THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11

Description

• Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

AFTER the incident last described, the intercourse between the clergyman   
    and the physician, though externally the same, was really of another   
    character than it had previously been. The intellect of Roger   
    Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was   
    not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to read.   
    Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear,   
    a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this   
    unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge   
    than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself   
    the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear,   
    the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush   
    of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden   
    from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven,   
    to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving!   
    All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom   
    nothing else could so adequately 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 the avenger   
    and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning,   
    where it seemed most to punish- had substituted for his black   
    devices. A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to   
    him. It mattered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from what   
    other region. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him   
    and Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmost   
    soul, of the latter seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so   
    that he could see and comprehend its every movement. He became, thenceforth,   
    not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's   
    interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he   
    arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was for ever on the rack;   
    it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine- and   
    the physician knew it well! Would be startle him with sudden fear? As   
    at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly phantom- uprose a   
    thousand phantoms- in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all   
    flocking round about tie clergyman, and pointing with their fingers   
    at his breast!

  
   

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister,   
    though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil influence   
    watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual   
    nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully- even, at times,   
    with horror and the bitterness of hatred- at the deformed figure   
    of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard,   
    his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his   
    garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to   
    be relied on, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than   
    he was willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible   
    to assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale,   
    conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his   
    heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other   
    cause. He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference   
    to Roger Chillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should   
    have drawn from them, and did his best to root them out. Unable to   
    accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle, continued   
    his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and thus gave   
    him constant opportunities for perfecting the purpose to which-   
    poor, forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched than his   
    victim- the avenger had devoted himself.

  
   

While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by   
    some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations   
    of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved   
    a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, indeed,   
    in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral   
    perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion,   
    were kept in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and   
    anguish of his daily life. His fame, though still on its upward slope,   
    already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen,   
    eminent as several of them were. There were scholars among them,   
    who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected   
    with the divine profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived; and   
    who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in such solid and   
    valuable attainments than their youthful brother. There were men,   
    too, of a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far   
    greater share of shrewd, hard, iron, or granite understanding; which,   
    duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes   
    a highly respectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the   
    clerical species. There were others, again, true saintly fathers,   
    whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books,   
    and by patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by spiritual   
    communications with the better world, into which their purity of   
    life had almost introduced these holy personages, with their garments   
    of mortality still clinging to them. All that they lacked was the   
    gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues   
    of flame; symbolising, it would seem, not the power of speech in   
    foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole   
    human brotherhood in the heart's native language. These fathers, otherwise   
    so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and rarest attestation of their   
    office, the Tongue of Flame. They would have vainly sought- had   
    they ever dreamed of seeking- to express the highest truths through   
    the humblest medium of familiar words and images. Their voices came   
    down, afar and indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually   
    dwelt.

  
   

Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr. Dimmesdale,   
    by many of his traits of character, naturally belonged. To the   
    high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had   
    not the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be,   
    of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. It kept   
    him down, on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes,   
    whose voice the angels might else have listened to and answered!   
    But this very burden it was, that gave him sympathies so intimate   
    with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated   
    in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself, and   
    sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes   
    of sad, persuasive eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes   
    terrible! The people knew not the power that moved them thus.   
    They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. They fancied   
    him the mouthpiece of Heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and   
    love. In their eyes, the very ground on which he trod was sanctified.   
    The virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a   
    passion so imbued with religious sentiment that they imagined it to   
    be all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as their   
    most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. The aged members of   
    his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they were   
    themselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would go   
    heavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children, that their   
    old bones should be buried close to their young pastor's holy grave.   
    And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking   
    of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would   
    ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!

  
   

It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured   
    him! It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon   
    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   
    longed to 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 black   
    garments of the priesthood- I, who ascend the sacred desk, and turn   
    my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion, in your   
    behalf, with the Most High Omniscience- I, in whose daily life you   
    discern the sanctity of Enoch- I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave   
    a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the pilgrims that shall   
    come after me may be guided to the regions of the blest- I, who   
    have laid the hand of baptism upon your children- I, who have breathed   
    the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen   
    sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted- I, your pastor,   
    whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a   
    lie!"

  
   

More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose   
    never to come down its steps, until he should have spoken words   
    like the above. More than once, he had cleared his throat, and drawn   
    in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth   
    again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul. More   
    than 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, that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled   
    up before their eyes, by the burning wrath of the Almighty! Could   
    there be plainer speech than this? Would not the people start up in   
    their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, 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. They little guessed what deadly purport   
    lurked in those self-condemning words. "The godly youth!" said   
    they among themselves. "The saint on earth! Alas, if he discern such     FACE="Arial"> sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle   
    would he behold in thine or mine!" The minister well knew-   
    subtle, but remorseless hypocrite that he was!- the light in   
    which his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to   
    put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty   
    conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a   
    self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being   
    self-deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it   
    into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his   
    nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever   
    did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable   
    self!

  
   

His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the   
    old, corrupted faith of Rome, than with the better light of the Church   
    in which he had been born and bred. In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret   
    closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes,   
    this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders;   
    laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the   
    more pitilessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too,   
    as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast- not, however,   
    like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter   
    medium of celestial illumination, but rigorously, and until his knees   
    trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise,   
    night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with a   
    glimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking-glass,   
    by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it. He thus   
    typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but   
    could not purify, himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brain often   
    reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully,   
    and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimness of the   
    chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him, within the looking-glass.   
    Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at   
    the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group   
    of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but   
    grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of   
    his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like   
    frown, and his mother, turning her face away as she passed by.   
    Ghost of a mother- thinnest fantasy of a mother- methinks she   
    might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through   
    the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided   
    Hester Prynne, leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and   
    pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and   
    then at the clergyman's own breast.

  
   

None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by an effort   
    of his will, he could discern substances through their misty lack   
    of substance, and convince himself that they were not solid in their   
    nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big, square, leathern-bound   
    and brazen-clasped volume of divinity. But, for all that, they   
    were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which   
    the poor minister now dealt with. It is the unspeakable misery   
    of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance   
    out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were   
    meant by Heaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue   
    man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to   
    nothing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself   
    in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.   
    The only truth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence   
    on this earth, was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled   
    expression of it in his aspect. Had he once found power to   
    smile, and wear a face of gaiety, there would have been no such man!

  
   

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

Disclaimer:
Contents of this page are indexed from the Internet. All actions are under your responsability. Email us to report illegal contents or external links and we'll remove them immediately.

Please check the description for download links if any or do a search to find alternative books.

Can't Download?
Please search mirrors if you can't find download links for "THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11" in "Description" and someone else may update the links. Check the comments when back to find any updates.

Search Mirrors
Maybe some mirror pages will be helpful, search this book at top of this page or click here to find more info.

1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 2
3. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 10
4. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 7
5. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 8
6. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 5
7. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 9
8. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 20
9. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 6
10. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 4
11. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 23
12. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 3
13. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 1
14. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 12
15. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 14
16. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 16