The Scarlet Letter

The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good

social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the

site on which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since

been built. It had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's

home-field, on one side, and so was well adapted to call up

serious reflections, suited to their respective employments, in

both minister and man of physic. The motherly care of the good

widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny

exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create a noontide shadow

when desirable. The walls were hung round with tapestry, said to

be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the

Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan the Prophet,

in colours still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the

scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer.

Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with

parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis,

and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even

while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet

constrained often to avail themselves. On the other side of the

house, old Roger Chillingworth arranged his study and

laboratory: not such as a modern man of science would reckon

even tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling

apparatus and the means of compounding drugs and chemicals,

which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to purpose.

With such commodiousness of situation, these two learned persons

sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarly

passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual

and not incurious inspection into one another's business.

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as

we have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of

Providence had done all this for the purpose--besought in so

many public and domestic and secret prayers--of restoring the

young minister to health. But, it must now be said, another

portion of the community had latterly begun to take its own view

of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old

physician. When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with

its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however,

it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of

its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are

often so profound and so unerring as to possess the character of

truth supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which

we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger

Chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious

refutation. There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who

had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas

Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to

having seen the physician, under some other name, which the

narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Dr.

Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the

affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted that the man

of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical

attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage

priests, who were universally acknowledged to be powerful

enchanters, often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their

skill in the black art. A large number--and many of these were

persons of such sober sense and practical observation that their

opinions would have been valuable in other matters--affirmed

that Roger Chillingworth's aspect had undergone a remarkable

change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since his

abode with Mr. Dimmesdale. At first, his expression had been

calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now there was something ugly and

evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and

which grew still the more obvious to sight the oftener they

looked upon him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his

laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed

with infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was

getting sooty with the smoke.