IX.-THE LEECH.

nder 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 dishonor; 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 connection 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 interests, to vanish out of
life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean,
whither rumor 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.nderIn 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 subtile faculties of such men were materialized, 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 favor 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 heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor 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, by 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 rumor 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 favorable 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 labors? 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 labors, 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
talk with the plash 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 recognized 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 lamplight, 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 scrutinized 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 license 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 disagreeably 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 recognized 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 authorized
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 unsavory
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 colors 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 truths 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 Doctor 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 Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages
of especial 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 depths of
the poor minister’s eyes, the battle was a sore one and the victory
anything but secure.