The Scarlet Letter Page 7

 

  IV.

  THE INTERVIEW.

  After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in astate of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness, lestshe should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenziedmischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossibleto quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment,Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. Hedescribed him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physicalscience, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people couldteach, in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in theforest. To say the truth, there was much need of professionalassistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently forthe child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemedto have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair,which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions ofpain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agonywhich Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.

  Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment appeared thatindividual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowd had beenof such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He waslodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the mostconvenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until themagistrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respectinghis ransom. His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer,after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at thecomparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne hadimmediately become as still as death, although the child continued tomoan.

  "Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said thepractitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace inyour house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter bemore amenable to just authority than you may have found herheretofore."

  "Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master Brackett,"I shall own you for a man of skill indeed! Verily, the woman hathbeen like a possessed one; and there lacks little, that I should takein hand to drive Satan out of her with stripes."

  The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude ofthe profession to which he announced himself as belonging. Nor did hisdemeanor change, when the withdrawal of the prison-keeper left himface to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in thecrowd, had intimated so close a relation between himself and her. Hisfirst care was given to the child; whose cries, indeed, as she laywrithing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity topostpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He examinedthe infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case,which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medicalpreparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water.

  "My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above ayear past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties ofsimples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim themedical degree. Here, woman! The child is yours,--she is none ofmine,--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 withstrongly marked apprehension into his face.

  "Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whispered she.

  "Foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, halfsoothingly. "What should ail me, to harm this misbegotten andmiserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were it mychild,--yea, mine own, as well as thine!--I could do no better forit."

  As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state ofmind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered thedraught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge.The moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossingsgradually ceased; and, in a few moments, as is the custom of youngchildren after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewyslumber. The physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, nextbestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny hefelt her pulse, looked into her eyes,--a gaze that made her heartshrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange andcold,--and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded tomingle another draught.

  "I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I have learned manynew secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them,--a recipe thatan Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that wereas old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinlessconscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell andheaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuoussea."

  He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow, earnestlook into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubtand questioning, as to what his purposes might be. She looked also ather slumbering child.

  "I have thought of death," said she,--"have wished for it,--would evenhave prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray foranything. Yet if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, erethou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is even now at my lips."

  "Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure. "Dostthou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be soshallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I dobetter for my object than to let thee live,--than to give theemedicines against all harm and peril of life,--so that this burningshame may still blaze upon thy bosom?" As he spoke, he laid his longforefinger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorchinto Hester's breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed herinvoluntary gesture, and smiled. "Live, therefore, and bear about thydoom with thee, in the eyes of men and women,--in the eyes of him whomthou didst call thy husband,--in the eyes of yonder child! And, thatthou mayest live, take off this draught."

  Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained thecup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bedwhere the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which theroom afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could not buttremble at these preparations; for she felt that--having now done allthat humanity or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty,impelled him to do, for the relief of physical suffering--he was nextto treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparablyinjured.

  "Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast falleninto the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal ofinfamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It wasmy folly, and thy weakness. I,--a man of thought,--the bookworm ofgreat libraries,--a man already in decay, having given my best yearsto feed the hungry dream of knowledge,--what had I to do with youthand beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could Idelude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veilphysical deformity in a young girl's fantasy! Men call me wise. Ifsages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen allthis. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and dismalforest, and entered this settlement of Christian men, the very firstobject to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester Prynne, standing up, astatue of ignominy, before the people. Nay, from the moment when wecame down the old church steps together, a married pair, I might havebeheld the bale-fire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end of ourpath!"

  "Thou knowest," said Hester,--for, depressed as she was, she could notendure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame,--"thou knowestthat 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 thatepoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had been socheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, butlonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindleone! It seemed not so wild a dream,--old as I was, and sombre as Iwas, and misshapen as I was,--that the simple bliss, which isscattered far and wid
e, for all mankind to gather up, might yet bemine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermostchamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence madethere!"

  "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 relationwith my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought andphilosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee.Between thee and me the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, theman 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 andself-relying intelligence. "Never know him! Believe me, Hester, thereare few things,--whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth,in the invisible sphere of thought,--few things hidden from the manwho devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of amystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude.Thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, evenas thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thyheart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I cometo the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek thisman, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold inalchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. Ishall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly andunawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!"

  The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, thatHester Prynne clasped her hands over her heart, dreading lest heshould 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. "Hebears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost; butI shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him! Think not that Ishall interfere with Heaven's own method of retribution, or, to my ownloss, betray him to the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imaginethat I shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against hisfame, if, as I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Lethim hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he shall bemine!"

  "Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled. "Butthy 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 awoman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closestligaments. No matter whether of love or hate; no matter whether ofright or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My homeis where thou art, and where he is. But betray me not!"

  "The Eyes of the wrinkled Scholar glowed"]

  "Wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired Hester, shrinking, shehardly knew why, from this secret bond. "Why not announce thyselfopenly, and cast me off at once?"

  "It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the dishonorthat besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may be for otherreasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let,therefore, thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and ofwhom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize me not, by word, by sign,by look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottestof. Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, hislife, 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 washereafter to be named, "I leave thee alone; alone with thy infant, andthe scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee towear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares andhideous dreams?"

  "Why dost thou smile so at me?" inquired Hester, troubled at theexpression of his eyes. "Art thou like the Black Man that haunts theforest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that willprove the ruin of my soul?"

  "Not thy soul," he answered, with another smile. "No, not thine!"