afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of
Mr. Dimmesdale’s nature. Hester could
not but ask herself whether there had not originally
been a defect of truth, courage, and loyalty on her
own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into
a position where so much evil was to be foreboded and
nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification
lay in the fact that she had been able to discern
no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than
had overwhelmed herself except by acquiescing in Roger
Chillingworth’s scheme of disguise. Under
that impulse she had made her choice, and had chosen,
as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative
of the two. She determined to redeem her error
so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened
by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself
no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth
as on that night, abased by sin and half-maddened
by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked
together in the prison-chamber. She had climbed
her way since then to a higher point. The old
man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer
to her level, or, perhaps, below it, by the revenge
which he had stooped for.
In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former
husband, and do what might be in her power for the
rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set
his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek.
One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part
of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician with
a basket on one arm and a staff in the other hand,
stooping along the ground in quest of roots and herbs
to concoct his medicine withal.
XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN
Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of
the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea-weed,
until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer
of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird,
and, making bare her small white feet went pattering
along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there
she came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into
a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for
Pearl to see her face in. Forth peeped at her,
out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around
her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image
of a little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate,
invited to take her hand and run a race with her.
But the visionary little maid on her part, beckoned
likewise, as if to say—“This is a
better place; come thou into the pool.”
And Pearl, stepping in mid-leg deep, beheld her own
white feet at the bottom; while, out of a still lower
depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile,
floating to and fro in the agitated water.
Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician.
“I would speak a word with you,” said
she—“a word that concerns us much.”
