Kabanata Kabanata 20 · THE MINISTER IN A MAZE

. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE

As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and little Pearl,

he threw a backward glance, half expecting that he should discover only

some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child,

slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. So great a vicissitude in

his life could not at once be received as real. But there was Hester,

clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some

blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever

since been covering with moss, so that these two fated ones, with

earth’s heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together, and

find a single hour’s rest and solace. And there was Pearl, too, lightly

dancing from the margin of the brook—now that the intrusive third

person was gone—and taking her old place by her mother’s side. So the

minister had not fallen asleep and dreamed!

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of

impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled and

more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and himself had sketched

for their departure. It had been determined between them that the Old

World, with its crowds and cities, offered them a more eligible shelter

and concealment than the wilds of New England or all America, with its

alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the few settlements of Europeans

scattered thinly along the sea-board. Not to speak of the clergyman’s

health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life, his

native gifts, his culture, and his entire development would secure him

a home only in the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the

state the more delicately adapted to it the man. In furtherance of this

choice, it so happened that a ship lay in the harbour; one of those

unquestionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being

absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a

remarkable irresponsibility of character. This vessel had recently

arrived from the Spanish Main, and within three days’ time would sail

for Bristol. Hester Prynne—whose vocation, as a self-enlisted Sister of

Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain and crew—could

take upon herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child

with all the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable.

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the

precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It would

probably be on the fourth day from the present. “This is most

fortunate!” he had then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr.

Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate we hesitate to reveal.

Nevertheless—to hold nothing back from the reader—it was because, on

the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election Sermon;

and, as such an occasion formed an honourable epoch in the life of a

New England Clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable

mode and time of terminating his professional career. “At least, they

shall say of me,” thought this exemplary man, “that I leave no public

duty unperformed or ill-performed!” Sad, indeed, that an introspection

so profound and acute as this poor minister’s should be so miserably

deceived! We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him;

but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so

slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease that had long since begun

to eat into the real substance of his character. No man, for any

considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the

multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the

true.

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale’s feelings as he returned from his

interview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, and

hurried him townward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods

seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and less

trodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it on his outward

journey. But he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself through

the clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow,

and overcame, in short, all the difficulties of the track, with an

unweariable activity that astonished him. He could not but recall how

feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath he had toiled over the

same ground, only two days before. As he drew near the town, he took an

impression of change from the series of familiar objects that presented

themselves. It seemed not yesterday, not one, not two, but many days,

or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There, indeed, was each

former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the

peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and

a weather-cock at every point where his memory suggested one. Not the

less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. The

same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the

well-known shapes of human life, about the little town. They looked

neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter,

nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet today; it

was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the

individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting glance; and

yet the minister’s deepest sense seemed to inform him of their

mutability. A similar impression struck him most remarkably as he

passed under the walls of his own church. The edifice had so very

strange, and yet so familiar an aspect, that Mr. Dimmesdale’s mind

vibrated between two ideas; either that he had seen it only in a dream

hitherto, or that he was merely dreaming about it now.

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no

external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator

of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had

operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister’s

own will, and Hester’s will, and the fate that grew between them, had

wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore, but

the same minister returned not from the forest. He might have said to

the friends who greeted him—“I am not the man for whom you take me! I

left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy

tree trunk, and near a melancholy brook! Go, seek your minister, and

see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy,

pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment!”

His friends, no doubt, would still have insisted with him—“Thou art

thyself the man!” but the error would have been their own, not his.

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him other

evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. In

truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in

that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the impulses now

communicated to the unfortunate and startled minister. At every step he

was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a

sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional, in spite of

himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed

the impulse. For instance, he met one of his own deacons. The good old

man addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchal privilege

which his venerable age, his upright and holy character, and his

station in the church, entitled him to use and, conjoined with this,

the deep, almost worshipping respect, which the minister’s professional

and private claims alike demanded. Never was there a more beautiful

example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the

obeisance and respect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank,

and inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. Now, during a

conversation of some two or three moments between the Reverend Mr.

Dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by

the most careful self-control that the former could refrain from

uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind,

respecting the communion-supper. He absolutely trembled and turned pale

as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself in utterance of these

horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his

having fairly given it. And, even with this terror in his heart, he

could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old

patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by his minister’s impiety.

Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying along the street,

the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest female member of his

church, a most pious and exemplary old dame, poor, widowed, lonely, and

with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and

children, and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial-ground is full

of storied gravestones. Yet all this, which would else have been such

heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by

religious consolations and the truths of Scripture, wherewith she had

fed herself continually for more than thirty years. And since Mr.

Dimmesdale had taken her in charge, the good grandam’s chief earthly

comfort—which, unless it had been likewise a heavenly comfort, could

have been none at all—was to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of

set purpose, and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant,

heaven-breathing Gospel truth, from his beloved lips, into her dulled,

but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment

of putting his lips to the old woman’s ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the

great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture,

nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him,

unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. The

instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged

sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely

poisonous infusion. What he really did whisper, the minister could

never afterwards recollect. There was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in

his utterance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to the good

widow’s comprehension, or which Providence interpreted after a method

of its own. Assuredly, as the minister looked back, he beheld an

expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine

of the celestial city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale.

Again, a third instance. After parting from the old church member, he

met the youngest sister of them all. It was a maiden newly-won—and won

by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale’s own sermon, on the Sabbath after his

vigil—to barter the transitory pleasures of the world for the heavenly

hope that was to assume brighter substance as life grew dark around

her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. She was

fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in Paradise. The minister knew

well that he was himself enshrined within the stainless sanctity of her

heart, which hung its snowy curtains about his image, imparting to

religion the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity. Satan,

that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away from her

mother’s side, and thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted,

or—shall we not rather say?—this lost and desperate man. As she drew

nigh, the arch-fiend whispered him to condense into small compass, and

drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom

darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power

over this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister felt

potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look,

and develop all its opposite with but a word. So—with a mightier

struggle than he had yet sustained—he held his Geneva cloak before his

face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving

the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. She ransacked her

conscience—which was full of harmless little matters, like her pocket

or her work-bag—and took herself to task, poor thing! for a thousand

imaginary faults, and went about her household duties with swollen

eyelids the next morning.

Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last

temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, and

almost as horrible. It was—we blush to tell it—it was to stop short in

the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan

children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk.

Denying himself this freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken

seaman, one of the ship’s crew from the Spanish Main. And here, since

he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale

longed at least to shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and recreate

himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound

with, and a volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and

heaven-defying oaths! It was not so much a better principle, as partly

his natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of clerical

decorum, that carried him safely through the latter crisis.

“What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?” cried the minister to

himself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his hand

against his forehead.

“Am I mad? or am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make a

contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood? And does he

now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the performance of every

wickedness which his most foul imagination can conceive?”

At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale thus communed with

himself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old Mistress Hibbins,

the reputed witch-lady, is said to have been passing by. She made a

very grand appearance, having on a high head-dress, a rich gown of

velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow starch, of which Anne

Turner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before this

last good lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder.

Whether the witch had read the minister’s thoughts or no, she came to a

full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and—though

little given to converse with clergymen—began a conversation.

“So, reverend sir, you have made a visit into the forest,” observed the

witch-lady, nodding her high head-dress at him. “The next time I pray

you to allow me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bear you

company. Without taking overmuch upon myself my good word will go far

towards gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder

potentate you wot of.”

“I profess, madam,” answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance,

such as the lady’s rank demanded, and his own good breeding made

imperative—“I profess, on my conscience and character, that I am

utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words! I went not

into the forest to seek a potentate, neither do I, at any future time,

design a visit thither, with a view to gaining the favour of such

personage. My one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of

mine, the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice with him over the many precious

souls he hath won from heathendom!”

“Ha, ha, ha!” cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high

head-dress at the minister. “Well, well! we must needs talk thus in the

daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at midnight, and in the

forest, we shall have other talk together!”

She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her

head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognise a secret

intimacy of connexion.

“Have I then sold myself,” thought the minister, “to the fiend whom, if

men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for

her prince and master?”

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by a

dream of happiness, he had yielded himself with deliberate choice, as

he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the

infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout

his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened

into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness,

unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever

was good and holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened him.

And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real

incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals,

and the world of perverted spirits.

He had by this time reached his dwelling on the edge of the

burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study.

The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first

betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked

eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing

through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around

him on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried

comfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had

haunted him throughout his walk from the forest dell into the town and

thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here gone through fast

and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray; here borne

a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in its rich old

Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God’s voice

through all.

There on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished

sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had

ceased to gush out upon the page two days before. He knew that it was

himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered

these things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon! But he

seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful pitying,

but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had

returned out of the forest—a wiser one—with a knowledge of hidden

mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached.

A bitter kind of knowledge that!

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the

study, and the minister said, “Come in!”—not wholly devoid of an idea

that he might behold an evil spirit. And so he did! It was old Roger

Chillingworth that entered. The minister stood white and speechless,

with one hand on the Hebrew Scriptures, and the other spread upon his

breast.

“Welcome home, reverend sir,” said the physician. “And how found you

that godly man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear sir, you look

pale, as if the travel through the wilderness had been too sore for

you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength to

preach your Election Sermon?”

“Nay, I think not so,” rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. “My

journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the free air

which I have breathed have done me good, after so long confinement in

my study. I think to need no more of your drugs, my kind physician,

good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand.”

All this time Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister with the

grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient. But, in

spite of this outward show, the latter was almost convinced of the old

man’s knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, with respect to

his own interview with Hester Prynne. The physician knew then that in

the minister’s regard he was no longer a trusted friend, but his

bitterest enemy. So much being known, it would appear natural that a

part of it should be expressed. It is singular, however, how long a

time often passes before words embody things; and with what security

two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may approach its

very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus the minister felt no

apprehension that Roger Chillingworth would touch, in express words,

upon the real position which they sustained towards one another. Yet

did the physician, in his dark way, creep frightfully near the secret.

“Were it not better,” said he, “that you use my poor skill tonight?

Verily, dear sir, we must take pains to make you strong and vigorous

for this occasion of the Election discourse. The people look for great

things from you, apprehending that another year may come about and find

their pastor gone.”

“Yes, to another world,” replied the minister with pious resignation.

“Heaven grant it be a better one; for, in good sooth, I hardly think to

tarry with my flock through the flitting seasons of another year! But

touching your medicine, kind sir, in my present frame of body I need it

not.”

“I joy to hear it,” answered the physician. “It may be that my

remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due effect.

Happy man were I, and well deserving of New England’s gratitude, could

I achieve this cure!”

“I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend,” said the Reverend

Mr. Dimmesdale with a solemn smile. “I thank you, and can but requite

your good deeds with my prayers.”

“A good man’s prayers are golden recompense!” rejoined old Roger

Chillingworth, as he took his leave. “Yea, they are the current gold

coin of the New Jerusalem, with the King’s own mint mark on them!”

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and requested

food, which, being set before him, he ate with ravenous appetite. Then

flinging the already written pages of the Election Sermon into the

fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote with such an impulsive

flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied himself inspired; and only

wondered that Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and solemn

music of its oracles through so foul an organ pipe as he. However,

leaving that mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved for ever, he drove

his task onward with earnest haste and ecstasy.

Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he

careering on it; morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the

curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study, and

laid it right across the minister’s bedazzled eyes. There he was, with

the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of

written space behind him!

XXI.