The Scarlet Letter

So Roger Chillingworth--a deformed old figure with a face that

haunted men's memories longer than they liked--took leave of

Hester Prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. He

gathered here and there a herb, or grubbed up a root and put it

into the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched the

ground as he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a little

while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see whether

the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath

him and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and

brown, across its cheerful verdure.

She wondered what sort of

herbs they were which the old man was so sedulous to gather.

Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the

sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs of species

hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? Or

might it suffice him that every wholesome growth should be

converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch?

Did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really

fall upon him? Or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of

ominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way he

turned himself? And whither was he now going? Would he not

suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot,

where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade,

dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the

climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance?

Or would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much

the uglier the higher he rose towards heaven?

"Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as still she

gazed after him, "I hate the man!"

She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome

or lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought of those

long-past days in a distant land, when he used to emerge at

eventide from the seclusion of his study and sit down in the

firelight of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile.

He needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that

the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken

off the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not

otherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal

medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among her

ugliest remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes could have

been! She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to

marry him! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that

she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his

hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle

and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed

by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him,

that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had

persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side.