The Scarlet Letter

After the incident last described, the intercourse between the

clergyman and the physician, though externally the same, was

really of another character than it had previously been. The

intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain

path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had

laid out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he

appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice,

hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man,

which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal

had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted

friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse,

the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of

sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow,

hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and

forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless--to him, the

Unforgiving! All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very

man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of

vengeance!

The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this

scheme. Roger Chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly,

if at all, less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which

Providence--using the avenger and his victim for its own

purposes, and, perchance, pardoning, where it seemed most to

punish--had substituted for his black devices. A revelation, he

could almost say, had been granted to him. It mattered little

for his object, whether celestial or from what other region. By

its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and Mr.

Dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very

inmost soul of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his

eyes, so that he could see and comprehend its every movement. He

became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor in

the poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he

chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was

for ever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that

controlled the engine: and the physician knew it well. Would he

startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's

wand, up rose a grisly phantom--up rose a thousand phantoms--in

many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round

about the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at his

breast!

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the

minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil

influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its

actual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully--even, at

times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred--at the deformed

figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his

grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the

very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's

sight; a token implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy

in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge

to himself. For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for

such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that

the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire

substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause.

He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to

Roger Chillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have

drawn from them, and did his best to root them out. Unable to

accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle,

continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and

thus gave him constant opportunities for perfecting the purpose

to which--poor forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched

than his victim--the avenger had devoted himself.