IV.-THE INTERVIEW.

fter her return to the prison, Hester Prynne
was found to be in a state of nervous excitement
that demanded constant watchfulness,
lest she should perpetrate violence on herself,
or do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor
babe. As night approached, it proving impossible
to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment,
Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a
physician. He described him as a man of skill in all Christian
modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever
the savage people could teach, in respect to medicinal herbs and
roots that grew in the forest. To say the truth, there was much
need of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself,
but still more urgently for the child; who, drawing its sustenance
from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it
all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the
mother’s system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and
was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which
Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.fterClosely following the jailer into the dismal apartment appeared
that individual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowd
had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter.
He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence,
but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of
him, until the magistrates should have conferred with the Indian
sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was announced as
Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into the
room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quiet
that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had immediately
become as still as death, although the child continued to moan.“Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient,” said the
practitioner. “Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have
peace in your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall
hereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may have
found her heretofore.”“Nay, if your worship can accomplish that,” answered Master
Brackett, “I shall own you for a man of skill indeed! Verily,
the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little,
that I should take in hand to drive Satan out of her with stripes.”The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic
quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as
belonging. Nor did his demeanor change, when the withdrawal
of the prison-keeper left him face to face with the woman, whose
absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a relation
between himself and her. His first care was given to the
child; whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the trundle-bed,
made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business
to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant carefully,
and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took
from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical preparations,
one of which he mingled with a cup of water.“My old studies in alchemy,” observed he, “and my sojourn,
for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly
properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than
many that claim the medical degree. Here, woman! The child
is yours,—she is none of mine,—neither will she recognize my
voice or aspect as a father’s. Administer this draught, therefore,
with thine own hand.”Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing
with strongly marked apprehension into his face.“Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?” whispered
she.“Foolish woman!” responded the physician, half coldly, half
soothingly. “What should ail me, to harm this misbegotten
and miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were
it my child,—yea, mine own, as well as thine!—I could do no
better for it.”As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of
mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered
the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the
leech’s pledge. The moans of the little patient subsided; its
convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and, in a few moments, as
is the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into
a profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had a fair
right to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother.
With calm and intent scrutiny he felt her pulse, looked into her
eyes,—a gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because
so familiar, and yet so strange and cold,—and, finally, satisfied
with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught.“I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe,” remarked he; “but I
have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is
one of them,—a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital
of some lessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink
it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I
cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy
passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea.”He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow,
earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full
of doubt and questioning, as to what his purposes might be.
She looked also at her slumbering child.“I have thought of death,” said she,—“have wished for it,—would
even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I
should pray for anything. Yet if death be in this cup, I bid
thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is
even now at my lips.”“Drink, then,” replied he, still with the same cold composure.
“Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes
wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of
vengeance, what could I do better for my object than to let
thee live,—than to give thee medicines against all harm and
peril of life,—so that this burning shame may still blaze upon
thy bosom?” As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on the
scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester’s
breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed her involuntary
gesture, and smiled. “Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom
with thee, in the eyes of men and women,—in the eyes of him
whom thou didst call thy husband,—in the eyes of yonder
child! And, that thou mayest live, take off this draught.”Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained
the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself
on the bed where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only
chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her.
She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt
that—having now done all that humanity or principle, or, if so
it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for the relief of
physical suffering—he was next to treat with her as the man
whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured.“Hester,” said he, “I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast
fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the
pedestal of infamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not
far to seek. It was my folly, and thy weakness. I,—a man
of thought,—the bookworm of great libraries,—a man already
in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream
of knowledge,—what had I to do with youth and beauty like
thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude
myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical
deformity in a young girl’s fantasy! Men call me wise. If
sages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen
all this. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast
and dismal forest, and entered this settlement of Christian men,
the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester
Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people.
Nay, from the moment when we came down the old church steps
together, a married pair, I might have beheld the bale-fire of
that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our path!”“Thou knowest,” said Hester,—for, depressed as she was, she
could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame,—“thou
knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love,
nor feigned any.”“True,” replied he. “It was my folly! I have said it. But,
up to that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world
had been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough
for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household
fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream,—old
as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,—that
the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all
mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I
drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought
to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!”“I have greatly wronged thee,” murmured Hester.“We have wronged each other,” answered he. “Mine was
the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false
and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who
has not thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance,
plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me the scale hangs
fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us
both! Who is he?”“Ask me not!” replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his
face. “That thou shalt never know!”“Never, sayest thou?” rejoined he, with a smile of dark and
self-relying intelligence. “Never know him! Believe me, Hester,
there are few things,—whether in the outward world, or, to
a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought,—few things
hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly
to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover up
thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it,
too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this
day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, and
give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come to
the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek
this man, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought
gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious
of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself
shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs
be mine!”The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her,
that Hester Prynne clasped her hands over her heart, dreading
lest he should read the secret there at once.“Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine,”
resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one
with him. “He bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment,
as thou dost; but I shall read it on his heart. Yet fear
not for him! Think not that I shall interfere with Heaven’s
own method of retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him to the
gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine that I shall contrive
aught against his life; no, nor against his fame, if, as I
judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let him
hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he
shall be mine!”“Thy acts are like mercy,” said Hester, bewildered and appalled.
“But thy words interpret thee as a terror!”“One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon
thee,” continued the scholar. “Thou hast kept the secret of thy
paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land
that know me. Breathe not, to any human soul, that thou didst
ever call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth,
I shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated
from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child,
amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No
matter whether of love or hate; no matter whether of right or
wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My
home is where thou art, and where he is. But betray me
not!”“Wherefore dost thou desire it?” inquired Hester, shrinking,
she hardly knew why, from this secret bond. “Why not announce
thyself openly, and cast me off at once?”“It may be,” he replied, “because I will not encounter the
dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It
may be for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live
and die unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband be to the world
as one already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come.
Recognize me not, by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the
secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou
fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his life, will be
in my hands. Beware!”“I will keep thy secret, as I have his,” said Hester.“Swear it!” rejoined he.And she took the oath.“And now, Mistress Prynne,” said old Roger Chillingworth,
as he was hereafter to be named, “I leave thee alone; alone
with thy infant, and the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester?
Doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep?
Art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?”“Why dost thou smile so at me?” inquired Hester, troubled
at the expression of his eyes. “Art thou like the Black Man
that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me
into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?”“Not thy soul,” he answered, with another smile. “No, not
thine!”