XX

The Minister in a Maze

As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and little Pearl, he threw a backward glance half expecting that he should discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as real. But there was Hester, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the tree-trunk. And there was Pearl, too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook – now that the intrusive third person was gone – taking her old place by her mother’s side. So the minister had not fallen asleep and dreamed!

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of impression he recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and himself had sketched for their departure. It had been determined between them that the Old World, with its crowds and cities, offered them a more eligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of New England or all America, with its alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the few settlements of Europeans scattered thinly along the sea-board. In furtherance of this choice, it so happened that a ship lay in the harbour; one of those unquestionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibility of character. This vessel had recently arrived from the Spanish Main, and within three days’ time would sail for Bristol. Hester Prynne – whose vocation, as a self-enlisted Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain and crew – could take upon herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child with all the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable.

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It would probably be on the fourth day from the present. “This is most fortunate!” he had then said to himself – to hold nothing back from the reader – it was because, on the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election Sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honourable epoch in the life of a New England Clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. Sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister’s should be so miserably deceived! No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale’s feelings as he returned from his interview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, and hurried him townward at a rapid pace. He leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself through the clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, and overcame all the difficulties of the track, with an unweariable activity that astonished him. He could not but recall how feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath he had toiled over the same ground, only two days before. As he drew near the town, he took an impression of change from the series of familiar objects that presented themselves. It seemed not yesterday but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses. Not the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met. A similar impression struck him as he passed under the walls of his own church. The edifice had so strange, and yet so familiar an aspect, that Mr. Dimmesdale’s mind vibrated between two ideas; either that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely dreaming now. This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator. It was the same town as heretofore, but the same minister returned not from the forest.

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional, in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse. For instance, he met one of his own deacons. The good old man addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchal privilege which his venerable age, his upright and holy character, and his station in the church, entitled him to use and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost worshipping respect, which the minister’s professional and private claims alike demanded. Now, during a conversation of some two or three moments between the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the most careful self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the communion-supper. He absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself in utterance of these horrible matters. And, even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by his minister’s impiety.

Hurrying along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest female member of his church, a most pious and exemplary old dame, poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago. All this, which would else have been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths of Scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty years. And since Mr. Dimmesdale had taken her in charge, the good grandam’s chief earthly comfort was to meet her pastor, and be refreshed with a word of warm, heaven-breathing Gospel truth. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman’s ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. What he really did whisper, the minister could never afterwards recollect.

Again, a third instance. After parting from the old church member, he met the youngest sister of them all. It was a maiden newly-won – and won by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale’s own sermon, on the Sabbath after his vigil – to barter the transitory pleasures of the world for the heavenly hope. She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in Paradise. Satan, that afternoon, had surely thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or, rather, lost and desperate man. As she drew nigh, the archfiend whispered him to drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. With a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained he held his Geneva cloak before his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might.

Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk.

“What is it that tempts me thus?” cried the minister to himself, pausing in the street, striking his hand against his forehead. “Am I mad? or given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest? Does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the performance of every wickedness which his imagination can conceive?”

At the moment old Mistress Hibbins is said to have been passing by. Whether the witch had read the minister’s thoughts or no, she came to a full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled, and, though little given to converse with clergymen, began a conversation.

“So, reverend sir, you have made a visit into the forest,” observed the witch-lady. “The next time I pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bear you company. Without taking overmuch upon myself my good word will go far towards gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder potentate you wot of.”

“I profess, madam,” answered the clergyman, “that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words! I went not into the forest to seek a potentate with a view to gaining the favour of such personage. My one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot!”

“Ha, ha, ha! Well, well! We must needs talk thus in the daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at midnight, in the forest, we shall have other talk together!”

She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognise a secret intimacy of connexion.

“Have I then sold myself,” thought the minister, “to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince and master?”

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. The infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, awoke, even while they frightened him.

He had by this time reached his dwelling, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its windows, its fireplace. Here he had studied and written; here gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray; here borne a hundred thousand agonies! There on the table was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst. He knew it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the forest, a wiser one, with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the study, and the minister said, “Come in!” – not wholly devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit. And so he did! It was old Roger Chillingworth that entered.

“Welcome home, reverend sir,” said the physician. “How found you that godly man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear sir, you look pale, as if the travel through the wilderness had been too sore for you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength to preach your Election Sermon?”

“Nay, I think not so,” rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. “My journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the free air which I have breathed have done me good, after so long confinement in my study. I think to need no more of your drugs, my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand.”

Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister with the intent regard of a physician towards his patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the latter was almost convinced of the old man’s knowledge, or confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with Hester. The physician knew then that in the minister’s regard he was no longer a trusted friend, but bitterest enemy. It is singular, however, how long a time often passes before words embody things. Thus the minister felt no apprehension that Roger Chillingworth would touch, in express words, upon the real position which they sustained towards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark way, creep frightfully near the secret.

“Were it not better,” said he, “that you use my poor skill tonight? We must take pains to make you strong and vigorous for this Election discourse. The people look for great things from you, apprehending that another year may come and find their pastor gone.”

“Yes, to another world,” replied the minister with pious resignation. “Heaven grant it be a better one; for I hardly think to tarry with my flock through the seasons of another year! But touching your medicine, kind sir, in my present frame of body I need it not.”

“I joy to hear it,” answered the physician. “It may be that my remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due effect. Happy man were I, and well deserving of New England’s gratitude, could I achieve this cure!”

“I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend,” said Mr. Dimmesdale with a solemn smile. “Thank you, and can but requite your good deeds with my prayers.”

“A good man’s prayers are golden recompense!” rejoined old Roger Chillingworth, as he took his leave.

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant, and requested food, which he ate with ravenous appetite. Then flinging the already written pages of the Election Sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another. He wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied himself inspired; and only wondered that Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and solemn music of its oracles through so foul an organ pipe as he.

Thus the night fled away, and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study, and laid it right across the minister’s bedazzled eyes. There he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written space behind him!