He soon manifested his familiarity with the
ponderous and imposing machinery of antique physic; in which
every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and
heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the
proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian
captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the
properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from
his patients that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the
untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his own
confidence as the European Pharmacopoeia, which so many learned
doctors had spent centuries in elaborating.
This learned stranger was exemplary as regarded at least the
outward forms of a religious life; and early after his arrival,
had chosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale.
The young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in
Oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little
less than a heavenly ordained apostle, destined, should he live
and labour for the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds,
for the now feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had
achieved for the infancy of the Christian faith. About this
period, however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently
begun to fail. By those best acquainted with his habits, the
paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his
too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of
parochial duty, and more than all, to the fasts and vigils of
which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the
grossness of this earthly state from clogging and obscuring his
spiritual lamp. Some declared, that if Mr. Dimmesdale were
really going to die, it was cause enough that the world was not
worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the
other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that
if Providence should see fit to remove him, it would be because
of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on
earth. With all this difference of opinion as to the cause of
his decline, there could be no question of the fact. His form
grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a
certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often
observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put
his hand over his heart with first a flush and then a paleness,
indicative of pain.
Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the
prospect that his dawning light would be extinguished, all
untimely, when Roger Chillingworth made his advent to the town.
His first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence,
dropping down as it were out of the sky or starting from the
nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily
heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be a man of
skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs and the blossoms
of wild-flowers, and dug up roots and plucked off twigs from the
forest-trees like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was
valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm
Digby and other famous men--whose scientific attainments were
esteemed hardly less than supernatural--as having been his
correspondents or associates. Why, with such rank in the learned
world, had he come hither? What, could he, whose sphere was in
great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? In answer to this
query, a rumour gained ground--and however absurd, was
entertained by some very sensible people--that Heaven had
wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent Doctor
of Physic from a German university bodily through the air and
setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study!
Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven
promotes its purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what
is called miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a
providential hand in Roger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival.