The Scarlet Letter

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.