home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
Text File | 1992-06-29 | 514.1 KB | 11,625 lines |
- ***This is the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Scarlet Letter***
- *****This file should be named scrlt10.txt or scrlt10.zip******
-
- Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, xxxxx11.txt.
- VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, xxxxx10a.txt.
-
- Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
-
- We produce about one million dollars for each hour we work. One
- hundred hours is a conservative estimate for how long it we take
- to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
- searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
- projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
- per text is nominally estimated at one dollar, then we produce a
- million dollars per hour; next year we will have to do four text
- files per month, thus upping our productivity to two million/hr.
- The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
- Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
- This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers.
-
- We need your donations more than ever!
-
- All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/IBC", and are
- tax deductible to the extent allowable by law ("IBC" is Illinois
- Benedictine College). (Subscriptions to our paper newsletter go
- to IBC, too)
-
- Send to:
-
- David Turner, Project Gutenberg
- Illinois Benedictine College
- 5700 College Road
- Lisle, IL 60532-0900
-
- All communication to Project Gutenberg should be carried out via
- Illinois Benedictine College unless via email. This is for help
- in keeping me from being swept under by paper mail as follows:
-
- 1. Too many people say they are including SASLE's and aren't.
-
- 2. Paper communication just takes too long when compared to the
- thousands of lines of email I receive every day. Even then,
- I can't communicate with people who take too long to respond
- as I just can't keep their trains of thought alive for those
- extended periods of time. Even quick responses should reply
- with the text of the messages they are answering (reply text
- option in RiceMail). This is more difficult with paper.
-
- 3. People request disks without specifying which kind of disks,
- it can be very difficult to read an Apple disk on an IBM. I
- have also received too many disks that cannot be formatted.
-
- My apologies.
-
- We would strongly prefer to send you this information by email
- (Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
- Email requests to:
-
- Internet: hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
- Bitnet: hart@uiucvmd or hart@uiucvmd.bitnet
- Compuserve: >internet:hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
- Attmail: internet!vmd.cso.uiuc.edu!HART
- MCImail: ADDRESS TYPE: MCI / EMS: INTERNET / MBX:
- hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
- ******
- If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please:
-
- FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
- ftp mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu
- login: anonymous
- password: your@login
- cd etext/etext91
- or cd etext92 [for new books] [now also cd etext/etext92]
- or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
- dir [to see files]
- get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
- GET INDEX and AAINDEX
- for a list of books
- and
- GET NEW GUT for general information
- and
- MGET GUT* for newsletters.
-
- **Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
- (Three Pages)
-
- ****START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START****
- Why is this "small print" statement here? You know: lawyers.
- They tell us that we could get sued if there is something wrong
- with your copy of this etext, even if what's wrong is not our
- fault, and even if you got it for free and from someone other
- than us. So, among other things, this "small print" statement
- disclaims most of the liability we could have to you if some-
- thing is wrong with your copy.
-
- This "small print" statement also tells you how to distribute
- copies of this etext if you want to. As explained in greater
- detail below, if you distribute such copies you may be required
- to pay us if you distribute using our trademark, and if we get
- sued in connection with your distribution.
-
- *BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
-
- By using or reading any part of the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext
- that follows this statement, you indicate that you agree to and
- accept the following terms, conditions and disclaimers. If you
- do not understand them, or do not agree to and accept them, then
- [1] you may not read or use the etext, and [2] you will receive
- a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it on request within
- 30 days of receiving it. If you received this etext on a
- hysical medium (such as a disk), you must return the physical
- medium with your request and retain no copies of it.
-
- ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
-
- This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
- etexts, is a "Public Domain" work distributed by Professor
- Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association (the
- "Project"). Among other things, this means that no one owns a
- United States copyright on or for this work, so the Project (and
- you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
- permission and without paying royalties. Special rules, set
- forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
- under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
-
- To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable efforts
- to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain works.
- Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any medium they
- may be on may contain errors and defects (collectively, the
- "Defects"). Among other things, such Defects may take the form
- of incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors,
- unauthorized distribution of a work that is not in the public
- domain, a defective or damaged disk or other etext medium, a
- computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read
- by your equipment.
-
- DISCLAIMER
-
- As to every real and alleged Defect in this etext and any medium
- it may be on, and but for the "Right of Replacement or Refund"
- described below, [1] the Project (and any other party you may
- receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) dis-
- claims all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses,
- including legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLI-
- GENCE OR UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR
- CONTRACT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
- PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
- POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
-
- RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND
-
- If you received this etext in a physical medium, and the medium
- was physically damaged when you received it, you may return it
- within 90 days of receiving it to the person from whom you
- received it with a note explaining such Defects. Such person
- will give you, in his or its discretion, a replacement copy of
- the etext or a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it.
-
- If you received it electronically and it is incomplete, inaccu-
- rate or corrupt, you may send notice within 90 days of receiving
- it to the person from whom you received it describing such
- Defects. Such person will give you, in his or its discretion, a
- second opportunity to receive it electronically, or a refund of
- the money (if any) you paid to receive it.
-
- Aside from this limited warranty, THIS ETEXT IS PROVIDED TO YOU
- "AS-IS". NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
- ARE MADE TO YOU AS TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON,
- INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR
- FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
-
- Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
- the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
- above disclaimers, exclusions and limitations may not apply to
- you. This "small print" statement gives you specific legal
- rights, and you may also have other rights.
-
- IF YOU DISTRIBUTE THIS ETEXT
-
- You agree that if you distribute this etext or a copy of it to
- anyone, you will indemnify and hold the Project, its officers,
- members and agents harmless from all liability, cost and ex-
- pense, including legal fees, that arise by reason of your
- distribution and either a Defect in the etext, or any alter-
- ation, modification or addition to the etext by you or for which
- you are responsible. This provision applies to every distribu-
- tion of this etext by you, whether or not for profit or under
- the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
-
- DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
-
- You agree that if you distribute one or more copies of this
- etext under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark (whether electron-
- ically, or by disk, book or any other medium), you will:
-
- [1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this re-
- quires that you do not remove, alter or modify the etext or
- this "small print!" statement. You may however, if you
- wish, distribute this etext in machine readable binary,
- compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, including any
- form resulting from conversion by word processing or hyper-
- text software, but only so long as *EITHER*:
-
- [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable. We
- consider an etext *not* clearly readable if it
- contains characters other than those intended by the
- author of the work, although tilde (~), asterisk (*)
- and underline (_) characters may be used to convey
- punctuation intended by the author, and additional
- characters may be used to indicate hypertext links.
-
- [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at no
- expense into in plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form
- by the program that displays the etext (as is the
- case, for instance, with most word processors).
-
- [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no
- additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext
- in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC or
- other equivalent proprietary form).
-
- [2] Honor the terms and conditions applicable to distributors
- under the "RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND" set forth above.
-
- [3] Pay a trademark license fee of 20% (twenty percent) of the
- net profits you derive from distributing this etext under
- the trademark, determined in accordance with generally
- accepted accounting practices. The license fee:
-
- [*] Is required only if you derive such profits. In
- distributing under our trademark, you incur no
- obligation to charge money or earn profits for your
- distribution.
-
- [*] Shall be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association /
- Illinois Benedictine College" (or to such other person
- as the Project Gutenberg Association may direct)
- within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or
- were legally required to prepare) your year-end
- federal income tax return with respect to your profits
- for that year.
-
- WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
-
- The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
- scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
- free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
- you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
- Association / Illinois Benedictine College".
-
- Drafted by CHARLES B. KRAMER, Attorney
- CompuServe: 72600,2026
- Internet: 72600.2026@compuserve.com
- Tel: (212) 254-5093
-
- *END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.03.08.92*END*
- Notes from Project Gutenberg Executive Director, Michael S. Hart
-
- We have kept this edition the same as the edition prepared at
- Dartmouth except as follows:
-
- paragraphs are separated by a blank line (c/r, c/r)
- pages markers are separated by double blank lines
- missing punctuation replaced
- missing alphabetical character replaced.
- hyphens and dashes made consistent ( -- ) and (-)
- spaces before ! and ? eliminated for consistency
- missing quotation marks replaced
- some paragraphs had indentations, most did not,
- indentations were removed.
- page headers moved to left column when not there
-
- We have left the following as they were:
-
- Since the lines did not end with hard returns (c/r), we could
- not easily place the lines exactly as they appeared in the
- paper edition. Therefore you will see the last lines of pages
- be of varying lengths. Setting our margination at the various
- usual lengths did not solve this, so we stayed with the default
- of 65 characters per line.
-
- ******
-
-
-
- THE SCARLET LETTER
-
- THIS ELECTRONIC EDITION WAS
- PREPARED AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
- FROM THE EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY EDITION, 1906
- PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
- LONDON & TORONTO: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
- NEW YORK, E. P. DUTTON & CO.
-
-
- EDITOR'S NOTE
-
- NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE was already a man of forty-six, and a tale
- writer of some twenty-four years' standing, when "The Scarlet
- Letter" appeared. He was born at Salem, Mass., on July 4th, 1804,
- son of a sea-captain. He led there a shy and rather sombre life;
- of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly uncongenial, his
- moody, intensely meditative temperament being considered. Its
- colours and shadows are marvelously reflected in his "Twice-Told
- Tales" and other short stories, the product of his first literary
- period. Even his college days at Bowdoin did not quite break
- through his acquired and inherited reserve; but beneath it all,
- his faculty of divining men and women was exercised with almost
- uncanny prescience and subtlety. "The Scarlet Letter," which
- explains as much of this unique imaginative art, as is to be
- gathered from reading his highest single achievement, yet needs
- to be ranged with his other writings, early and late, to have its
- last effect. In the year that saw it published, he began "The
- House of the Seven Gables," a later romance or prose-tragedy of
- the Puritan-American community as he had himself known it -
- defrauded of art and the joy of life, "starving for symbols" as
- Emerson has it. Nathaniel Hawthorne died at Plymouth, New
- Hampshire, on May 18th, 1864.
-
- The following is the table of his romances,
- stories, and other works:
-
- Fanshawe, published anonymously, 1826; Twice-Told Tales, 1st
- Series, 1837; 2nd Series, 1842; Grandfather's Chair, a history
- for youth, 1845: Famous Old People (Grandfather's Chair), 1841
- Liberty Tree: with the last words of Grandfather's Chair, 1842;
- Biographical Stories for Children, 1842; Mosses from an Old
- Manse, 1846; The Scarlet Letter, 1850; The House of the Seven
- Gables, 1851: True Stories from History and Biography (the whole
- History of Grandfather's Chair), 1851 A Wonder Book for Girls and
- Boys, 1851; The Snow Image and other Tales, 1851: The Blithedale
- Romance, 1852; Life of Franklin Pierce, 1852; Tanglewood Tales
- (2nd Series of the Wonder Book), 1853; A Rill from the Town-Pump,
- with remarks, by Telba, 1857; The Marble Faun; or, The Romance of
- Monte Beni (4 EDITOR'S NOTE) (published in England under the
- title of "Transformation"), 1860, Our Old Home, 1863; Dolliver
- Romance (1st Part in "Atlantic Monthly"), 1864; in 3 Parts, 1876;
- Pansie, a fragment, Hawthorne' last literary effort, 1864;
- American Note-Books, 1868; English Note Books, edited by Sophia
- Hawthorne, 1870; French and Italian Note Books, 1871; Septimius
- Felton; or, the Elixir of Life (from the "Atlantic Monthly"),
- 1872; Doctor Grimshawe's Secret, with Preface and Notes by
- Julian Hawthorne, 1882.
-
- Tales of the White Hills, Legends of New England, Legends of the
- Province House, 1877, contain tales which had already been
- printed in book form in "Twice-Told Tales" and the "Mosses"
- "Sketched and Studies," 1883.
-
- Hawthorne's contributions to magazines were numerous, and most of
- his tales appeared first in periodicals, chiefly in "The Token,"
- 1831-1838, "New England Magazine," 1834,1835; "Knickerbocker,"
- 1837-1839; "Democratic Review," 1838-1846; "Atlantic Monthly,"
- 1860-1872 (scenes from the Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton,
- and passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books).
-
- Works: in 24 volumes, 1879; in 12 volumes, with introductory
- notes by Lathrop, Riverside Edition, 1883.
-
- Biography, etc. ; A. H. Japp (pseud. H. A. Page), Memoir of N.
- Hawthorne, 1872; J. T. Field's "Yesterdays with Authors," 1873 G.
- P. Lathrop, "A Study of Hawthorne," 1876; Henry James English Men
- of Letters, 1879; Julian Hawthorne, "Nathaniel Hawthorne and his
- wife," 1885; Moncure D. Conway, Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
- 1891; Analytical Index of Hawthorne's Works, by E. M. O'Connor
- 1882.
-
- CONTENTS
-
- INTRODUCTORY page
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE * * * * * 7
-
-
- CHAPTER l.
- THE PRISON-DOOR * * * * * 59
-
-
- CHAPTER II.
- THE MARKET-PLACE * * * * * 62
-
-
- CHAPTER III.
- THE RECOGNITION * * * * * * 75
-
-
- CHAPTER IV.
- THE INTERVIEW * * * * * * 87
-
-
- CHAPTER V.
- HESTER AT HER NEEDLE * * * * * 96
-
-
- CHAPTER VI.
- PEARL * * * * * * * * 109
-
- CHAPTER VII.
- THE GOVERNOR'S HALL * * * * * 122
-
-
- CHAPTER VIII.
- THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER * * 131
-
-
- CHAPTER IX
- THE LEECH * * * * * * * 143
-
-
- CHAPTER X
- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT * * * 156
-
-
- CHAPTER XI.
- THE INTERIOR OF A HEART * * * * 168
-
-
- CHAPTER XII.
- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL * * * * 177
-
-
- CHAPTER XIII.
- ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER * * * * 191
-
-
- CHAPTER XIV.
- HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN * * * 203
-
-
- CHAPTER XV.
- HESTER AND PEARL * * * * * 250
-
-
- CHAPTER XVI.
- A FOREST WALK * * * * * * 219
-
-
- CHAPTER XVII.
- THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER * * 228
-
-
- CHAPTER XVIII.
- A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE * * * * * 240
-
-
- CHAPTER XIX
- THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE * * * 248
-
-
- CHAPTER XX
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE * * * * 258
-
-
- CHAPTER XXI.
- THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY * * * * 273
-
-
- CHAPTER XXII.
- THE PROCESSION * * * * * * 285
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIII.
- THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER * 299
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIV.
- CONCLUSION * * * * * * * 315
-
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM -- HOUSE
-
-
-
- INTRODUCTORY TO "THE SCARLET LETTER"
-
-
-
- It is a little remarkable, that -- though disinclined to talk
- overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my
- personal friends -- an autobiographical impulse should twice in
- my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public.
- The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the
- reader -- inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the
- indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagin -- with a
- description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old
- Manse. And now -- because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough
- to find a listener or two on the former occasion -- I again seize
- the public by the button, and talk of my three years' experience
- in a Custom-House. The example of the famous "P. P. , Clerk of
- this Parish," was never more faithfully followed. The truth
- seems to be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon
- the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside
- his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand
- him better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some
- authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in
- such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be
- addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and
-
-
-
- 8 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large
- on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment
- of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence
- by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous,
- however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as
- thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker
- stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be
- pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive,
- though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and
- then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness,
- we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of
- ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this
- extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be
- autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or
- his own.
-
- It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has a
- certain propriety, of a kind always recognised in literature, as
- explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into
- my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a
- narrative therein contained. This, in fact -- a desire to put
- myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the
- most prolix among the tales that make up my volume -- this, and
- no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with
- the public. In accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared
- allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation
- of a mode of life not heretofore described, together with some of
- the characters that move in it, among whom the author happened to
- make one.
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 9
-
-
-
- In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century
- ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf -- but
- which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and
- exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps,
- a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging
- hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out
- her cargo of firewood -- at the head, I say, of this dilapidated
- wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the
- base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many
- languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass -- here,
- with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening
- prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious
- edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during
- precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or
- droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with
- the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally,
- and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of
- Uncle Sam's goverment is here established. Its front is
- ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars,
- supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite
- steps descends towards the street Over the entrance hovers an
- enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a
- shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of
- intermingled thunder- bolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With
- the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy
- fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the
- general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
- inoffensive com-
-
-
-
- 10 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- munity; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their
- safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows
- with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people
- are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the
- wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom
- has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But
- she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and,
- sooner or later -- oftener soon than late -- is apt to fling off
- her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a
- rankling wound from her barbed arrows.
-
- The pavement round about the above-described edifice -- which we
- may as well name at once as the Custom-House of the port -- has
- grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of
- late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business. In
- some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon
- when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions
- might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before the last
- war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned,
- as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit
- her wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to swell,
- needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New
- York or Boston. On some such morning, when three or four vessels
- happen to have arrived at once usually from Africa or South
- America -- or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward,
- there is a sound of frequent feet passing briskly up and down the
- granite steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted him, you
- may greet the sea-flushed ship-
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 11
-
-
-
- master, just in port, with his vessel's papers under his arm in a
- tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful, sombre,
- gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now
- accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will
- readily be turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of
- incommodities such as nobody will care to rid him of. Here,
- likewise -- the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded,
- careworn merchant -- we have the smart young clerk, who gets the
- taste of traffic as a wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends
- adventures in his master's ships, when he had better be sailing
- mimic boats upon a mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is the
- outward-bound sailor, in quest of a protection; or the recently
- arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital.
- Nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little schooners
- that bring firewood from the British provinces; a rough-looking
- set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of the Yankee aspect,
- but contributing an item of no slight importance to our decaying
- trade.
-
- Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were,
- with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for
- the time being, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More
- frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern --
- in the entry if it were summer time, or in their appropriate
- rooms if wintry or inclement weathers row of venerable figures,
- sitting in old-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind
- legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but
- occasionally might be heard talking together, ill
-
-
-
- 12 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- voices between a speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy
- that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses, and all other
- human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on
- monopolized labour, or anything else but their own independent
- exertions. These old gentlemen -- seated, like Matthew at the
- receipt of custom, but not very liable to be summoned thence,
- like him, for apostolic errands -- were Custom-House officers.
-
- Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a
- certain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty
- height, with two of its arched windows commanding a view of the
- aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a
- narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three give
- glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and
- ship-chandlers, around the doors of which are generally to be
- seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such
- other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room
- itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is
- strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen
- into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general
- slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which
- womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very
- infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove
- with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged
- stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly
- decrepit and infirm; and -- not to forget the library -- on some
- shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a
- bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 13
-
-
-
- tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal
- communication with other parts of be edifice. And here, some six
- months ago -- pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the
- long-legged tool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes
- wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper -- you
- might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who
- welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine
- glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the
- western side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to
- seek him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor.
- The besom of reform hath swept him out of office, and a worthier
- successor wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments.
-
- This old town of Salem -- my native place, though I have dwelt
- much away from it both in boyhood and maturer years -- possesses,
- or did possess, a hold on my affection, the force of which I have
- never realized during my seasons of actual residence here.
- Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its
- flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few
- or none of which pretend to architectural beauty -- its
- irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only
- tame -- its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through
- the whole extent of be peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New
- Guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the other --
- such being the features of my native town, it would be quite as
- reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged
- checker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere,
- there is within me a feeling for Old Salem, which, in lack of a
- better
-
-
-
- 14 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is
- probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family
- has stuck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a
- quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my
- name, made his appearance in the wild and forest -- bordered
- settlement which has since become a city. And here his
- descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their
- earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it
- must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a
- little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the
- attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust
- for dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as
- frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need
- they consider it desirable to know.
-
- But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of
- that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and
- dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back
- as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of
- home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference
- to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a stronger
- claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded,
- sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor-who came so early,
- with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with
- such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war
- and peace -- a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is
- seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a soldier,
- legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the
- Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 15
-
-
-
- likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have
- remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his
- hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last
- longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds,
- although these were many. His son, too, inherited the
- persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the
- martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to
- have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his
- dry old bones, in the Charter-street burial-ground, must still
- retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust I know not
- whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent,
- and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are
- now groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another
- state of being. At all events, I, the present writer, as their
- representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes,
- and pray that any curse incurred by them -- as I have heard, and
- as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a
- long year back, would argue to exist -- may be now and henceforth
- removed.
-
- Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed
- Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for
- his sins that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of
- the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have
- borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim that I
- have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success
- of mine -- if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been
- brightened by success -- would they deem otherwise
-
-
-
- 16 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?"
- murmurs one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A
- writer of story books What kind of business in life -- what mode
- of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and
- generation -- may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as
- well have been a fiddler" Such are the compliments bandied
- between my great grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time
- And yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their
- nature have intertwined themselves with mine
-
- Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by
- these two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since
- subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as
- I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom
- or never, on the other hand, after the first two generations,
- performing any memorable deed, or so much as putting forward a
- claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of
- sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get
- covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil.
- From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the
- sea; a grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from
- the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took
- the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray
- and the gale which had blustered against his sire and grandsire.
- The boy, also in due time, passed from the forecastle to the
- cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his
- world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with
- the natal earth. This long connexion of a
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 17
-
-
-
- family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a
- kindred between the human being and the locality, quite
- independent of any charm in the scenery or moral circumstances
- that surround him. It is not love but instinct. The new
- inhabitant -- who came himself from a foreign land, or whose
- father or grandfather came -- has little claim to be called a
- Salemite; he has no conception of the oyster -- like tenacity
- with which an old settler, over whom his third century is
- creeping, clings to the spot where his successive generations
- have been embedded. It is no matter that the place is joyless
- for him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and
- dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind,
- and the chillest of social atmospheres; -- all these, and
- whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the
- purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the
- natal spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case.
- I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the
- mould of features and cast of character which had all along been
- familiar here -- ever, as one representative of the race lay down
- in the grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march
- along the main street -- might still in my little day be seen and
- recognised in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is
- an evidence that the connexion, which has become an unhealthy
- one, should at least be severed. Human nature will not flourish,
- any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted, for too
- long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My
- children have had other birth-places, and, so far as their
- fortunes may be
-
-
-
- 18 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- within my control, shall strike their roots into accustomed
- earth.
-
- On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange,
- indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me
- to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when I might as
- well, or better, have gone somewhere else. My doom was on me, It
- was not the first time, nor the second, that I had gone away --
- as it seemed, permanently -- but yet returned, like the bad
- halfpenny, or as if Salem were for me the inevitable centre of
- the universe. So, one fine morning I ascended the flight of
- granite steps, with the President's commission in my pocket, and
- was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my
- weighty responsibility as chief executive officer of the
- Custom-House.
-
- I doubt greatly -- or, rather, I do not doubt at all -- whether
- any public functionary of the United States, either in the civil
- or military line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of
- veterans under his orders as myself. The whereabouts of the
- Oldest Inhabitant was at once settled when I looked at them. For
- upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent
- position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House out of
- the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of
- office generally so fragile. A soldier -- New England's most
- distinguished soldier -- he stood firmly on the pedestal of his
- gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of
- the successive administrations through which he had held office,
- he had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of
- danger and heart-quake General Miller was radically con-
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 19
-
-
-
- servative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight
- influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, and with
- difficulty moved to change, even when change might have brought
- unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking charge off my
- department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient sea --
- captains, for the most part, who, after being tossed on every
- sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blast,
- had finally drifted into this quiet nook, where, with little to
- disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential
- election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence.
