The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

  XI.

  THE INTERIOR OF A HEART.

  After the incident last described, the intercourse between theclergyman and the physician, though externally the same, was really ofanother character than it had previously been. The intellect of RogerChillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not,indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread.Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, aquiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in thisunfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revengethan any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself theone trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, theremorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush ofsinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden fromthe world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to berevealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving! All that darktreasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could soadequately pay the debt of vengeance!

  The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme.Roger Chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all,less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which Providence--using theavenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoningwhere it seemed most to punish--had substituted for his black devices.A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. Itmattered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from what otherregion. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him andMr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmostsoul, of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so thathe could see and comprehend its every movement. He became,thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poorminister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Wouldhe arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was forever on therack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled theengine;--and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him withsudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grislyphantom,--uprose a thousand phantoms,--in many shapes, of death, ormore awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and pointingwith their fingers at his breast!

  All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that theminister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evilinfluence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of itsactual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully,--even, at times,with horror and the bitterness of hatred,--at the deformed figure ofthe old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, hisslightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments,were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be reliedon, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he waswilling to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to assigna reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale,conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart'sentire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause.He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to RogerChillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn fromthem, and did his best to root them out. Unable to accomplish this, henevertheless, as a matter of principle, continued his habits of socialfamiliarity with the old man, and thus gave him constant opportunitiesfor perfecting the purpose to which--poor, forlorn creature that hewas, and more wretched than his victim--the avenger had devotedhimself.

  While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured bysome black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations ofhis deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved abrilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, indeed, in greatpart, by his sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions,his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in astate of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his dailylife. His fame, though still on its upward slope, already overshadowedthe soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several ofthem were. There were scholars among them, who had spent more years inacquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine profession, thanMr. Dimmesdale had lived; and who might well, therefore, be moreprofoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than theiryouthful brother. There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mindthan his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard, iron,or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportionof doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable,efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. There wereothers, again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had beenelaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought,and etherealized, moreover, by spiritual communications with thebetter world, into which their purity of life had almost introducedthese holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clingingto them. All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon thechosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolizing, itwould seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages,but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart'snative language. These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lackedHeaven's last and rarest attestation of their office, the Tongue ofFlame. They would have vainly sought--had they ever dreamed ofseeking--to express the highest truths through the humblest medium offamiliar words and images. Their voices came down, afar andindistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt.

  The Virgins of the Church]

  Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr.Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of character, naturally belonged. Tothe high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed,had not the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it mightbe, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. Itkept him down, on a level with the lowest; him, the man of etherealattributes, whose voice the angels might else have listened to andanswered! But this very burden it was, that gave him sympathies sointimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heartvibrated in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself,and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, ingushes of sad, persuasive eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, butsometimes terrible! The people knew not the power that moved themthus. They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. Theyfancied him the mouthpiece of Heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke,and love. In their eyes, the very ground on which he trod wassanctified. The virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims ofa passion so imbued with religious sentiment that they imagined it tobe all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, astheir most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. The aged members ofhis flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they werethemselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would goheavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children, thattheir old bones should be buried close to their young pastor's holygrave. And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale wasthinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grasswould ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!

  It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public venerationtortured him! It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and toreckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or value,that had not its divine essence as the life within their life. Then,what was he?--a substance?--or the dimmest of all shadows? He longedto speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full height of his voice,and tell the people what he was. "I, whom you behold in these blackgarments of the priesthood,--I, who ascend the sacred desk, and turnmy pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion, in yourbehalf, with the Most High Omniscience,--I, in whose daily life youdiscern the sanctity of Enoch,--I, whose footsteps, as you suppose,leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the pilgrims that shallcome after me may be guided to the regions of the blest,--I, who havelaid the hand of baptism upon your children,--I, who have breathed theparting prayer over
your dying friends, to whom the Amen soundedfaintly from a world which they had quitted,--I, your pastor, whom youso reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!"

  More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with apurpose never to come down its steps, until he should have spokenwords like the above. More than once, he had cleared his throat, anddrawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forthagain, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul. Morethan once--nay, more than a hundred times--he had actually spoken!Spoken! But how? He had told his hearers that he was altogether vile,a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination,a thing of unimaginable iniquity; and that the only wonder was, thatthey did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes, bythe burning wrath of the Almighty! Could there be plainer speech thanthis? Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneousimpulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so,indeed! They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. Theylittle guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemningwords. "The godly youth!" said they among themselves. "The saint onearth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, whathorrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!" The minister wellknew--subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!--the light inwhich his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put acheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, buthad gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, withoutthe momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the verytruth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by theconstitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie,as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed hismiserable self!

  His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with theold, corrupted faith of Rome, than with the better light of the churchin which he had been born and bred. In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet,under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, thisProtestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders;laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the morepitilessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as ithas been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast,--not, however,like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter mediumof celestial illumination, but rigorously, and until his kneestrembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise,night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with aglimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in alooking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw uponit. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured,but could not purify, himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brainoften reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seendoubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimnessof the chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him, within thelooking-glass. Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned andmocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now agroup of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, butgrew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of hisyouth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and hismother, turning her face away as she passed by. Ghost of amother,--thinnest fantasy of a mother,--methinks she might yet havethrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through the chamberwhich these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided HesterPrynne, leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointingher forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then atthe clergyman's own breast.

  None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by aneffort of his will, he could discern substances through their mistylack of substance, and convince himself that they were not solid intheir nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big, square,leathern-bound and brazen-clasped volume of divinity. But, for allthat, they were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial thingswhich the poor minister now dealt with. It is the unspeakable miseryof a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance outof whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant byHeaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, thewhole universe is false,--it is impalpable,--it shrinks to nothingwithin his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in afalse light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. The onlytruth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on thisearth, was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembledexpression of it in his aspect. Had he once found power to smile, andwear a face of gayety, there would have been no such man!

  On one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, butforborne to picture forth, the minister started from his chair. A newthought had struck him. There might be a moment's peace in it.Attiring himself with as much care as if it had been for publicworship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly down thestaircase, undid the door, and issued forth.