Young
Goodman Brown ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset
into the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the
threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the
wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the
wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.
"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her
lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise
and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams
and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me
this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year." "My love and my
Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this
one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth
and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet,
pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?"
"Then God bless youe!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons; "and
may you find all well whn you come back." "Amen!" cried Goodman
Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm
will come to thee." So they parted; and the young man pursued his way
until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and
saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite
of her pink ribbons. "Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart
smote him. "What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks
of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a
dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; 't would kill
her to think it. Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night
I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven." With this excellent
resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more
haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all
the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow
path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as
could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller
knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs
overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen
multitude. "There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said
Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added,
"What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!" His head
being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again,
beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of
an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward side by
side with him. "You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The
clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston, and that is full
fifteen minutes agone." "Faith kept me back a while," replied
the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of
his companion, though not wholly unexpected. It was now deep dusk in the
forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As
nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old,
apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a
considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than
features. Still they might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though
the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner
too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not
have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King William's court,
were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing
about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the
likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be
seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must
have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light. "Come,
Goodman Brown," cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace for
the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary."
"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop,
"having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return
whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot'st of."
"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let
us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou
shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet." "Too
far! too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk.
"My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father
before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the
days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever
took this path and kept" "Such company, thou wouldst say,"
observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. "Well said, Goodman
Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among
the Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the
constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of
Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my
own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war. They were
my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path,
and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you for their
sake." "If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I
marvel they never spoke of these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that
the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England. We are a
people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness."
"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff,
"I have a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of
many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers
towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are
firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too--But these are state
secrets." "Can this be so?" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of
amazement at his undisturbed companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do
with the governor and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a
simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet
the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice
would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day." Thus far the
elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into a fit of
irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snake-like staff
actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy. "Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he
again and again; then composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go
on; but, prithee, don't kill me with laughing." "Well, then, to end
the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there
is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break
my own." "Nay, if that be the case," answered the other,
"e'en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women like
the one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm." As he
spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman
Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his
catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with
the minister and Deacon Gookin. "A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should
be so far in the wilderness at nightfall," said he. "But with your
leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this
Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was
consorting with and whither I was going." "Be it so," said his
fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the
path." Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his
companion, who advanced softly along the road until he had come within a
staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best of her way,
with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words--a
prayer, doubtless--as she went. The traveller put forth his staff and touched
her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail. "The devil!"
screamed the pious old lady. "Then Goody Cloyse knows her old
friend?" observed the traveller, confronting her and leaning on his
writhing stick. "Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?" cried
the good dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip,
Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But--would your
worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I
suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all
anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf's bane"
"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the
shape of old Goodman Brown. "Ah, your worship knows the recipe,"
cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying, being all ready
for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for
they tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But
now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a
twinkling." "That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I
may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse; but here is my staff, if you
will." So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed
life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian
magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take cognizance. He had
cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down again, beheld neither Goody
Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited for
him as calmly as if nothing had happened. "That old woman taught me my
catechism," said the young man; and there was a world of meaning in this
simple comment. They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller
exhorted his companion to make good speed and persevere in the path,
discoursing so aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom
of his auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a
branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of the
twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The moment his
fingers touched them they became strangely withered and dried up as with a
week's sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until suddenly,
in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump of
a tree and refused to go any farther. "Friend," said he, stubbornly,
"my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand. What if
a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going
to heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after
her?" "You will think better of this by and by," said his
acquaintance, composedly. "Sit here and rest yourself a while; and when
you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along." Without
more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of
sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few
moments by the roadside, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how
clear a conscience he should meet the minister in his morning walk, nor shrink
from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his that
very night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly
now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations,
Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable
to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty
purpose that had brought him thither, though now so happily turned from it. On
came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices,
conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass
along the road, within a few yards of the young man's hiding-place; but, owing
doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that particular spot, neither the
travellers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small
boughs by the wayside, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a
moment, the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky athwart which they must
have passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling
aside the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst without
discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could have
sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices of the
minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do,
when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While yet within
hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch. "Of the two,
reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had rather miss
an ordination dinner than to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our
community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut
and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian powwows, who, after their
fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a
goodly young woman to be taken into communion." "Mighty well, Deacon
Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the minister. "Spur up, or
we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground."