- Though by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and
- infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that kept
- death at bay. Two or three of their number, as I was assured,
- being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bed-ridden, never dreamed
- of making their appearance at the Custom-House during a large
- part of the year; but, after a torpid winter, would creep out
- into the warm sunshine of May or June, go lazily about what they
- termed duty, and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake
- themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty to the charge of
- abbreviating the official breath of more than one of these
- venerable servants of the republic. They were allowed, on my
- representation, to rest from their arduous labours, and soon
- afterwards -- as if their sole principle of life had been zeal
- for their country's service -- as I verily believe it was --
- withdrew to a better world. It is a pious consolation to me
- that, through my interference, a sufficient space was allowed
- them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices into
-
-
-
- 20 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- which, as a matter of course, every Custom-House officer must be
- supposed to fall. Neither the front nor the back entrance of the
- Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.
-
- The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for
- their venerable brotherhood that the new Surveyor was not a
- politician, and though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither
- received nor held his office with any reference to political
- services. Had it been otherwise -- had an active politician been
- put into this influential post, to assume the easy task of making
- head against a Whig Collector, whose infirmities withheld him
- from the personal administration of his office -- hardly a man of
- the old corps would have drawn the breath of official life within
- a month after the exterminating angel had come up the
- Custom-House steps. According to the received code in such
- matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a
- politician, to bring every one of those white heads under the axe
- of the guillotine. It was plain enough to discern that the old
- fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. It pained,
- and at the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that
- attended my advent, to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by
- half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so
- harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or another
- addressed me, the tremor of a voice which, in long-past days, had
- been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough
- to frighten Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these
- excellent old persons, that, by all established rule -- and, as
- regarded some of them, weighed by their own lack of
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 11
-
-
-
- efficiency for business -- they ought to have given place to
- younger men, more orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter
- than themselves to serve our common Uncle. I knew it, too, but
- could never quite find in my heart to act upon the knowledge.
- Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and
- considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they
- continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and
- loiter up and down the Custom-House steps. They spent a good
- deal of time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with
- their chairs tilted back against the walls; awaking, however,
- once or twice in the forenoon, to bore one another with the
- several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories and mouldy
- jokes, that had grown to be passwords and countersigns among
- them.
-
- The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had
- no great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts and the happy
- consciousness of being usefully employed -- in their own behalf
- at least, if not for our beloved country -- these good old
- gentlemen went through the various formalities of office.
- Sagaciously under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds
- of vessels Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and
- marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones
- to slip between their fingers Whenever such a mischance occurred
- -- when a waggon-load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled
- ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their
- unsuspicious noses -- nothing could exceed the vigilance and
- alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and
- secure with tape and sealing -- wax, all the avenues of
-
-
-
- 22 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- the delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous
- negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on
- their praiseworthy caution after the mischief had happened; a
- grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal the moment
- that there was no longer any remedy.
-
- Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my
- foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part
- of my companion's character, if it have a better part, is that
- which usually comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type
- whereby I recognise the man. As most of these old Custom-House
- officers had good traits, and as my position in reference to
- them, being paternal and protective, was favourable to the growth
- of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like them all. It was
- pleasant in the summer forenoons -- when the fervent heat, that
- almost liquefied the rest of the human family, merely
- communicated a genial warmth to their half torpid systems -- it
- was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of
- them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen
- witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling
- with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged
- men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect,
- any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the
- matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface,
- and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch
- and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real
- sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent glow
- of decaying wood.
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 23
-
-
-
- It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to
- represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In
- the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there
- were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked
- ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and
- dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them.
- Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be
- the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as
- respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no
- wrong done if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome
- old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their
- varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all
- the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so
- many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have
- stored their memory with the husks. They spoke with far more
- interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or
- yesterday's, to-day's, or tomorrow's dinner, than of the
- shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's
- wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.
-
- The father of the Custom-House -- the patriarch, not only of this
- little squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the
- respectable body of tide-waiters all over the United States --
- was a certain permanent Inspector. He might truly be termed a
- legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or rather
- born in the purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and
- formerly collector of the port, had created an office for him,
- and appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages which
- few living men
-
-
-
- 24 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- can now remember. This Inspector, when I first knew him, was a
- man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the
- most wonderful specimens of winter-green that you would be likely
- to discover in a lifetime's search. With his florid cheek, his
- compact figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat,
- his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect,
- altogether he seemed -- not young, indeed -- but a kind of new
- contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and
- infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which
- perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of
- the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they
- came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the
- blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal -- and
- there was very little else to look at -- he was a most
- satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and
- wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme
- age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which he had ever
- aimed at or conceived of. The careless security of his life in
- the Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but slight and
- infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to
- make time pass lightly over him. The original and more potent
- causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature,
- the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling
- admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter
- qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old
- gentleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed no power of
- thought no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensi-
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 25
-
-
-
- bilities: nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts,
- which, aided by the cheerful temper which grew inevitably out of
- his physical well-being, did duty very respectably, and to
- general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband
- of three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty
- children, most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity,
- had likewise returned to dust. Here, one would suppose, might
- have been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest disposition through
- and through with a sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector
- One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these
- dismal reminiscences. The next moment he was as ready for sport
- as any unbreeched infant: far readier than the Collector's junior
- clerk, who at nineteen years was much the elder and graver man of
- the two.
-
- I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I
- think, livelier curiosity than any other form of humanity there
- presented to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so
- perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so
- impalpable such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My
- conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing,
- as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so
- cunningly had the few materials of his character been put
- together that there was no painful perception of deficiency, but,
- on my part, an entire contentment with what I found in him. It
- might be difficult -- and it was so -- to conceive how he should
- exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely
- his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his
- last breath, had been not unkindly
-
-
-
- 26 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- given; with no higher moral responsibilities than the beasts of
- the field, but with a larger scope of enjoyment than theirs, and
- with all their blessed immunity from the dreariness and duskiness
- of age.
-
- One point in which he had vastly the advantage over his
- four-footed brethren was his ability to recollect the good
- dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of
- his life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait;
- and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle
- or an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither
- sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all
- his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit
- of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him
- expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's meat, and the most
- eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His
- reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the
- actual banquet, seemed to bring the savour of pig or turkey under
- one's very nostrils. There were flavours on his palate that had
- lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were
- still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had
- just devoured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips
- over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been
- food for worms. It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of
- bygone meals were continually rising up before him -- not in
- anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former
- appreciation, and seeking to repudiate an endless series of
- enjoyment. at once shadowy and sensual, A tender loin of beef, a
- hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken,
- or a remarkably
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 27
-
-
-
- praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his board in the
- days of the elder Adams, would be remembered; while all the
- subsequent experience of our race, and all the events that
- brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over him
- with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chief
- tragic event of the old man's life, so far as I could judge, was
- his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty
- or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which,
- at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife
- would make no impression on its carcase, and it could only be
- divided with an axe and handsaw.
-
- But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I should
- be glad to dwell at considerably more length, because of all men
- whom I have ever known, this individual was fittest to be a
- Custom-House officer. Most persons, owing to causes which I may
- not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this
- peculiar mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable of it;
- and, were he to continue in office to tile end of time, would be
- just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just as
- good an appetite.
-
- There is one likeness, without which my gallery of Custom-House
- portraits would be strangely incomplete, but which my
- comparatively few opportunities for observation enable me to
- sketch only in the merest outline. It is that of the Collector,
- our gallant old General, who, after his brilliant military
- service, subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild Western
- territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the
- decline of his varied and honourable life.
-
-
-
- 28 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his
- three-score years and ten, and was pursuing the remainder of his
- earthly march, burdened with infirmities which even the martial
- music of his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little
- towards lightening. The step was palsied now, that had been
- foremost in the charge. It was only with the assistance of a
- servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron balustrade,
- that he could slowly and painfully ascend the Custom-House steps,
- and, with a toilsome progress across the floor, attain his
- customary chair beside the fireplace. There he used to sit,
- gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that
- came and went, amid the rustle of papers, the administering of
- oaths, the discussion of business, and the casual talk of the
- office; all which sounds and circumstances seemed but
- indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make their way
- into his inner sphere of contemplation. His countenance, in this
- repose, was mild and kindly. If his notice was sought, an
- expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon his
- features, proving that there was light within him, and that it
- was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that
- obstructed the rays in their passage. The closer you penetrated
- to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. When no
- longer called upon to speak or listen -- either of which
- operations cost him an evident effort -- his face would briefly
- subside into its former not uncheerful quietude. It was not
- painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the
- imbecility of decaying age. The framework of his nature,
- originally strong and massive, was not yet crumpled into ruin.
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 29
-
-
-
- To observe and define his character, however, under such
- disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out and build
- up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from
- a view of its grey and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance,
- the walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a
- shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown,
- through long years of peace and neglect, with grass and alien
- weeds.
-
- Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection -- for,
- slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards
- him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might
- not improperly be termed so, -- I could discern the main points
- of his portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic
- qualities which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good
- right, that he had won a distinguished name. His spirit could
- never, I conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity;
- it must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse to
- set him in motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to
- overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in
- the man to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded
- his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind
- that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow,
- as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness -- this was
- the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept
- untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I could
- imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go
- deeply into his consciousness -- roused by a trumpets real, loud
- enough to awaken all of his energies that
-
-
-
- 30 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- were not dead, but only slumbering -- he was yet capable of
- flinging off his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the
- staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a
- warrior. And, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have
- still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be
- pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I
- saw in him -- as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old
- Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile -- was
- the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might
- well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of
- integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a
- somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable
- as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he
- led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of
- quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the
- polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his
- own hand, for aught I know -- certainly, they had fallen like
- blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to
- which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy -- but, be that
- as it might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as
- would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not
- known the man to whose innate kindliness I would more confidently
- make an appeal.
-
- Many characteristics -- and those, too, which contribute not the
- least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch -- must have
- vanished, or been obscured, before I met the General. All merely
- graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 31
-
-
-
- nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that
- have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and
- crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined
- fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and
- beauty, there were points well worth noting. A ray of humour,
- now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim
- obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of
- native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after
- childhood or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness for
- the sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier might be
- supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here
- was one who seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the
- floral tribe.
-
- There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit;
- while the Surveyor -- though seldom, when it could be avoided,
- taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in
- conversation -- was fond of standing at a distance, and watching
- his quiet and almost slumberous countenance. He seemed away from
- us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though we
- passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though we might have
- stretched forth our hands and touched his own. It might be that
- he lived a more real life within his thoughts than amid the
- unappropriate environment of the Collector's office. The
- evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the battle; the flourish
- of old heroic music, heard thirty years before -- such scenes and
- sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense.
- Meanwhile, the merchants and ship-masters, the spruce clerks and
- uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of
-
-
-
- 32 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- his commercial and Custom-House life kept up its little murmur
- round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did
- the General appear to sustain the most distant relation. He was
- as much out of place as an old sword -- now rusty, but which had
- flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still a bright
- gleam along its blade -- would have been among the inkstands,
- paper-folders, and mahogany rulers on the Deputy Collector's
- desk.
-
- There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and
- re-creating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier -- the
- man of true and simple energy. It was the recollection of those
- memorable words of his -- "I'll try, Sir" -- spoken on the very
- verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the
- soul and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending all
- perils, and encountering all. If, in our country, valour were
- rewarded by heraldic honour, this phrase -- which it seems so
- easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger and
- glory before him, has ever spoken -- would be the best and
- fittest of all mottoes for the General's shield of arms.
-
- It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual
- health to be brought into habits of companionship with
- individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and
- whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to
- appreciate. The accidents of my life have often afforded me this
- advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my
- continuance in office. There was one man, especially, the
- observation of whose character gave me a new idea of talent. His
- gifts were emphatically those of a man of business;
-
-
-
- 33 THE CUSTOM-HOUSE
-
-
-
- prompt, acute, clear-minded; with an eye that saw through all
- perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish
- as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood in
- the Custom-House, it was his proper field of activity; and the
- many intricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper,
- presented themselves before him with the regularity of a
- perfectly comprehended system. In my contemplation, he stood as
- the ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House in
- himself; or, at all events, the mainspring that kept its
- variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution
- like this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own
- profit and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to
- their fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce
- seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus, by an
- inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did
- our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which
- everybody met with. With an easy condescension, and kind
- forbearance towards our stupidity -- which, to his order of mind,
- must have seemed little short of crime -- would he forth-with, by
- the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as
- clear as daylight. The merchants valued him not less than we,
- his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect; it was a law of
- nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it
- be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect so
- remarkably clear and accurate as his to be honest and regular in
- the administration of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to
- anything that came within the range of his vocation, would
- trouble such
-
-
-
- 34 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- a man very much in the same way, though to a far greater degree,
- than an error in the balance of an account, or an ink-blot on the
- fair page of a book of record. Here, in a word -- and it is a
- rare instance in my life -- I had met with a person thoroughly
- adapted to the situation which he held.
-
- Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself
- connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence,
- that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past
- habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever
- profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and
- impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm;
- after living for three years within the subtle influence of an
- intellect like Emerson's; after those wild, free days on the
- Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of
- fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau
- about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden;
- after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement
- of Hillard's culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment
- at Longfellow's hearthstone -- it was time, at length, that I
- should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself
- with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. Even the
- old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who
- had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some
- measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no
- essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such
- associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of
- altogether different qualities, and lever murmur at the change.
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 35
-
-
-
- Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment
- in my regard. I cared not at this period for books; they were
- apart from me. Nature -- except it were human nature -- the
- nature that is developed in earth and sky, was, in one sense,
- hidden from me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had
- been spiritualized passed away out of my mind. A gift, a
- faculty, if it had not been departed, was suspended and inanimate
- within me. There would have been something sad, unutterably
- dreary, in all this, had I not been conscious that it lay at my
- own option to recall whatever was valuable in the past. It might
- be true, indeed, that this was a life which could not, with
- impunity, be lived too long; else, it might make me permanently
- other than I had been, without transforming me into any shape
- which it would be worth my while to take. But I never considered
- it as other than a transitory life. There was always a prophetic
- instinct, a low whisper in my ear, that within no long period,
- and whenever a new change of custom should be essential to my
- good, change would come.
-
- Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue and, so far as
- I have been able to understand, as good a Surveyor as need be. A
- man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten times the
- Surveyor's proportion of those qualities), may, at any time, be a
- man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the
- trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains
- with whom my official duties brought me into any manner of
- connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in
- no other character. None of them, I presume, had
-
-
-
- 36 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- ever read a page of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the
- more for me if they had read them all; nor would it have mended
- the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been
- written with a pen like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom
- was a Custom-House officer in his day, as well as I. It is a
- good lesson -- though it may often be a hard one -- for a man who
- has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank
- among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of
- the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find
- how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all
- that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that l
- especially needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or
- rebuke; but at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives
- me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my
- perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a
- sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer
- -- an excellent fellow, who came into the office with me, and
- went out only a little later -- would often engage me in a
- discussion about one or the other of his favourite topics,
- Napoleon or Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too a
- young gentleman who, it was whispered occasionally covered a
- sheet of Uncle Sam's letter paper with what (at the distance of a
- few yards) looked very much like poetry -- used now and then to
- speak to me of books, as matters with which I might possibly be
- conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was
- quite sufficient for my necessities.
-
- No longer seeking or caring that my name should
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 37
-
-
-
- be blasoned abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it had
- now another kind of vogue. The Custom-House marker imprinted it,
- with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of
- anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable
- merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the
- impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such
- queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a
- name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and,
- I hope, will never go again.
-
- But the past was not dead. Once in a great while, the thoughts
- that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had been put to rest
- so quietly, revived again. One of the most remarkable occasions,
- when the habit of bygone days awoke in me, was that which brings
- it within the law of literary propriety to offer the public the
- sketch which I am now writing.
-
- In the second storey of the Custom-House there is a large room,
- in which the brick-work and naked rafters have never been covered
- with panelling and plaster. The edifice -- originally projected
- on a scale adapted to the old commercial enterprise of the port,
- and with an idea of subsequent prosperity destined never to be
- realized -- contains far more space than its occupants know what
- to do with. This airy hall, therefore, over the Collector's
- apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite of the
- aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await
- the labour of the carpenter and mason. At one end of the room,
- in a recess, were a number of barrels piled one upon another,
- containing bundles of official documents. Large quantities of
- similar
-
-
-
- 38 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think how
- many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil had been
- wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance
- on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never
- more to be glanced at by human eyes. But then, what reams of
- other manuscripts -- filled, not with the dulness of official
- formalities, but with the thought of inventive brains and the
- rich effusion of deep hearts -- had gone equally to oblivion; and
- that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their day, as these
- heaped-up papers had, and -- saddest of all -- without
- purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which the
- clerks of the Custom-House had gained by these worthless
- scratchings of the pen. Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps,
- as materials of local history. Here, no doubt, statistics of the
- former commerce of Salem might be discovered, and memorials of
- her princely merchants -- old King Derby -- old Billy Gray -- old
- Simon Forrester -- and many another magnate in his day, whose
- powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb before his
- mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of the
- greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy of
- Salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings
- of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to the
- Revolution, upward to what their children look upon as
- long-established rank,
-
- Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier
- documents and archives of the Custom-House having, probably, been
- carried off to Halifax, when all the king's officials accompanied
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 39
-
-
-
- the British army in its flight from Boston. It has often been a
- matter of regret with me; for, going back, perhaps, to the days
- of the Protectorate, those papers must have contained many
- references to forgotten or remembered men, and to antique
- customs, which would have affected me with the same pleasure as
- when I used to pick up Indian arrow-heads in the field near the
- Old Manse.
-
- But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a
- discovery of some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the
- heaped-up rubbish in the corner, unfolding one and another
- document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago
- foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants
- never heard of now on 'Change, nor very readily decipherable on
- their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters with the
- saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow on the
- corpse of dead activity -- and exerting my fancy, sluggish with
- little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of the old
- towns brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and only
- Salem knew the way thither -- I chanced to lay my hand on a
- small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow
- parchment. This envelope had the air of an official record of
- some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and
- formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present.
- There was something about it that quickened an instinctive
- curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the
- package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to
- light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found
-
-
-
- 40 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor
- Shirley, in favour of one Jonathan Pine, as Surveyor of His
- Majesty's Customs for the Port of Salem, in the Province of
- Massachusetts Bay. I remembered to have read (probably in Felt's
- "Annals") a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about
- fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent
- times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little
- graveyard of St. Peter's Church, during the renewal of that
- edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my
- respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some
- fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle, which,
- unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory
- preservation. But, on examining the papers which the parchment
- commission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue's
- mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the
- frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.
-
- They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private
- nature, or, at least, written in his private capacity, and
- apparently with his own hand. I could account for their being
- included in the heap of Custom-House lumber only by the fact that
- Mr. Pine's death had happened suddenly, and that these papers,
- which he probably kept in his official desk, had never come to
- the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate to the
- business of the revenue. On the transfer of the archives to
- Halifax, this package, proving to be of no public concern, was
- left behind, and had remained ever since unopened.
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 41
-
-
-
- The ancient Surveyor -- being little molested, suppose, at that
- early day with business pertaining to his office -- seems to have
- devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local
- antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature. These
- supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would
- otherwise have been eaten up with rust.
-
- A portion of his facts, by-the-by, did me good service in the
- preparation of the article entitled "MAIN STREET," included in
- the present volume. The remainder may perhaps be applied to
- purposes equally valuable hereafter, or not impossibly may be
- worked up, so far as they go, into a regular history of Salem,
- should my veneration for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious
- a task. Meanwhile, they shall be at the command of any
- gentleman, inclined and competent, to take the unprofitable
- labour off my hands. As a final disposition I contemplate
- depositing them with the Essex Historical Society. But the
- object that most drew my attention to the mysterious package was
- a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded, There
- were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was
- greatly frayed and defaced, so that none, or very little, of the
- glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy to perceive,
- with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch (as I am
- assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence
- of a now forgotten art, not to be discovered even by the process
- of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth -- for
- time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little
- other than a rag -- on careful examination, assumed the shape of
- a letter.
-
-
-
- 42 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each
- limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length.
- It had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental
- article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or what rank,
- honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was
- a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world in
- these particulars) I saw little hope of solving. And yet it
- strangely interested me. My eyes fastened themselves upon the
- old scarlet letter, and would not be turned aside. Certainly
- there was some deep meaning in it most worthy of interpretation,
- and which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol,
- subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the
- analysis of my mind.
-
- When thus perplexed -- and cogitating, among other hypotheses,
- whether the letter might not have been one of those decorations
- which the white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes of
- Indians -- I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me
- -- the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word -- it seemed
- to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether
- physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the letter
- were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered, and
- involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.
-
- In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had
- hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around
- which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the
- satisfaction to find recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a
- reasonably complete explanation of the whole
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 43
-
-
-
- affair. There were several foolscap sheets, containing many
- particulars respecting the life and conversation of one Hester
- Prynne, who appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage
- in the view of our ancestors. She had flourished during the
- period between the early days of Massachusetts and the close of
- the seventeenth century. Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr.
- Surveyor Pine, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his
- narrative, remembered her, in their youth, as a very old, but not
- decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. It had been her
- habit, from an almost immemorial date, to go about the country as
- a kind of voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good
- she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all
- matters, especially those of the heart, by which means -- as a
- person of such propensities inevitably must -- she gained from
- many people the reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine,
- was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying
- further into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings
- and sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the
- reader is referred to the story entitled "THE SCARLET LETTER";
- and it should be borne carefully in mind that the main facts of
- that story are authorized and authenticated by the document of
- Mr. Surveyor Pine. The original papers, together with the
- scarlet letter itself -- a most curious relic -- are still in my
- possession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced
- by the great interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of
- them I must not be understood affirming that, in the dressing up
- of the tale, and imagining the motives
-
-
-
- 44 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- and modes of passion that influenced the characters who figure in
- it, I have invariably confined myself within the limits of the
- old Surveyor's half-a-dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary,
- I have allowed myself, as to such points, nearly, or altogether,
- as much license as if the facts had been entirely of my own
- invention. What I contend for is the authenticity of the
- outline.
-
- This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track.
- There seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale. It impressed
- me as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years
- gone by, and wearing his immortal wig -- which was buried with
- him, but did not perish in the grave -- had bet me in the
- deserted chamber of the Custom-House. In his port was the
- dignity of one who had borne His Majesty's commission, and who
- was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendour that shone so
- dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike alas the hangdog look
- of a republican official, who, as the servant of the people,
- feels himself less than the least, and below the lowest of his
- masters. With his own ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but
- majestic, figure had imparted to me the scarlet symbol and the
- little roll of explanatory manuscript. With his own ghostly
- voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my
- filial duty and reverence towards him -- who might reasonably
- regard himself as my official ancestor -- to bring his mouldy and
- moth-eaten lucubrations before the public. "Do this," said the
- ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head that
- looked so imposing within its memorable wig; "do this, and the
- profit shall be all
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 45
-
-
-
- your own You will shortly need it; for it is not in your days as
- it was in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease, and
- oftentimes an heirloom. But I charge you, in this matter of old
- Mistress Prynne, give to your predecessor's memory the credit
- which will be rightfully due" And I said to the ghost of Mr.
