Description
Compare and Contrast Young Goodman Brown’s character and faith to Balthasar Espinosa’s character and tragic fate in “The Gospel According to Mark”
Goal
Identify the main qualities of each character
Identify the themes and main ideas in each story
Examine the central role of a protagonist in a short story
Analyze the rhetorical use of allusion, epiphany, allegory and setting as contributing elements in fiction.
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Jorge Luis Borges
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK (1970)
Translated by Norrnan Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), an outstanding modern writer of Latin America, was born in
Buenos Aires into a family prominent in Argentine history. Borges grew up bilingual, learning
English from his English grandmother and receiving his early education from an English tutor.
Caught in Europe by the outbreak of World War II, Borges lived in Switzerland and later Spain,
where he joined the Ultraists, a group of experimental poets who renounced realism. On returning
to Argentina, he edited a poetry magazine printed in the form of a poster and affixed to city walls.
For his opposition to the regime of Colonel Juan Peron, Borges was forced to resign his post as a
librarian and was mockingly offered a job as a chicken inspector. In 1955, after Peron was
deposed, Borges became director of the national library and Professor of English Literature at the
University of Buenos Aires. Since childhood a sufferer from poor eyesight, Borges eventually went
blind. His eye problems may have encouraged him to work mainly in short, highly crafed forms:
stories, essays, fables, and lyric poems full of elaborate music. His short stories, in Ficciones
(1944), El hacedor (1960); translated as Dreamtigers, (1964), and Labyrinths (1962), have been
admired worldwide.
These events took place at La Colorada ranch, in the southern part of the township of Junin,
during the last days of March 1928. The protagonist was a medical student named Baltasar
Espinosa. We may describe him, for now, as one of the common run of young men from Buenos
Aires, with nothing more noteworthy about him than an almost unlimited kindness and a
capacity for public speaking that had earned him several prizes at the English school0 in Ramos
Mejia. He did not like arguing, and preferred having his listener rather than himself in the right.
Although he was fascinated by the probabilities of chance in any game he played, he was a bad
player because it gave him no pleasure to win. His wide intelligence was undirected; at the age of
thirty-three, he still had not qualified for graduation in the subject to which he was most drawn.
His father, who was a freethinker0 (like all the gentlemen of his day), had introduced him to the
lessons of Herbert Spencer0, but his mother, before leaving on a trip for Montevideo, once asked
him to say the Lord’s Prayer and make the sign of the cross every night. Through the years, he
had never gone back on that promise.
Espinosa was not lacking in spirit; one day, with more indifference than anger, he had
exchanged two or three punches with a group of fellow-students who were trying to force him to
take part in a university demonstration. Owing to an acquiescent nature, he was full of opinions,
or habits of mind, that were questionable: Argentina mattered less to him than a fear that in other
parts of the world people might think of us as Indians; he worshiped France but despised the
French; he thought little of Americans but approved the fact that there were tall buildings, like
theirs, in Buenos Aires; he believed the gauchos0 of the plains to be better riders than those of hill
or mountain country. When his cousin Daniel invited him to spend the summer months out at La
Colorada, he said yes at once — not because he was really fond of the country, but more out of
his natural complacency and also because it was easier to say yes than to dream up reasons for
saying no.
The ranch’s main house was big and slightly run down; the quarters of the foreman, whose
name was Gutre, were close by. The Gutres were three: the father, an unusually uncouth son, and
a daughter of uncertain paternity. They were tall, strong, and bony, and had hair that was on the
reddish side and faces that showed traces of Indian blood. They were barely articulate. The
foreman’s wife had died years before.
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There in the country, Espinosa began learning things he never knew, or even suspected — for
example, that you do not gallop a horse when approaching settlements, and that you never go out
riding except for some special purpose. In time, he was to come to tell the birds apart by their
calls.
After a few days, Daniel had to leave for Buenos Aires to close a deal on some cattle. At
most, this bit of business might take him a week. Espinosa, who was already somewhat weary of
hearing about his cousin’s incessant luck with women and his tireless interest in the minute
details of men’s fashion, preferred staying on at the ranch with his textbooks. But the heat was
unbearable, and even the night brought no relief. One morning at daybreak, thunder woke him.