The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty
air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or
solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying so
deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for
support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburdened with
the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether
there really was a heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars
brightening in it. "With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand
firm against the devil!" cried Goodman Brown. While he still gazed upward
into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud,
though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening
stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this
black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if
from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices.
Once the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people
of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at
the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next
moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught
but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a
stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine at Salem
village, but never until now from a cloud of night There was one voice of a
young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and
entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and
all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her
onward. "Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and
desperation; and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying, "Faith!
Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy
husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately
in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud
swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something
fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The
young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon. "My Faith is gone!"
cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin
is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given." And,
maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown
grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along
the forest path rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier
and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of
the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides mortal
man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking
of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while
sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a
broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn.
But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other
horrors. "Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at
him. "Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with
your deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself,
and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you." In
truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful
than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing
his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid
blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the
forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous
than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course,
until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the
felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up
their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused, in a
lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard the swell of what
seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance with the weight of many voices.
He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village
meeting-house. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not
of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in
awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his cry was lost to his
own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert. In the interval of silence he
stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an
open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing
some rude, natural resemblance either to an alter or a pulpit, and surrounded
by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles
at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that had overgrown the summit of the
rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully illuminating the
whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red
light arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then
disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the darkness,
peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once. "A grave and dark-clad
company," quoth Goodman Brown. In truth they were such. Among them,
quivering to and fro between gloom and splendor, appeared faces that would be
seen next day at the council board of the province, and others which, Sabbath
after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded
pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the
governor was there. At least there were high dames well known to her, and wives
of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of
excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should
espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light flashing over the obscure field
bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of the church members of
Salem village famous for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had
arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor.
But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people,
these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men
of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean
and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see
that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the
saints. Scattered also among their pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests,
or powwows, who had often scared their native forest with more hideous
incantations than any known to English witchcraft. "But where is
Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he
trembled. Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as
the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature can
conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is
the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and still the chorus of the
desert swelled between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the
final peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the roaring wind,
the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of the
unconcerted wilderness were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man
in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier
flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke
wreaths above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock
shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a
figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both
in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the New England churches.
"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice that echoed through the
field and rolled into the forest. At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from
the shadow of the trees and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a
loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He
could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father beckoned him
to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim
features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother?
But he had no power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when
the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms and led him to the
blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female, led
between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier,
who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was
she. And there stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire. "Welcome,
my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race.
Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind
you!" They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame,
the fiend worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every
visage. "There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have
reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from
your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful
aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping assembly. This
night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded
elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their
households; how many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has given her husband a
drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless
youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair
damsels--blush not, sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and
bidden me, the sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human
hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church,
bedchamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed, and shall
exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot. Far
more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep
mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly
supplies more evil impulses than human power--than my power at its utmost--can
make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each other." They
did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld
his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn
tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature
could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's
hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye
undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness.
Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race."
"Welcome," repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and
triumph. And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet
hesitating on the verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin was hollowed,
naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or
was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the shape of evil dip
his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they
might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of
others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own. The
husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted
wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at
what they disclosed and what they saw! "Faith! Faith!" cried the
husband, "look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one." Whether
Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found himself amid calm
night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind which died heavily away
through the forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp;
while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the
coldest dew. The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street
of Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old
minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast
and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman
Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old
Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were
heard through the open window. "What God doth the wizard pray to?"
quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the
early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought
her a pint of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the
grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied
the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting
into such joy at sight of him that she skipped along the street and almost
kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly
and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting. Had Goodman Brown
fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witchmeeting? Be
it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman
Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate
man did he become from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day,
when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an
anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain.
When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and,
with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of
saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery
unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should
thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly
at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide,
when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and
gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was
borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and
children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a few,
they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.
Literature Network » Nathaniel Hawthorne » Young Goodman Brown
http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/158/
0 komentar:
Post a Comment