Young
Goodman Brown
作者简介：
纳撒尼尔·霍桑 (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864)
生於麻塞诸塞州塞勒姆。父为船长，一八○八年去世。曾在缅因州博多因学院就读，与朗费罗和後来当选为美国总统的佛兰克林·皮尔斯相识。毕业後隐居塞勒姆，写了一本名叫《范肖》(Fanshawe)的小说，在一八二八年匿名出版，还有一些短篇小说与小品文(辑为《重讲一遍的故事》(Twice-Told Tales, 两集分别於一八三七及一八四二年出版)。一八三六年离开塞勒姆去波士顿，一面写作，一面在海关任职。一八四一年参加创办布鲁克农场，一八四二年与有超验论思想(transcendentalist)的索菲娅·皮博迪("爱默生先生是纯音正调")结婚并搬到康考德"古宅"居住，写了更多的短篇和小品文，都收集在一八四六年出版的《古宅青苔》(Mosses from an Old Manse)里。一八四六到四九年在塞勒姆任港务总监；後来迁居伯克夏，与梅尔维尔相契。一八五三到五七年任美国驻利物浦领事，後至义大利，一八六○年回到康考德。第一部成功的小说《红字》(The Scarlet Letter)於一八五○年出版，其後尚有《带七个尖角阁的房子》(The House of the Seven Gables, 1851)，《福谷传奇》(The Blithedale Romance, 1852)与《玉石雕像》(The Marble Faun, 1860)。其他作品有短篇小说集《雪影》(The Snow Image, 1851)，儿童故事集《坦格林的故事》(Tanglewood Tales)，《我们的老家》(Our Old Home, 1863)，英国记事和死後发表的一些残篇。
在他最好的短篇《小伙子布朗》('Young Goodman Brown')里，霍桑写了早年的新英格兰，故事主人公去出席在半夜举行的魔鬼聚会，发现在座的不仅有镇上所有德高望重的人，甚至还有他的妻子费思...
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, cost thou doubt me already,
and we but three months married?"
"Then God bless you!" 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 to-night. 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.
<
2 >
"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."
<
3 >
"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 gayest," replied Goodman
Brown, "I marvel they never spoke of these matters; or, verily, I marvel
not, seeing that the least rumour 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 snakelike staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.
<
4 >
"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, "then 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 recognised 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 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.
<
5 >
"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
cognisance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down again,
beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but this 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."
<
6 >
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 recognised 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."
<
7 >
"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 favour, 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.
<
8 >
"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 meetinghouse. 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.
<
9 >
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 altar 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 splendour, 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 honoured
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 recognised 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.
<
10 >
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!"
<
11 >
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 carder, 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,
bed-chamber, 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!
<
12 >
"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 cloth the wizard pray to?"
quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the
early sunshine at her own lattice, catechising 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 meetinghouse, 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 grey blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking
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 neighbours
not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour
was gloom. top
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