were the

puppets of Pearl’s witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward

change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage

of her inner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary

personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged, black,

and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the

breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders; the

ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down

and uprooted most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the vast variety of

forms into which she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed,

but darting up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural

activity—soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a

tide of life—and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. It

was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern

lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the

sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be a little more than was

observable in other children of bright faculties; except as Pearl, in

the dearth of human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary

throng which she created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings

with which the child regarded all these offsprings of her own heart and

mind. She never created a friend, but seemed always to be sowing

broadcast the dragon’s teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies,

against whom she rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad—then what

depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the cause—to

observe, in one so young, this constant recognition of an adverse

world, and so fierce a training of the energies that were to make good

her cause in the contest that must ensue.

Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees,

and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which

made utterance for itself betwixt speech and a groan—“O Father in

Heaven—if Thou art still my Father—what is this being which I have

brought into the world?” And Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or

aware through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish,

would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile

with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play.

One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be told. The

very first thing which she had noticed in her life, was—what?—not the

mother’s smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint,

embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards,

and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no

means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware

was—shall we say it?—the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom! One day, as

her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught

by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and putting

up her little hand she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with

a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child.

Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token,

instinctively endeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the torture

inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if

her mother’s agonised gesture were meant only to make sport for her,

did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile. From that epoch, except

when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment’s safety: not

a moment’s calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes

elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze might never once be fixed upon the

scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the

stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd

expression of the eyes.

Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child’s eyes while Hester

was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of doing; and

suddenly—for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered

with unaccountable delusions—she fancied that she beheld, not her own

miniature portrait, but another face in the small black mirror of

Pearl’s eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet

bearing the semblance of features that she had known full well, though

seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them. It was as if an

evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in

mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured, though less

vividly, by the same illusion.

In the afternoon of a certain summer’s day, after Pearl grew big enough

to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of wild

flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother’s bosom; dancing

up and down like a little elf whenever she hit the scarlet letter.

Hester’s first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped

hands. But whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her

penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she

resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into

little Pearl’s wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost

invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother’s breast with

hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to

seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the child

stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little laughing image of a

fiend peeping out—or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined

it—from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes.

“Child, what art thou?” cried the mother.

“Oh, I am your little Pearl!” answered the child.

But while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down

with the humoursome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak

might be to fly up the chimney.

“Art thou my child, in very truth?” asked Hester.

Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment, with

a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was Pearl’s wonderful

intelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were not

acquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not now

reveal herself.

“Yes; I am little Pearl!” repeated the child, continuing her antics.

“Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!” said the mother

half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came

over her in the midst of her deepest suffering. “Tell me, then, what

thou art, and who sent thee hither?”

“Tell me, mother!” said the child, seriously, coming up to Hester, and

pressing herself close to her knees. “Do thou tell me!”

“Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!” answered Hester Prynne.

But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of

the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or because

an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her small forefinger and

touched the scarlet letter.

“He did not send me!” cried she, positively. “I have no Heavenly

Father!”

“Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!” answered the mother,

suppressing a groan. “He sent us all into the world. He sent even me,

thy mother. Then, much more thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish

child, whence didst thou come?”

“Tell me! Tell me!” repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing

and capering about the floor. “It is thou that must tell me!”

But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal

labyrinth of doubt. She remembered—betwixt a smile and a shudder—the

talk of the neighbouring townspeople, who, seeking vainly elsewhere for

the child’s paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had

given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring: such as, ever

since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through

the agency of their mother’s sin, and to promote some foul and wicked

purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a

brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child to whom this

inauspicious origin was assigned among the New England Puritans.

VII.

THE GOVERNOR’S HALL

Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellingham, with

a pair of gloves which she had fringed and embroidered to his order,

and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for, though

the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler to

descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an

honourable and influential place among the colonial magistracy.

Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of

embroidered gloves, impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview

with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the

settlement. It had reached her ears that there was a design on the part

of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid order of

principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her child. On

the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin,

these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in

the mother’s soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from

her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral

and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation,

then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these

advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than

Hester Prynne’s. Among those who promoted the design, Governor

Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. It may appear singular,

and, indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which

in later days would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than

that of the select men of the town, should then have been a question

publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. At

that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even slighter

public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight than the welfare of

Hester and her child, were strangely mixed up with the deliberations of

legislators and acts of state. The period was hardly, if at all,

earlier than that of our story, when a dispute concerning the right of

property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the

legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important

modification of the framework itself of the legislature.

