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 afterward 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 call est 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 you e!" said Faith,
with the pink ribbons; "and may you find all well when 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 traveler 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 a gone."
"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 traveler 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-traveler, "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 witch-meeting?
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.
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