| HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN "What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!"
"It had been better so!" said Hester Prynne.
"What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth again. "I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid his life would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough. What art can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!" "Better he had died at once!" said Hester Prynne.
"Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. "Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritual sense—for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this—he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment." The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognise, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably he had never before viewed himself as he did now.
"Hast thou not tortured him enough?" said Hester, noticing the old man's look. "Has he not paid thee all?" "No, no! He has but increased the debt!" answered the physician, and as he proceeded, his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. "Dost thou me, Hester, as I was nine years agone? Even then I was in the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the other—faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich with benefits conferred. Dost thou me? Was I not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself—kind, true, just and of constant, if not warm affections? Was I not all this?" "All this, and more," said Hester. "And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. "I have already told thee what I am—a fiend! Who made me so?"
"It was myself," cried Hester, shuddering. "It was I, not less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?"
"I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied Roger
Chillingworth. "If that has not avenged me, I can do no more!"
He laid his finger on it with a smile.
"It has avenged thee," answered Hester Prynne.
"I judged no less," said the physician. "And now what wouldst thou with me touching this man?"
"I must reveal the secret," answered Hester, firmly. "He must discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in my hands. Nor do I—whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron entering into the soul—nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him, no good for me, no good for thee. There is no good for little Pearl. There is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze." "Woman, I could well-nigh pity thee," said Roger Chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of iration too, for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. "Thou hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature." "And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly for thine own! Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the Power that claims it! I said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?" "Peace, Hester—peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness—"it is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! Now, go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man."
He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs. |
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ESTER Y EL MDICO —Qu otro camino os quedaba?—pregunt el mdico.—Si yo hubiera sealado a este hombre con el dedo, habra sido arrojado de su plpito a un calabozo—y de all tal vez al cadalso.
—Habra sido preferible,—dijo Ester.
—Qu mal le he hecho a ese hombre?—pregunt de nuevo el mdico.—Te aseguro, Ester Prynne, que con los honorarios ms crecidos y valiosos que un monarca pudiera haber pagado a un facultativo, no se habra conseguido todo el esmero y la atencin que he consagrado a este infeliz eclesistico. a no ser por m, su vida se habra extinguido en medio de tormentos y agonas en los dos primeros aos que siguieron a la perpetracin de su crimen y el tuyo. Porque t sabes, Ester, que su alma carece de la fortaleza de la tuya para sobrellevar, como lo has hecho, un peso semejante al de tu letra escarlata. Oh! yo podra revelar un secreto digno de ser conocido! Pero basta sobre este punto. Lo que la ciencia puede hacer, lo he hecho en su beneficio. Si aun respira y se arrastra en este mundo, a m solamente lo debe.
—Ms le valiera haber muerto de una vez,—dijo Ester.
—S, mujer, tienes razn,—exclam el viejo Roger haciendo brillar en los ojos todo el fuego infernal de su corazn;—ms le valiera haber muerto de una vez. Jams mortal alguno padeci lo que este hombre ha padecido.... Y todo, todo, a la vista de su peor enemigo. Ha tenido una vaga sospecha acerca de m: ha sentido que algo se cerna siempre sobre l a manera de una maldicin; conoca instintivamente que la mano que sondeaba su corazn no era mano amiga, y que haba un ojo que le observaba, buscando solamente la iniquidad, y la ha encontrado. Pero no saba que esa mano y ese ojo fueran los mos! Con la supersticin comn a su clase, se imaginaba entregado a un demonio para que le atormentara con sueos espantosos, con pensamientos terribles, con el aguijn del remordimiento, y con la creencia de que no ser perdonado, todo como anticipacin de lo que le espera ms all de la tumba. Pero era la sombra constante de mi presencia, la proximidad del hombre a quien ms vilmente haba ofendido, y que vive tan solo merced a este veneno perpetuo del ms intenso deseo de venganza. S; s por cierto! No se equivocaba, tena un enemigo implacable junto a s. Un mortal, dotado en otro tiempo de sentimientos humanos, se ha convertido en un demonio para su tormento especial.
El infortunado mdico, al pronunciar estas palabras, alz los brazos con una mirada de horror, como si hubiera visto alguna forma espantosa, que no poda reconocer y estuviese usurpando el lugar de su propia imagen en un espejo. Era uno de esos raros momentos en que el aspecto moral de un hombre se revela con toda fidelidad a los ojos de su alma. Probablemente jams se haba visto a s mismo como se vea ahora.
—No lo has torturado ya bastante?—le pregunt Ester notando la expresin del rostro del anciano.—No te ha pagado todo con usura?
