Chapter 4 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 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!"