- Surveyor Pue -- "I will"
-
- On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much thought. It
- was the subject of my meditations for many an hour, while pacing
- to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a hundredfold
- repetition, the long extent from the front door of the
- Custom-House to the side entrance, and back again. Great were
- the weariness and annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers
- and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmercifully
- lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps.
- Remembering their own former habits, they used to say that the
- Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck. They probably fancied
- that my sole object -- and, indeed, the sole object for which a
- sane man could ever put himself into voluntary motion -- was to
- get an appetite for dinner. And, to say the truth, an appetite,
- sharpened by the east wind that generally blew along the passage,
- was the only valuable result of so much indefatigable exercise.
- So little adapted is the atmosphere of a Custom-house to the
- delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility, that, had I remained
- there through ten Presidencies yet to come, I doubt whether the
- tale of "The Scarlet Letter" would ever have been brought before
- the public eye. My imagination was a tarnished mirror. It would
- not reflect, or only with miserable
-
-
-
- 46 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- dimness, the figures with which I did my best to people it. The
- characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered
- malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual
- forge. They would take neither the glow of passion nor the
- tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead
- corpses, and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin
- of contemptuous defiance. "What have you to do with us?" that
- expression seemed to say. "The little power you might have once
- possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone You have
- bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go then, and earn
- your wages" In short, the almost torpid creatures of my own
- fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion.
-
- It was not merely during the three hours and a half which Uncle
- Sam claimed as his share of my daily life that this wretched
- numbness held possession of me. It went with me on my sea-shore
- walks and rambles into the country, whenever -- which was seldom
- and reluctantly -- I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating
- charm of Nature which used to give me such freshness and activity
- of thought, the moment that I stepped across the threshold of the
- Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for
- intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in
- the chamber which I most absurdly termed my study. Nor did it
- quit me when, late at night, I sat in the deserted parlour,
- lighted only by the glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving
- to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might
- flow out on the brightening page in many-hued description.
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 47
-
-
-
- If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it
- might well be deemed a hopeless case. Moonlight, in a familiar
- room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its
- figures so distinctly -- making every object so minutely visible,
- yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility -- is a medium the
- most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his
- illusive guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the
- well-known apartment; the chairs, with each its separate
- individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a
- volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the book-case;
- the picture on the wall -- all these details, so completely seen,
- are so spiritualised by the unusual light, that they seem to lose
- their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing
- is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire
- dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little
- wicker carriage; the hobby-horse -- whatever, in a word, has been
- used or played with during the day is now invested with a quality
- of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly
- present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our
- familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between
- the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary
- may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.
- Ghosts might enter here without affrighting us. It would be too
- much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to
- look about us and discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now
- sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an
- aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned
-
-
-
- 48 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- from afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside.
-
- The somewhat dim coal fire has an essential Influence in
- producing the effect which I would describe. It throws its
- unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness
- upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam upon the polish
- of the furniture. This warmer light mingles itself with the cold
- spirituality of the moon-beams, and communicates, as it were, a
- heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which
- fancy summons tip. It converts them from snow-images into men
- and women. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold -- deep
- within its haunted verge -- the smouldering glow of the
- half-extinguished anthracite, the white moon-beams on the floor,
- and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with
- one remove further from the actual, and nearer to the
- imaginative. Then, at such an hour, and with this scene before
- him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things,
- and make them look like truth, he need never try to write
- romances.
-
- But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House experience,
- moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of firelight, were just
- alike in my regard; and neither of them was of one whit more
- avail than the twinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire class of
- susceptibilities, and a gift connected with them -- of no great
- richness or value, but the best I had -- was gone from me.
-
- It is my belief, however, that had I attempted a different order
- of composition, my faculties would not have been found so
- pointless and inefficacious. I
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 49
-
-
-
- might, for instance, have contented myself with writing out the
- narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of the Inspectors, whom I
- should be most ungrateful not to mention, since scarcely a day
- passed that he did not stir me to laughter and admiration by his
- marvel loins gifts as a story-teller. Could I have preserved the
- picturesque force of his style, and the humourous colouring which
- nature taught him how to throw over his descriptions, the result,
- I honestly believe, would have been something new in literature.
- Or I might readily have found a more serious task. It was a
- folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so
- intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another
- age, or to insist on creating the semblance of a world out of
- airy matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty of my
- soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual
- circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to diffuse
- thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day,
- and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise the
- burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the
- true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and
- wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters with which I was now
- conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was
- spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace only because I
- had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall
- ever write was there; leaf after leaf presenting itself to me,
- just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour,
- and vanishing as fast as written, only because my brain wanted
- the insight, and my
-
-
-
- 50 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- hand the cunning, to transcribe it. At some future day, it may
- be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken
- paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to
- gold upon the page.
-
- These perceptions had come too late. At the Instant, I was only
- conscious that what would have been a pleasure once was now a
- hopeless toil. There was no occasion to make much moan about
- this state of affairs. I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably
- poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor
- of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is anything
- but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect
- is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like
- ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a
- smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact there could be
- no doubt and, examining myself and others, I was led to
- conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on the
- character, not very favourable to the mode of life in question.
- In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these
- effects. Suffice it here to say that a Custom-House officer of
- long continuance can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable
- personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he
- holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his
- business, which -- though, I trust, an honest one -- is of such a
- sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind.
-
- An effect -- which I believe to be observable, more or less, in
- every individual who has occupied the position -- is, that while
- he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper
- strength, departs from
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 51
-
-
-
- him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or
- force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If
- he possesses an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating
- magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited
- powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer -- fortunate in
- the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid
- a struggling world -- may return to himself, and become all that
- he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his
- ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out,
- with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath
- of life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity -- that
- his tempered steel and elasticity are lost -- he for ever
- afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external
- to himself. His pervading and continual hope -- a hallucination,
- which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of
- impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like
- the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief
- space after death -- is, that finally, and in no long time, by
- some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to
- office. This faith, more than anything else, steals the pith and
- availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of
- undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much
- trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little
- while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support
- him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold
- in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly
- intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his
- Uncle's pocket? It is sadly
-
-
-
- 52 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to
- infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam's
- gold -- meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman -- has,
- in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the
- devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself,
- or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if
- not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy
- force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance,
- and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.
-
- Here was a fine prospect in the distance Not that the Surveyor
- brought the lesson home to himself, or admitted that he could be
- so utterly undone, either by continuance in office or ejectment.
- Yet my reflections were not the most comfortable. I began to
- grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, to
- discover which of its poor properties were gone, and what degree
- of detriment had already accrued to the remainder. I endeavoured
- to calculate how much longer I could stay in the Custom-House,
- and yet go forth a man. To confess the truth, it was my greatest
- apprehension -- as it would never be a measure of policy to turn
- out so quiet an individual as myself; and it being hardly in the
- nature of a public officer to resign -- it was my chief trouble,
- therefore, that I was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the
- Surveyorship, and become much such another animal as the old
- Inspector. Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life
- that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with this
- venerable friend -- to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the
- day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep
- in
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 53
-
-
-
- the sunshine or in the shade? A dreary look-forward, this, for a
- man who felt it to be the best definition of happiness to live
- throughout the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities
- But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm.
- Providence had meditated better things for me than I could
- possibly imagine for myself.
-
- A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorship -- to
- adopt the tone of "P. P. " -- was the election of General Taylor
- to the Presidency. It is essential, in order to a complete
- estimate of the advantages of official life, to view the
- incumbent at the in-coming of a hostile administration. His
- position is then one of the most singularly irksome, and, in
- every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can
- possibly occupy; with seldom an alternative of good on either
- hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst event may
- very probably be the best. But it is a strange experience, to a
- man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are
- within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand
- him, and by whom, since one or the other must needs happen, lie
- would rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who
- has kept his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the
- bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to
- be conscious that he is himself among its objects There are few
- uglier traits of human nature than this tendency -- which I now
- witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours -- to grow cruel,
- merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. If
- the guillotine, as applied to office-holders, were a literal
- fact, instead of one of the most apt of
-
-
-
- 54 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the active members of the
- victorious party were sufficiently excited to have chopped off
- all our heads, and have thanked Heaven for the opportunity It
- appears to me -- who have been a calm and curious observer, as
- well in victory as defeat -- that this fierce and bitter spirit
- of malice and revenge has never distinguished the many triumphs
- of my own party as it now did that of the Whigs. The Democrats
- take the offices, as a general rule, because they need them, and
- because the practice of many years has made it the law of
- political warfare, which unless a different system be proclaimed,
- it was weakness and cowardice to murmur at. But the long habit
- of victory has made them generous. They know how to spare when
- they see occasion; and when they strike, the axe may be sharp
- indeed, but its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it
- their custom ignominiously to kick the head which they have just
- struck off.
-
- In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, I saw much
- reason to congratulate myself that I was on the losing side
- rather than the triumphant one. If, heretofore, l had been none
- of the warmest of partisans I began now, at this season of peril
- and adversity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my
- predilections lay; nor was it without something like regret and
- shame that, according to a reasonable calculation of chances, I
- saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better than those
- of my democratic brethren. But who can see an inch into futurity
- beyond his nose? My own head was the first that fell
-
- The moment when a man's head drops off is
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 55
-
-
-
- seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most
- agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of
- our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy
- and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best
- rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.
- In my particular case the consolatory topics were close at hand,
- and, indeed, had suggested themselves to my meditations a
- considerable time before it was requisite to use them. In view
- of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts of
- resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who
- should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and although
- beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. In the
- Custom-House, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent three years
- -- a term long enough to rest a weary brain: long enough to break
- off old intellectual habits, and make room for new ones: long
- enough, and too long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing
- what was really of no advantage nor delight to any human being,
- and withholding myself from toil that would, at least, have
- stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then, moreover, as regarded
- his unceremonious ejectment, the late Surveyor was not altogether
- ill-pleased to be recognised by the Whigs as an enemy; since his
- inactivity in political affairs -- his tendency to roam, at will,
- in that broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather
- than confine himself to those narrow paths where brethren of the
- same household must diverge from one another -- had sometimes
- made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he was a
- friend. Now, after he had won the
-
-
-
- 56 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- crown of martyrdom (though with no longer a head to wear it on),
- the point might be looked upon as settled. Finally, little
- heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous to be overthrown in the
- downfall of the party with which he had been content to stand
- than to remain a forlorn survivor, when so many worthier men were
- falling: and at last, after subsisting for four years on the
- mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled then to define
- his position anew, and claim the yet more humiliating mercy of a
- friendly one.
-
- Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept me for a
- week or two careering through the public prints, in my
- decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman, ghastly and
- grim, and longing to be buried, as a political dead man ought.
- So much for my figurative self. The real human being all this
- time, with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself
- to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best;
- and making an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens, had
- opened his long-disused writing desk, and was again a literary
- man.
-
- Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor, Mr.
- Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty through long idleness, some
- little space was requisite before my intellectual machinery could
- be brought to work upon the tale with an effect in any degree
- satisfactory. Even yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much
- absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a stern and sombre
- aspect: too much ungladdened by genial sunshine; too little
- relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften
- almost every scene of nature and real life, and
-
-
-
- THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 57
-
-
-
- undoubtedly should soften every picture of them. This
- uncaptivating effect is perhaps due to the period of hardly
- accomplished revolution, and still seething turmoil, in which the
- story shaped itself. It is no indication, however, of a lack of
- cheerfulness in the writer's mind: for he was happier while
- straying through the gloom of these sunless fantasies than at any
- time since he had quitted the Old Manse. Some of the briefer
- articles, which contribute to make up the volume, have likewise
- been written since my involuntary withdrawal from the toils and
- honours of public life, and the remainder are gleaned from
- annuals and magazines, of such antique date, that they have gone
- round the circle, and come back to novelty again. Keeping up the
- metaphor of the political guillotine, the whole may be considered
- as the POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR: and the
- sketch which I am now bringing to a close, if too
- autobiographical for a modest person to publish in his lifetime,
- will readily be excused in a gentleman who writes from beyond the
- grave. Peace be with all the world My blessing on my friends My
- forgiveness to my enemies For I am in the realm of quiet
-
- The life of the Custom -- House lies like a dream behind me. The
- old Inspector -- who, by-the-bye, l regret to say, was overthrown
- and killed by a horse some time ago, else he would certainly have
- lived for ever -- he, and all those other venerable personages
- who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my
- view: white-headed and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to
- sport with, and has now flung aside for ever. The merchants --
- Pingree,
-
-
-
- 58 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt -- these and
- many other names, which had such classic familiarity for my ear
- six months ago, -- these men of traffic, who seemed to occupy so
- important a position in the world -- how little time has it
- required to disconnect me from them all, not merely in act, but
- recollection It is with an effort that
-
- I recall the figures and appellations of these few. Soon,
- likewise, my old native town will loom upon me through the haze
- of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no
- portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in
- cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden
- houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity
- of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my
- life; I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good townspeople will
- not much regret me, for -- though it has been as dear an object
- as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their
- eyes, and to win myself a pleasant memory in this abode and
- burial-place of so many of my forefathers -- there has never
- been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man requires
- in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. I shall do
- better amongst other faces; and these familiar ones, it need
- hardly be said, will do just as well without me.
-
- It may be, however -- oh, transporting and triumphant thought I
- -- that the great-grandchildren of the present race may
- sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days, when the
- antiquary of days to come, among the sites memorable in the
- town's history, shall point out the locality of THE TOWN PUMP.
-
-
-
-
-
- THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
-
-
- I
-
-
-
- THE PRISON DOOR
-
-
-
- A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey
- steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods,
- and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden
- edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and
- studded with iron spikes.
-
- The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue
- and happiness they might originally project, have invariably
- recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot
- a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion
- as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule it may
- safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the
- first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost
- as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on
- Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which
- subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres
- in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is that, some
- fifteen or twenty
-
-
-
- 60 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was
- already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age,
- which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy
- front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door
- looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like
- all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a
- youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the
- wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with
- burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation,
- which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so
- early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. But
- on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold,
- was a wild rose-hush, covered, in this month of June, with its
- delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance
- and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the
- condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that
- the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
-
- This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in
- history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old
- wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks
- that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is far
- authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of
- the sainted Ann Hutchinson as she entered the prison-door, we
- shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on
- the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from
- that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise
-
-
-
- THE PRISON-DOOR 61
-
-
-
- than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It
- may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom
- that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close
- of a tale of human frailty and sorrow
-
-
-
- II.
-
-
-
- THE MARKET-PLACE
-
-
-
- THE grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain
- summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by
- a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with
- their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door.
- Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history
- of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded
- physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful
- business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the
- anticipated execution of some rioted culprit, on whom the
- sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of
- public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan
- character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be
- drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful
- child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority,
- was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that an
- Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be
- scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the
- white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to
- be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might
- be,
-
-
-
- THE MARKET-PLACE 63
-
-
-
- too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered
- widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either
- case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the
- part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion
- and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were
- so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of
- public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre,
- indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look
- for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a
- penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking
- infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern
- a dignity as the punishment of death itself.
-
- It was a circumstance to he noted on the summer morning when our
- story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were
- several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in
- whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age
- had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety
- restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping
- forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial
- persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the
- scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there
- was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old English
- birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from
- them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout
- that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted
- to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty,
- and a slighter physical frame, if not
-
-
-
- 64 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- character of less force and solidity than her own. The women who
- were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than
- half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been
- the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They
- were her countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land,
- with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into
- their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on
- broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy
- cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly
- yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England.
- There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among
- these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle
- us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its
- volume of tone.
-
- "Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I'll tell ye a
- piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof if
- we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute,
- should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester
- Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for
- judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together,
- would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful
- magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not"
-
- "People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master
- Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart
- that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation. "
-
- "The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but
-
-
-
- THE MARKET-PLACE 65
-
-
-
- merciful overmuch -- that is a truth," added a third autumnal
- matron. "At the very least, they should have put the brand of a
- hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madame Hester would have
- winced at that, I warrant me. But she -- the naughty baggage --
- little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown
- Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like.
- heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever"
-
- "Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a
- child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang
- of it will be always in her heart. "
-
- "What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of
- her gown or the flesh of her forehead?" cried another female, the
- ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted
- judges. "This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to
- die; Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the
- Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who
- have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives
- and daughters go astray"
-
- "Mercy on us, goodwife" exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there
- no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of
- the gallows? That is the hardest word yet Hush now, gossips for
- the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress
- Prynne herself. "
-
- The door of the jail being flung open from within there
- appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into
- sunshine, the grim and gristly presence of the town-beadle, with
- a sword by his side, and his
-
-
-
- 66 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and
- represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the
- Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in
- its final and closest application to the offender. Stretching
- forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon
- the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward, until,
- on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an
- action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and
- stepped into the open air as if by her own free will. She bore
- in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked
- and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day;
- because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance
- only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome
- apartment of the prison.
-
- When the young woman -- the mother of this child -- stood fully
- revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to
- clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse
- of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a
- certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In
- a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame
- would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her
- arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a
- glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her
- townspeople and neighbours. On the breast of her gown, in fine
- red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic
- flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so
- artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous
- luxuriance
-
-
-
- THE MARKET-PLACE 67
-
-
-
- of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting
- decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a
- splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly
- beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the
- colony.
-
- The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a
- large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it
- threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides
- being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of
- complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and
- deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the
- feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain
- state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and
- indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication.
- And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the
- antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the
- prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to
- behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were
- astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone
- out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she
- was enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer,
- there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her attire,
- which indeed, she had wrought for the occasion in prison, and had
- modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude
- of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its
- wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all
- eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer -- so that both
- men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with
-
-
-
- 68 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Hester Prynne were now impressed as if they beheld her for the
- first time -- was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically
- embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of
- a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity,
- and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.
-
- "She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked
- one of her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this
- brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? Why, gossips,
- what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates,
- and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a
- punishment?"
-
- "It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames,
- "if we stripped Madame Hester's rich gown off her dainty
- shoulders; and as for the red letter which she hath stitched so
- curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel to
- make a fitter one!"
-
- "Oh, peace, neighbours -- peace!" whispered their youngest
- companion; "do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that
- embroidered letter but she has felt it in her heart. "
-
- The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "Make way,
- good people -- make way, in the King's name!" cried he. "Open a
- passage; and I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where
- man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel
- from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the
- righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged
- out into the sunshine! Come along, Madame Hester, and show your
- scarlet letter in the market-place!"
-
-
-
- THE MARKET-PLACE 69
-
-
-
- A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators.
- Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession
- of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set
- forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd
- of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the
- matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran
- before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare
- into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the
- ignominious letter on her breast. It was no great distance, in
- those days, from the prison door to the market-place. Measured
- by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a
- journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she
- perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that
- thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the
- street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature,
- however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful,
- that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he
- endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that
- rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore,
- Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came
- to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the
- market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's
- earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.
-
- In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine,
- which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely
- historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old
- time, to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good
- citizen-
-
-
-
- 70 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- ship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France.
- It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose
- the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as
- to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up
- to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and
- made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be
- no outrage, methinks, against our common nature -- whatever be
- the delinquencies of the individual -- no outrage more flagrant
- than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was
- the essence of this punishment to do. In Hester Prynne's
- instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her
- sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the
- platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and
- confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most
- devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her
- part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus
- displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a
- man's shoulders above the street.
-
- Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might
- have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire
- and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind
- him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious
- painters have vied with one another to represent; something which
- should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred
- image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the
- world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most
- sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world
- was only the darker for this woman's beauty,
-
-
-
- THE MARKET-PLACE 7I
-
-
-
- and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.
-
- The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always
- invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature,
- before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead
- of shuddering at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace
- had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern
- enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence,
- without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the
- heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a
- theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there
- been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have
- been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no
- less dignified than the governor, and several of his counsellors,
- a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town, all of whom
- sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon
- the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of
- the spectacle, without risking the majesty, or reverence of rank
- and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a
- legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning.
- Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit
- sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight
- of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and
- concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be
- borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified
- herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public
- contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there
- was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn
-
-
-
- 72 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all
- those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and
- herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the
- multitude -- each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced
- child, contributing their individual parts -- Hester Prynne might
- have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But,
- under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she
- felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full
- power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon
- the ground, or else go mad at once.
-
- Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was
- the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or,
- at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of
- imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially
- her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up
- other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on
- the edge of the western wilderness: other faces than were louring
- upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats.
- Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages of
- infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the
- little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back
- upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest
- in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as
- another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a
- play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to
- relieve itself by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms,
- from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.
-
- Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was
-
-
-
- THE MARKET-PLACE 73
-
-
-
- a point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track
- along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy.
- Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native
- village, in Old England, and her paternal home: a decayed house
- of grey stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a
- half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of
- antique gentility. She saw her father's face, with its bold
- brow, and reverend white beard that flowed over the old-fashioned
- Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and
- anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which,
- even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a
- gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own
- face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the
- interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze
- at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well
- stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes
- dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore
- over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a
- strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to
- read the human soul. This figure of tile study and the cloister,
- as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was
- slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than
- the right. Next rose before her in memory's picture-gallery, the
- intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the
- huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and
- quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new life had
- awaited her, still in connexion with the mis-shapen scholar: a
- new life, but feeding itself on
-
-
-
- 74 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling
- wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the
- rude market-place of the Puritan, settlement, with all the
- townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at
- Hester Prynne -- yes, at herself -- who stood on the scaffold of
- the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet,
- fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom
-
- Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her
- breast that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at
- the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to
- assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes
- these were her realities -- all else had vanished!
-
-
-
-
-
- III.
-
-
-
- THE RECOGNITION
-
-
-
- FROM this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and
- universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at
- length relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a
- figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts. An
- Indian in his native garb was standing there; but the red men
- were not so infrequent visitors of the English settlements that
- one of them would have attracted any notice from Hester Prynne at
- such a time; much less would he have excluded all other objects
- and ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side, and evidently
- sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a
- strange disarray of civilized and savage costume.
-
- He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which as yet
- could hardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence
- in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental
- part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself and
- become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly
- careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had
- endeavoured to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was
- sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne that one of this man's
- shoulders rose
-
-
-
- 76 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- higher than the other. Again, at the first instant of perceiving
- that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she
- pressed her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that
- the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did
- not seem to hear it,
-
- At his arrival in the market-place, and some time before she saw
- him, the stranger had bent his eyes on Hester Prynne. It was
- carelessly at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look
- inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and
- import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind.
- Very soon, however, his look became keen and penetrative. A
- writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake
- gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all
- its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His face darkened
- with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so
- instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save
- at a single moment, its expression might have passed for
- calmness. After a brief space, the convulsion grew almost
- imperceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of his
- nature. When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his
- own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and
- calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and
- laid it on his lips.
-
- Then touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood near to him,
- he addressed him in a formal and courteous manner:
-
- "I pray you, good Sir," said he, "who is this woman? -- and
- wherefore is she here set up to public shame?"
-
-
-
- THE RECOGNITION 77
-
-
-
- "You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered
- the townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage
- companion, "else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester
- Prynne and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, I
- promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church. "
-
- "You say truly," replied the other; "I am a stranger, and have
- been a wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with
- grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in
- bonds among the heathen-folk to the southward; and am now brought
- hither by this Indian to be redeemed out of my captivity. Will
- it please you, therefore, to tell me of Hester Prynne's -- have I
- her name rightly? -- of this woman's offences, and what has
- brought her to yonder scaffold?"
