Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the water,and play with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she shouldhave talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the childflew away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feetwent pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and thereshe came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, leftby the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in.Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glisteningcurls around her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the imageof a little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invitedto take her hand and run a race with her. But the visionarylittle maid on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say--"Thisis a better place; come thou into the pool." And Pearl, steppingin mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while,out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind offragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.

Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. "I would speaka word with you," said she--"a word that concerns us much."

"Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word for old RogerChillingworth?" answered he, raising himself from his stoopingposture. "With all my heart! Why, mistress, I hear good tidingsof you on all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve, amagistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of youraffairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered me that there had beenquestion concerning you in the council. It was debated whetheror no, with safety to the commonweal, yonder scarlet lettermight be taken off your bosom. On my life, Hester, I made myintreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be doneforthwith."

"It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off thebadge," calmly replied Hester. "Were I worthy to be quit of it,it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed intosomething that should speak a different purport."

"Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better," rejoined he, "Awoman must needs follow her own fancy touching the adornment ofher person. The letter is gaily embroidered, and shows rightbravely on your bosom!"

All this while Hester had been looking steadily at the old man,and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what achange had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. Itwas not so much that he had grown older; for though the tracesof advancing life were visible he bore his age well, and seemedto retain a wiry vigour and alertness. But the former aspect ofan intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was whatshe best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and beensucceeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefullyguarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask thisexpression with a smile, but the latter played him false, andflickered over his visage so derisively that the spectator couldsee his blackness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too,there came a glare of red light out of his eyes, as if the oldman's soul were on fire and kept on smouldering duskily withinhis breast, until by some casual puff of passion it was blowninto a momentary flame. This he repressed as speedily aspossible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind hadhappened.

In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence ofman's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he willonly, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil'soffice. This unhappy person had effected such a transformationby devoting himself for seven years to the constant analysis ofa heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, andadding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analysed andgloated over.

The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here wasanother ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home toher.

"What see you in my face," asked the physician, "that you lookat it so earnestly?"

"Something that would make me weep, if there were any tearsbitter enough for it," answered she. "But let it pass! It is ofyonder miserable man that I would speak."

"And what of him?" cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly, as if heloved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss itwith the only person of whom he could make a confidant. "Not tohide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now tobe busy with the gentleman. So speak freely and I will makeanswer."

"When we last spake together," said Hester, "now seven yearsago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy astouching the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As thelife and good fame of yonder man were in your hands there seemedno choice to me, save to be silent in accordance with yourbehest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I thusbound myself, for, having cast off all duty towards other humanbeings, there remained a duty towards him, and somethingwhispered me that I was betraying it in pledging myself to keepyour counsel. Since that day no man is so near to him as you.You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him,sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow andrankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you causehim to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. Inpermitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only manto whom the power was left me to be true!"

"What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger,pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit intoa dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!"

"It had been better so!" said Hester Prynne.

"What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworthagain. "I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that everphysician earned from monarch could not have bought such care asI have wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid his lifewould have burned away in torments within the first two yearsafter the perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, hisspirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thinehas, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I couldreveal a goodly secret! But enough. What art can do, I haveexhausted on him. That he now breathes and creeps about on earthis owing all to me!"

"Better he had died at once!" said Hester Prynne.

"Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old Roger Chillingworth,letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes."Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what thisman has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy!He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwellingalways upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritualsense--for the Creator never made another being so sensitive asthis--he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at hisheartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him,which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that theeye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to hisbrotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to betortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the stingof remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaitshim beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of mypresence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had mostvilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by thisperpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed, he did noterr, there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once ahuman heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment."

The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, liftedhis hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld somefrightful shape, which he could not recognise, usurping theplace of his own image in a glass. It was one of thosemoments--which sometimes occur only at the interval ofyears--when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to hismind's eye. Not improbably he had never before viewed himself ashe did now.

"Hast thou not tortured him enough?" said Hester, noticing theold man's look. "Has he not paid thee all?"

"No, no! He has but increased the debt!" answered thephysician, and as he proceeded, his manner lost its fiercercharacteristics, and subsided into gloom. "Dost thou rememberme, Hester, as I was nine years agone? Even then I was in theautumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my lifehad been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years,bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, andfaithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to theother--faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. No lifehad been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so richwith benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? Was I not,though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful forothers, craving little for himself--kind, true, just and ofconstant, if not warm affections? Was I not all this?"

"All this, and more," said Hester.

"And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face, andpermitting the whole evil within him to be written on hisfeatures. "I have already told thee what I am--a fiend! Who mademe so?"

"It was myself," cried Hester, shuddering. "It was I, not lessthan he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?"

"I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied RogerChillingworth. "If that has not avenged me, I can do no more!"

He laid his finger on it with a smile.

"It has avenged thee," answered Hester Prynne.

"I judged no less," said the physician. "And now what wouldstthou with me touching this man?"

"I must reveal the secret," answered Hester, firmly. "He mustdiscern thee in thy true character. What may be the result Iknow not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him,whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So faras concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame andhis earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in my hands.Nor do I--whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth,though it be the truth of red-hot iron entering into thesoul--nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longera life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thymercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him, nogood for me, no good for thee. There is no good for littlePearl. There is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze."

"Woman, I could well-nigh pity thee," said Roger Chillingworth,unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too, for there was aquality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed."Thou hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlierwith a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pitythee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature."

"And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that hastransformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purgeit out of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake,then doubly for thine own! Forgive, and leave his furtherretribution to the Power that claims it! I said, but now, thatthere could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who arehere wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, andstumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewnour path. It is not so! There might be good for thee, and theealone, since thou hast been deeply wronged and hast it at thywill to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thoureject that priceless benefit?"

"Peace, Hester--peace!" replied the old man, with gloomysternness--"it is not granted me to pardon. I have no such poweras thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes backto me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thyfirst step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but sincethat moment it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that havewronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion;neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office fromhis hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as itmay! Now, go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man."

He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment ofgathering herbs.