Chương Chương 9 · THE LEECH

. THE LEECH

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will remember,

was hidden another name, which its former wearer had resolved should

never more be spoken. It has been related, how, in the crowd that

witnessed Hester Prynne’s ignominious exposure, stood a man, elderly,

travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld

the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and

cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her

matronly fame was trodden under all men’s feet. Infamy was babbling

around her in the public market-place. For her kindred, should the

tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life,

there remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonour; which would

not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion with the

intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship. Then why—since

the choice was with himself—should the individual, whose connexion with

the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all,

come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little

desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal

of shame. Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and

key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of

mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out

of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean,

whither rumour had long ago consigned him. This purpose once effected,

new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose;

dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full

strength of his faculties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritan

town as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction than the

learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common

measure. As his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made him

extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was as a

physician that he presented himself and as such was cordially received.

Skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare

occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of the

religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic. In

their researches into the human frame, it may be that the higher and

more subtle faculties of such men were materialised, and that they lost

the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous

mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to comprise all of life

within itself. At all events, the health of the good town of Boston, so

far as medicine had aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the

guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly

deportment were stronger testimonials in his favour than any that he

could have produced in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one

who combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily

and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a professional body Roger

Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He soon manifested his

familiarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of antique

physic; in which every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and

heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the proposed

result had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity, moreover,

he had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and

roots; nor did he conceal from his patients that these simple

medicines, Nature’s boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a

share of his own confidence as the European Pharmacopœia, which so

many learned doctors had spent centuries in elaborating.

This learned stranger was exemplary as regarded at least the outward

forms of a religious life; and early after his arrival, had chosen for

his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young divine,

whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was considered by his

more fervent admirers as little less than a heavenly ordained apostle,

destined, should he live and labour for the ordinary term of life, to

do as great deeds, for the now feeble New England Church, as the early

Fathers had achieved for the infancy of the Christian faith. About this

period, however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to

fail. By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the

young minister’s cheek was accounted for by his too earnest devotion to

study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and more than all,

to the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order

to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clogging and obscuring

his spiritual lamp. Some declared, that if Mr. Dimmesdale were really

going to die, it was cause enough that the world was not worthy to be

any longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with

characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence should

see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to

perform its humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of

opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of

the fact. His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and

sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often

observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand

over his heart with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of

pain.

Such was the young clergyman’s condition, and so imminent the prospect

that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when Roger

Chillingworth made his advent to the town. His first entry on the

scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down as it were out of

the sky or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery,

which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be a

man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs and the blossoms

of wild-flowers, and dug up roots and plucked off twigs from the

forest-trees like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was

valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby and

other famous men—whose scientific attainments were esteemed hardly less

than supernatural—as having been his correspondents or associates. Why,

with such rank in the learned world, had he come hither? What, could

he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? In

answer to this query, a rumour gained ground—and however absurd, was

entertained by some very sensible people—that Heaven had wrought an

absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent Doctor of Physic from a

German university bodily through the air and setting him down at the

door of Mr. Dimmesdale’s study! Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who

knew that Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the

stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were inclined

to see a providential hand in Roger Chillingworth’s so opportune

arrival.

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician

ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as a

parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from

his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at his

pastor’s state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if

early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favourable result. The

elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens

of Mr. Dimmesdale’s flock, were alike importunate that he should make

trial of the physician’s frankly offered skill. Mr. Dimmesdale gently

repelled their entreaties.

“I need no medicine,” said he.

But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive

Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous

than before—when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a

casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? Was he weary of his

labours? Did he wish to die? These questions were solemnly propounded

to Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston, and the deacons of

his church, who, to use their own phrase, “dealt with him,” on the sin

of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He

listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the physician.

“Were it God’s will,” said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in

fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth’s

professional advice, “I could be well content that my labours, and my

sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and

what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go

with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your skill

to the proof in my behalf.”

“Ah,” replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness, which, whether

imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, “it is thus that a young

clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deep root,

give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walk with

God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden

pavements of the New Jerusalem.”

“Nay,” rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart, with

a flush of pain flitting over his brow, “were I worthier to walk there,

I could be better content to toil here.”

“Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly,” said the physician.

