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CHAPTER IV. 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 fore-finger on the scarlet letter,
which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's breast, as if it
ad 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!"
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