X.-THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT.

ld 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!ldSometimes, 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, sympathizing, 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, nowadays, looked
straightforth 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, nor
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 unspoken crime?”“That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours,” replied the minister.
“There can be, if I forebode 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 with a 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 them 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, O, what a relief have I
witnessed in those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last
draws free air, after 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 fellow-men, let them do it by making manifest the power
and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential
self-abasement! Wouldst 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 Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensitive clergyman shrunk, with nervous
dread, from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl
clapped her little hands, in the most extravagant ecstasy. 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 all 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?”“No!—not to thee!—not to an earthly physician!” cried
Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and
bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger Chillingworth.
“Not to thee! But if it be the soul’s disease, then
do I commit myself to the one Physician of the soul! He,
if it stand with his good pleasure, can cure; or he can kill!
Let him do with me as, in his justice and wisdom, he
shall see good. But who art thou, that meddlest in this matter?—that
dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his
God?”With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room.“It is as well to have made this step,” said Roger Chillingworth
to himself, looking after the minister with a grave smile.
“There is nothing lost. We shall be friends again anon. But
see, now, how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth
him out of himself! As with one passion, so with another!
He hath done a wild thing erenow, this pious Master Dimmesdale,
in the hot passion of his heart!”It proved not difficult to re-establish the intimacy of the two
companions, on the same footing and in the same degree as
heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy,
was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him
into an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been
nothing in the physician’s words to excuse or palliate. He
marvelled, indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust
back the kind old man, when merely proffering the advice
which it was his duty to bestow, and which the minister himself
had expressly sought. With these remorseful feelings, he
lost no time in making the amplest apologies, and besought his
friend still to continue the care, which, if not successful in
restoring him to health, had, in all probability, been the means
of prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. Roger Chillingworth
readily assented, and went on with his medical supervision
of the minister; doing his best for him, in all good
faith, but always quitting the patient’s apartment, at the close
of a professional interview, with a mysterious and puzzled smile
upon his lips. This expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale’s
presence, but grew strongly evident as the physician
crossed the threshold.“A rare case!” he muttered. “I must needs look deeper
into it. A strange sympathy betwixt soul and body! Were
it only for the art’s sake, I must search this matter to the
bottom!”It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded,
that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noonday, and entirely
unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair,
with a large black-letter volume open before him on the table.
It must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous
school of literature. The profound depth of the minister’s
repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of
those persons whose sleep, ordinarily, is as light, as fitful, and
as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To
such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn
into itself, that he stirred not in his chair, when old
Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came
into the room. The physician advanced directly in front of
his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside
the vestment, that, hitherto, had always covered it even from
the professional eye.Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred.After a brief pause, the physician turned away.But, with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! With
what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed
only by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through
the whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously
manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his
arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor!
Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his
ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports
himself, when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won
into his kingdom.But what distinguished the physician’s ecstasy from Satan’s
was the trait of wonder in it!