In a word, old 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 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 analysed and
gloated over.
The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was
another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home 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 man that I would speak."
"And what 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 happen just now to
be busy with the gentleman. So speak freely and I will make
answer."
"When we 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 heavy misgivings that I thus
bound myself, for, having cast off all 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,
sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow 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!"
"What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger,
pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into
a dungeon, thence, 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, 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, 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!"