The Scarlet Letter: A Romance - Section 17 - Hester and the Physician

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dream Ario Books presents Section seventeen of The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Chapter fourteen. Hester and the physician Hester
bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the
water and play with the shells and tangled seaweed until
she should have talked awhile with yonder, gatherer of herbs.

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So the child flew away like a bird, and making
bare her small white feet, went pattering along the moist
margin of the sea. Here and there she came to
a full stop and peeped curiously into a pool left
by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to
see her face in fourth peeped at her out of

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the pool, with dark glistening curls around her head and
an elf smile in her eyes, the image of a
little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to
take her hand and run a race with her. But
the visionary little maid, on her part, beckoned likewise, as
if to say, this is a better place, come thou

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into the pool, and Pearl, stepping in mid leg deep,
beheld her own white feet at the bottom, while out
of a still lower depth came the gleam of a
kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the
agitated water. Meanwhile, her mother had accosted the physician. I

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would speak a word with you, said she, A word
that concerns us much. Aha. And is it, Mistress Hester,
that has a word for old Roger? Chillingworth answered, he
raising himself from his stooping posture, with all my heart, Why, Mistress,
I hear good tidings of you on all hands. No

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longer ago than yester eve, a magistrate, a wise and
godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Mistress Hester, and
whispered me that there had been question concerning you in
the council. It was debated whether off or no, with
safety to the common wheel, yonder scarlet letter might be
taken off your bosom. On my life, Hester, I made

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my entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be
done forthwith. It lies not in the pleasure of the
magistrates to take off this badge, calmly replied Hester, were
I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall
away of its own nature, or be transformed into something
that should speak a different purport. Nay, then wear it

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if it suits you better rejoined he a woman must
needs follow her own fancy touching the adornment of her person.
The letter is gaily embroidered and shows right bravely 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 a change had been wrought

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upon him within the past seven years. It was not
so much that he had grown older, for though the
trace of advancing life were visible, he bore his age
well and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness.
But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man,
calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him,

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had altogether vanished and been succeeded by an eager, searching,
almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be
his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile,
but the latter played him false, and flickered over his
visage so derisively that the spectator could see his blackness

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all the better for it. Ever, and Anon too, there
came a glare of red fire out of his eyes,
as if the old man's soul were on fire, and
kept on, smoldering duskily within his breast, until by some
casual puff of passion it was blown into a momentary flame.
This he repressed as speedily as possible, and strove to look,

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because if nothing of the kind had happened. In a word,
Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of
transforming himself into a devil, if he will, only, for
a reasonable space of time undertake a devil's office. This
unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself

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for seven years to the constant analysis of a heart
full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence and adding
fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated
over the scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here
was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home

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to her. What see you in my face? Asked the physician,
that you look at it so earnestly, something that would
make me weep if there were any tears bitter enough
for it, answered she, But let it pass. It is
of yonder miserable mans that I would speak. And what

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of him, cried Roger Chillingworth eagerly, as if he loved
the topic and were glad of an opportunity to discuss
it with the only person of whom he could make
a confidant. Not to hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my
thoughts happened just now to be busy with the gentleman.
So speak freely, and I will make answer when we

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last spake together, said Hester, now seven years ago, it
was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy, as
touching the former relation betwixt yourself and me, As the
life and good fame of yonder Man were in your hands,
there seemed no choice to me save to be silent
in accordance with your behest. Yet it was not without

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heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for having cast
off full duty towards other human beings. There remained a
duty towards him, and something whispered me that I was
betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since
that day, no man is so near to him as you.
You tread behind his every footstep, You are beside him,

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sleeping and waking, You search his thoughts, You borrow and
rankle in his heart. Your clutch is on his life,
and you cause him to die daily, a living death,
and still he knows you not. In permitting this, I
have surely acted a false part by the only man
to whom the power was left me to be true.

