The black veil, though it covers only our pastor's face, throws its influence over his whole person, and makes him ghostlike from head to foot.
Hooper, still covered with his black veil. It was now an appropriate emblem.
"How strange," said a lady, "that a simple black veil, such as any woman might wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on Mr.
Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister, as his black veil to them.
Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought.
At the close of the services, the people hurried out with indecorous confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their mouths all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone, wrapt in silent meditation; some talked loudly, and profaned the Sabbath day with ostentatious laughter.
He even raised himself in bed; and there he sat, shivering with the arms of death around him, while the black veil hung down, awful, at that last moment, in the gathered terrors of a lifetime.
As years wore on, shedding their snows above his sable veil, he acquired a name throughout the New England churches, and they called him Father Hooper.
But presently she took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and turned to the mirror.
"Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them."
"But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when I looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerful aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there--on the carpet--I saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis,--the veil, torn from top to bottom in two halves!"
"Thank God!" he exclaimed, "that if anything malignant did come near you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed.
In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her.
