Revenge
It was around the time that Roger Chillingworth settled in the town as a doctor that the young Reverend Dimmesdale’s health began to decline. The townspeople saw the coincidence of the ailing reverend and the doctor’s arrival as a miracle enacted by the providence of God. Therefore the town elders thought it was God’s will that Reverend Dimmesdale’s health be placed in Dr.Chillindworth’s hands.
The two men soon became constant companions. Reverend Dimmesdale was fascinated by Chillingworth’s wealth of experience as a doctor and an older man, while the doctor spent his time looking for clues to the reverend’s illness. Chillingworth was convinced that his bodily sickness was the result of a troubled heart and mind. Just what was doctor was unable to figure out just what was troubling the reverend’s mind.
The two men soon moved into a house together. But as time passed, the townspeople began to see Doctor Chillingworth differently. His appearance and moving to the town. Where
He was once calm and kind, they now saw evil on his face. Rumors around town said that the reverend’s poor health was caused by Satan, who haunted him in the form of Roger Chillingworth.
It happened one day that the reverend visited Chillingworth in his laboratory, where he often made drugs from plants he had collected. The doctor was examining a bundle of ugly-looking plants from the graveyard that stood next to their house.
“I found these leaves in that graveyard right there,” said the doctor, pointing out the window. “This variety is new to me. I found them growing out of an unmarked grave. I suspect they grew out of the man’s heart. Perhaps they represent a dreadful secret that he was buried with. It would have been better that he confessed it during his lifetime.”
“Maybe he wanted to but was unable,” said the reverend, gripping his breast as if it were throbbing with pain. “When the members of my church confess their sins, they are always greatly relieved.”
Just then the doctor and the reverend saw Hester Prynne and Pearl walking over a footpath that ran through the graveyard. Pearl was disrespectfully skipping along from the top of one tomb to the next. Then she gathered a handful of prickly burrs from a burdock plant and stuck them along the lines of her mother’s scarlet A.
“Ah, that child has no respect for law or authority,” said Roger Chillingworth. “Just the other day I saw her splash water from a horse trough on the governor. What in Heaven’s name is wrong with her?”
Suddenly, Pearl ran up to the window and threw one of the prickly burrs at Reverend Dimmesdale. Then she laughed and called to her mother, “Let’s go, Mother. Or the Black Man is going to get you like he has already gotten the reverend. Come quickly, or he’ll catch you! But he can’t catch me!”
“Do you think Hester Prynne is less miserable for bearing her shame in that letter on her breast, rather than hiding it away in her heart?” the doctor asked the reverend as the mother and her child walked away from the window.