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What choice had you, asked Roger Chillingworth. My finger pointed
at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit
into a dungeon their peradventure to the gallows. It had
been better, so said Hester Prynne. What evil have I done?
The man asked Roger Chillingworth again, I tell thee Hester Prynne,

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the richest fee that ever physician earned from Monarch could
not have bought such care as I have wasted on
this miserable priest. But for my aid, his life would
have burned away in torments within the first two years
after the perpetration of his crime, and Thine for Hester,
his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up

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as thine has beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh,
I could reveal a goodly secret, But enough, what art
can do? I have exhausted on him, that he now
breathes and creeps about on earth? Is owing all to me? Better?
He had died at once, said hester Prynne. Yea woman,

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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
this man has suffered, and all all in the sight
of his worst enemy. He has been conscious of me.
He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him, like

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a curse. He knew by spiritual sense, for the Creator
never made another being so sensitive as this. He knew
that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart strings,
and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which
sought only evil and found it. But he knew not
that the eye and hand were mine. With the superstition

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common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to
a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts,
the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a
foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it
was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity

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of the man whom he had most vilely wronged and
who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison
of the direst revenge. YEA, indeed, he did not err.
There was a fiend at his elbow, A mortal man
with once a human heart has become a fiend for
his special lity torment. The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words,

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lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if
he had beheld some frightful shape which he could not recognize,
usurping the place of his own image in a glass.
It was one of those moments which sometimes occur only
at the interval of years, when a man's moral aspect
is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye, not Improbably he

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had never before viewed himself as he did now. Hast
thou not tortured him enough? Said Hester, noticing the old
man's look. Has he not paid thee all? No? No,
he has but increased the debt, answered the physician, And
as he proceeded, his manner lost its fiercer characteristics and

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subsided into gloom. Dost thou remember me, Hester, as I
was nine years agone. Even then I was in the
autumn of my days, Nor was it the early autumn,
but my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful,
quiet years bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge,

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and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual
to the other, faithfully for the advancement of human welfare.
No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine.
Few lives so rich with benefits conferred? Dost thou remember me?
Was I not, though you might deem me cold? Nevertheless

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a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself, kind, true, just,
and of constant, 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 and

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permitting the whole evil within him to be written on
his features. I have already told THEE what I am?
A fiend who made me so? It was myself, cried Hester, shuddering.
It was I not less than he? Why hast thou
not avenged thyself on me? I have left THEE to

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the scarlet letter, replied Roger Chillingworth. If that have not
avenged me, I can do no more. He laid his
finger on it with a smile. It has avenged THEE,
answered Hester, Bryne, I judged no less, said the physician,
And now what wouldst thou with me touching this man?

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I must reveal the secret, answered Hester firmly. He must
discern THEE in thy true character. What may be the result,
I know 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 far as concerns the
overthrow or preservation of his fame and his earthly state,

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and perchance his life he is in thy hands. Nor
do I whom the scarlet letter has disciplined the truth,
though it be the truth of red hot iron entering
into the soul. Nor do I perceive such advantage in
his living any longer, a life of ghastly emptiness, that
I shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with him

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as thou wilt. There is no good for him, no
good for me, no good for thee. There is no
good for little Pearl. 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 a quality almost

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majestic in the despair which she expressed, thou hadst great
elements peradventure. Have thou met earlier with a better love
than mine this evil had not been? I pity THEE
for the good that has been wasted in thy nature,
And I THEE, answered hester Prynne, for the hatred that

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has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend.
Wilt thou yet purge it out of THEE and be
once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly
for thine own, forgive and leave his further retribution to
the power that claims it. I said, but now that
there could be no good event for him, or THEE

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or me, who were here wandering together in this gloomy
maze of evil, and stumbling at every step over the
guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not
so there might be good for THEE and THEE alone.
Since thou hast been deeply wronged, and has it at
thy will to pardon, Wilt thou give up that only privilege?

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Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit? Peace? Hest a peace,
replied the old man with gloomy sternness. It is not
granted me to pardon. I have no such power as
thou tellest me of my old faith, long forgotten, comes
back to me and explains all that we do and

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all we suffer. By thy first step, awry, thou didst
plant the germ of evil. But since that moment it
has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged
me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion.
Neither are my fiendlike who have snatched a fiend's office
from his hands. It is our fate. No. The black

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flower blossom as it may now go thy ways, and
deal as thou wilt with yonder man. He waved his
hand and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs.
End of Section seventeen. Dream Audio Books hopes you have
enjoyed this programe.