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CHAPTER IX. 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 arid 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 Pharmacopoeia, 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.
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