Outside, the wind was rocking the Australian pines. Listening to the first heavy drops of rain,
Espinosa thanked God. All at once, cold air rolled in. That afternoon, the Salado overflowed its
banks.
The next day, looking out over the flooded fields from the gallery of the main house,
Baltasar Espinosa thought that the stock metaphor comparing the pampa to the sea was not
altogether false — at least, not that morning — though W. H. Hudson0 had remarked that the sea
seems wider because we view it from a ship’s deck and not from a horse or from eye level.
The rain did not let up. The Gutres, helped or hindered by Espinosa, the town dweller,
rescued a good part of the livestock, but many animals were drowned. There were four roads
leading to La Colorada; all of them were under water. On the third day, when a leak threatened
the foreman’s house, Espinosa gave the Gutres a room near the toolshed, at the back of the main
house. This drew them all closer; they ate together in the big dining room. Conversation turned
out to be difficult. The Gutres, who knew so much about country things, were hard put to it to
explain them. One night, Espinosa asked them if people still remembered the Indian raids from
back when the frontier command was located there in Junin. They told him yes, but they would
have given the same answer to a question about the beheading of Charles I.0 Espinosa recalled
his father’s saying that almost every case of longevity that was cited in the country was really a
case of bad memory or of a dim notion of dates. Gauchos are apt to be ignorant of the year of
their birth or of the name of the man who begot them.
In the whole house, there was apparently no other reading matter than a set of the Farm
Journal, a handbook of veterinary medicine, a deluxe edition of the Uruguayan epic Tabare, a
history of shorthorn cattle in Argentina, a number of erotic or detective stories, and a recent
novel called Don Segundo Sombra. Espinosa, trying in some way to bridge the inevitable afterdinner gap, read a couple of chapters of this novel to the Gutres, none of whom could read or
write. Unfortunately, the foreman had been a cattle drover, and the doings of the hero, another
cattle drover, failed to whet his interest. He said that the work was light, that drovers always
traveled with a packhorse that carried everything they needed, and that, had he not been a drover,
he would never have seen such far-flung places as the Laguna de Gomez, the town of Bragado,
and the spread of the Ntinez family in Chacabuco. There was a guitar in the kitchen; the ranch
hands, before the time of the events I am describing, used to sit around in a circle. Someone
would tune the instrument without ever getting around to playing it. This was known as a
guitarfest.
Espinosa, who had grown a beard, began dallying in front of the mirror to study his new
face, and he smiled to think how, back in Buenos Aires, he would bore his friends by telling
them the story of the Salado flood. Strangely enough, he missed places he never frequented and
never would: a corner of Cabrera Street on which there was a mailbox; one of the cement lions of
a gateway on Jujuy Street, a few blocks from the Plaza del Once; an old barroom with a tiled
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floor, whose exact whereabouts he was unsure of. As for his brothers and his father, they would
already have learned from Daniel that he was isolated etymologically, the word was perfect–by
the floodwaters.
Exploring the house, still hemmed in by the watery waste, Espinosa came across an English
Bible. Among the blank pages at the end, the Guthries–such was their original name–had left a
handwritten record of their lineage. They were natives of Inverness;0 had reached the New
World, no doubt as common laborers, in the early part of the nineteenth century; and had
intermarried with Indians. The chronicle broke off sometime during the 1870s, when they no
longer knew how to write. After a few generations, they had forgotten English; their Spanish, at
the time Espinosa knew them, gave them trouble. They lacked any religious faith, but there
survived in their blood, like faint tracks, the rigid fanaticism of the Calvinist and the superstitions
of the pampa Indian. Espinosa later told them of his find, but they barely took notice.
