THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 4

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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   
    forefinger 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 bookworm 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 churchsteps 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 hands 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?"     SIZE="2">

  
   

"Not thy soul," he answered, with another smile.   
    "No, not thy soul."   
   

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 6
3. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 23
4. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 2
5. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 16
6. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 3
7. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 15
8. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 14
9. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 13
10. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 12
11. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11
12. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 10
13. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 7
14. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 8
15. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 5
16. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 18