-
- "Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after
- your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman,
- "to find yourself at length in a land where iniquity is searched
- out and punished in the sight of rulers and people, as here in
- our godly New England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the
- wife of a certain learned man, English by birth, but who had long
- ago dwelt in Amsterdam, whence some good time agone he was minded
- to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the Massachusetts.
- To this purpose he sent his wife before him, remaining himself to
- look after some necessary affairs. Marry, good Sir, in some two
- years, or less, that the woman has been a dweller here in Boston,
- no tidings have come of this learned gentleman, Master Prynne;
- and his young wife, look you, being left to her own misguidance
- -- "
-
-
-
- 78 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- "Ah! -- aha! -- I conceive you," said the stranger with a
- bitter smile. "So learned a man as you speak of should have
- learned this too in his books. And who, by your favour, Sir, may
- be the father of yonder babe -- it is some three or four months
- old, I should judge -- which Mistress Prynne is holding in her
- arms?"
-
- "Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the
- Daniel who shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the
- townsman. "Madame Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the
- magistrates have laid their heads together in vain. Peradventure
- the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown
- of man, and forgetting that God sees him. "
-
- "The learned man," observed the stranger with another smile,
- "should come himself to look into the mystery. "
-
- "It behoves him well if he be still in life," responded the
- townsman. "Now, good Sir, our Massachusetts magistracy,
- bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and
- doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall, and that, moreover,
- as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea,
- they have not been bold to put in force the extremity of our
- righteous law against her. The penalty thereof is death. But in
- their great mercy and tenderness of heart they have doomed
- Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the
- platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the
- remainder of her natural life to wear a mark of shame upon her
- bosom. "
-
- "A wise sentence," remarked the stranger, gravely.
-
-
-
- THE RECOGNITION 79
-
-
-
- bowing his head. "Thus she will be a living sermon against sin,
- until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It
- irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should
- not at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be
- known -- he will be known! -- he will be known!"
-
- He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and
- whispering a few words to his Indian attendant, they both made
- their way through the crowd.
-
- While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her
- pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger -- so
- fixed a gaze that, at moments of intense absorption, all other
- objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him
- and her. Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more
- terrible than even to meet him as she now did, with the hot
- mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its
- shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the
- sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as
- to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen
- only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a
- home, or beneath a matronly veil at church. Dreadful as it was,
- she was conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand
- witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him
- and her, than to greet him face to face -- they two alone. She
- fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded
- the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her.
- Involved in these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her
- until it had repeated her name more than once, in
-
-
-
- 80 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- a loud and solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude.
-
- "Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!" said the voice.
-
- It has already been noticed that directly over the platform on
- which Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery,
- appended to the meeting-house. It was the place whence
- proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the
- magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public
- observances in those days. Here, to witness the scene which we
- are describing, sat Governor Bellingham himself with four
- sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of
- honour. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of
- embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath -- a
- gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in
- his wrinkles. He was not ill-fitted to be the head and
- representative of a community which owed its origin and progress,
- and its present state of development, not to the impulses of
- youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the
- sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because
- it imagined and hoped so little. The other eminent characters by
- whom the chief ruler was surrounded were distinguished by a
- dignity of mien, belonging to a period when the forms of
- authority were felt to possess the sacredness of Divine
- institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage.
- But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy
- to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who
- should he less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring
- woman's heart, and
-
-
-
- THE RECOGNITION 81
-
-
-
- disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid
- aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face. She
- seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect
- lay in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she
- lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale,
- and trembled.
-
- The voice which had called her attention was that of the
- reverend and famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston,
- a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the
- profession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. This
- last attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than
- his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of
- shame than self-congratulation with him. There he stood, with a
- border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap, while his grey
- eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking,
- like those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He
- looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed
- to old volumes of sermons, and had no more right than one of
- those portraits would have to step forth, as he now did, and
- meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish
-
- "Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, "I have striven with my
- young brother here, under whose preaching of the Word you have
- been privileged to sit" -- here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the
- shoulder of a pale young man beside him -- "I have sought, I say,
- to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here
- in the face of Heaven, and before these wise and upright rulers,
- and in hearing of all the people, as touching the vileness and
- blackness of
-
-
-
- 82 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- your sin. Knowing your natural temper better than l, he could
- the better judge what arguments to use, whether of tenderness or
- terror, such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy,
- insomuch that you should no longer hide the name of him who
- tempted you to this grievous fall. But he opposes to me -- with
- a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond his years -- that
- it were wronging the very nature of woman to force her to lay
- open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and in presence
- of so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to convince him, the
- shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of
- it forth. What say you to it, once again, brother Dimmesdale?
- Must it be thou, or I, that shall deal with this poor sinner's
- soul?"
-
- There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of
- the balcony; and Governor Bellingham gave expression to its
- purport, speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered
- with respect towards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed:
-
- "Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of this
- woman's soul lies greatly with you. It behoves you; therefore,
- to exhort her to repentance and to confession, as a proof and
- consequence thereof. "
-
- The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd
- upon the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale -- young clergyman, who had
- come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the
- learning of the age into our wild forest land. His eloquence and
- religious fervour had already given the earnest of high eminence
- in his profession. He was a person of
-
-
-
- THE RECOGNITION 83
-
-
-
- very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow;
- large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he
- forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both
- nervous sensibility and a vast power of self restraint.
- Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like
- attainments, there was an air about this young minister -- an
- apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look -- as of a being
- who felt himself quite astray, and at a loss in the pathway of
- human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of
- his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would permit, he trod
- in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself simple and
- childlike, coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and
- fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people
- said, affected them like tile speech of an angel.
-
- Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the
- Governor had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding
- him speak, in the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a
- woman's soul, so sacred even in its pollution. The trying nature
- of his position drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips
- tremulous.
-
- "Speak to the woman, my brother," said Mr. Wilson. "It is of
- moment to her soul, and, therefore, as the worshipful Governor
- says, momentous to thine own, ill whose charge hers is. Exhort
- her to confess the truth!"
-
- The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, silent prayer, as it
- seemed, and then came forward.
-
- "Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony and looking
- down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou
-
-
-
- 84 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- hearest what this good man says, and seest the accountability
- under which I labour. If thou feelest it to be for thy soul's
- peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more
- effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of
- thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any
- mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester,
- though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there
- beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than
- to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for
- him, except it tempt him -- yea, compel him, as it were -- to add
- hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy,
- that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil
- within thee and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest
- to him -- who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for
- himself -- the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented
- to thy lips!"
-
- The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and
- broken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather
- than the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within
- all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of
- sympathy. Even the poor baby at Hester's bosom was affected by
- the same influence, for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze
- towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms with a
- half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So powerful seemed the
- minister's appeal that the people could not believe but that
- Hester Prynne would speak out the guilty name, or else that the
- guilty one himself in whatever high or lowly place he stood,
- would be drawn forth by an inward and
-
-
-
- THE RECOGNITION 85
-
-
-
- inevitable necessity, and compelled to ascend the scaffold.
-
- Hester shook her head.
-
- "Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!"
- cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before. "That
- little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm
- the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out the name! That,
- and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy
- breast. "
-
- "Never," replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but
- into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is
- too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I
- might endure his agony as well as mine!"
-
- "Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly,
- proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold, "Speak; and give
- your child a father!"
-
- "I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death, but
- responding to this voice, which she too surely recognised. "And
- my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know an
- earthly one!"
-
- "She will not speak!" murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over
- the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the
- result of his appeal. He now drew back with a long respiration.
- "Wondrous strength arid generosity of a woman's heart! She will
- not speak!"
-
- Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind,
- the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the
- occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all
- its branches, but
-
-
-
- 86 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- with continual reference to the ignominious letter. So forcibly
- did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which
- his periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed
- new terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its
- scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne,
- meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed
- eyes, and an air of weary indifference. She had borne that
- morning all that nature could endure; and as her temperament was
- not of the order that escapes from too intense suffering by a
- swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust
- of insensibility, while the faculties of animal life remained
- entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher thundered
- remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant,
- during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its
- wailings and screams; she strove to hush it mechanically, but
- seemed scarcely to sympathise with its trouble. With the same
- hard demeanour, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the
- public gaze within its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered by
- those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid
- gleam along the dark passage-way of the interior.
-
-
-
- IV.
-
-
-
- THE INTERVIEW
-
-
-
- After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in
- a state of nervous excitement, that demanded constant
- watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or
- do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. As night
- approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by
- rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer,
- thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a man
- of skill in all Christian modes of physical science, and likewise
- familiar with whatever the savage people could teach in respect
- to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. To say the
- truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely
- for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child -- who,
- drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have
- drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which
- pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of
- pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral
- agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.
-
- Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared
- that individual, of singular aspect
-
-
- 88 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- whose presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to the
- wearer of the scarlet letter. He was lodged in the prison, not
- as suspected of any offence, but as the most convenient and
- suitable mode of disposing of him, until the magistrates should
- have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom.
- His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after
- ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the
- comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne
- had immediately become as still as death, although the child
- continued to moan.
-
- "Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the
- practitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have
- peace in your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall
- hereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may have
- found her heretofore. "
-
- "Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master
- Brackett, "I shall own you for a man of skill, indeed! Verily,
- the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little
- that I should take in hand, to drive Satan out of her with
- stripes. "
-
- The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic
- quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as
- belonging. Nor did his demeanour change when the withdrawal of
- the prison keeper left him face to face with the woman, whose
- absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a
- relation between himself and her. His first care was given to
- the child, whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the
- trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all
- other business
-
-
-
- THE INTERVIEW 89
-
-
-
- to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant carefully,
- and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from
- beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical preparations,
- one of which he mingled with a cup of water.
-
- "My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for
- above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly
- properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than
- many that claim the medical degree. Here, woman! The child is
- yours -- she is none of mine -- neither will she recognise my
- voice or aspect as a father's. Administer this draught,
- therefore, with thine own hand. "
- Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing
- with strongly marked apprehension into his face.
-
- "Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whispered
- she.
-
- "Foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, half
- soothingly. "What should ail me to harm this misbegotten and
- miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good, and were it my
- child -- yea, mine own, as well as thine! I could do no better
- for it. "
-
- As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state
- of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered
- the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the
- leech's pledge. The moans of the little patient subsided; its
- convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and in a few moments, as is
- the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into
- a profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had a fair
- right to be termed,
-
-
-
- 90 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- next bestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent
- scrutiny, he felt her pulse, looked into her eyes -- a gaze that
- made her heart shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet
- so strange and cold -- and, finally, satisfied with his
- investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught
-
- "I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I have
- learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of
- them -- a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some
- lessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It
- may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot
- give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy
- passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea. "
-
- He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow,
- earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet
- full of doubt and questioning as to what his purposes might be.
- She looked also at her slumbering child.
-
- "I have thought of death," said she -- " have wished for it --
- would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should
- pray for anything. Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee
- think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! it is even
- now at my lips. "
-
- "Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure.
- "Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes
- wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance,
- what could I do better for my object than to let thee live --
- than to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life --
- so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?" As
- he spoke, he laid his long fore-
-
-
-
- THE INTERVIEW 91
-
-
-
- finger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch
- into Hester's breast, as if it had been red hot. He noticed her
- involuntary gesture, and smiled "Live, therefore, and bear about
- thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women -- in the eyes
- of him whom thou didst call thy husband -- in the eyes of yonder
- child! And, that thou mayest live, take off this draught. "
-
- Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained
- the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself
- on the bed, where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only
- chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her.
- She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt
- that -- having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if
- so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do for the relief
- of physical suffering -- he was next to treat with her as the man
- whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured.
-
- "Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how thou hast
- fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the
- pedestal of infamy on which I found thee. The reason is not far
- to seek. It was my folly, and thy weakness. I -- a man of
- thought -- the book-worm of great libraries -- a man already in
- decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of
- knowledge -- what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine
- own? Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself
- with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical
- deformity in a young girl's fantasy? Men call me wise. If sages
- were ever wise in their own behoof, I might
-
-
-
- 92 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- have foreseen all this. I might have known that, as I came out
- of the vast and dismal forest, and entered this settlement of
- Christian men, the very first object to meet my eyes would be
- thyself, Hester Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before
- the people. Nay, from the moment when we came down the old
- church-steps together, a married pair, I might have beheld the
- bale-fire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our path!"
-
- "Thou knowest," said Hester -- for, depressed as she was, she
- could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame
- -- "thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor
- feigned any. "
-
- "True," replied he. "It was my folly! I have said it. But, up
- to that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had
- been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for
- many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire.
- I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream -- old as
- I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was -- that the
- simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to
- gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into
- my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by
- the warmth which thy presence made there!"
-
- "I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.
-
- "We have wronged each other," answered he. "Mine was the first
- wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and
- unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has
- not thought and philosophised in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot
- no evil against thee. Between thee and
-
-
-
- THE INTERVIEW 93
-
-
-
- me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives
- who has wronged us both! Who is he?"
-
- "Ask me not?" replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his
- face. "That thou shalt never know!"
-
- "Never, sayest thou?" rejoined he, with a smile of dark and
- self-relying intelligence. "Never know him! Believe me, Hester,
- there are few things whether in the outward world, or, to a
- certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought -- few things
- hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and
- unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover up
- thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it,
- too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this
- day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, and
- give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come to
- the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek
- this man, as I have sought truth in books: as I have sought gold
- in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of
- him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder,
- suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine. "
-
- The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her,
- that Hester Prynne clasped her hand over her heart, dreading lest
- he should read the secret there at once.
-
- "Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine,"
- resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one
- with him. "He bears no letter of infamy wrought into his
- garment, as thou dost, but I shall read it on his heart . Yet
- fear not for him! Think not that I shall interfere with Heaven's
-
-
-
- 94 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- own method of retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him to the
- gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine that I shall
- contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame, if as
- I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let him hide
- himself in outward honour, if he may! Not the less he shall be
- mine!"
-
- "Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled;
- "but thy words interpret thee as a terror!"
-
- "One thing, thou that wast my wife, l would enjoin upon thee,"
- continued the scholar. "Thou hast kept the secret of thy
- paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land
- that know me. Breathe not to any human soul that thou didst ever
- call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I
- shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated
- from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child,
- amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No
- matter whether of love or hate: no matter whether of right or
- wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is
- where thou art and where he is. But betray me not!"
-
- "Wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired Hester, shrinking, she
- hardly knew why, from this secret bond. "Why not announce
- thyself openly, and cast me off at once?"
-
- "It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the
- dishonour that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It
- may be for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and
- die unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband be to the world as one
-
-
-
- THE INTERVIEW 95
-
-
-
- already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognise
- me not, by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, above
- all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou fail me in this,
- beware! His fame, his position, his life will be in my hands.
- Beware!"
-
- "I will keep thy secret, as I have his," said Hester.
-
- "Swear it!" rejoined he.
- And she took the oath.
-
- "And now, Mistress Prynne," said old Roger Chillingworth, as he
- was hereafter to be named, "I leave thee alone: alone with thy
- infant and the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy
- sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not
- afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?"
-
- "Why dost thou smile so at me?" inquired Hester, troubled at the
- expression of his eyes. "Art thou like the Black Man that
- haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a
- bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?"
-
- "Not thy soul," he answered, with another smile. No, not
- thine!"
-
-
-
-
-
- V.
-
-
-
- HESTER AT HER NEEDLE
-
-
-
- Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her
- prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the
- sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and
- morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the
- scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real
- torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of
- the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have
- been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which
- all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was
- supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the
- combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert
- the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a
- separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime,
- and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call
- up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet
- years. The very law that condemned her -- a giant of stem
- featured but with vigour to support, as well as to annihilate, in
- his iron arm -- had held her up through the terrible ordeal of
- her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison
- door, began the daily
-
-
-
- HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 97
-
-
-
- custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the
- ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could
- no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present
- grief. Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the
- next day, and so would the next: each its own trial, and yet the
- very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The
- days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same
- burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to
- fling down; for the accumulating days and added years would pile
- up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all,
- giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol
- at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they
- might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and
- sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look
- at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast -- at her,
- the child of honourable parents -- at her, the mother of a babe
- that would hereafter be a woman -- at her, who had once been
- innocent -- as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And
- over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be
- her only monument.
-
- It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her -- kept
- by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of
- the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure -- free to
- return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and
- there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as
- completely as if emerging into another state of being -- and
- having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to
- her, where the
-
-
-
- 98 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people
- whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned
- her -- it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call
- that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the
- type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so
- irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which
- almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and
- haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has
- given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more
- irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her
- ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It
- was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the
- first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to
- every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and
- dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth -- even
- that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless
- maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like
- garments put off long ago -- were foreign to her, in comparison.
- The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to
- her inmost soul, but could never be broken.
- It might be, too -- doubtless it was so, although she hid the
- secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of
- her heart, like a serpent from its hole -- it might be that
- another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had
- been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with
- whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised
- on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final
- judgment, and make that their
-
-
-
- HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 99
-
-
-
- marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution.
- Over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea
- upon Hester's contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and
- desperate joy with which she seized, and then strove to cast it
- from her. She barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened
- to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe
- -- what, finally, she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing
- a resident of New England -- was half a truth, and half a
- self-delusion. Here, she said to herself had been the scene of
- her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly
- punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame
- would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than
- that which she had lost: more saint-like, because the result of
- martyrdom.
-
- Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the
- town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close
- vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched
- cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned,
- because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while
- its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that
- social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants.
- It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the
- forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of scrubby
- trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much
- conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was
- some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be,
- concealed. In this little lonesome dwelling, with some slender
- means that she possessed, and by the licence of the
-
-
-
- 100 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her,
- Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mystic
- shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot.
- Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be
- shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh
- enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or
- standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or
- coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning
- the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a
- strange contagious fear.
-
- Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth
- who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of
- want. She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that
- afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply
- food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art, then,
- as now, almost the only one within a woman's grasp -- of
- needle-work. She bore on her breast, in the curiously
- embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative
- skill, of which the dames of a court might gladly have availed
- themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual adornment of
- human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed,
- in the sable simplicity that generally characterised the
- Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for
- the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the
- age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this
- kind, did not fail to extend its influence over our stern
- progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it
- might seem harder to dispense with.
-
-
-
- HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 101
-
-
-
- Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of
- magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in
- which a new government manifested itself to the people, were, as
- a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted
- ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep
- ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered
- gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of men
- assuming the reins of power, and were readily allowed to
- individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary
- laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian
- order. In the array of funerals, too -- whether for the apparel
- of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of
- sable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors -- there
- was a frequent and characteristic demand for such labour as
- Hester Prynne could supply. Baby-linen -- for babies then wore
- robes of state -- afforded still another possibility of toil and
- emolument.
-
- By degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would now
- be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of
- so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a
- fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by
- whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now,
- sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in
- vain; or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise
- have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly
- equited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy
- with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by
- putting
-
-
-
- 102 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been
- wrought by her sinful hands. Her needle-work was seen on the
- ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and
- the minister on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was
- shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the
- dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her
- skill was called in to embroider the white veil which was to
- cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the
- ever relentless vigour with which society frowned upon her sin.
-
- Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of
- the plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a
- simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the
- coarsest materials and the most sombre hue, with only that one
- ornament -- the scarlet letter -- which it was her doom to wear.
- The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a
- fanciful, or, we may rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which
- served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to
- develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have
- also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter.
- Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her
- infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on
- wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently
- insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she
- might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she
- employed in making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable
- that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and
-
-
-
- HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 103
-
-
-
- that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment in devoting so
- many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a rich,
- voluptuous, Oriental characteristic -- a taste for the gorgeously
- beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her
- needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life,
- to exercise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure,
- incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the
- needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of
- expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life.
- Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid
- meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is
- to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something
- doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong beneath.
-
- In this matter, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in
- the world. With her native energy of character and rare
- capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it had set
- a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart than that
- which branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with
- society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she
- belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence
- of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often
- expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she
- inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature
- by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. She
- stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them, like a
- ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make
- itself seen or felt; no more smile with the
-
-
-
- 104 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it
- succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only
- terror and horrible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its
- bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she
- retained in the universal heart. It was not an age of delicacy;
- and her position, although she understood it well, and was in
- little danger of forgetting it, was often brought before her
- vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch
- upon the tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom
- she sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the
- hand that was stretched forth to succour them. Dames of elevated
- rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her
- occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into
- her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by
- which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles;
- and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the
- sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated
- wound. Hester had schooled herself long and well; and she never
- responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose
- irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again subsided into the
- depths of her bosom. She was patient -- a martyr, indeed but she
- forebore to pray for enemies, lest, in spite of her forgiving
- aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly twist
- themselves into a curse.
-
- Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the
- innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly
- contrived for her by the undying,
-
-
-
- HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 105
-
-
-
- the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen
- paused in the streets, to address words of exhortation, that
- brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the
- poor, sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share
- the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it was often her
- mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. She grew to
- have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents
- a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman gliding
- silently through the town, with never any companion but one only
- child. Therefore, first allowing her to pass, they pursued her
- at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterances of a word
- that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the
- less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it
- unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her
- shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no
- deeper pang had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story
- among themselves -- had the summer breeze murmured about it --
- had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar torture
- was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When strangers looked
- curiously at the scarlet letter and none ever failed to do so --
- they branded it afresh in Hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she
- could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the
- symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye had
- likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of
- familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in short,
- Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human
- eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it
-
-
-
- 106 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily
- torture.
-
- But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months,
- she felt an eye -- a human eye -- upon the ignominious brand,
- that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony
- were shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with
- still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she
- had sinned anew. (Had Hester sinned alone?)
-
- Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a
- softer moral and intellectual fibre would have been still more
- so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to
- and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with
- which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to
- Hester -- if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to
- be resisted -- she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter
- had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet
- could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic
- knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was terror-
- stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were they?
- Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad
- angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet
- only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a
- lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet
- letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's?
- Or, must she receive those intimations -- so obscure, yet so
- distinct -- as truth? In all her miserable experience, there was
- nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It
- perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent
-
-
-
- HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 107
-
-
-
- inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid
- action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a
- sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or
- magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of
- antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship
- with angels. "What evil thing is at hand?" would Hester say to
- herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing
- human within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly
- saint! Again a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert
- itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who,
- according to the rumour of all tongues, had kept cold snow within
- her bosom throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's
- bosom, and the burning shame on Hester Prynne's -- what had the
- two in common? Or, once more, the electric thrill would give her
- warning -- "Behold Hester, here is a companion!" and, looking
- up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the
- scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted, with a
- faint, chill crimson in her cheeks as if her purity were somewhat
- sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, whose talisman was
- that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth
- or age, for this poor sinner to revere? -- such loss of faith is
- ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a
- proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own
- frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to
- believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.
-
- The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always
- contributing a grotesque horror to what
-
-
-
- 108 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet
- letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend.
- They averred that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged
- in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and
- could be seen glowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked
- abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say it seared
- Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in
- the rumour than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.
-
-
-
-
-
- VI.
-
-
-
- PEARL
-
-
-
-
-
- We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant that little creature,
- whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of
- Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank
- luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad
- woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became
- every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its
- quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! Her
- Pearl -- for so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive
- of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white,
- unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison.
