บทที่ บทที่ 4 · THE INTERVIEW

. THE INTERVIEW

After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in a

state of nervous excitement, that demanded constant watchfulness, lest

she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied

mischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossible

to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, Master

Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. He

described him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical

science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could

teach in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest.

To say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not

merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child—who,

drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in

with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the

mother’s system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a

forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which Hester

Prynne had borne throughout the day.

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared that

individual, of singular aspect whose presence in the crowd had been of

such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was lodged

in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most

convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the magistrates

should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom.

His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after

ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the

comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had

immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to

moan.

“Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient,” said the

practitioner. “Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in

your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter be more

amenable to just authority than you may have found her heretofore.”

“Nay, if your worship can accomplish that,” answered Master Brackett,

“I shall own you for a man of skill, indeed! Verily, the woman hath

been like a possessed one; and there lacks little that I should take in

hand, to drive Satan out of her with stripes.”

The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of

the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. Nor did his

demeanour change when the withdrawal of the prison keeper left him face

to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had

intimated so close a relation between himself and her. His first care

was given to the child, whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the

trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other

business to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant carefully,

and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from

beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical preparations, one of

which he mingled with a cup of water.

“My old studies in alchemy,” observed he, “and my sojourn, for above a

year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of

simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the

medical degree. Here, woman! The child is yours—she is none of

mine—neither will she recognise 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 with

strongly marked apprehension into his face. “Wouldst thou avenge

thyself on the innocent babe?” whispered she.

“Foolish woman!” responded the physician, half coldly, half soothingly.

“What should ail me to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? The

medicine is potent for good, and were it my child—yea, mine own, as

well as thine! I could do no better for it.”

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of mind,

he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered the draught.

It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech’s pledge. The moans

of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings gradually

ceased; and in a few moments, as is the custom of young children after

relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. The

physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his

attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny, he felt her

pulse, looked into her eyes—a gaze that made her heart shrink and

shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and cold—and, finally,

satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught.

“I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe,” remarked he; “but I have learned many

new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them—a recipe that an

Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as

old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless

conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and

heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous

sea.”

He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow, earnest

look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt and

questioning as to what his purposes might be. She looked also at her

slumbering child.

“I have thought of death,” said she—“have wished for it—would even have

prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for anything.

Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou

beholdest me quaff it. See! it is even now at my lips.”

“Drink, then,” replied he, still with the same cold composure. “Dost

thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be so

shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I do

better for my object than to let thee live—than to give thee medicines

against all harm and peril of life—so that this burning shame may still

blaze upon thy bosom?” As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on the

scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester’s breast,

as if it had been red hot. He noticed her involuntary gesture, and

smiled. “Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the

eyes of men and women—in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy

husband—in the eyes of yonder child! And, that thou mayest live, take

off this draught.”

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained the cup,

and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bed,

where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the

room afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could not but

tremble at these preparations; for she felt that—having now done all

that humanity, or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty,

impelled him to do for the relief of physical suffering—he was next to

treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably

injured.

“Hester,” said he, “I ask not wherefore, nor how thou hast fallen into

the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal of infamy

on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was my folly,

and thy weakness. I—a man of thought—the book-worm of great libraries—a

man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry

dream of knowledge—what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine

own? Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the

idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young

girl’s fantasy? Men call me wise. If sages were ever wise in their own

behoof, I might have foreseen all this. I might have known that, as I

came out of the vast and dismal forest, and entered this settlement of

Christian men, the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself,

Hester Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people.

Nay, from the moment when we came down the old church-steps together, a

married pair, I might have beheld the bale-fire of that scarlet letter

blazing at the end of our path!”

“Thou knowest,” said Hester—for, depressed as she was, she could not

endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame—“thou knowest

that 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 that

epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had been so cheerless!

My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and

chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed

not so wild a dream—old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as

I was—that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all

mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee

into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by

the warmth which thy presence made there!”

“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 relation

with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and

philosophised in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee.

Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the

man 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 and

self-relying intelligence. “Never know him! Believe me, Hester, there

are few things whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in

the invisible sphere of thought—few things hidden from the man who

devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a

mystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude.

Thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even

as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy

heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come

to the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek this

man, as I have sought truth in books: as I have sought gold in alchemy.

There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him

tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or

later, he must needs be mine.”

The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, that

Hester Prynne clasped her hand over her heart, dreading lest he should

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. “He

bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost, but I

shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him! Think not that I

shall interfere with Heaven’s own method of retribution, or, to my own

loss, betray him to the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine

that I shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame,

if as I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let him hide

himself in outward honour, if he may! Not the less he shall be mine!”

“Thy acts are like mercy,” said Hester, bewildered and appalled; “but

thy 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 a woman, a

man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest

ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate: no matter whether of

right or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is

where thou art and where he is. But betray me not!”

“Wherefore dost thou desire it?” inquired Hester, shrinking, she hardly

knew why, from this secret bond. “Why not announce thyself openly, and

cast me off at once?”

“It may be,” he replied, “because I will not encounter the dishonour

that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may be for other

reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let,

therefore, thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and of whom

no tidings shall ever come. Recognise me not, by word, by sign, by

look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of.

Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his life

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 was

hereafter to be named, “I leave thee alone: alone with thy infant and

the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to

wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares and

hideous dreams?”

“Why dost thou smile so at me?” inquired Hester, troubled at the

expression of his eyes. “Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the

forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove

the ruin of my soul?”

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

V.