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CHAPTER XX. 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 futherance 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 underbush,
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 to-day; 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 a 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 widows 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 black-guard, 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 bad
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 he 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!
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