- But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price --
- purchased with all she had -- her mother's only treasure! How
- strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet
- letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no
- human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself.
- God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished,
- had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same
- dishonoured bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the race
- and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in
- heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester
-
-
-
- 110 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed
- had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its
- result would be good. Day after day she looked fearfully into
- the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark
- and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness
- to which she owed her being.
-
- Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape,
- its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its
- untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth
- in Eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything of
- the angels after the world's first parents were driven out. The
- child had a native grace which does not invariably co-exist with
- faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed
- the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it
- best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her
- mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood
- hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured,
- and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the
- arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore
- before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure when
- thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl's own proper
- beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have
- extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute
- circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor. And
- yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play,
- made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued
- with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were
- many children, comprehending the full scope
-
-
-
- PEARL 111
-
-
-
- between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the
- pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however,
- there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she
- never lost; and if in any of her changes, she had grown fainter
- or paler, she would have ceased to be herself -- it would have
- been no longer Pearl!
-
- This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly
- express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature
- appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but -- or
- else Hester's fears deceived her -- it lacked reference and
- adaptation to the world into which she was born. The child could
- not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence a great
- law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements
- were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or
- with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of
- variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be
- discovered. Hester could only account for the child's character
- -- and even then most vaguely and imperfectly -- by recalling
- what she herself had been during that momentous period while
- Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her
- bodily frame from its material of earth. The mother's
- impassioned state had been the medium through which were
- transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and,
- however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep
- stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow,
- and the untempered light of the intervening substance. Above
- all, the warfare of Hester's spirit at that epoch was perpetuated
- in Pearl. She could
-
-
-
- 112 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of
- her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and
- despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now
- illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's
- disposition, but, later in the day of earthly existence, might be
- prolific of the storm and whirlwind.
-
- The discipline of the family in those days was of a far more
- rigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent
- application of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were
- used, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences,
- but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all
- childish virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the loving mother
- of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side of undue
- severity. Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes,
- she early sought to impose a tender but strict control over the
- infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the
- task was beyond her skill. after testing both smiles and frowns,
- and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any
- calculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand
- aside and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses.
- Physical compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while
- it lasted. As to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed
- to her mind or heart, little Pearl might or might not be within
- its reach, in accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment.
- Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a
- certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labour
- thrown away to insist, persuade or plead.
-
-
-
- PEARL 113
-
-
-
- It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, perverse,
- sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow
- of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning at such
- moments whether Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather an
- airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a
- little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a
- mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright,
- deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and
- intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, and
- might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not
- whence and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was
- constrained to rush towards the child -- to pursue the little elf
- in the flight which she invariably began -- to snatch her to her
- bosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses -- not so much
- from overflowing love as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh
- and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she
- was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother
- more doubtful than before.
-
- Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so
- often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had
- bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst
- into passionate tears. Then, perhaps -- for there was no
- foreseeing how it might affect her -- Pearl would frown, and
- clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a
- stern, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom she would
- laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and
- unintelligent of human sorrow. Or -- but this more
-
-
-
- 114 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- rarely happened -- she would be convulsed with rage of grief and
- sob out her love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent
- on proving that she had a heart by breaking it. Yet Hester was
- hardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness: it
- passed as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters,
- the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some
- irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the
- master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible
- intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child lay in
- the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted
- hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until -- perhaps with
- that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids
- -- little Pearl awoke!
-
- How soon -- with what strange rapidity, indeed did Pearl arrive
- at an age that was capable of social intercourse beyond the
- mother's ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a
- happiness would it have been could Hester Prynne have heard her
- clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish
- voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's
- tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive
- children. But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of
- the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin,
- she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more
- remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child
- comprehended her loneliness: the destiny that had drawn an
- inviolable circle round about her: the whole peculiarity, in
- short, of her position in respect to
-
-
-
- PEARL 115
-
-
-
- other children. Never since her release from prison had Hester
- met the public gaze without her. In all her walks about the
- town, Pearl, too, was there: first as the babe in arms, and
- afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother,
- holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at
- the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw
- the children of the settlement on the grassy margin of the
- street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in
- such grim fashions as the Puritanic nurture would permit!
- playing at going to church, perchance, or at scourging Quakers,
- or taking scalps in a sham fight with the Indians, or scaring one
- another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and
- gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken
- to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about
- her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible
- in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with
- shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble,
- because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some
- unknown tongue.
-
- The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most
- intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of
- something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary
- fashions, in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them in
- their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their
- tongues. Pearl felt the sentiment, and requited it with the
- bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish
- bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value,
- and even comfort for the mother;
-
-
-
- 116 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- because there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the
- mood, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in
- the child's manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to
- discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had
- existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl
- inherited, by inalienable right, out of Hester's heart. Mother
- and daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from
- human society; and in the nature of the child seemed to be
- perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester
- Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed
- away by the softening influences of maternity.
-
- At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not
- a wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life
- went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself
- to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may
- be applied. The unlikeliest materials -- a stick, a bunch of
- rags, a flower -- were the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and,
- without undergoing any outward change, became spiritually adapted
- to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. Her one
- baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary personages, old and
- young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged, black, and solemn,
- and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the
- breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders
- the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl
- smote down and uprooted most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the
- vast variety of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no
- continuity, indeed, but darting' up and dancing, always in a
- state of preter-
-
-
-
- PEARL 117
-
-
-
- natural activity -- soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so
- rapid and feverish a tide of life -- and succeeded by other
- shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as
- the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere
- exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing
- mind, there might be a little more than was observable in other
- children of bright faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of
- human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which
- she created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with
- which the child regarded all these offsprings of her own heart
- and mind. She never created a friend, but seemed always to be
- sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest of
- armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. It was
- inexpressibly sad -- then what depth of sorrow to a mother, who
- felt in her own heart the cause -- to observe, in one so young,
- this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a
- training of the energies that were to make good her cause in the
- contest that must ensue.
-
- Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her
- knees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain have
- hidden, but which made utterance for itself betwixt speech and a
- groan -- "O Father in Heaven -- if Thou art still my Father --
- what is this being which I have brought into the world?" And
- Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware through some more
- subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid
- and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like
- intelligence, and resume her play.
-
-
-
- 118 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told.
- The very first thing which she had noticed in her life, was --
- what? -- not the mother's smile, responding to it, as other
- babies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth,
- remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond
- discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means! But
- that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was --
- shall we say it? -- the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom! One
- day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had
- been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the
- letter; and putting up her little hand she grasped at it,
- smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her
- face the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath,
- did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively
- endeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the torture
- inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl's baby-hand. Again,
- as if her mother's agonised gesture were meant only to make sport
- for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile. From
- that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had never
- felt a moment's safety: not a moment's calm enjoyment of her.
- Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's
- gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then,
- again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden
- death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd expression of
- the eyes.
-
- Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes while
- Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are food
- of doing; and
-
-
-
- PEARL 119
-
-
-
- suddenly for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are
- pestered with unaccountable delusions she fancied that she
- beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face in the
- small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiend-like,
- full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features
- that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and
- never with malice in them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed
- the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. Many a
- time afterwards had Hester been tortured, though less vividly, by
- the same illusion.
-
- In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big
- enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls
- of wild flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's
- bosom; dancing up and down like a little elf whenever she hit the
- scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her
- bosom with her clasped hands. But whether from pride or
- resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought
- out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat
- erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's wild
- eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably
- hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts for
- which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek
- it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the child
- stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little laughing image
- of a fiend peeping out -- or, whether it peeped or no, her mother
- so imagined it -- from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes.
-
- "Child, what art thou?" cried the mother.
-
-
-
- 120 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- "Oh, I am your little Pearl!" answered the child.
-
- But while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and
- down with the humoursome gesticulation of a little imp, whose
- next freak might be to fly up the chimney.
-
- "Art thou my child, in very truth?" asked Hester.
-
- Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the
- moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was
- Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted
- whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her
- existence, and might not now reveal herself.
-
- "Yes; I am little Pearl!" repeated the child, continuing her
- antics.
-
- "Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said the
- mother half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive
- impulse came over her in the midst of her deepest suffering.
- "Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?"
-
- "Tell me, mother!" said the child, seriously, coming up to
- Hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell
- me!"
-
- "Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!" answered Hester Prynne.
-
- But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the
- acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary
- freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up
- her small forefinger and touched the scarlet letter.
-
- "He did not send me!" cried she, positively. "I have no Heavenly
- Father!"
-
- "Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered the mother.
- suppressing a groan. "He sent
-
-
-
- PEARL 121
-
-
-
- us all into the world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much
- more thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence
- didst thou come?"
-
- "Tell me! Tell me!" repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but
- laughing and capering about the floor. "It is thou that must
- tell me!"
-
- But Hester could not resolve the query, using herself in a dismal
- labyrinth of doubt. She remembered -- betwixt a smile and a
- shudder -- the talk of the neighbouring townspeople, who, seeking
- vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of
- her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a
- demon offspring: such as, ever since old Catholic times, had
- occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their
- mother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose.
- Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a
- brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child to whom
- this inauspicious origin was assigned among the New England
- Puritans.
-
-
-
-
-
- VII
-
-
-
- THE GOVERNOR'S HALL
-
-
-
- Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellingham,
- with a pair of gloves which she had fringed and embroidered to
- his order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of
- state; for, though the chances of a popular election had caused
- this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank,
- he still held an honourable and influential place among the
- colonial magistracy.
-
- Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair
- of embroidered gloves, impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an
- interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the
- affairs of the settlement. It had reached her ears that there
- was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants,
- cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and
- government, to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that
- Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people
- not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother's
- soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her
- path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of
- moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of
- ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the
-
-
-
- THE GOVERNOR'S HALL 123
-
-
-
- fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser
- and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who
- promoted the design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of
- the most busy. It may appear singular, and, indeed, not a little
- ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which in later days would
- have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the
- select men of the town, should then have been a question publicly
- discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. At
- that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even
- slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight than
- the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed up with
- the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. The period
- was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a
- dispute concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused
- a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the
- colony, but resulted in an important modification of the
- framework itself of the legislature.
-
- Full of concern, therefore -- but so conscious of her own right
- that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on
- the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of
- nature, on the other -- Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary
- cottage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was
- now of an age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and,
- constantly in motion from morn till sunset, could have
- accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often,
- nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to
- be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to he let down
- again, and frisked onward before Hester
-
-
-
- 124 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We
- have spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty -- a beauty that
- shone with deep and vivid tints, a bright complexion, eyes
- possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of
- a deep, glossy brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly
- akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout her: she
- seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment. Her
- mother, in contriving the child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous
- tendencies of her imagination their full play, arraying her in a
- crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in
- fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of
- colouring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to
- cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's
- beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that
- ever danced upon the earth.
-
- But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of
- the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably
- reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed
- to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another
- form: the scarlet letter endowed with life! The mother herself
- -- as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain
- that all her conceptions assumed its form -- had carefully
- wrought out the similitude, lavishing many hours of morbid
- ingenuity to create an analogy between the object of her
- affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But, in
- truth, Pearl was the one as well as the other; and only in
- consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to
- represent the scarlet letter in her appearance.
-
-
-
- THE GOVERNOR'S HALL 125
-
-
-
- As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the
- children of the Puritans looked up from their player what passed
- for play with those sombre little urchins -- and spoke gravely
- one to another
-
- "Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and of
- a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter
- running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud
- at them!"
-
- But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping
- her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of
- threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her
- enemies, and put them all to flight. She resembled, in her
- fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence -- the scarlet
- fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment -- whose
- mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. She
- screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound,
- which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake
- within them. The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to
- her mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.
-
- Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor
- Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of
- which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our
- older towns now moss -- grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy
- at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences,
- remembered or forgotten, that have happened and passed away
- within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the
- freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the
- cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human
- habitation, into which death had never
-
-
-
- 126 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- entered. It had, indeed, a very cheery aspect, the walls being
- overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken
- glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine
- fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and
- sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double
- handful. The brilliancy might have be fitted Aladdin's palace
- rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was
- further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures
- and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age which had
- been drawn in the stucco, when newly laid on, and had now grown
- hard and durable, for the admiration of after times.
-
- Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house began to caper
- and dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of
- sunshine should be stripped off its front, and given her to play
- with.
-
- "No, my little Pearl!" said her mother; "thou must gather thine
- own sunshine. I have none to give thee!"
-
- They approached the door, which was of an arched form, and
- flanked on each side by a narrow tower or projection of the
- edifice, in both of which were lattice-windows, the wooden
- shutters to close over them at need. Lifting the iron hammer
- that hung at the portal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was
- answered by one of the Governor's bond servant -- a free-born
- Englishman, but now a seven years' slave. During that term he
- was to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of
- bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf wore the
- customary garb of serving-men at that period, and long before, in
- the old hereditary halls of England,
-
-
-
- THE GOVERNOR'S HALL 137
-
-
-
- "Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within?" Inquired Hester.
-
- "Yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open
- eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the
- country, he had never before seen. "Yea, his honourable worship
- is within. But he hath a godly minister or two with him, and
- likewise a leech. Ye may not see his worship now. "
-
- "Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne; and the
- bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and
- the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in
- the land, offered no opposition.
-
- So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of
- entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his
- building materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of
- social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation
- after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native
- land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall,
- extending through the whole depth of the house, and forming a
- medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all
- the other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was
- lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small
- recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though
- partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated
- by one of those embowed hall windows which we read of in old
- books, and which was provided with a deep and cushion seat.
- Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the
- Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even
- as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre
- table, to be
-
-
-
- 128 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall
- consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were
- elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a
- table in the same taste, the whole being of the Elizabethan age,
- or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the
- Governor's paternal home. On the table -- in token that the
- sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left behind --
- stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester
- or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant
- of a recent draught of ale.
-
- On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers
- of the Bellingham lineage, some with armour on their breasts, and
- others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were
- characterised by the sternness and severity which old portraits
- so invariably put on, as if they were the ghosts, rather than the
- pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and
- intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of living
- men.
-
- At about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall was
- suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral
- relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured
- by a skilful armourer in London, the same year in which Governor
- Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel
- head-piece, a cuirass, a gorget and greaves, with a pair of
- gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the
- helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white
- radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the
- floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but
- had been
-
-
-
- THE GOVERNOR'S HALL 129
-
-
-
- worn by the Governor on many a solemn muster and draining field,
- and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the
- Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak
- of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch, as his professional associates,
- the exigenties of this new country had transformed Governor
- Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman and ruler.
-
- Little Pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armour
- as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house,
- spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the
- breastplate.
-
- "Mother," cried she, "I see you here. Look! look!"
-
- Hester looked by way of humouring the child; and she saw that,
- owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet
- letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions,
- so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance.
- In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed
- upwards also, at a similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at
- her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an
- expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty
- merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much
- breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel
- as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp
- who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl's shape.
-
- "Come along, Pearl," said she, drawing her away, "Come and look
- into this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there;
- more beautiful ones than we find in the woods. "
-
- Pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further end of
- the hall, and looked along the vista of
-
-
-
- 130 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- a garden walk, carpeted with closely-shaven grass, and bordered
- with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. But the
- proprietor appeared already to have relinquished as hopeless, the
- effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard
- soil, and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native
- English taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain
- sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some distance, had run
- across the intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic
- products directly beneath the hall window, as if to warn the
- Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an
- ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few
- rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the
- descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the
- first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage
- who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.
-
-
- Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and
- would not be pacified.
-
- "Hush, child -- hush!" said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry,
- dear little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is
- coming, and gentlemen along with him. "
-
- In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue, a number of
- persons were seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter
- scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch
- scream, and then became silent, not from any motion of obedience,
- but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was
- excited by the appearance of those new personages.
-
-
-
-
-
- VIII.
-
-
-
- THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER
-
-
-
-
-
- Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap -- such as
- elderly gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their
- domestic privacy -- walked foremost, and appeared to be showing
- off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements.
- The wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his grey
- beard, in the antiquated fashion of King James's reign, caused
- his head to look not a little like that of John the Baptist in a
- charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe,
- and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in
- keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had
- evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it is an
- error to suppose that our great forefathers -- though accustomed
- to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial
- and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods
- and life at the behest of duty -- made it a matter of conscience
- to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly
- within their grasp. This creed was never taught, for instance,
- by the venerable pastor, John Wilson, whose beard, white as a
- snow-drift, was seen over Governor Bellingham's shoulders, while
- its
-
-
-
- 132 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalised
- in the New England climate, and that purple grapes might possibly
- be compelled to flourish against the sunny garden-wall. The old
- clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, had
- a long established and legitimate taste for all good and
- comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in
- the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as
- that of Hester Prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his
- private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to
- any of his professional contemporaries.
-
- Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests -- one,
- the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as
- having taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester
- Prynne's disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old
- Roger Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who for
- two or three years past had been settled in the town. It was
- understood that this learned man was the physician as well as
- friend of the young minister, whose health had severely suffered
- of late by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labours and
- duties of the pastoral relation.
-
- The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two
- steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall window,
- found himself close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain
- fell on Hester Prynne, and partially concealed her.
-
- "What have we here?" said Governor Bellingham, looking with
- surprise at the scarlet little figure before him. "MI profess I
- have never seen the like since my days of vanity, in old King
- James's time, when I was
-
-
-
- THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 133
-
-
-
- wont to esteem it a high favour to be admitted to a court mask!
- There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions in holiday
- time, and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But
- how gat such a guest into my hall?"
-
- "Ay, indeed!" cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of
- scarlet plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such
- figures when the sun has been shining through a richly painted
- window, and tracing out the golden and crimson images across the
- floor. But that was in the old land. Prithee, young one, who
- art thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this
- strange fashion? Art thou a Christian child -- ha? Dost know
- thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies
- whom we thought to have left behind us, with other relics of
- Papistry, in merry old England?"
-
- "I am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name
- is Pearl!"
-
- "Pearl? -- Ruby, rather -- or Coral! -- or Red Rose, at the
- very least, judging from thy hue!" responded the old minister,
- putting forth his hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on
- the cheek. "But where is this mother of thine? Ah! I see," he
- added; and, turning to Governor Bellingham, whispered, "This is
- the selfsame child of whom we have held speech together; and
- behold here the unhappy woman, Hester Prynne, her mother!"
-
- "Sayest thou so?" cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged
- that such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a
- worthy type of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time, and
- we will look into this matter forthwith. "
-
-
-
- 134 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall,
- followed by his three guests.
-
- "Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on
- the wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question
- concerning thee of late. The point hath been weightily
- discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do
- well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such
- as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath
- stumbled and fallen amid the pitfalls of this world. Speak thou,
- the child's own mother! Were it not, thinkest thou, for thy
- little one's temporal and eternal welfare that she be taken out
- of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and
- instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst thou do
- for the child in this kind?"
-
- "I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!"
- answered Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.
-
- "Woman, it is thy badge of shame!" replied the stern magistrate.
- "It is because of the stain which that letter indicates that we
- would transfer thy child to other hands. "
-
- "Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more
- pale, "this badge hath taught me -- it daily teaches me -- it is
- teaching me at this moment -- lessons whereof my child may be
- the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself. "
-
- "We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we
- are about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this
- Pearl -- since that is her name -- and see whether she hath had
- such Christian nurture as befits a child of her age. "
-
-
-
- THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 135
-
-
-
- The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair and made an
- effort to draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child,
- unaccustomed to the touch or familiarity of any but her mother,
- escaped through the open window, and stood on the upper step,
- looking like a wild tropical bird of rich plumage, ready to take
- flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not a little astonished
- at this outbreak -- for he was a grandfatherly sort of personage,
- and usually a vast favourite with children -- essayed, however,
- to proceed with the examination.
-
- "Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to
- instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy
- bosom the pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child,
- who made thee?"
-
- Now Pearl knew well enough who made her, for Hester Prynne, the
- daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child
- about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those
- truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity,
- imbibes with such eager interest. Pearl, therefore -- so large
- were the attainments of her three years' lifetime -- could have
- borne a fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first
- column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with
- the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that
- perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which
- little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune
- moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or
- impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in
- her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr.
- Wilson's
-
-
-
- 136 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- question, the child finally announced that she had not been made
- at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild
- roses that grew by the prison-door.
-
- This phantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the
- Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window,
- together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she
- had passed in coming hither.
-
- Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered
- something in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at
- the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the
- balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his
- features -- how much uglier they were, how his dark complexion
- seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen --
- since the days when she had familiarly known him. She met his
- eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give all
- her attention to the scene now going forward.
-
- "This is awful!" cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the
- astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here
- is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her!
- Without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its
- present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we
- need inquire no further. "
-
- Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms,
- confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce
- expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this
- sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she
- possessed in-
-
-
-
- THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 137
-
-
-
- defeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them
- to the death.
-
- "God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her in requital of
- all things else which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness
- -- she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in
- life! Pearl punishes me, too! See ye not, she is the scarlet
- letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a
- millionfold the power of retribution for my sin? Ye shall not
- take her! I will die first!"
-
- "My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child
- shall be well cared for -- far better than thou canst do for it.
- "
-
- "God gave her into my keeping!" repeated Hester Prynne, raising
- her voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up!" And here
- by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr.
- Dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so
- much as once to direct her eyes. "Speak thou for me!" cried she.
- "Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me
- better than these men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for
- me! Thou knowest -- for thou hast sympathies which these men
- lack -- thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's
- rights, and how much the stronger they are when that mother has
- but her child and the scarlet letter! Look thou to it! I will
- not lose the child! Look to it!"
-
- At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester
- Prynne's situation had provoked her to little less than madness,
- the young minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his
- hand over his heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly
-
-
-
- 138 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- nervous temperament was thrown into agitation. He looked now
- more careworn and emaciated than as we described him at the scene
- of Hester's public ignominy; and whether it were his failing
- health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a
- world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth.
-
- "There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a
- voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall
- re-echoed and the hollow armour rang with it -- "truth in what
- Hester says, and in the feeling which inspires her! God gave her
- the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its
- nature and requirements -- both seemingly so peculiar -- which no
- other mortal being can possess. And, moreover, is there not a
- quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother
- and this child?"
-
- "Ay -- how is that, good Master Dimmesdale?" interrupted the
- Governor. "Make that plain, I pray you!"
-
- "It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it
- otherwise, do we not hereby say that the Heavenly Father, the
- creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognised a deed of sin, and
- made of no account the distinction between unhallowed lust and
- holy love? This child of its father's guilt and its mother's
- shame has come from the hand of God, to work in many ways upon
- her heart, who pleads so earnestly and with such bitterness of
- spirit the right to keep her. It was meant for a blessing -- for
- the one blessing of her life! It was meant, doubtless, the
- mother herself hath told us, for a retribution, too;
-
-
-
- THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 139
-
-
-
- a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a
- sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy!
- Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor
- child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears
- her bosom?"
-
- "Well said again!" cried good Mr. Wilson. "l feared the woman
- had no better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!"
-
- "Oh, not so! -- not so!" continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She
- recognises, believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought
- in the existence of that child. And may she feel, too -- what,
- methinks, is the very truth -- that this boon was meant, above
- all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve
- her from blacker depths of sin into which Satan might else have
- sought to plunge her! Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful
- woman, that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of
- eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care -- to be trained up
- by her to righteousness, to remind her, at every moment, of her
- fall, but yet to teach her, as if it were by the Creator's sacred
- pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also
- will bring its parents thither! Herein is the sinful mother
- happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's sake, then,
- and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as
- Providence hath seen fit to place them!"
