The cry of grief, rage, and terror, was yet piercing the night,when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There was ascream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fadinginto far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clearand silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightlydown through the air, and caught on the branch of a tree. The youngman seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There isno good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee isthis world given."And maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, didGoodman 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 orrun. The road grew wilder and drearier, and more faintly traced, andvanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness,still rushing onward, with the instinct that guides mortal man toevil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds; the creakingof the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians;while, sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church-bell, andsometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Naturewere laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of thescene, 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 withyour deviltry! Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powow, comedevil himself! and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fearhim as he fear you!"In truth, all through the haunted forest, there could be nothingmore frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew, among theblack pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, nowgiving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shoutingforth such laughter, as set all the echoes of the forest laughing likedemons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous, thanwhen he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on hiscourse, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light beforehim, as when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have beenset on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at thehour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that haddriven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn,rolling solemnly from a distance, with the weight of many voices. Heknew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the villagemeetinghouse. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by achorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benightedwilderness, pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown criedout; and his cry was lost to his own ear, by its unison with the cryof the desert.
In the interval of silence, he stole forward, until the lightglared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmedin by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude,natural resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and surroundedby four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched,like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage, that hadovergrown the summit of the rock, was all on fire, blazing high intothe night, and fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendanttwig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose andfell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, thendisappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of thedarkness, 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, betweengloom and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen, next day, atthe council-board of the province, and others which, Sabbath afterSabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over thecrowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm,that the lady of the governor was there. At least, there were highdames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows,a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, andfair 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 thechurch-members of Salem village, famous for their especial sanctity.
Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of thatvenerable saint, his reverend pastor. But, irreverently consortingwith these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of thechurch, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men ofdissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over toall mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. Itwas strange to see, that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor werethe sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered, also, among theirpalefaced enemies, were the Indian priests, or powows, who had oftenscared their native forest with more hideous incantations than anyknown to English witchcraft.
"But, where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope cameinto his heart, he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, suchas the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that ournature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more.
