The Minister's Black Veil

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by

  a black veil."

  "But what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an

  innocent sorrow?" urged Elizabeth. "Beloved and respected as you

  are, there may be whispers that you hide your face under the

  consciousness of secret sin. For the sake of your holy office, do away

  this scandal!"

  The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the

  rumors that were already abroad in the village. But Mr. Hooper's

  mildness did not forsake him. He even smiled again- that same sad

  smile, which always appeared like a faint glimmering of light,

  proceeding from the obscurity beneath the veil.

  "If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough," he merely

  replied; "and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do

  the same?"

  And with this gentle, but unconquerable obstinacy did he resist all

  her entreaties. At length Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments

  she appeared lost in thought, considering, probably, what new

  methods might be tried to withdraw her lover from so dark a fantasy,

  which, if it had no other meaning, was perhaps a symptom of mental

  disease. Though of a firmer character than his own, the tears rolled

  down her cheeks. But, in an instant, as it were, a new feeling took

  the place of sorrow: her eyes were fixed insensibly on the black veil,

  when, like a sudden twilight in the air, its terrors fell around

  her. She arose, and stood trembling before him.

  "And do you feel it then, at last?" said he mournfully.

  She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her hand, and turned

  to leave the room. He rushed forward and caught her arm.

  "Have patience with me, Elizabeth!" cried he, passionately. "Do not

  desert me, though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine,

  and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between

  our souls! It is but a mortal veil- it is not for eternity! O! you

  know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my

  black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!"

  "Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face," said she.

  "Never! It cannot be!" replied Mr. Hooper.

  "Then farewell!" said Elizabeth.

  She withdrew her arm from his grasp, and slowly departed, pausing

  at the door, to give one long shuddering gaze, that seemed almost to

  penetrate the mystery of the black veil. But, even amid his grief, Mr.

  Hooper smiled to think that only a material emblem had separated him

  from happiness, though the horrors, which it shadowed forth, must be

  drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.

  From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper's black

  veil, or, by a direct appeal, to discover the secret which it was

  supposed to hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular

  prejudice, it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often

  mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational, and tinges

  them all with its own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude,

  good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the

  street with any peace of mind, so conscious was he that the gentle and

  timid would turn aside to avoid him, and that others would make it a

  point of hardihood to throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of

  the latter class compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset

  to the burial ground; for when he leaned pensively over the gate,

  there would always be faces behind the gravestones, peeping at his

  black veil. A fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead

  people drove him thence. It grieved him, to the very depth of his kind

  heart, to observe how the children fled from his approach, breaking up

  their merriest sports, while his melancholy figure was yet afar off.

  Their instinctive dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught

  else, that a preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of

  the black crape. In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known

  to be so great, that he never willingly passed before a mirror, nor

  stooped to drink at a still fountain, lest, in its peaceful bosom,

  he should be affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausibility to

  the whispers, that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great

  crime too horrible to be entirely concealed, or otherwise than so

  obscurely intimated. Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled a

  cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which

  enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never

  reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him

  there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors, he walked

  continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul, or

  gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world. Even the

  lawless wind, it was believed, respected his dreadful secret, and

  never blew aside the veil. But still good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at

  the pale visages of the worldly throng as he passed by.

  Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one

  desirable effect, of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman.

  By the aid of his mysterious emblem- for there was no other apparent

  cause- he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony

  for sin. His converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to

  themselves, affirming, though but figuratively, that, before he

  brought them to celestial light, they had been with him behind the

  black veil. Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark

  affections. Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper, and would not

  yield their breath till he appeared; though ever, as he stooped to

  whisper consolation, they shuddered at the veiled face so near their

  own. Such were the terrors of the black veil, even when Death had

  bared his visage! Strangers came long distances to attend service at

  his church, with the mere idle purpose of gazing at his figure,

  because it was forbidden them to behold his face. But many were made

  to quake ere they departed! Once, during Governor Belcher's

  administration, Mr. Hooper was appointed to preach the election

  sermon. Covered with his black veil, he stood before the chief

  magistrate, the council, and the representatives, and wrought so

  deep an impression that the legislative measures of that year were

  characterized by all the gloom and piety of our earliest ancestral

  sway.