-
- "You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old
- Roger Chillingworth, smiling at him.
-
- "And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath
- spoken," added the Rev. Mr. Wilson.
-
-
-
- 140 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- "What say you, worshipful Master Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded
- well for the poor woman?"
-
- "Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate; "and hath adduced such
- arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands;
- so long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the
- woman. Care must be had nevertheless, to put the child to due
- and stated examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master
- Dimmesdale's. Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must
- take heed that she go both to school and to meeting. "
-
- The young minister, on ceasing to speak had withdrawn a few steps
- from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in
- the heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his
- figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous
- with the vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty
- little elf stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the
- grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so
- tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was
- looking on, asked herself -- "Is that my Pearl?" Yet she knew
- that there was love in the child's heart, although it mostly
- revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her lifetime had
- been softened by such gentleness as now. The minister -- for,
- save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than
- these marks of childish preference, accorded spontaneously by a
- spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us
- something truly worthy to be loved -- the minister looked round,
- laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then
- kissed her brow. Little Pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment
- lasted no longer;
-
-
-
- THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 141
-
-
-
- she laughed, and went capering down the hall so airily, that old
- Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched
- the floor.
-
- "The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess," said he
- to Mr. Dimmesdale. "She needs no old woman's broomstick to fly
- withal!"
-
- "A strange child!" remarked old Roger Chillingworth. "It is easy
- to see the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a
- philosopher's research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyse that
- child's nature, and, from it make a mould, to give a shrewd guess
- at the father?"
-
- "Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clue
- of profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. "Better to fast and
- pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery
- as we find it, unless Providence reveal it of its own accord
- Thereby, every good Christian man hath a title to show a father's
- kindness towards the poor, deserted babe. "
-
- The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with
- Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it
- is averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open,
- and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress
- Hibbins, Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the
- same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch.
-
- "Hist, hist!" said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed
- to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. "Wilt
- thou go with us to-night? There will be a merry company in the
- forest; and I well-nigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester
- Prynne should make one. "
-
-
-
- 141 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- "Make my excuse to him, so please you!" answered Hester, with a
- triumphant smile. "I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my
- little Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have
- gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black
- Man's book too, and that with mine own blood!"
-
- "We shall have thee there anon!" said the witch-lady, frowning,
- as she drew back her head.
-
- But here -- if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins
- and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable -- was
- already an illustration of the young minister's argument against
- sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her
- frailty. Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan's
- snare.
-
-
-
-
-
- IX
-
-
-
- THE LEECH
-
-
-
-
-
- Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will
- remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had
- resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how,
- in the crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure,
- stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the
- perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find
- embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of
- sin before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all
- men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the public
- market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach
- them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there
- remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonour; which would
- not fail to be distributed in strict accordance arid proportion
- with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship.
- Then why -- since the choice was with himself -- should the
- individual, whose connexion with the fallen woman had been the
- most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate
- his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not
- to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to
- all but Hester
-
-
-
- 144 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose
- to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded
- his former ties and interest, to vanish out of life as completely
- as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumour
- had long ago consigned him. This purpose once effected, new
- interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new
- purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to
- engage the full strength of his faculties.
-
- In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the
- Puritan town as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction
- than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more
- than a common measure. As his studies, at a previous period of
- his life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical
- science of the day, it was as a physician that he presented
- himself and as such was cordially received. Skilful men, of the
- medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in
- the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of the
- religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic.
- In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the
- higher and more subtle faculties of such men were materialised,
- and that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the
- intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve
- art enough to comprise all of life within itself. At all events,
- the health of the good town of Boston, so far as medicine had
- aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an
- aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were
- stronger testimonials in his favour
-
-
-
- THE LEECH 145
-
-
-
- than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma.
- The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of
- that noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor.
- To such a professional body Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant
- acquisition. He soon manifested his familiarity with the
- ponderous and imposing machinery of antique physic; in which
- every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and
- heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the
- proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian
- captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the
- properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his
- patients that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the
- untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his own
- confidence as the European Pharmacopoeia, which so many learned
- doctors had spent centuries in elaborating.
-
- This learned stranger was exemplary as regarded at least the
- outward forms of a religious life; and early after his arrival,
- had chosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale.
- The young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in
- Oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little
- less than a heavenly ordained apostle, destined, should he live
- and labour for the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds,
- for the now feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had
- achieved for the infancy of the Christian faith. About this
- period, however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently
- begun to fail. By those best acquainted with his habits, the
- paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his
- too
-
-
-
- 146 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial
- duty, and more than all, to the fasts and vigils of which he made
- a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this
- earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp.
- Some declared, that if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die,
- it was cause enough that the world was not worthy to be any
- longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with
- characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence
- should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own
- unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. With
- all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline,
- there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated;
- his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy
- prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight
- alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart
- with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.
-
- Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the
- prospect that his dawning light would be extinguished, all
- untimely, when Roger Chillingworth made his advent to the town.
- His first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence,
- dropping down as it were out of the sky or starting from the
- nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily
- heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be a man of
- skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs and the blossoms of
- wild-flowers, and dug up roots and plucked off twigs from the
- forest-trees like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was
- valueless to common eyes. He was heard to
-
-
-
- THE LEECH 147
-
-
-
- speak of Sir Kenelm Digby and other famous men -- whose
- scientific attainments were esteemed hardly less than
- supernatural -- as having been his correspondents or associates.
- Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come hither?
- What, could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in
- the wilderness? In answer to this query, a rumour gained ground
- -- and however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible
- people -- that Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by
- transporting an eminent Doctor of Physic from a German university
- bodily through the air and setting him down at the door of Mr.
- Dimmesdale's study! Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew
- that Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the
- stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were
- inclined to see a providential hand in Roger Chillingworth's so
- opportune arrival.
-
- This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the
- physician ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached
- himself to him as a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly
- regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility.
- He expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was
- anxious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not
- despondent of a favourable result. The elders, the deacons, the
- motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens of Mr.
- Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he should make
- trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. Mr. Dimmesdale
- gently repelled their entreaties.
-
- "I need no medicine," said he.
-
- But how could the young minister say so, when,
-
-
-
- 148 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- with every successive Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner,
- and his voice more tremulous than before -- when it had now
- become a constant habit, rather than a casual gesture, to press
- his hand over his heart? Was he weary of his labours? Did he
- wish to die? These questions were solemnly propounded to Mr.
- Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston, and the deacons of
- his church, who, to use their own phrase, "dealt with him," on
- the sin of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held
- out. He listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with
- the physician.
-
- "Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in
- fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth's
- professional advice, "I could be well content that my labours,
- and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end
- with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and
- the spiritual go with me to my eternal state, rather than that
- you should put your skill to the proof in my behalf. "
-
- "Ah," replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness, which,
- whether imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, "it is
- thus that a young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not
- having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily!
- And saintly men, who walk with God on earth, would fain be away,
- to walk with him on the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem. "
-
- "Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his
- heart, with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, "were I
- worthier to walk there, I could be better content to toil here. "
-
-
-
- THE LEECH 149
-
-
-
- "Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the
- physician.
-
- In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the
- medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the
- disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to
- look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two
- men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time
- together. For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable
- the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took
- long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various
- walks with the splash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn
- wind-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the
- guest of the other in his place of study and retirement There was
- a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of
- science, in whom he recognised an intellectual cultivation of no
- moderate depth or scope; together with a range and freedom of
- ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the members of
- his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked,
- to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a
- true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment
- largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself
- powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage
- continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of
- society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views;
- it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of
- a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its
- iron framework. Not the less, however, though with a tremulous
- enjoyment,
-
-
-
- 150 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe
- through the medium of another kind of intellect than those with
- which he habitually held converse. It was as if a window were
- thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and
- stifled study, where his life was wasting itself away, amid
- lamp-light, or obstructed day-beams, and the musty fragrance, be
- it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But the air was
- too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. So the
- minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the
- limits of what their Church defined as orthodox.
-
- Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, both
- as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway
- in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when
- thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might
- call out something new to the surface of his character. He
- deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before
- attempting to do him good. Wherever there is a heart and an
- intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the
- peculiarities of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and
- imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the
- bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there.
- So Roger Chillingworth -- the man of skill, the kind and friendly
- physician -- strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving
- among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing
- everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a
- dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has
- opportunity and licence to undertake such a
-
-
-
- THE LEECH 151
-
-
-
- quest, and skill to follow it up. A man burdened with a secret
- should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the
- latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more let
- us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor
- disagreeable prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the
- power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such
- affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have
- spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought if such
- revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so
- often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate
- breath, and here and there a word to indicate that all is
- understood; if to these qualifications of a confidant be joined
- the advantages afforded by his recognised character as a
- physician; -- then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of
- the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark but
- transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the daylight.
-
-
- Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes
- above enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of
- intimacy, as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated
- minds, which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human
- thought and study to meet upon; they discussed every topic of
- ethics and religion, of public affairs, and private character;
- they talked much, on both sides, of matters that seemed personal
- to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied
- must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness
- into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions, indeed,
- that even the nature of Mr.
-
-
-
- 152 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Dimmesdale's bodily disease had never fairly been revealed to
- him. It was a strange reserve!
-
- After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of
- Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were
- lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the
- minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and
- attached physician. There was much joy throughout the town when
- this greatly desirable object was attained. It was held to be
- the best possible measure for the young clergyman's welfare;
- unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorised to do
- so, he had selected some one of the many blooming damsels,
- spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife. This
- latter step, however, there was no present prospect that Arthur
- Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all
- suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his
- articles of Church discipline. Doomed by his own choice,
- therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his
- unsavoury morsel always at another's board, and endure the
- life-long chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself
- only at another's fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious,
- experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord of
- paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very
- man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.
-
- The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good
- social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site
- on which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since been
- built. It the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's home-
-
-
-
- THE LEECH 153
-
-
-
- field, on one side, and so was well adapted to call up serious
- reflections, suited to their respective employments, in both
- minister and man of physic. The motherly care of the good widow
- assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny
- exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create a noontide shadow
- when desirable. The walls were hung round with tapestry, said to
- be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the
- Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan the Prophet,
- in colours still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the
- scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer.
- Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with
- parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis,
- and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even
- while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet
- constrained often to avail themselves. On the other side of the
- house, old Roger Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory:
- not such as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably
- complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus and the means
- of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised alchemist
- knew well how to turn to purpose. With such commodiousness of
- situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in
- his own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the
- other, and bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into
- one another's business.
-
- And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as
- we have intimated, very
-
-
-
- 154 THE SCARLET LEVER
-
-
-
- reasonably imagined that the hand of Providence had done all this
- for the purpose -- besought in so many public and domestic and
- secret prayers -- of restoring the young minister to health.
- But, it must now be said, another portion of the community had
- latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr.
- Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. When an
- uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is
- exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it forms its
- judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and
- warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so profound
- and so unerring as to possess the character of truth
- supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which we
- speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger Chillingworth by
- no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation. There was an
- aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London
- at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty
- years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under
- some other name, which the narrator of the story had now
- forgotten, in company with Dr. Forman, the famous old conjurer,
- who was implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three
- individuals hinted that the man of skill, during his Indian
- captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining in the
- incantations of the savage priests, who were universally
- acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing
- seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black art. A
- large number -- and many of these were persons of such sober
- sense and practical observation that their opinions would have
-
-
-
- THE LEECH 155
-
-
-
- been valuable in other matters -- affirmed that Roger
- Chillingworth's aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he
- had dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with Mr.
- Dimmesdale. At first, his expression had been calm, meditative,
- scholar-like. Now there was something ugly and evil in his face,
- which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the
- more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon him.
- According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been
- brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel;
- and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting sooty with
- the smoke.
-
- To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion
- that the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of
- special sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted
- either by Satan himself or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old
- Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine
- permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's
- intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible man, it was
- confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. The
- people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come
- forth out of the conflict transfigured with the glory which he
- would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it was sad to
- think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must
- struggle towards his triumph.
-
- Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depth of the
- poor minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one, and the victory
- anything but secure.
-
-
-
-
-
- X.
-
-
-
- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT
-
-
-
-
-
- Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in
- temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and
- in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He
- had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and
- equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if
- the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and
- figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and
- wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible
- fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity,
- seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again
- until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor
- clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather,
- like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel
- that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find
- nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas, for his own soul,
- if these were what he sought!
-
- Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning
- blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us
- say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from
- Bunyan's awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the
- pilgrim's
-
-
-
- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 157
-
-
-
- face. The soil where this dark miner was working bad perchance
- shown indications that encouraged him.
-
- "This man," said he, at one such moment, to himself, "pure as
- they deem him -- all spiritual as he seems -- hath inherited a
- strong animal nature from his father or his mother. Let us dig a
- little further in the direction of this vein!"
-
- Then after long search into the minister's dim interior, and
- turning over many precious materials, in the shape of high
- aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure
- sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and
- illuminated by revelation -- all of which invaluable gold was
- perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker -- he would turn
- back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards another point. He
- groped along as stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary
- an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only
- half asleep -- or, it may be, broad awake -- with purpose to
- steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his
- eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would
- now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his
- presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his
- victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of
- nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would
- become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had
- thrust itself into relation with him. But Old Roger
- Chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive;
- and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there
- the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathising,
-
- but never intrusive friend.
-
-
-
- 158 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's
- character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick
- hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all
- mankind. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize
- his enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still
- kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving he old
- physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for
- recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were
- converted into drugs of potency.
-
- One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the
- sill of the open window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he
- talked with Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining
- a bundle of unsightly plants.
-
- "Where," asked he, with a look askance at them -- for it was the
- clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked
- straight forth at any object, whether human or inanimate" where,
- my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark,
- flabby leaf?"
-
- "Even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician,
- continuing his employment. "They are new to me. I found them
- growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of
- the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon
- themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his
- heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried
- with him, and which he had done better to confess during his
- lifetime. "
-
- "Perchance," said Mr. Dimmesdale, "he earnestly desired it, but
- could not. "
-
- "And wherefore?" rejoined the physician.
-
-
-
- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 159
-
-
-
- "Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly
- for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up
- out of a buried heart, to make manifest, an outspoken crime?"
-
- "That, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours," replied the
- minister. "There can be, if I forbode aright, no power, short of
- the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by
- type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human
- heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must
- perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be
- revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to
- understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then
- to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That,
- surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless
- I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual
- satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting,
- on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A
- knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest
- solution of that problem. And, I conceive moreover, that the
- hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of, will yield
- them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy
- unutterable. "
-
- "Then why not reveal it here?" asked Roger Chillingworth,
- glancing quietly aside at the minister. "Why should not the
- guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?"
-
- "They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast,
- as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. "Many, many a
- poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the
- death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. And
- ever,
-
-
-
- 160 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- after such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have I witnessed in
- those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last draws free
- air, after a long stifling with his own polluted breath. How can
- it be otherwise? Why should a wretched man -- guilty, we will
- say, of murder -- prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his
- own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the
- universe take care of it!"
-
- "Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm
- physician.
-
- "True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But not
- to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept
- silent by the very constitution of their nature. Or -- can we
- not suppose it? -- guilty as they may be, retaining,
- nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they
- shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of
- men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no
- evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own
- unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures,
- looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all
- speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid
- themselves. "
-
- "These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with
- somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture
- with his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame that
- rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for
- God's service -- these holy impulses may or may not coexist in
- their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has
- unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed
- within them. But, if
-
-
-
- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 161
-
-
-
- they seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their
- unclean hands! If they would serve their fellowmen, let them do
- it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in
- constraining them to penitential self-abasement! Would thou have
- me to believe, O wise and pious friend, that a false show can be
- better -- can be more for God's glory, or man' welfare -- than
- God's own truth? Trust me, such men deceive themselves!"
-
- "It may be so," said the young clergyman, indifferently, as
- waiving a discussion that he considered irrelevant or
- unseasonable. He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from
- any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous
- temperament. -- "But, now, I would ask of my well-skilled
- physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have profited
- by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine?"
-
- Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear,
- wild laughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the
- adjacent burial-ground. Looking instinctively from the open
- window -- for it was summer-time -- the minister beheld Hester
- Prynne and little Pearl passing along the footpath that traversed
- the enclosure. Pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was in
- one of those moods of perverse merriment which, whenever they
- occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the sphere of
- sympathy or human contact. She now skipped irreverently from one
- grave to another; until coming to the broad, flat, armorial
- tombstone of a departed worthy -- perhaps of Isaac Johnson
- himself -- she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's
- command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously,
- little Pearl paused
-
-
-
- 162 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside
- the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged them along the
- lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal bosom, to
- which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously adhered.
- Hester did not pluck them off.
-
- Roger Chillingworth had by this time approached the window and
- smiled grimly down.
-
- "There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for
- human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that
- child's composition," remarked he, as much to himself as to his
- companion. "I saw her, the other day, bespatter the Governor
- himself with water at the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in
- heaven's name, is she? Is the imp altogether evil? Hath she
- affections? Hath she any discoverable principle of being?"
-
- "None, save the freedom of a broken law," answered Mr.
- Dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the
- point within himself, "Whether capable of good, I know not. "
-
- The child probably overheard their voices, for, looking up to the
- window with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and
- intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Rev. Mr.
- Dimmesdale. The sensitive clergyman shrank, with nervous dread,
- from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her
- little hands in the most extravagant ecstacy. Hester Prynne,
- likewise, had involuntarily looked up, and all these four
- persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the
- child laughed aloud, and shouted -- "Come away, mother! Come
- away, or yonder old black man will catch you! He hath got
-
-
-
- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 163
-
-
-
- hold of the minister already. Come away, mother or he will catch
- you! But he cannot catch little Pearl!"
-
- So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking
- fantastically among the hillocks of the dead people, like a
- creature that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried
- generation, nor owned herself akin to it. It was as if she had
- been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be
- permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself without
- her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.
-
- "There goes a woman," resumed Roger Chillingworth, after a pause,
- "who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of
- hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is
- Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet
- letter on her breast?"
-
- "I do verily believe it," answered the clergyman. "Nevertheless,
- I cannot answer for her. There was a look of pain in her face
- which I would gladly have been spared the sight of. But still,
- methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to
- show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it up
- in his heart. "
-
- There was another pause, and the physician began anew to examine
- and arrange the plants which he had gathered.
-
- "You inquired of me, a little time agone," said he, at length,
- "my judgment as touching your health. "
-
- "I did," answered the clergyman, "and would gladly learn it.
- Speak frankly, I pray you, be it for life or death. "
-
-
-
- 164 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- "Freely then, and plainly," said the physician, still busy with
- his plants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr. Dimmesdale, "the
- disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself nor as outwardly
- manifested, -- in so far, at least as the symptoms have been laid
- open to my observation. Looking daily at you, my good sir, and
- watching the tokens of your aspect now for months gone by, I
- should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but
- that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure
- you. But I know not what to say, the disease is what I seem to
- know, yet know it not. "
-
- "You speak in riddles, learned sir," said the pale minister,
- glancing aside out of the window.
-
- "Then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician, "and I
- crave pardon, sir, should it seem to require pardon, for this
- needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask as your friend, as
- one having charge, under Providence, of your life and physical
- well being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly
- laid open and recounted to me?"
-
- "How can you question it?" asked the minister. "Surely it were
- child's play to call in a physician and then hide the sore!"
-
- "You would tell me, then, that I know all?" said Roger
- Chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright with
- intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's face.
- "Be it so! But again! He to whom only the outward and physical
- evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which
- he is called upon to cure. A bodily disease, which we look upon
- as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a
- symptom of some ailment in the spiritual
-
-
-
- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 165
-
-
-
- part. Your pardon once again, good sir, if my speech give the
- shadow of offence. You, sir, of all men whom I have known, are
- he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and
- identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the
- instrument. "
-
- "Then I need ask no further," said the clergyman, somewhat
- hastily rising from his chair. "You deal not, I take it, in
- medicine for the soul!"
-
- "Thus, a sickness," continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in
- an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, but standing
- up and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with
- his low, dark, and misshapen figure, -- "a sickness, a sore
- place, if we may so call it, in your spirit hath immediately its
- appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. Would you,
- therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil? How may
- this be unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in
- your soul?"
-
- "No, not to thee! not to an earthly physician!" cried Mr.
- Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and bright,
- and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger Chillingworth. "Not
- to thee! But, if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit
- myself to the one Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with
- His good pleasure, can cure, or he can kill. Let Him do with me
- as, in His justice and wisdom, He shall see good. But who art
- thou, that meddlest in this matter? that dares thrust himself
- between the sufferer and his God?"
-
- With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room.
-
- "It is as well to have made this step," said Roger Chillingworth
- to himself, looking after the minister, with a grave smile.
- "There is nothing lost. We shall be friends again anon. But
- see, now, how passion
-
-
-
- 166 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! As
- with one passion so with another. He hath done a wild thing ere
- now, this pious Master Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his
- heart. "
-
- It proved not difficult to re-establish the intimacy of the two
- companions, on the same footing and in the same degree as
- heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy,
- was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him into
- an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in
- the physician's words to excuse or palliate. He marvelled,
- indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust back the kind
- old man, when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty
- to bestow, and which the minister himself had expressly sought.
- With these remorseful feelings, he lost no time in making the
- amplest apologies, and besought his friend still to continue the
- care which, if not successful in restoring him to health, had, in
- all probability, been the means of prolonging his feeble
- existence to that hour. Roger Chillingworth readily assented,
- and went on with his medical supervision of the minister; doing
- his best for him, in all good faith, but always quitting the
- patient's apartment, at the close of the professional interview,
- with a mysterious and puzzled smile upon his lips. This
- expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but grew
- strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold.
-
- "A rare case," he muttered. "I must needs look deeper into it.
- A strange sympathy betwixt soul and body! Were it only for the
- art's sake, I must search this matter to the bottom. "
-
- It came to pass, not long after the scene above
-
-
-
- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 167
-
-
-
- recorded, that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, noon-day, and
- entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his
- chair, with a large black-letter volume open before him on the
- table. It must have been a work of vast ability in the
- somniferous school of literature. The profound depth of the
- minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one
- of those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful,
- and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To
- such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now
- withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old
- Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came
- into the room. The physician advanced directly in front of his
- patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the
- vestment, that hitherto had always covered it even from the
- professional eye.
-
- Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred.
-
- After a brief pause, the physician turned away.
-
- But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and honor! With what a
- ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by
- the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the
- whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously
- manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his
- arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor!
- Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his
- ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports
- himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won
- into his kingdom.
-
- But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was
- the trait of wonder in it!
-
-
-
-
-
- XI
-
-
-
- THE INTERIOR OF A HEART
-
-
-
-
-
- After the incident last described, the intercourse between the
- clergyman and the physician, though externally the same, was
- really of another character than it had previously been. The
- intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain
- path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had
- laid out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he
- appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice,
- hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man,
- which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal
- had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted
- friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the
- agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful
- thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from
- the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to
- be revealed to him, the Pitiless -- to him, the Unforgiving! All
- that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom
- nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance!
