XIV.-HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN.

ester bade little Pearl run down to the
margin of the water, and play with the shells
and tangled sea-weed, until she should have
talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs.
So the child flew away like a bird, and,
making bare her small white feet, went pattering
along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she
came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, left by
the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Forth
peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around
her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a little
maid, whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take
her hand, and run a race with her. But the visionary little
maid, on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say,—“This is
a better place! Come thou into the pool!” And Pearl, stepping
in, mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom;
while, out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of
fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.esterMeanwhile, her mother had accosted the physician.“I would speak a word with you,” said she,—“a word that
concerns us much.”“Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word for old
Roger Chillingworth?” answered he, raising himself from his
stooping posture. “With all my heart! Why, Mistress, I hear
good tidings of you on all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve,
a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of
your affairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered me that there had
been question concerning you in the council. It was debated
whether or no, with safety to the common weal, yonder scarlet
letter might be taken off your bosom. On my life, Hester, I
made my entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might
be done forthwith!”“It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off
this badge,” calmly replied Hester. “Were I worthy to be
quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed
into something that should speak a different purport.”“Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better,” rejoined he. “A
woman must needs follow her own fancy, touching the adornment
of her person. The letter is gayly embroidered, and shows
right bravely on your bosom!”All this while, Hester had been looking steadily at the old
man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern
what a change had been wrought upon him within the past
seven years. It was not so much that he had grown older; for
though the traces of advancing life were visible, he bore his age
well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But
the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and
quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether
vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching,
almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his
wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile; but
the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively,
that the spectator could see his blackness all the better
for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out
of his eyes; as if the old man’s soul were on fire, and kept on
smouldering duskily within his breast, until, by some casual
puff of passion, it was blown into a momentary flame. This
he repressed, as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if
nothing of the kind had happened.In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence
of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will
only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office.
This unhappy person had effected such a transformation, by
devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a
heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and
adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated
over.The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne’s bosom. Here
was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home
to her.“What see you in my face,” asked the physician, “that you
look at it so earnestly?”“Something that would make me weep, if there were any
tears bitter enough for it,” answered she. “But let it pass!
It is of yonder miserable man that I would speak.”“And what of him?” cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly,
as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to
discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confidant.
“Not to hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts
happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. So speak
freely; and I will make answer.”“When we last spake together,” said Hester, “now seven
years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy,
as touching the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As
the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands,
there seemed no choice to me, save to be silent, in accordance
with your behest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings
that I thus bound myself; for, having cast off all duty towards
other human beings, there remained a duty towards him; and
something whispered me that I was betraying it, in pledging
myself to keep your counsel. Since that day, no man is so
near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You
are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts.
You burrow and rankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his
life, and you cause him to die daily a living death; and still
he knows you not. In permitting this, I have surely acted a
false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to
be true!”“What choice had you?” asked Roger Chillingworth. “My
finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his
pulpit into a dungeon,—thence, peradventure, to the gallows!”“It had been better so!” said Hester Prynne.“What evil have I done the man?” asked Roger Chillingworth
again. “I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that
ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought
such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for
my aid, his life would have burned away in torments, within
the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine.
For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne
up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. O,
I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough! What art can
do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes, and
creeps about on earth, is owing all to me!”“Better he had died at once!” said Hester Prynne.“Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!” cried old Roger Chillingworth,
letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her
eyes. “Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer
what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his
worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an
influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew, by
some spiritual sense,—for the Creator never made another
being so sensitive as this,—he knew that no friendly hand was
pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye was looking curiously
into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he
knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition
common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given
over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams, and
desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair of pardon;
as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it
was the constant shadow of my presence!—the closest propinquity
of the man whom he had most vilely wronged!—and
who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the
direst revenge! Yea, indeed!—he did not err!—there was a
fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart,
has become a fiend for his especial torment!”The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted
his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some
frightful shape, which he could not recognize, usurping the
place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments—which
sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when
a man’s moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind’s eye.
Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.“Hast thou not tortured him enough?” said Hester, noticing
the old man’s look. “Has he not paid thee all?”“No!—no!—He has but increased the debt!” answered
the physician; and as he proceeded his manner lost its fiercer
characteristics, and subsided into gloom. “Dost thou remember
me, Hester, as I was nine years agone? Even then, I was in
the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all
my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet
years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge,
and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but
casual to the other,—faithfully for the advancement of human
welfare. No life had been more peaceful and innocent than
mine; few lives so rich with benefits conferred. Dost thou
remember me? Was I not, though you might deem me cold,
nevertheless a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself,—kind,
true, just, and of constant, if not warm affections?
Was I not all this?”“All this, and more,” said Hester.“And what am I now?” demanded he, looking into her face,
and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his
features. “I have already told thee what I am! A fiend! Who
made me so?”“It was myself!” cried Hester, shuddering. “It was I, not
less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?”“I have left thee to the scarlet letter,” replied Roger Chillingworth.
“If that have not avenged me, I can do no more!”He laid his finger on it, with a smile.“It has avenged thee!” answered Hester Prynne.“I judged no less,” said the physician. “And now, what
wouldst thou with me touching this man?”“I must reveal the secret,” answered Hester, firmly. “He
must discern thee in thy true character. What may be the
result, I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from
me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be
paid. So far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his
fair fame and his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in
thy hands. Nor do I,—whom the scarlet letter has disciplined
to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron, entering into
the soul,—nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any
longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore
thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for
him,—no good for me,—no good for thee! There is no good
for little Pearl! There is no path to guide us out of this dismal
maze!”“Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!” said Roger Chillingworth,
unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too; for there
was a quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed.
“Thou hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met
earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I
pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature!”“And I thee,” answered Hester Prynne, “for the hatred that
has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou
yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? If not
for his sake, then doubly for thine own! Forgive, and leave
his further retribution to the Power that claims it! I said, but
now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or
me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of
evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we
have strewn our path. It is not so! There might be good for
thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and
hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only
privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?”“Peace, Hester, peace!” replied the old man, with gloomy
sternness. “It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such
power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten,
comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we
suffer. By thy first step awry thou didst plant the germ of
evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity.
Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of
typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a
fiend’s office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black
flower blossom as it may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou
wilt with yonder man.”He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment
of gathering herbs.