THE MINISTER'S VIGIL Pearl laughed again.
But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. The wooden houses, with their jutting storeys and quaint gable-peaks; the doorsteps and thresholds with the early grass springing up about them; the garden-plots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn, and even in the market-place margined with green on either side—all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of this world than they had ever borne before. And there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom; and little Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those two. They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendour, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another.
There was witchcraft in little Pearl's eyes; and her face, as she glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smile which made its expression frequently so elvish. She withdrew her hand from Mr. Dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. But he clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes towards the zenith.
Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena that occurred with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revelations from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows seen in the midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to have been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. We doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell New England, from its settlement down to revolutionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been previously warned by some spectacle of its nature. Not seldom, it had been seen by multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested on the faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder through the coloured, magnifying, and distorted medium of his imagination, and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought. It was, indeed, a majestic idea that the destiny of nations should be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. A scroll so wide might not be deemed too expensive for Providence to write a people's doom upon. The belief was a favourite one with our forefathers, as betokening that their infant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate.
We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter—the letter A—marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have seen another symbol in it. There was a singular circumstance that characterised Mr. Dimmesdale's psychological state at this moment. All the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Pearl was pointing her finger towards old Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold. The minister appeared to see him, with the same glance that discerned the miraculous letter. To his feature as to all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked upon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that onished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth have ed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated. "Who is that man, Hester?" gasped Mr. Dimmesdale, overcome with terror. "I shiver at him! Dost thou know the man? I hate him, Hester!"
She ed her oath, and was silent. "I tell thee, my soul shivers at him!" muttered the minister again. "Who is he? Who is he? Canst thou do nothing for me? I have a nameless horror of the man!" "Minister," said little Pearl, "I can tell thee who he is!"
"Quickly, then, child!" said the minister, bending his ear close to her lips. "Quickly, and as low as thou canst whisper." |
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LA VIGILIA DEL MINISTRO Perla empez a reir de nuevo.
Pero antes de que el Sr. Dimmesdale hubiera terminado de hablar, brill una luz en toda la extensin del obscuro horizonte. Fue sin duda uno de esos meteoros que el observador nocturno puede ver a menudo, que se inflaman, brillan y se extinguen rpidamente en las regiones del espacio. Tan intenso fue su esplendor, que ilumin por completo la densa masa de nubes entre el firmamento y la tierra. La bveda celeste resplandeci de tal modo, que dej ver la calle como si estuviera alumbrada por la luz del medioda, pero con la extraeza que siempre comunica a los objetos familiares una claridad no acostumbrada. Las casas de madera, con sus pisos que sobresalan y sus curiosos caballetes rematados en punta; las escaleras de las puertas y los quicios con las primeras hierbas de la primavera que empezaban a brotar en las cercanas; los bancos de tierra de los jardines que parecan negros con la tierra removida recientemente;—todo se volvi visible, pero con una singularidad de aspecto que pareca darle a los objetos una significacin diferente de la que antes tenan. Y all estaba el ministro con la mano puesta sobre el corazn; y Ester Prynne, con la letra bordada brillando en su seno; y la pequea Perla que era en s misma un smbolo y el lazo de unin entre aquellos dos seres. All estaban de pie al fulgor de aquella extraa y solemne luz, como si sta fuera la que haba de revelar todos los secretos, y fuera tambin la alborada que haba de reunir todos los que mutuamente se pertenecan.
En los ojos de Perla haba cierta expresin misteriosa, y en su rostro, cuando lo alz para mirar al ministro, aquella sonrisa maliciosa que la haca comparar a un trasgo. Retir su mano de la del Sr. Dimmesdale, y seal al otro lado de la calle. Pero l cruz las manos sobre el pecho y levant las miradas hacia el cielo.