  In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in

  outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving,

  though unloved, and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in

  their health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal

  anguish. As years wore on, shedding their snows above his sable

  veil, he acquired a name throughout the New England churches, and they

  called him Father Hooper. Nearly all his parishioners, who were of

  mature age when he was settled, had been borne away by many a funeral:

  he had one congregation in the church, and a more cr
owded one in the

  churchyard; and having wrought so late into the evening, and done

  his work so well, it was now good Father Hooper's turn to rest.

  Several persons were visible by the shaded candle-light, in the

  death chamber of the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none.

  But there was the decorously grave, though unmoved physician,

  seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could

  not save. There were the deacons, and other eminently pious members of

  his church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark, of Westbury, a

  young and zealous divine, who had ridden in haste to pray by the

  bedside of the expiring minister. There was the nurse, no hired

  handmaiden of death, but one whose calm affection had endured thus

  long in secrecy, in solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not

  perish, even at the dying hour. Who, but Elizabeth! And there lay

  the hoary head of good Father Hooper upon the death pillow, with the

  black veil still swathed about his brow, and reaching down over his

  face, so that each more difficult gasp of his faint breath caused it

  to stir. All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and

  the world: it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and

  woman's love, and kept him in that saddest of all prisons, his own

  heart; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of

  his darksome chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of eternity.

  For some time previous, his mind had been confused, wavering

  doubtfully between the past and the present, and hovering forward,

  as it were, at intervals, into the indistinctness of the world to

  come. There had been feverish turns, which tossed him from side to

  side, and wore away what little strength he had. But in his most

  convulsive struggles, and in the wildest vagaries of his intellect,

  when no other thought retained its sober influence, he still showed an

  awful solicitude lest the black veil should slip aside. Even if his

  bewildered soul could have forgotten, there was a faithful woman at

  his pillow, who, with averted eyes, would have covered that aged face,

  which she had last beheld in the comeliness of manhood. At length

  the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and

  bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse, and breath that grew

  fainter and fainter, except when a long, deep, and irregular

  inspiration seemed to prelude the flight of his spirit.

  The minister of Westbury approached the bedside.

  "Venerable Father Hooper," said he, "the moment of your release

  is at hand. Are you ready for the lifting of the veil that shuts in

  time from eternity?"

  Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his

  head; then, apprehensive, perhaps, that his meaning might be doubtful,

  he exerted himself to speak.

  "Yea," said he, in faint accents, "my soul hath a patient weariness

  until that veil be lifted."

  "And is it fitting," resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark, "that a man so

  given to prayer, of such a blameless example, holy in deed and

  thought, so far as mortal judgment may pronounce; is it fitting that a

  father in the church should leave a shadow on his memory, that may

  seem to blacken a life so pure? I pray you, my venerable brother,

  let not this thing be! Suffer us to be gladdened by your triumphant

  aspect as you go to your reward. Before the veil of eternity be

  lifted, let me cast aside this black veil from your face!"

  And thus speaking, the Reverend Mr. Clark bent forward to reveal

  the mystery of so many years. But, exerting a sudden energy, that made

  all the beholders stand aghast, Father Hooper snatched both his

  hands from beneath the bedclothes, and pressed them strongly on the

  black veil, resolute to struggle, if the minister of Westbury would

  contend with a dying man.

  "Never!" cried the veiled clergyman. "On earth, never!"

  "Dark old man!" exclaimed the affrighted minister, "with what

  horrible crime upon your soul are you now passing to the judgment?"

  Father Hooper's breath heaved; it rattled in his throat; but,

  with a mighty effort, grasping forward with his hands, he caught

  hold of life, and held it back till he should speak. He even raised

  himself in bed; and there he sat, shivering with the arms of death

  around him, while the black veil hung down, awful at that last moment,

  in the gathered terrors of a lifetime. And yet the faint, sad smile,

  so often there, now seemed to glimmer from its obscurity, and linger

  on Father Hooper's lips.

  "Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried he, turning his veiled face

  round the circle of pale spectators. "Tremble also at each other! Have

  men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and

  fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery which it obscurely

  typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows

  his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when

  man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely

  treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the

  symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo!

  on every visage a Black Veil!"

  While his auditors shrank from one another, in mutual affright,

  Father Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse, with a faint

  smile lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his

  coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of

  many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial

  stone is moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful

  is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the Black Veil!

  NOTE. Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of

  York, Maine, who died about eighty years since, made himself

  remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here related of the

  Reverend Mr. Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol had a

  different import. In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved

  friend; and from that day till the hour of his own death, he hid his

  face from men.

  THE END

  .