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the

medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the disease

interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the

character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so different in

age, came gradually to spend much time together. For the sake of the

minister’s health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with

healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the

forest; mingling various walks with the splash and murmur of the waves,

and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one

was the guest of the other in his place of study and retirement. There

was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of

science, in whom he recognised an intellectual cultivation of no

moderate depth or scope; together with a range and freedom of ideas,

that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own

profession. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to find this

attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest, a true

religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an

order of mind that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a

creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse of time.

In no state of society would he have been what is called a man of

liberal views; it would always be essential to his peace to feel the

pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within

its iron framework. Not the less, however, though with a tremulous

enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe

through the medium of another kind of intellect than those with which

he habitually held converse. It was as if a window were thrown open,

admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where

his life was wasting itself away, amid lamp-light, or obstructed

day-beams, and the musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that

exhales from books. But the air was too fresh and chill to be long

breathed with comfort. So the minister, and the physician with him,

withdrew again within the limits of what their Church defined as

orthodox.

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, both as he

saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the

range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown

amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out

something new to the surface of his character. He deemed it essential,

it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good.

Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the

physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur

Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so

intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its

groundwork there. So Roger Chillingworth—the man of skill, the kind and

friendly physician—strove to go deep into his patient’s bosom, delving

among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing

everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark

cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and

licence to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. A man

burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his

physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless

something more,—let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive

egotism, nor disagreeable prominent characteristics of his own; if he

have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into

such affinity with his patient’s, that this last shall unawares have

spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if such

revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so often

by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here

and there a word to indicate that all is understood; if to these

qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his

recognised character as a physician;—then, at some inevitable moment,

will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark

but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the daylight.

Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above

enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have

said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a

field as the whole sphere of human thought and study to meet upon; they

discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairs, and

private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters that

seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician

fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister’s

consciousness into his companion’s ear. The latter had his suspicions,

indeed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale’s bodily disease had

never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!

After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr.

Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the

same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister’s life-tide

might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. There

was much joy throughout the town when this greatly desirable object was

attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the young

clergyman’s welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt

authorised to do so, he had selected some one of the many blooming

damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife. This

latter step, however, there was no present prospect that Arthur

Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all suggestions

of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of Church

discipline. Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so

evidently was, to eat his unsavoury morsel always at another’s board,

and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm

himself only at another’s fireside, it truly seemed that this

sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord of

paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very man,

of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.

The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good social

rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site on which the

venerable structure of King’s Chapel has since been built. It had the

graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson’s home-field, on one side, and so

was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suited to their

respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. The

motherly care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front

apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create

a noontide shadow when desirable. The walls were hung round with

tapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events,

representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan

the Prophet, in colours still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of

the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer. Here

the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with parchment-bound

folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and monkish erudition,

of which the Protestant divines, even while they vilified and decried

that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves.

On the other side of the house, old Roger Chillingworth arranged his

study and laboratory: not such as a modern man of science would reckon

even tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus and

the means of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised

alchemist knew well how to turn to purpose. With such commodiousness of

situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in his

own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the other, and

bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into one another’s

business.

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s best discerning friends, as we

have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of Providence

had done all this for the purpose—besought in so many public and

domestic and secret prayers—of restoring the young minister to health.

But, it must now be said, another portion of the community had latterly

begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and

the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed multitude attempts

to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When,

however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions

of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so

profound and so unerring as to possess the character of truth

supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which we speak,

could justify its prejudice against Roger Chillingworth by no fact or

argument worthy of serious refutation. There was an aged

handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London at the

period of Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder, now some thirty years agone; he

testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which

the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Dr.

Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of

Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted that the man of skill, during

his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining

in the incantations of the savage priests, who were universally

acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly

miraculous cures by their skill in the black art. A large number—and

many of these were persons of such sober sense and practical

observation that their opinions would have been valuable in other

matters—affirmed that Roger Chillingworth’s aspect had undergone a

remarkable change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since his

abode with Mr. Dimmesdale. At first, his expression had been calm,

meditative, scholar-like. Now there was something ugly and evil in his

face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the

more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon him. According to

the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the

lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel; and so, as might be

expected, his visage was getting sooty with the smoke.

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion that the

Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of special sanctity,

in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself

or Satan’s emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth. This

diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a season, to burrow

into the clergyman’s intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible

man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would

turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister

come forth out of the conflict transfigured with the glory which he

would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it was sad to think

of the perchance mortal agony through which he must struggle towards

his triumph.

Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depth of the poor

minister’s eyes, the battle was a sore one, and the victory anything

but secure.

X.