Nada era tan comn en aquellos tiempos como interpretar todas las apariciones metericas, y todos los otros fenmenos naturales, que ocurren con menos regularidad que la salida y la puesta del sol y de la luna, como otras tantas revelaciones de origen sobrenatural. As es que una lanza brillante, una espada de llamas, un arco, o un haz de flechas, pronosticaban una guerra con los indios. Era sabido que una lluvia de luz carmes indicaba una epidemia. Dudamos mucho que haya acontecido algo notable en la Nueva Inglaterra, desde los primeros das de su colonizacin hasta el tiempo de la guerra de la Independencia, de que los habitantes no hubieran tenido un previo aviso merced a un espectculo de esta naturaleza. a veces haba sido visto por la multitud; pero con mucha mayor frecuencia, todo reposaba en el mero dicho de un solitario espectador que haba contemplado el maravilloso fenmeno al travs del trastornador vidrio de aumento de su imaginacin, dndole ms tarde una forma ms precisa. Era sin duda una idea grandiosa pensar que el destino de las naciones deba revelarse en estos sorprendentes jeroglficos en la bveda celeste. Entre nuestros antepasados era una creencia muy extendida, indicando que su naciente comunidad estaba bajo la custodia especial del cielo. Pero qu diremos cuando un individuo descubre una revelacin en ese mismo libro misterioso dirigida a l solamente? En ese caso, sera nicamente el sntoma de una alteracin profunda del espritu, si un hombre, en consecuencia de un dolor prolongado, intenso y secreto, y de la costumbre mrbida de estarse estudiando constantemente, ha llegado a asociar su personalidad a la naturaleza entera, hasta el extremo de que el firmamento no venga a ser sino una pgina adecuada para la historia del futuro destino de su alma.
Por lo tanto, a esta enfermedad de su espritu atribuimos la idea de que el ministro, al dirigir sus miradas hacia el cielo, creyese contemplar en l la figura de una inmensa letra,—la letra A,—dibujada con contornos de luz de un rojo obscuro. En aquel lugar, y ardiendo opacamente, solo se haba dejado ver un meteoro al travs de un velo de nubes; pero no con la forma que su culpable imaginacin le prestaba, o a lo menos, de una manera tan poco definida, que otra conciencia delincuente podra haber visto en l otro smbolo distinto.
Haba una circunstancia especial que caracterizaba el estado psicolgico del Sr. Dimmesdale en aquel momento. Todo el tiempo que estuvo mirando al zenit, tena la plena conciencia de que Perla estaba apuntando con el dedo en direccin del viejo Roger Chillingworth, que se hallaba en pie no muy distante del tablado. El ministro pareca verle con la misma mirada con que discerna la letra milagrosa. As como a los dems objetos, la luz meterica comunicaba una nueva expresin a las facciones del mdico; o bien pudiera suceder que ste no se cuidaba en esta ocasin, como siempre lo haca, de ocultar la malevolencia con que miraba a su vctima. Ciertamente, si el meteoro ilumin el espacio e hizo visible la tierra con un fulgor solemne que oblig a recordar al clrigo y a Ester el da del Juicio Final, en ese caso Roger Chillingworth debi parecerles el gran enemigo del gnero humano, que se presentaba all con una sonrisa amenazadora reclamando lo que le perteneca. Tan viva fue aquella expresin, o tan intensa la percepcin que de ella tuvo el ministro, que le pareci que permaneca visible en la obscuridad, aun despus de desvanecida la luz del meteoro, como si la calle y todo lo dems hubiera desaparecido por completo.
—Quin es ese hombre, Ester?—pregunt Dimmesdale con voz trmula, sobrecogido de terror.—Me estremezco al verlo. Conoces a ese hombre? Le odio, Ester.
Ella record su juramento y permaneci en silencio.
—Te repito que mi alma se estremece en su presencia,—murmur el ministro de nuevo.—Quin es? Quin es? No puedes hacer nada por m? Ese hombre me inspira un horror indecible.
—Ministro, dijo Perlita, yo puedo decirte quin es.
—Pronto, nia, pronto,—dijo el ministro inclinando el odo junto a los labios de Perla.—Pronto, y tan bajo como te sea posible. |
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