英文名著精选阅读:《红字》第九章(上)
Chapter 09 THE LEECH
第九章 医生
UNDER the appellationof Roger Chillingworth, the reader will remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how, in the crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominiousexposure, stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilouswilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulnessof home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her matronlyfame was troddenunder all men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the public market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagionof her dishonour; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion with the intimacy and sacrednessof their previous relationship. Then why- since the choice was with himself- should the individual, whose connection with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicatehis claim to an inheritanceso little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloriedbeside her on her pedestalof shame. Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and as regarded his former ties and interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumour had long ago consigned him. This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.
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