Nathaniel Hawthorne » Young Goodman Brown
Young Goodman Brown came forth
"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 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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