This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded, at least, the
outward forms of a religious life, and, early after his arrival, had
chosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young
divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was
considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a
heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for the
ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now feeble New
England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of
the Christian faith. About this period, however, the health of Mr.
Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with
his habits, the paleness of the young minister’s cheek was accounted
for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of
parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which
he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this
earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some
declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it was
cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden
by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic
humility, avowed his belief, that, if Providence should see fit to
remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its
humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as
to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact.
His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a
certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on
any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his
heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.

Such was the young clergyman’s condition, and so imminent the prospect
that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when Roger
Chillingworth made his advent to the town. His first entry on the
scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as it were, out of
the sky, or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery,
which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be
a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and the
blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs from
the forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was
valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby,
and other famous men,—whose scientific attainments were esteemed
hardly less than supernatural,—as having been his correspondents or
associates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come
hither? What could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in
the wilderness? In answer to this query, a rumor gained ground,—and,
however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people,—that
Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent
Doctor of Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air,
and setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale’s study!
Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its
purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called
miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in
Roger Chillingworth’s so opportune arrival.

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician
ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as
a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from
his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at his
pastor’s state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if
early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favorable result. The
elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair
maidens, of Mr. Dimmesdale’s flock, were alike importunate that he
should make trial of the physician’s frankly offered skill. Mr.
Dimmesdale gently repelled their entreaties.

But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive
Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous
than before,—when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a
casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? Was he weary of his
labors? Did he wish to die? These questions were solemnly propounded
to Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston and the deacons of
his church, who, to use their own phrase, “dealt with him” on the sin
of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He
listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the
physician.

“Were it God’s will,” said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in
fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth’s
professional advice, “I could be well content, that my labors, and my
sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and
what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go
with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your
skill to the proof in my behalf.”

“Ah,” replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness which, whether
imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, “it is thus that a
young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deep
root, give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walk
with God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden
pavements of the New Jerusalem.”

“Nay,” rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart,
with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, “were I worthier to walk
there, I could be better content to toil here.”

“Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly,” said the physician.

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the
medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the
disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look
into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so
different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. For the
sake of the minister’s health, and to enable the leech to gather
plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the
sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and
murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops.
Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other, in his place of
study and retirement. There was a fascination for the minister in the
company of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual
cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range and
freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the
members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not
shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a
true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment
largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself
powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage
continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society
would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would
always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about
him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. Not
the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the
occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of
another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held
converse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer
atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was
wasting itself away, amid lamplight, or obstructed day-beams, and the
musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But
the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. So
the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the
limits of what their church defined as orthodox.

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized 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 license 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 disagreeably 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 recognized 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 authorized 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 unsavory 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.

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 colors 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 truths 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 Doctor 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.

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that
the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial
sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by
Satan himself, or Satan’s emissary, in the guise of old Roger
Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a
season, to burrow into the clergyman’s intimacy, and plot against his
soul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the
victory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see
the minister come forth out of the conflict, transfigured with the
glory which he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it
was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must
struggle towards his triumph.

Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of the poor
minister’s eyes, the battle was a sore one and the victory anything
but secure.

Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in
temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in
all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun
an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity
of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved
no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem,
instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he
proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still
calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and never set
him free again, until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the
poor clergyman’s heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather,
like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that
had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely to find nothing
save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these were
what he sought!