Full of concern, therefore—but so conscious of her own right that it

seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on the one side,

and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the

other—Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. Little Pearl,

of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to run lightly

along by her mother’s side, and, constantly in motion from morn till

sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey than that before

her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she

demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be let

down again, and frisked onward before Hester on the grassy pathway,

with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have spoken of Pearl’s rich

and luxuriant beauty—a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints, a

bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow,

and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and which, in after years,

would be nearly akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout

her: she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment. Her

mother, in contriving the child’s garb, had allowed the gorgeous

tendencies of her imagination their full play, arraying her in a

crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in

fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of colouring,

which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter

bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl’s beauty, and made her the very

brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth.

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of the

child’s whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded

the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon

her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet

letter endowed with life! The mother herself—as if the red ignominy

were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed

its form—had carefully wrought out the similitude, lavishing many hours

of morbid ingenuity to create an analogy between the object of her

affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But, in truth, Pearl

was the one as well as the other; and only in consequence of that

identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to represent the scarlet

letter in her appearance.

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the

children of the Puritans looked up from their play,—or what passed for

play with those sombre little urchins—and spoke gravely one to another.

“Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and of a

truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running

along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!”

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her

foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening

gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them

all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant

pestilence—the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of

judgment—whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation.

She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which,

doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. The

victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother, and looked

up, smiling, into her face.

Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor

Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which

there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns now

moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many

sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have

happened and passed away within their dusky chambers. Then, however,

there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the

cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human

habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a very

cheery aspect, the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in

which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that,

when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it

glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the

double handful. The brilliancy might have befitted Aladdin’s palace

rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further

decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams,

suitable to the quaint taste of the age which had been drawn in the

stucco, when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the

admiration of after times.

Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house began to caper and

dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine

should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with.

“No, my little Pearl!” said her mother; “thou must gather thine own

sunshine. I have none to give thee!”

They approached the door, which was of an arched form, and flanked on

each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of

which were lattice-windows, the wooden shutters to close over them at

need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester Prynne

gave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor’s

bond-servants—a free-born Englishman, but now a seven years’ slave.

During that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much a

commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf wore

the customary garb of serving-men at that period, and long before, in

the old hereditary halls of England.

“Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within?” inquired Hester.

“Yea, forsooth,” replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes

at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had

never before seen. “Yea, his honourable worship is within. But he hath

a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see

his worship now.”

“Nevertheless, I will enter,” answered Hester Prynne; and the

bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and the

glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land,

offered no opposition.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance.

With many variations, suggested by the nature of his building

materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of social life,

Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation after the residences

of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a wide

and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the

house, and forming a medium of general communication, more or less

directly, with all the other apartments. At one extremity, this

spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which

formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end,

though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated

by one of those embowed hall windows which we read of in old books, and

which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the

cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or

other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter

gilded volumes on the centre table, to be turned over by the casual

guest. The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs,

the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken

flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste, the whole being of the

Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither

from the Governor’s paternal home. On the table—in token that the

sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left behind—stood a

large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl

peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent

draught of ale.

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of

the Bellingham lineage, some with armour on their breasts, and others

with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterised by the

sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on, as if

they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies,

and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and

enjoyments of living men.

At about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall was

suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic,

but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful

armourer in London, the same year in which Governor Bellingham came

over to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a gorget

and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all,

and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to

glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about

upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show,

but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn muster and training

field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the

Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of

Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch, as his professional associates, the

exigencies of this new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into

a soldier, as well as a statesman and ruler.

Little Pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armour as

she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house, spent some

time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.

“Mother,” cried she, “I see you here. Look! Look!”

Hester looked by way of humouring the child; and she saw that, owing to

the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was

represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be

greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she

seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upwards also, at a

similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the

elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small

physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in

the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made

Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child,

but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl’s shape.

“Come along, Pearl,” said she, drawing her away, “Come and look into

this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful

ones than we find in the woods.”

Pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further 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

those new personages.

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 grey 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 great 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

shoulders, while its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet

be naturalised in the New England climate, and that purple grapes might

possibly be compelled to flourish 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 labours 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 favour 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 favourite 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 phantasy 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 millionfold the power of retribution for

my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!”

“My poor woman,” said the not unkind old minister, “the child shall be

well cared for—far better than thou canst do for 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 careworn 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 armour 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 recognised 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 has 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, 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!”

“Oh, not so!—not so!” continued Mr. Dimmesdale. “She recognises,

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 if it were by the Creator’s sacred

pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will

bring its parents 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 Rev. 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 analyse that child’s nature, and, from it make

a mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?”

“Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clue 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

tonight? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I well-nigh

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.

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 dishonour; 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 connexion 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 interest, to vanish out

of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean,

whither rumour 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 subtle faculties of such men were materialised, 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 favour 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 Pharmacopœia, 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 heavenly ordained apostle,

destined, should he live and labour 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,

to 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 rumour 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 favourable 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

labours? 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 labours, 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.

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 walks with the splash 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 recognised 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 lamp-light, 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 scrutinised 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

licence 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 disagreeable 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

recognised 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

authorised 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 unsavoury 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 colours 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 truth

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 Dr.

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

Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of special 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 depth of the poor

minister’s eyes, the battle was a sore one, and the victory anything

but secure.

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, sympathising, 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, now-a-days, looked straight

forth 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, no 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 outspoken crime?”

“That, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours,” replied the minister.

“There can be, if I forbode 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 in the 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 it 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, oh, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful

brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after a 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 fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and

reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential

self-abasement! Would 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 Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale. The

sensitive clergyman shrank, with nervous dread, from the light missile.

Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little hands in the most

extravagant ecstacy. 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. It was as if she had been made afresh out of

new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and

be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her

for a crime.

“There goes a woman,” resumed Roger Chillingworth, after a pause, “who,

be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden

sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is Hester Prynne the

less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on her breast?”

“I do verily believe it,” answered the clergyman. “Nevertheless, I

cannot answer for her. There was a look of pain in her face which I

would gladly have been spared the sight of. But still, methinks, it

must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as

this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it up in his heart.”

There was another pause, and the physician began anew to examine and

arrange the plants which he had gathered.

“You inquired of me, a little time agone,” said he, at length, “my

judgment as touching your health.”

“I did,” answered the clergyman, “and would gladly learn it. Speak

frankly, I pray you, be it for life or death.”

“Freely then, and plainly,” said the physician, still busy with his

plants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr. Dimmesdale, “the disorder is a

strange one; not so much in itself nor as outwardly manifested,—in so

far, at least as the symptoms have been laid open to my observation.

Looking daily at you, my good sir, and watching the tokens of your

aspect now for months gone by, I should deem you a man sore sick, it

may be, yet not so sick but that an instructed and watchful physician

might well hope to cure you. But I know not what to say, the disease is

what I seem to know, yet know it not.”

“You speak in riddles, learned sir,” said the pale minister, glancing

aside out of the window.

“Then, to speak more plainly,” continued the physician, “and I crave

pardon, sir, should it seem to require pardon, for this needful

plainness of my speech. Let me ask as your friend, as one having

charge, under Providence, of your life and physical well being, hath

all the operation of this disorder been fairly laid open and recounted

to me?”

“How can you question it?” asked the minister. “Surely it were child’s

play to call in a physician and then hide the sore!”

“You would tell me, then, that I know all?” said Roger Chillingworth,

deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright with intense and concentrated

intelligence, on the minister’s face. “Be it so! But again! He to whom

only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes,

but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. A bodily disease,

which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all,

be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon

once again, good sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence. You,

sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose body is the closest

conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit

whereof it is the instrument.”

“Then I need ask no further,” said the clergyman, somewhat hastily

rising from his chair. “You deal not, I take it, in medicine for the

soul!”

“Thus, a sickness,” continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in an

unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, but standing up and

confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low,

dark, and misshapen figure,—“a sickness, a sore place, if we may so

call it, in your spirit hath immediately its appropriate manifestation

in your bodily frame. Would you, therefore, that your physician heal

the bodily evil? How may this be unless you first lay open to him the

wound or trouble in your soul?”