Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, both
as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed
pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he
appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of
which might call out something new to the surface of his
character. He deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the
man, before attempting to do him good. Wherever there is a heart
and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged
with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought
and imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that
the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork
there. So Roger Chillingworth--the man of skill, the kind and
friendly physician--strove to go deep into his patient's bosom,
delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and
probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker
in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who
has opportunity and licence to undertake such a quest, and skill
to follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially
avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess
native sagacity, and a nameless something more,--let us call it
intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeable
prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power,
which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such
affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have
spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if such
revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so
often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate
breath, and here and there a word to indicate that all is
understood; if to these qualifications of a confidant be joined
the advantages afforded by his recognised character as a
physician;--then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of
the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark but
transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the
daylight.
Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes
above enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of
intimacy, as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated
minds, which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human
thought and study to meet upon; they discussed every topic of
ethics and religion, of public affairs, and private character;
they talked much, on both sides, of matters that seemed personal
to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied
must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness
into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions, indeed,
that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bodily disease had
never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!
After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of
Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were
lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the
minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and
attached physician. There was much joy throughout the town when
this greatly desirable object was attained. It was held to be
the best possible measure for the young clergyman's welfare;
unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorised to do
so, he had selected some one of the many blooming damsels,
spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife. This
latter step, however, there was no present prospect that Arthur
Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all
suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his
articles of Church discipline. Doomed by his own choice,
therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his
unsavoury morsel always at another's board, and endure the
life-long chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself
only at another's fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious,
experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord of
paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very
man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.