—No! no! Ha aumentado su deuda,—respondi el mdico, y a medida que prosegua, su rostro fue perdiendo la expresin de fiereza, volvindose ms y ms sombro.—Te acuerdas, Ester, cmo era yo hace nueve aos? Aun entonces me encontraba en el otoo de mis das, y no al principio del otoo. Pero toda mi vida haba consistido en aos tranquilos de estudio severo y de meditacin, consagrados a aumentar mis conocimientos, y tambin, fielmente, al progreso del bienestar del gnero humano. Ninguna vida haba sido tan pacfica e inocente como la ma: pocas, tan ricas en beneficios conferidos. No recuerdas lo que yo era? Aunque fro en la apariencia, no era yo un hombre que pensaba en el bien de los dems, sin acordarse mucho de s mismo; bondadoso, sincero, justo, y constante en sus afectos, si bien stos no muy ardientes? No era yo todo esto?
—Todo esto, y ms,—dijo Ester.
—Y qu soy ahora?—pregunt el anciano, mirndola fijamente al rostro, y dejando que toda la perversidad de su alma se retratase en la fisonoma.—Qu soy yo ahora? Ya te he dicho lo que soy: un enemigo implacable: un demonio en forma humana. Quin me ha hecho as?
—Yo he sido,—exclam Ester estremecindose.—Yo he sido, tanto o ms que l. Por qu no te has vengado en m?
—Te he dejado entregada a la letra escarlata,—replic Roger.—Si eso no me ha vengado, no puedo hacer ms.
Y puso un dedo en la letra, con una sonrisa.
—Te ha vengado!—replic Ester.
—Es lo que crea,—dijo el mdico.—Y ahora qu es lo que quieres de m respecto a ese hombre?
—Tengo que revelarle el secreto,—respondi Ester con firmeza,—tiene que ver y saber lo que realmente eres. No s cules sern las consecuencias. Pero esta deuda ma para con l, cuya ruina y tormento he sido, tiene al fin que quedar satisfecha. En tus manos est la destruccin o la conservacin de su buen nombre y estado social, y tal vez hasta su vida. Ni puedo yo,— quien la letra escarlata ha hecho comprender el valor de la verdad, si bien hacindola penetrar en el alma como con un hierro candente,—no, ni puedo yo percibir la ventaja que l reporte de vivir por ms tiempo esa vida de miseria y de horror, para rebajarme ante ti e implorarte compasin hacia tu vctima. No; haz con l lo que quieras. No hay nada bueno que esperar para l—ni para m—ni para ti—ni aun siquiera para mi pequea Perla. No hay sendero alguno que nos saque de este triste y sombro laberinto.
—Mujer, casi podra compadecerte,—dijo el mdico a quien no fue posible contener un movimiento de iracin, pues haba una cierta majestad en la desesperacin con que Ester se expres.—Haba en t grandes cualidades; y si hubieras hallado en tus primeros aos un amor ms adecuado que el mo, nada de esto habra acontecido. Te compadezco por todo lo bueno que en t se ha perdido.
—Y yo a t,—contest Ester,—por todo el odio que ha transformado en un monstruo infernal a un hombre justo y sabio. Quieres despojarte de ese odio y volver de nuevo a ser una criatura humana? Si no por l, a lo menos por t. Perdona; y deja su ulterior castigo al Poder a quien pertenece. Dije ahora poco que nada bueno podamos esperar l, ni t, ni yo, que andamos vagando juntos en este sombro laberinto de maldad, tropezando a cada paso contra la culpa que hemos esparcido en nuestra senda. No es as. Puede haber algo bueno para t; s, para t solo, porque t eres el profundamente ofendido, y tienes el privilegio de poder perdonar. Quieres abandonar ese nico privilegio? Quieres rechazar esa ventaja de incomparable valor?
—Basta, Ester, basta,—replic el anciano mdico con sombra entereza.—No me est concedido perdonar. No hay en m esa facultad de que hablas. Mi antigua fe, olvidada hace tiempo, se apodera de nuevo de m y explica todo lo que hacemos y todo lo que padecemos. El primer paso errado que diste, sembr el germen del mal; pero desde aquel momento ha sido todo una fatal necesidad. Vosotros que de tal modo me habis ofendido, no sois culpables, excepto en una especie de ilusin; ni soy yo el enemigo infernal que ha arrebatado al gran enemigo del gnero humano su oficio. Es nuestro destino. Deja que se desenvuelva como quiera. Contina en tu sendero, y haz lo que te parezca con ese hombre.
Hizo una seal con la mano y sigui recogiendo hierbas y races. |
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