Leafing through the volume, his fingers opened it at the beginning of the Gospel according
to Saint Mark. As an exercise in translation, and maybe to find out whether the Gutres
understood any of it, Espinosa decided to begin reading them that text after their evening meal. It
surprised him that they listened attentively, absorbed. Maybe the gold letters on the cover lent
the book authority. It’s still there in their blood, Espinosa thought. It also occurred to him that the
generations of men, throughout recorded time, have always told and retold two stories — that of a
lost ship which searches the Mediterranean seas for a dearly loved island, and that of a god who
is crucified on Golgotha. Remembering his lessons in elocution from his schooldays in Ramos
Mejia, Espinosa got to his feet when he came to the parables.
The Gutres took to bolting their barbecued meat and their sardines so as not to delay the
Gospel. A pet lamb that the girl adorned with a small blue ribbon had injured itself on a strand of
barbed wire. To stop the bleeding, the three had wanted to apply a cobweb to the wound, but
Espinosa treated the animal with some pills. The gratitude that this treatment awakened in them
took him aback. (Not trusting the Gutres at first, he’d hidden away in one of his books the 240
pesos he had brought with him.) Now, the owner of the place away, Espinosa took over and gave
timid orders, which were immediately obeyed. The Gutres, as if lost without him, liked following
him from room to room and along the gallery that ran around the house. While he read to them,
he noticed that they were secretly stealing the crumbs he had dropped on the table. One evening,
he caught them unawares, talking about him respectfully, in very few words.
Having finished the Gospel according to Saint Mark, he wanted to read another of the three
Gospels that remained, but the father asked him to repeat the one he had just read, so that they
could understand it better. Espinosa felt that they were like children, to whom repetition is more
pleasing than variations or novelty. That night — this is not to be wondered at — he dreamed of
the Flood; the hammer blows of the building of the Ark woke him up, and he thought that
perhaps they were thunder. In fact, the rain, which had let up, started again. The cold was bitter.
The Gutres had told him that the storm had damaged the roof of the toolshed, and that they
would show it to him when the beams were fixed. No longer a stranger now, he was treated by
them with special attention, almost to the point of spoiling him. None of them liked coffee, but
for him there was always a small cup into which they heaped sugar.
The new storm had broken out on a Tuesday. Thursday night, Espinosa was awakened by a
soft knock at his door, which, just in case, he always kept locked. He got out of bed and opened
it; there was the girl. In the dark he could hardly make her out, but by her footsteps he could tell
she was barefoot, and moments later, in bed, that she must have come all the way from the other
end of the house naked. She did not embrace him or speak a single word; she lay beside him,
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trembling. It was the first time she had known a man. When she left, she did not kiss him;
Espinosa realized that he didn’t even know her name. For some reason that he did not want to pry
into, he made up his mind that upon returning to Buenos Aires he would tell no one about what
had taken place.
The next day began like the previous ones, except that the father spoke to Espinosa and
asked him if Christ had let Himself be killed so as to save all other men on earth. Espinosa, who
was a freethinker but who felt committed to what he had read to the Gutres, answered, “Yes, to
save everyone from Hell.”
Gutre then asked, “What’s Hell?”
“A place under the ground where souls burn and burn.”
“And the Roman soldiers who hammered in the nails — were they saved, too?”
“Yes,” said Espinosa, whose theology was rather dim.
All along, he was afraid that the foreman might ask him about what had gone on the night
before with his daughter. After lunch, they asked him to read the last chapters over again.
Espinosa slept a long nap that afternoon. It was a light sleep, disturbed by persistent hammering
and by vague premonitions. Toward evening, he got up and went out onto the gallery. He said, as
if thinking aloud, “The waters have dropped. It won’t be long now.”
“It won’t be long now,” Gutre repeated, like an echo.
The three had been following him. Bowing their knees to the stone pavement, they asked
his blessing. Then they mocked at him, spat on him, and shoved him toward the back part of the
house. The girl wept. Espinosa understood what awaited him on the other side of the door. When
they opened it, he saw a patch of sky. A bird sang out. A goldfinch, he thought. The shed was
without a roof; they had pulled down the beams to make the cross.
YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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, dost
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 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.
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“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.”
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“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
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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
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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.
5
“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 cr
