Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne Read Free Book Online Page A

him.
    "And do you feel it, then, at last?" said he, mournfully.
    She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her hand and turned to
leave the room. He rushed forward and caught her arm.
    "Have patience with me, Elizabeth!" cried he, passionately. "Do not
desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine,
and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between
our souls. It is but a mortal veil; it is not for eternity. Oh, you
know not how lonely I am, and how frightened to be alone behind my
black veil! Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity for ever."
    "Lift the veil but once and look me in the face," said she.
    "Never! It cannot be!" replied Mr. Hooper.
    "Then farewell!" said Elizabeth.
    She withdrew her arm from his grasp and slowly departed, pausing at
the door to give one long, shuddering gaze that seemed almost to
penetrate the mystery of the black veil. But even amid his grief Mr.
Hooper smiled to think that only a material emblem had separated him
from happiness, though the horrors which it shadowed forth must be
drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.
    From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper's black veil
or by a direct appeal to discover the secret which it was supposed to
hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was
reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the
sober actions of men otherwise rational and tinges them all with its
own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude good Mr. Hooper was
irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of
mind, so conscious was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside
to avoid him, and that others would make it a point of hardihood to
throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of the latter class
compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the
burial-ground; for when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would
always be faces behind the gravestones peeping at his black veil. A
fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead people drove him
thence. It grieved him to the very depth of his kind heart to observe
how the children fled from his approach, breaking up their merriest
sports while his melancholy figure was yet afar off. Their instinctive
dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught else that a
preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads of the black
crape. In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was known to be so
great that he never willingly passed before a mirror nor stooped to
drink at a still fountain lest in its peaceful bosom he should be
affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausibility to the whispers
that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too
horrible to be entirely concealed or otherwise than so obscurely
intimated. Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into
the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor
minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said
that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings
and outward terrors he walked continually in its shadow, groping
darkly within his own soul or gazing through a medium that saddened
the whole world. Even the lawless wind, it was believed, respected his
dreadful secret and never blew aside the veil. But still good Mr.
Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng as he
passed by.
    Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable
effect of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. By the aid of
his mysterious emblem—for there was no other apparent cause—he
became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin. His
converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves,
affirming, though but figuratively, that before he brought them to
celestial light they had been with him behind the black veil. Its
gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections.
Dying