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.
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