-
- The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme
- Roger Chillingworth, however,
-
-
-
- THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 169
-
-
-
- was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with the
- aspect of affairs, which Providence -- using the avenger and his
- victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning, where it
- seemed most to punish -- had substituted for his black devices A
- revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. It
- mattered little for his object, whether celestial or from what
- other region. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations
- betwixt him and Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external
- presence, but the very inmost soul of the latter, seemed to be
- brought out before his eyes, so that he could see and comprehend
- its every movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator
- only, but a chief actor in the poor minister's interior world.
- He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a
- throb of agony? The victim was for ever on the rack; it needed
- only to know the spring that controlled the engine: and the
- physician knew it well. Would he startle him with sudden fear?
- As at the waving of a magician's wand, up rose a grisly phantom
- -- up rose a thousand phantoms -- in many shapes, of death, or
- more awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and
- pointing with their fingers at his breast!
-
- All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the
- minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil
- influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its
- actual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully -- even, at
- times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred -- at the
- deformed figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait,
- his grizzled beard, his slightest and
-
-
-
- 170 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were
- odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be relied
- on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was
- willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to
- assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr.
- Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was
- infecting his heart's entire substance, attributed all his
- presentiments to no other cause. He took himself to task for his
- bad sympathies in reference to Roger Chillingworth, disregarded
- the lesson that he should have drawn from them, and did his best
- to root them out. Unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as
- a matter of principle, continued his habits of social familiarity
- with the old man, and thus gave him constant opportunities for
- perfecting the purpose to which -- poor forlorn creature that he
- was, and more wretched than his victim -- the avenger had devoted
- himself.
-
- While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and
- tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the
- machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale
- had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won
- it indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual
- gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and
- communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural
- activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. His fame,
- though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the
- soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several
- of them were. There are scholars among them, who had spent more
-
-
-
- THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 171
-
-
-
- years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine
- profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived; and who might well,
- therefore, be more profoundly versed in such solid and valuable
- attainments than their youthful brother. There were men, too, of
- a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far
- greater share of shrewd, hard iron, or granite understanding;
- which, duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal
- ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and
- unamiable variety of the clerical species. There were others
- again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated
- by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and
- etherealised, moreover, by spiritual communications with the
- better world, into which their purity of life had almost
- introduced these holy personages, with their garments of
- mortality still clinging to them. All that they lacked was, the
- gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in
- tongues of flame; symbolising, it would seem, not the power of
- speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing
- the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language.
- These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and
- rarest attestation of their office, the Tongue of Flame. They
- would have vainly sought -- had they ever dreamed of seeking --
- to express the highest truths through the humblest medium of
- familiar words and images. Their voices came down, afar and
- indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt.
-
-
- Not improbably, it was to this latter class of ms that Mr.
- Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of
-
-
-
- 172 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- character, naturally belonged. To the high mountain peaks of
- faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not the tendency
- been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be, of crime or
- anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. It kept him
- down on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal
- attributes, whose voice the angels might else have listened to
- and answered! But this very burden it was that gave him
- sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so
- that his heart vibrated in unison with theirs, and received their
- pain into itself and sent its own throb of pain through a
- thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad, persuasive eloquence.
- Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes terrible! The people knew not
- the power that moved them thus. They deemed the young clergyman
- a miracle of holiness. They fancied him the mouth-piece of
- Heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love. In their
- eyes, the very ground on which he trod was sanctified. The
- virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a passion
- so imbued with religious sentiment, that they imagined it to be
- all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as
- their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. The aged
- members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so
- feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity,
- believed that he would go heavenward before them, and enjoined it
- upon their children that their old bones should be buried close
- to their young pastor's holy grave. And all this time,
- perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave,
- he questioned with himself whether the grass
-
-
-
- THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 173
-
-
-
- would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be
- buried!
-
- It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration
- tortured him. It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and
- to reckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or
- value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their
- life. Then what was he? -- a substance? -- or the dimmest of
- all shadows? He longed to speak out from his own pulpit at the
- full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was. "I,
- whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood -- I,
- who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward,
- taking upon myself to hold communion in your behalf with the Most
- High Omniscience -- I, in whose daily life you discern the
- sanctity of Enoch -- I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a
- gleam along my earthly track, whereby the Pilgrims that shall
- come after me may be guided to the regions of the blest -- I, who
- have laid the hand of baptism upon your children -- I, who have
- breathed the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the
- Amen sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted -- I,
- your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a
- pollution and a lie!"
-
- More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a
- purpose never to come down its steps until he should have spoken
- words like the above. More than once he had cleared his throat,
- and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when
- sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of
- his soul. More than once -- nay, more than a hundred times -- he
- had actually
-
-
-
- 174 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- spoken! Spoken! But how? He had told his hearers that he was
- altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of
- sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity, and
- that the only wonder was that they did not see his wretched body
- shrivelled up before their eyes by the burning wrath of the
- Almighty! Could there be plainer speech than this? Would not
- the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse,
- and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so,
- indeed! They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more.
- They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those
- self-condemning words. "The godly youth!" said they among
- themselves. "The saint on earth! Alas! if he discern such
- sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he
- behold in thine or mine!" The minister well knew -- subtle, but
- remorseful hypocrite that he was! -- the light in which his
- vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat
- upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had
- gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without
- the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the
- very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And
- yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and
- loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all
- things else, he loathed his miserable self!
-
- His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with
- the old, corrupted faith of Rome than with the better light of
- the church in which he had been born and bred. In Mr.
- Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a
- bloody
-
-
-
- THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 175
-
-
-
- scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had
- plied it on his own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself the
- while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that
- bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of
- many other pious Puritans, to fast -- not however, like them, in
- order to purify the body, and render it the fitter medium of
- celestial illumination -- but rigorously, and until his knees
- trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils,
- likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness,
- sometimes with a glimmering lamp, and sometimes, viewing his own
- face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he
- could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection
- wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself. In these
- lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to
- flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of
- their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly
- and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it was a
- herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale
- minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining
- angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more
- ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth,
- and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his
- mother turning her face away as she passed by Ghost of a mother
- -- thinnest fantasy of a mother -- methinks she might yet have
- thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through the
- chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided
- Hester Prynne leading along little
-
-
-
- 176 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at
- the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then at the clergyman's own
- breast.
-
- None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by
- an effort of his will, he could discern substances through their
- misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not
- solid in their nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that
- big, square, leather-bound and brazen-clasped volume of divinity.
- But, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest and most
- substantial things which the poor minister now dealt with. It is
- the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals
- the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around
- us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit's joy and
- nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false -- it
- is impalpable -- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he
- himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a
- shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. The only truth that
- continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on this earth
- was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled
- expression of it in his aspect. Had he once found power to
- smile, and wear a face of gaiety, there would have been no such
- man!
-
- On one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, but
- forborne to picture forth, the minister started from his chair.
- A new thought had struck him. There might be a moment's peace in
- it. Attiring himself with as much care as if it had been for
- public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly
- down the staircase, undid the door, and issued forth.
-
-
-
-
-
- XII.
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL
-
-
-
-
-
- Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps
- actually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr.
- Dimmesdale reached the spot where, now so long since, Hester
- Prynne had lived through her first hours of public ignominy. The
- same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the
- storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with
- the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained
- standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The minister
- went up the steps.
-
- It was an obscure night in early May. An unwearied pall of cloud
- muffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon. If the
- same multitude which had stood as eye-witnesses while Hester
- Prynne sustained her punishment could now have been summoned
- forth, they would have discerned no face above the platform nor
- hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark grey of the
- midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was no peril of
- discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so pleased him,
- until morning should redden in the east, without other risk than
- that the dank and chill night air would creep into his frame, and
- stiffen his joints
-
-
-
- 178 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough;
- thereby defrauding the expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer
- and sermon. No eye could see him, save that ever-wakeful one
- which had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody scourge.
- Why, then, had he come hither? Was it but the mockery of
- penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with
- itself! A mockery at which angels blushed and wept, while fiends
- rejoiced with jeering laughter! He had been driven hither by the
- impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose
- own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which
- invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the
- other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.
- Poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden
- itself with crime? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their
- choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert
- their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it
- off at once! This feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do
- neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which
- intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of
- heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.
-
- And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of
- expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of
- mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his
- naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth,
- there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous
- tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power
- to restrain himself, he shrieked
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL I79
-
-
-
- aloud: an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was
- beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the
- hills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so
- much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound,
- and were bandying it to and fro.
-
- "It is done!" muttered the minister, covering his face with his
- hands. "The whole town will awake and hurry forth, and find me
- here!"
-
- But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded with a far
- greater power, to his own startled ears, than it actually
- possessed. The town did not awake; or, if it did, the drowsy
- slumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in a
- dream, or for the noise of witches, whose voices, at that period,
- were often heard to pass over the settlements or lonely cottages,
- as they rode with Satan through the air. The clergyman,
- therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes
- and looked about him. At one of the chamber-windows of Governor
- Bellingham's mansion, which stood at some distance, on the line
- of another street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistrate
- himself with a lamp in his hand a white night-cap on his head,
- and a long white gown enveloping his figure. He looked like a
- ghost evoked unseasonably from the grave. The cry had evidently
- startled him. At another window of the same house, moreover
- appeared old Mistress Hibbins, the Governor's sister, also with a
- lamp, which even thus far off revealed the expression of her sour
- and discontented face. She thrust forth her head from the
- lattice, and looked anxiously upward Beyond the shadow of a
- doubt, this venerable
-
-
-
- 180 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- witch-lady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale's outcry, and interpreted
- it, with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the
- clamour of the fiends and night-hags, with whom she was well
- known to make excursions in the forest.
-
- Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp, the old lady
- quickly extinguished her own, and vanished. Possibly, she went
- up among the clouds. The minister saw nothing further of her
- motions. The magistrate, after a wary observation of the
- darkness -- into which, nevertheless, he could see but little
- further than he might into a mill-stone -- retired from the
- window.
-
- The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, however, were
- soon greeted by a little glimmering light, which, at first a long
- way off was approaching up the street. It threw a gleam of
- recognition, on here a post, and there a garden fence, and here a
- latticed window-pane, and there a pump, with its full trough of
- water, and here again an arched door of oak, with an iron
- knocker, and a rough log for the door-step. The Reverend Mr.
- Dimmesdale noted all these minute particulars, even while firmly
- convinced that the doom of his existence was stealing onward, in
- the footsteps which he now heard; and that the gleam of the
- lantern would fall upon him in a few moments more, and reveal his
- long-hidden secret. As the light drew nearer, be beheld, within
- its illuminated circle, his brother clergyman -- or, to speak
- more accurately, his professional father, as well as highly
- valued friend -- the Reverend Mr. Wilson, who, as Mr. Dimmesdale
- now conjectured, had been praying at the bedside of
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL 181
-
-
-
- some dying man. And so he had. The good old minister came
- freshly from the death-chamber of Governor Winthrop, who had
- passed from earth to heaven within that very hour. And now
- surrounded, like the saint-like personage of olden times, with a
- radiant halo, that glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin --
- as if the departed Governor had left him an inheritance of his
- glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the distant shine of
- the celestial city, while looking thitherward to see the
- triumphant pilgrim pass within its gates -- now, in short, good
- Father Wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps with a
- lighted lantern! The glimmer of this luminary suggested the
- above conceits to Mr. Dimmesdale, who smiled -- nay, almost
- laughed at them -- and then wondered if he was gag mad.
-
- As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed beside the scaffold, closely
- muffling his Geneva cloak about him with one arm, and holding the
- lantern before his breast with the other, the minister could
- hardly restrain himself from speaking --
-
- "A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson. Come up hither,
- I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me!"
-
- Good Heavens! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually spoken? For one
- instant he believed that these words had passed his lips. But
- they were uttered only within his imagination. The venerable
- Father Wilson continued to step slowly onward, looking carefully
- at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his
- head towards the guilty platform. When the light of the
- glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the minister discovered,
- by the
-
-
-
- 182 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- faintness which came over him, that the last few moments had been
- a crisis of terrible anxiety, although his mind had made an
- involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid
- playfulness.
-
- Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again
- stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his
- limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the
- night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps
- of the scaffold. Morning would break and find him there The
- neighbourhood would begin to rouse itself. The earliest riser,
- coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a
- vaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and
- half-crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking from
- door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost -- as
- he needs must think it -- of some defunct transgressor. A dusky
- tumult would flap its wings from one house to another. Then --
- the morning light still waxing stronger -- old patriarchs would
- rise up in great haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly
- dames, without pausing to put off their night-gear. The whole
- tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen
- with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public
- view with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old
- Governor Bellingham would come grimly forth, with his King James'
- ruff fastened askew, and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the
- forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as
- having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good
- Father Wilson too, after spending half the night at a death-bed,
- and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early,
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL 183
-
-
-
- out of his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, likewise,
- would come the elders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's church,
- and the young virgins who so idolized their minister, and had
- made a shrine for him in their white bosoms, which now,
- by-the-bye, in their hurry and confusion, they would scantly have
- given themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs. All people,
- in a word, would come stumbling over their thresholds, and
- turning up their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the
- scaffold. Whom would they discern there, with the red eastern
- light upon his brow? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale,
- half-frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where
- Hester Prynne had stood
-
- Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the
- minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a
- great peal of laughter. It was immediately responded to by a
- light, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart
- -- but lie knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as
- acute -- he recognised the tones of little Pearl.
-
- "Pearl! Little Pearl!" cried he, after a moment's pause; then,
- suppressing his voice -- "Hester! Hester Prynne! Are you
- there?"
-
- "Yes; it is Hester Prynne!" she replied, in a tone of surprise;
- and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from the
- side-walk, along which she had been passing. "It is I, and my
- little Pearl. "
-
- "Whence come you, Hester?" asked the minister. "What sent you
- hither?"
-
- "I have been watching at a death-bed," answered Hester Prynne "at
- Governor Winthrop's death-bed,
-
-
-
- 184 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- and have taken his measure for a robe, and am now going homeward
- to my dwelling. "
-
- "Come up hither, Hester, thou and Little Pearl," said the
- Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. "Ye have both been here before, but I
- was not with you. Come up hither once again, and we will stand
- all three together. "
-
- She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform,
- holding little Pearl by the hand. The minister felt for the
- child's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so,
- there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life
- than his own pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying
- through all his veins, as if the mother and the child were
- communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. The
- three formed an electric chain.
-
- "Minister!" whispered little Pearl.
-
- "What wouldst thou say, child?" asked Mr. Dimmesdale.
-
- "`Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?"
- inquired Pearl.
-
- "Nay; not so, my little Pearl," answered the minister; for, with
- the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure,
- that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon
- him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction in which --
- with a strange joy, nevertheless -- he now found himself -- " not
- so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee
- one other day, but not to-morrow. "
-
- Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. But the
- minister held it fast.
-
- A moment longer, my child!" said he.
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL 185
-
-
-
- "But wilt thou promise," asked Pearl, "to take my hand, and
- mother's hand, to-morrow noontide?
-
- "Not then, Pearl," said the minister; "but another time. "
-
- "And what other time?" persisted the child.
-
- "At the great judgment day," whispered the minister; and,
- strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of
- the truth impelled him to answer the child so. "Then, and there,
- before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I must stand
- together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our
- meeting!''
-
- Pearl laughed again.
-
- But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far
- and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by
- one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often
- observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the
- atmosphere So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly
- illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth.
- The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It
- showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of
- mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to
- familiar objects by an unaccustomed light The wooden houses, with
- their jutting storeys and quaint gable-peaks; the doorsteps and
- thresholds with the early grass springing up about them; the
- garden-plots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track,
- little worn, and even in the market-place margined with green on
- either side -- all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect
- that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of
- this world
-
-
-
- 186 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- they had ever borne before. And there stood the minister, with
- his hand over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered
- letter glimmering on her bosom; and little Pearl, herself a
- symbol, and the connecting link between those two. They stood in
- the noon of that strange and solemn splendour, as if it were the
- light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall
- unite all who belong to one another.
-
- There was witchcraft in little Pearl's eyes; and her face, as she
- glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smile which
- made its expression frequently so elvish. She withdrew her hand
- from Mr. Dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. But he
- clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes towards
- the zenith.
-
- Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all
- meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena that occured
- with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so
- many revelations from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing
- spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows seen in the
- midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to
- have been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. We doubt
- whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell New
- England, from its settlement down to revolutionary times, of
- which the inhabitants had not been previously warned by some
- spectacle of its nature. Not seldom, it had been seen by
- multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested on the
- faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder through
- the coloured, magnifying, and distorted medium of his
- imagination, and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought.
- It
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL 187
-
-
-
- was, indeed, a majestic idea that the destiny of nations should
- be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven.
- A scroll so wide might not be deemed too expensive for Providence
- to write a people's doom upon. The belief was a favourite one
- with our forefathers, as betokening that their infant
- commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of peculiar
- intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when an
- individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on
- the same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only be
- the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man,
- rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret
- pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature,
- until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting
- page for his soul's history and fate.
-
- We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and
- heart that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld
- there the appearance of an immense letter -- the letter A --
- marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may
- have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil
- of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave
- it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's
- guilt might have seen another symbol in it.
-
- There was a singular circumstance that characterised Mr.
- Dimmesdale's psychological state at this moment. All the time
- that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless,
- perfectly aware that little Pearl was hinting her finger towards
- old Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the
- scaffold. The minister appeared to see him, with the same glance
-
-
-
- 188 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- that discerned the miraculous letter. To his feature as to all
- other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or
- it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at
- all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked
- upon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky,
- and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester
- Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger
- Chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing
- there with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid was the
- expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that
- it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness after the
- meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all
- things else were at once annihilated.
-
- "Who is that man, Hester?" gasped Mr. Dimmesdale, overcome with
- terror. "I shiver at him! Dost thou know the man? I hate him,
- Hester!"
-
- She remembered her oath, and was silent.
-
- "I tell thee, my soul shivers at him!" muttered the minister
- again. "Who is he? Who is he? Canst thou do nothing for me? I
- have a nameless horror of the man!"
-
- "Minister," said little Pearl, "I can tell thee who he is!"
-
- "Quickly, then, child!" said the minister, bending his ear close
- to her lips. "Quickly, and as low as thou canst whisper. "
-
- Pearl mumbled something into his ear that sounded, indeed, like
- human language, but was only such gibberish as children may be
- heard amusing themselves with by the hour together. At all
- events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old
- Roger
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL 189
-
-
-
- Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite
- clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind.
- The elvish child then laughed aloud.
-
- "Dost thou mock me now?" said the minister.
-
- "Thou wast not bold! -- thou wast not true!" answered the child.
- "Thou wouldst not promise to take my hand, and mother's hand,
- to-morrow noon-tide!"
-
- "Worthy sir," answered the physician, who had now advanced to the
- foot of the platform -- "pious Master Dimmesdale! can this be
- you? Well, well, indeed! We men of study, whose heads are in
- our books, have need to be straitly looked after! We dream in
- our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good sir, and
- my dear friend, I pray you let me lead you home!"
-
- "How knewest thou that I was here?" asked the minister,
- fearfully.
-
- "Verily, and in good faith," answered Roger Chillingworth, "I
- knew nothing of the matter. I had spent the better part of the
- night at the bedside of the worshipful Governor Winthrop, doing
- what my poor skill might to give him ease. He, going home to a
- better world, I, likewise, was on my way homeward, when this
- light shone out. Come with me, I beseech you, Reverend sir, else
- you will be poorly able to do Sabbath duty to-morrow. Aha! see
- now how they trouble the brain -- these books! -- these books!
- You should study less, good sir, and take a little pastime, or
- these night whimsies will grow upon you. "
-
- "I will go home with you," said Mr. Dimmesdale.
-
- With a chill despondency, like one awakening, all nerveless, from
- an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physician, and was led
- away.
-
-
-
- I90 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- The next day, however, being the Sabbath, he preached a discourse
- which was held to be the richest and most powerful, and the most
- replete with heavenly influences, that had ever proceeded from
- his lips. Souls, it is said, more souls than one, were brought
- to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within
- themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards Mr. Dimmesdale
- throughout the long hereafter. But as he came down the pulpit
- steps, the grey-bearded sexton met him, holding up a black glove,
- which the minister recognised as his own.
-
- "It was found," said the Sexton, "this morning on the scaffold
- where evil-doers are set up to public shame. Satan dropped it
- there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your
- reverence. But, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and
- always is. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!"
-
- "Thank you, my good friend," said the minister, gravely, but
- startled at heart; for so confused was his remembrance, that he
- had almost brought himself to look at the events of the past
- night as visionary.
-
- "Yes, it seems to be my glove, indeed!"
-
- "And, since Satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs
- handle him without gloves henceforward," remarked the old sexton,
- grimly smiling. "But did your reverence hear of the portent that
- was seen last night? a great red letter in the sky -- the letter
- A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good
- Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was
- doubtless held fit that there should be some notice thereof!"
-
- "No," answered the minister; "I had not heard of it. "
-
-
-
-
-
- XIII.
-
-
-
- ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER
-
-
-
-
-
- In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester
- Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the
- clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His
- moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It
- grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual
- faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps
- acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given
- them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from
- all others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate
- action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been
- brought to bear, and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale's
- well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor fallen man had
- once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with
- which he had appealed to her -- the outcast woman -- for support
- against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided,
- moreover, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little
- accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her
- ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself,
- Hester saw -- or seemed to see -- that there lay a responsibility
- upon her in
-
-
-
- 192 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no other, nor to
- the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest
- of humankind -- links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever
- the material -- had all been broken. Here was the iron link of
- mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all
- other ties, it brought along with it its obligations.
-
- Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in
- which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy.
- Years had come and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her
- mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its
- fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the
- townspeople. As is apt to be the case when a person stands out
- in any prominence before the community, and, at the same time,
- interferes neither with public nor individual interests and
- convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up
- in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human
- nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play,
- it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and
- quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the
- change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original
- feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne there was
- neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the
- public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she
- made no claim upon it in requital for what she suffered; she did
- not weigh upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity
- of her life during all these years in which she had been set
- apart to infamy was reckoned
-
-
-
- ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 193
-
-
-
- largely in her favour. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of
- mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining
- anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had
- brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.
-
- It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put forward even
- the humblest title to share in the world's privileges --
- further than to breathe the common air and earn daily bread for
- little Pearl and herself by the faithful labour of her hands --
- she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man
- whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to
- give of her little substance to every demand of poverty, even
- though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of
- the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought
- for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's
- robe. None so self-devoted as Hester when pestilence stalked
- through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether
- general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found
- her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate,
- into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy
- twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold
- intercourse with her fellow-creature There glimmered the
- embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere
- the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. It had
- even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's bard extremity, across
- the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while
- the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of
- futurity could reach him. In such emergencies Hester's nature
-
-
-
- 194 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- showed itself warm and rich -- a well-spring of human tenderness,
- unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest.
- Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow
- for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of
- Mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so
- ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to
- this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such
- helpfulness was found in her -- so much power to do, and power to
- sympathise -- that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A
- by its original signification. They said that it meant Abel, so
- strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.
-
- It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When
- sunshine came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded
- across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without
- one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any
- were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously.
- Meeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive
- their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her, she laid
- her finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. This might be
- pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the
- softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind.
- The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying
- common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but
- quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal
- is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its
- generosity. Interpreting Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal
- of this nature,
-
-
-
- ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 195
-
-
-
- society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign
- countenance than she cared to be favoured with, or, perchance,
- than she deserved.
