The Scarlet Letter

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will

remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had

resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how,

in the crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious

exposure, stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging

from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped

to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as

a type of sin before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden

under all men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the

public market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever

reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there

remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonour; which would

not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion

with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship.

Then why--since the choice was with himself--should the

individual, whose connexion with the fallen woman had been the

most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate

his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not

to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to

all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her

silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind,

and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out of

life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the

ocean, whither rumour had long ago consigned him. This purpose

once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and

likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of

force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the

Puritan town as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction

than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more

than a common measure. As his studies, at a previous period of

his life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical

science of the day, it was as a physician that he presented

himself and as such was cordially received. Skilful men, of the

medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in

the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of the

religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic.

In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the

higher and more subtle faculties of such men were materialised,

and that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the

intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve

art enough to comprise all of life within itself. At all events,

the health of the good town of Boston, so far as medicine had

aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an

aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment

were stronger testimonials in his favour than any that he could

have produced in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was

one who combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with

the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a

professional body Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant

acquisition.