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 colours 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
truth 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 Dr.
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.