-
- The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were
- longer in acknowledging the influence of Hester's good qualities
- than the people. The prejudices which they shared in common with
- the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron frame-work of
- reasoning, that made it a far tougher labour to expel them. Day
- by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing
- into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to
- be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men
- of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship
- of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile,
- had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they
- had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of
- that one sin for which she had borne so long and dreary a
- penance, but of her many good deeds since. "Do you see that
- woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers.
- "It is our Hester -- the town's own Hester -- who is so kind to
- the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the
- afflicted!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to
- tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of
- another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of
- bygone years. It was none the less a fact, however, that in the
- eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the
- effect of the cross on a nun's bosom It imparted to the wearer a
- kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all
- peril. Had
-
-
-
- 196 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her sale. It was
- reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his
- arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, and fell
- harmless to the ground.
-
- The effect of the symbol -- or rather, of the position in respect
- to society that was indicated by it -- on the mind of Hester
- Prynne herself was powerful and peculiar. All the light and
- graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this
- red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and
- harsh outline, which might have been repulsive had she possessed
- friends or companions to be repelled by it Even the
- attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It
- might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and
- partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad
- transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either
- been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a
- shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was
- due in part to all these causes, but still more to something
- else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face
- for Love to dwell upon; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic
- and statue like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its
- embrace; nothing in Hester's bosom to make it ever again the
- pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the
- permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such
- is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the
- feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered,
- and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be
- all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tender-
-
-
-
- ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 197
-
-
-
- ness will either be crushed out of her, or -- and the outward
- semblance is the same -- crushed so deeply into her heart that it
- can never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest
- theory. She who has once been a woman, and ceased to be so,
- might at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the
- magic touch to effect the transformation. We shall see whether
- Hester Prynne were ever afterwards so touched and so
- transfigured.
-
- Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be
- attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a
- great measure, from passion and feeling to thought. Standing
- alone in the world -- alone, as to any dependence on society, and
- with little Pearl to be guided and protected -- alone, and
- hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to
- consider it desirable -- she cast away the fragment a broken
- chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age
- in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more
- active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of
- the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these
- had overthrown and rearranged -- not actually, but within the
- sphere of theory, which was their most real abode -- the whole
- system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient
- principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a
- freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of
- the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would
- have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the
- scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the seashore,
- thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no
-
-
-
- 198 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would have
- been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have
- been seen so much as knocking at her door.
-
- It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often
- conform with the most perfect quietude to the external
- regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without
- investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed
- to be with Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to her from
- the spiritual world, it might have been far otherwise. Then she
- might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Ann
- Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She might, in
- one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She might, and not
- improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of
- the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the
- Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the
- mother's enthusiasm thought had something to wreak itself upon.
- Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to
- Hester's charge, the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be
- cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything
- was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature
- had something wrong in it which continually betokened that she
- had been born amiss -- the effluence of her mother's lawless
- passion -- and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of
- heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little
- creature had been born at all.
-
- Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with
- reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth
- accepting even to the
-
-
-
- ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 199
-
-
-
- happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence,
- she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point
- as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep women
- quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may
- be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole
- system of society is to be torn down and built up anew. Then the
- very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit,
- which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified
- before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and
- suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being
- obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary
- reforms until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier
- change, in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has
- her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never
- overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are
- not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to
- come uppermost, they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had
- lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in
- the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable
- precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild
- and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort
- nowhere. At times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul,
- whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to Heaven, and
- go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provide.
-
- The scarlet letter had not done its office.
-
- Now, however, her interview with the Reverend
-
-
-
- 200 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Mr. Dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her a new
- theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared
- worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. She had
- witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister
- struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle.
- She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not
- already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt that,
- whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of
- remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand
- that proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by
- his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had
- availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering
- with the delicate springs of Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. Hester
- could not but ask herself whether there had not originally been a
- defect of truth, courage, and loyalty on her own part, in
- allowing the minister to be thrown into position where so much
- evil was to be foreboded and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her
- only justification lay in the fact that she had been able to
- discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had
- overwhelmed herself except by acquiescing in Roger
- Chillingworth's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse she had
- made her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more
- wretched alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her
- error so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years
- of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so
- inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that night,
- abased by sin and half-maddened by the ignominy
-
-
-
- ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 201
-
-
-
- that was still new, when they had talked together in the
- prison-chamber. She had climbed her way since then to a higher
- point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself
- nearer to her level, or, perhaps, below it, by the revenge which
- he had stooped for.
-
- In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and
- do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on
- whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not
- long to seek. One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired
- part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician with a basket
- on one arm and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the
- ground in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicine
- withal.
-
-
-
- XIV
-
-
-
- HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN
-
-
-
- Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the water, and
- play with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have
- talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew
- away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feet went
- pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she
- came to a full stop, ad peeped curiously into a pool, left by the
- retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Forth
- peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls
- around her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a
- little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take
- her hand and run a race with her. But the visionary little maid
- on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say -- "This is a
- better place; come thou into the pool. " And Pearl, stepping in
- mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while, out
- of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary
- smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.
-
- Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. "I would speak
- a word with you," said she -- "a word that concerns us much. "
-
- "Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word
-
-
-
- HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 203
-
-
-
- for old Roger Chillingworth?" answered he, raising himself from
- his stooping posture. "With all my heart Why, mistress, I hear
- good tidings of you on all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve,
- a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your
- affairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered me that there had been
- question concerning you in the council. It was debated whether
- or no, with safety to the commonweal, yonder scarlet letter might
- be taken off your bosom. On my life, Hester, I made my intreaty
- to the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forthwith. "
-
- "It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off the
- badge," calmly replied Hester. "Were I worthy to be quit of it,
- it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into
- something that should speak a different purport. "
-
- "Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better," rejoined he, "A
- woman must needs follow her own fancy touching the adornment of
- her person. The letter is gaily embroidered, and shows right
- bravely on your bosom!"
-
- All this while Hester had been looking steadily at the old man,
- and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a
- change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. It
- was not so much that he had grown older; for though the traces of
- advancing life were visible he bore his age well, and seemed to
- retain a wiry vigour and alertness. But the former aspect of an
- intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she
- best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been
- succeeded by a eager, searching, almost fierce, yet
-
-
-
- 204 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to
- mask this expression with a smile, but the latter played him
- false, and flickered over his visage so derisively that the
- spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. Ever
- and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes,
- as if the old man's soul were on fire and kept on smouldering
- duskily within his breast, until by some casual puff of passion
- it was blown into a momentary flame. This he repressed as
- speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the
- kind had happened.
-
- In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of
- man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will
- only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.
- This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by
- devoting himself for seven years to the constant analysis of a
- heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and
- adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analysed and gloated
- over.
-
- The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was
- another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to
- her.
-
- "What see you in my face," asked the physician, "that you look at
- it so earnestly?"
-
- "Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears
- bitter enough for it," answered she. "But let it pass! It is of
- yonder miserable man that I would speak. "
-
- "And what of him?" cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly, as if he
- loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it
- with the only person of whom he could make a confidant. "Not to
- hide the
-
-
-
- HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 205
-
-
-
- truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy
- with the gentleman. So speak freely and I will make answer. "
-
- "When we last spake together," said Hester, "now seven years ago,
- it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy as touching
- the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and
- good fame of yonder man were in your hands there seemed no choice
- to me, save to be silent in accordance with your behest. Yet it
- was not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for,
- having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there
- remained a duty towards him, and something whispered me that I
- was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since
- that day no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his
- every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You
- search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart! Your
- clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living
- death, and still he knows you not. In permitting this I have
- surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was
- left me to be true!"
-
- "What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger,
- pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a
- dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!"
-
- "It had been better so!" said Hester Prynne.
-
- "What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth again.
- "I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician
- earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have
- wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid his
-
-
-
- 206 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- life would have burned away in torments within the first two
- years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. For,
- Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up,
- as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I
- could reveal a goodly secret! But enough. What art can do, I
- have exhausted on him. That he now breathes and creeps about on
- earth is owing all to me!"
-
- "Better he had died at once!" said Hester Prynne. "Yea, woman,
- thou sayest truly!" cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the
- lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. "Better had
- he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has
- suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has
- been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always
- upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritual sense -- for
- the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this -- he
- knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and
- that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only
- evil, and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were
- mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he
- fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with
- frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and
- despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the
- grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence, the
- closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged,
- and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the
- direst revenge! Yea, indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend
- at his elbow! A mortal man, with
-
-
-
- HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 207
-
-
-
- once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment.
- "
-
- The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his
- hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful
- shape, which he could not recognise, usurping the place of his
- own image in a glass. It was one of those moments -- which
- sometimes occur only at the interval of years -- when a man's
- moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not
- improbably he had never before viewed himself as he did now.
-
- "Hast thou not tortured him enough?" said Hester, noticing the
- old man's look. "Has he not paid thee all?"
-
- "No, no! He has but increased the debt!" answered the physician,
- and as he proceeded, his manner lost its fiercer characteristics,
- and subsided into gloom. "Dost thou remember me, Hester, as I
- was nine years agone? Even then I was in the autumn of my days,
- nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been made up of
- earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully
- for the increase of mine own knowledge, and faithfully, too,
- though this latter object was but casual to the other --
- faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. No life had
- been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich with
- benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? Was I not, though
- you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others,
- craving little for himself -- kind, true, just and of constant,
- if not warm affections? Was I not all this?"
-
- "All this, and more," said Hester.
-
-
-
- 203 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- "And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and
- permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his
- features. "I have already told thee what I am -- a fiend! Who
- made me so?"
-
- "It was myself," cried Hester, shuddering. "It was I, not less
- than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?"
-
- "I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied Roger
- Chillingworth. "If that has not avenged me, I can do no more!"
-
- He laid his finger on it with a smile.
-
- "It has avenged thee," answered Hester Prynne.
-
- "I judged no less," said the physician. "And now what wouldst
- thou with me touching this man?"
-
- "I must reveal the secret," answered Hester, firmly. "He must
- discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result I
- know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him,
- whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far
- as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and
- his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in my hands.
- Nor do I -- whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth,
- though it be the truth of red-hot iron entering into the soul --
- nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life
- of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy.
- Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him, no good for
- me, no good for thee. There is no good for little Pearl. There
- is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze. "
-
- "Woman, I could well-nigh pity thee," said Roger Chillingworth,
- unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too, for there was a
- quality almost majestic in
-
-
-
- HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 209
-
-
-
- the despair which she expressed. "Thou hadst great elements.
- Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than
- mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that has
- been wasted in thy nature. "
-
- "And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has
- transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge
- it out of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake,
- then doubly for thine own! Forgive, and leave his further
- retribution to the Power that claims it! I said, but now, that
- there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are
- here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and
- stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewn
- our path. It is not so! There might be good for thee, and thee
- alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged and hast it at thy
- will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt
- thou reject that priceless benefit?"
-
- "Peace, Hester--peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy
- sternness -- "it is not granted me to pardon. I have no such
- power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes
- back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By
- thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since
- that moment it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have
- wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion;
- neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from
- his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it
- may! Now, go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man. "
-
- He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of
- gathering herbs.
-
-
-
- XV.
-
-
-
- HESTER AND PEARL
-
-
-
- So Roger Chillingworth -- a deformed old figure with a face that
- haunted men's memories longer than they liked -- took leave of
- Hester Prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. He
- gathered here and there a herb, or grubbed up a root and put it
- into the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched the
- ground as he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a little
- while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see whether the
- tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him
- and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown,
- across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs
- they were which the old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not
- the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his
- eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs of species hitherto unknown,
- that would start up under his fingers? Or might it suffice him
- that every wholesome growth should be converted into something
- deleterious and malignant at his touch? Did the sun, which shone
- so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or was there,
- as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with
- his deformity whichever way he turned him-
-
-
-
- HESTER AND PEARL 211
-
-
-
- self? And whither was he now going? Would he not suddenly sink
- into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due
- course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood,
- henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate
- could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or would
- he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier
- the higher he rose towards heaven?
-
- "Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as still she
- gazed after him, "I hate the man?"
-
- She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome
- or lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought of those
- long-past days in a distant land, when he used to emerge at
- eventide from the seclusion of his study and sit down in the
- firelight of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile.
- He needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that
- the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken
- off the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not
- otherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal
- medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among her
- ugliest remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes could have
- been! She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to
- marry him! She deemed in her crime most to be repented of, that
- she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his
- hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle
- and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed
- by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him,
- that, in
-
-
-
- 212 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to
- fancy herself happy by his side.
-
- "Yes, I hate him!" repeated Hester more bitterly than before.
- "He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!"
-
- Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along
- with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their
- miserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some
- mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her
- sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the
- marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her
- as the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to have done with
- this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long years,
- under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of
- misery and wrought out no repentance?
-
- The emotion of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the
- crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw a dark light on
- Hester's state of mind, revealing much that she might not
- otherwise have acknowledged to herself.
-
- He being gone, she summoned back her child.
-
- "Pearl! Little Pearl! Where are you?"
-
- Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no
- loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer
- of herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully
- with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom
- forth, and -- as it declined to venture -- seeking a passage for
- herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky.
- Soon finding, however,
-
-
-
- HESTER AND PEARL 213
-
-
-
- that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for
- better pastime. She made little boats out of birch-bark, and
- freighted them with snailshells, and sent out more ventures on
- the mighty deep than any merchant in New England; but the larger
- part of them foundered near the shore. She seized a live
- horse-shoe by the tail, and made prize of several five-fingers,
- and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. Then she took
- up the white foam that streaked the line of the advancing tide,
- and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it with winged
- footsteps to catch the great snowflakes ere they fell.
- Perceiving a flock of beach-birds that fed and fluttered along
- the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles,
- and, creeping from rock to rock after these small sea-fowl,
- displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little gray
- bird, with a white breast, Pearl was almost sure had been hit by
- a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing. But then the
- elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport, because it grieved her
- to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the
- sea-breeze, or as wild as Pearl herself.
-
- Her final employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, and
- make herself a scarf or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume
- the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift
- for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her
- mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass and imitated, as best
- she could, on her own bosom the decoration with which she was so
- familiar on her mother's. A letter -- the letter A -- but
- freshly
-
-
-
- 214 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- green instead of scarlet. The child bent her chin upon her
- breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest, even
- as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the
- world was to make out its hidden import.
-
- "I wonder if mother will ask me what it means?" thought Pearl.
-
- Just then she heard her mother's voice, and, flitting along as
- lightly as one of the little sea-birds, appeared before Hester
- Prynne dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament
- upon her bosom.
-
- "My little Pearl," said Hester, after a moment's silence, "the
- green letter, and on thy childish bosom, has no purport. But
- dost thou know, my child, what this letter means which thy mother
- is doomed to wear?"
-
- "Yes, mother," said the child. "It is the great letter A. Thou
- hast taught me in the horn-book. "
-
- Hester looked steadily into her little face; but though there was
- that singular expression which she had so often remarked in her
- black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Pearl really
- attached any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to
- ascertain the point.
-
- "Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter?"
-
- "Truly do I!" answered Pearl, looking brightly into her mother's
- face. "It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his
- hand over his heart!"
-
- "And what reason is that?" asked Hester, half smiling at the
- absurd incongruity of the child's observation; but on second
- thoughts turning pale.
-
-
-
- HESTER AND PEARL 215
-
-
-
- "What has the letter to do with any heart save mine?"
-
- "Nay, mother, I have told all I know," said Pearl, more seriously
- than she was wont to speak. "Ask yonder old man whom thou hast
- been talking with, -- it may be he can tell. But in good earnest
- now, mother dear, what does this scarlet letter mean? -- and why
- dost thou wear it on thy bosom? -- and why does the minister
- keep his hand over his heart?"
-
- She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her
- eyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and
- capricious character. The thought occurred to Hester, that the
- child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike
- confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she
- knew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It showed
- Pearl in an unwonted aspect Heretofore, the mother, while loving
- her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled
- herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of
- an April breeze, which spends its time in airy sport, and has its
- gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of
- moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take it to
- your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanours it will sometimes,
- of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful
- tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone
- about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your
- heart. And this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of the
- child's disposition. Any other observer might have seen few but
- unamiable traits, and have given them a far darker colouring.
- But now the idea came
-
-
-
- 216 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with her remarkable
- precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age
- when she could have been made a friend, and intrusted with as
- much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without
- irreverence either to the parent or the child. In the little
- chaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerging and could
- have been from the very first -- the steadfast principles of an
- unflinching courage -- an uncontrollable will -- sturdy pride,
- which might be disciplined into self-respect -- and a bitter
- scorn of many things which, when examined, might be found to have
- the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too,
- though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest
- flavours of unripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes,
- thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother must
- be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish
- child.
-
- Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the
- scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her being. From the
- earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this
- as her appointed mission. Hester had often fancied that
- Providence had a design of justice and retribution, in endowing
- the child with this marked propensity; but never, until now, had
- she bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that design,
- there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence.
- If little Pearl were entertained with faith and trust, as a
- spirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not be
- her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her
- mother's heart, and converted it
-
-
-
- HESTER AND PEARL 217
-
-
-
- into a tomb? -- and to help her to overcome the passion, once so
- wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned
- within the same tomb-like heart?
-
- Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester's mind,
- with as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been
- whispered into her ear. And there was little Pearl, all this
- while, holding her mother's hand in both her own, and turning her
- face upward, while she put these searching questions, once and
- again, and still a third time.
-
- "What does the letter mean, mother? and why dost thou wear it?
- and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?"
-
- "What shall I say?" thought Hester to herself. "No! if this be
- the price of the child's sympathy, I cannot pay it. "
-
- Then she spoke aloud --
-
- "Silly Pearl," said she, "what questions are these? There are
- many things in this world that a child must not ask about. What
- know I of the minister's heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I
- wear it for the sake of its gold thread. "
-
- In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never before
- been false to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was the
- talisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who
- now forsook her; as recognising that, in spite of his strict
- watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some
- old one had never been expelled. As for little Pearl, the
- earnestness soon passed out of her face.
-
- But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. Two or
- three times, as her mother and she went
-
-
-
- 218 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- homeward, and as often at supper-time, and while Hester was
- putting her to bed, and once after she seemed to be fairly
- asleep, Pearl looked up, with mischief gleaming in her black
- eyes.
-
- "Mother," said she, "what does the scarlet letter mean?"
-
- And the next morning, the first indication the child gave of
- being awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and
- making that other enquiry, which she had so unaccountably
- connected with her investigations about the scarlet letter --
-
- "Mother! Mother Why does the minister keep his hand over his
- heart?"
-
- "Hold thy tongue, naughty child!" answered her mother, with an
- asperity that she had never permitted to herself before. "Do not
- tease me; else I shall put thee into the dark closet!"
-
-
-
- XVI.
-
-
-
- A FOREST WALK
-
-
-
- Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to
- Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior
- consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into
- his intimacy. For several days, however, she vainly sought an
- opportunity of addressing him in some of the meditative walks
- which she knew him to be in the habit of taking along the shores
- of the Peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighbouring
- country. There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to
- the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame, had she visited
- him in his own study, where many a penitent, ere now, had
- confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by
- the scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the secret or
- undisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly
- that her conscious heart imparted suspicion where none could have
- been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need
- the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together --
- for all these reasons Hester never thought of meeting him in any
- narrower privacy than beneath the open sky.
-
- At last, while attending a sick chamber, whither the Rev. Mr.
- Dimmesdale had been summoned
-
-
-
- 220 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- to make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day before, to
- visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian converts. He would
- probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon of the morrow.
- Betimes, therefore, the next day, Hester took little Pearl -- who
- was necessarily the companion of all her mother's expeditions,
- however inconvenient her presence -- and set forth.
-
- The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the Peninsula
- to the mainland, was no other than a foot-path. It straggled
- onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it
- in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and
- disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to
- Hester's mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which
- she had so long been wandering. The day was chill and sombre.
- Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however,
- by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and
- then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting
- cheerfulness was always at the further extremity of some long
- vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight -- feebly
- sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and
- scene -- withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots
- where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find
- them bright.
-
- "Mother," said little Pearl, the sunshine does not love you. It
- runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on
- your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing a good way off.
- Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child.
- It will not flee from me -- for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!"
-
-
-
- A FOREST WALK 221
-
-
-
- "Nor ever will, my child, I hope," said Hester.
-
- "And why not, mother?" asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the
- beginning of her race. "Will not it come of its own accord when
- I am a woman grown?"
-
- "Run away, child," answered her mother, "and catch the sunshine.
- It will soon be gone. "
-
- Pearl set forth at a great pace, and as Hester smiled to
- perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in
- the midst of it, all brightened by its splendour, and
- scintillating with the vivacity excited by rapid motion. The
- light lingered about the lonely child, as if glad of such a
- playmate, until her mother had drawn almost nigh enough to step
- into the magic circle too.
-
- "It will go now," said Pearl, shaking her head.
-
- "See!" answered Hester, smiling; now I can stretch out my hand
- and grasp some of it. "
-
- As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge
- from the bright expression that was dancing on Pearl's features,
- her mother could have fancied that the child had absorbed it into
- herself, and would give it forth again, with a gleam about her
- path, as they should plunge into some gloomier shade. There was
- no other attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new
- and untransmitted vigour in Pearl's nature, as this never failing
- vivacity of spirits: she had not the disease of sadness, which
- almost all children, in these latter days, inherit, with the
- scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors. Perhaps this,
- too, was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy with
- which Hester had fought against her sorrows before Pearl's birth.
- It was certainly a
-
-
-
- 222 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's
- character. She wanted -- what some people want throughout life
- -- a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanise and
- make her capable of sympathy. But there was time enough yet for
- little Pearl.
-
- "Come, my child!" said Hester, looking about her from the spot
- where Pearl had stood still in the sunshine -- "we will sit down
- a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves. "
-
- "I am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. "But you may
- sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile. "
-
- "A story, child!" said Hester. "And about what?"
-
- "Oh, a story about the Black Man," answered Pearl, taking hold of
- her mother's gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half
- mischievously, into her face.
-
- "How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big,
- heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers
- his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among
- the trees; and they are to write their names with their own
- blood; and then he sets his mark on their bosoms. Didst thou
- ever meet the Black Man, mother?"
-
- "And who told you this story, Pearl," asked her mother,
- recognising a common superstition of the period.
-
- "It was the old dame in the chimney corner, at the house where
- you watched last night," said the child. "But she fancied me
- asleep while she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and
- a thousand people had met him here, and had written in his
-
-
-
- A FOREST WALK 223
-
-
-
- book, and have his mark on them. And that ugly tempered lady,
- old Mistress Hibbins, was one. And, mother, the old dame said
- that this scarlet letter was the Black Man's mark on thee, and
- that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight,
- here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And dost thou go to
- meet him in the nighttime?"
-
- "Didst thou ever awake and find thy mother gone?" asked Hester.
-
- "Not that I remember," said the child. "If thou fearest to leave
- me in our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I
- would very gladly go! But, mother, tell me now! Is there such a
- Black Man? And didst thou ever meet him? And is this his mark?"
-
- "Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?" asked her
- mother.
-
- "Yes, if thou tellest me all," answered Pearl.
-
- "Once in my life I met the Black Man!" said her mother. This
- scarlet letter is his mark!"
-
- Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to
- secure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger
- along the forest track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap
- of moss; which at some epoch of the preceding century, had been a
- gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade,
- and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere It was a little dell
- where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising
- gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst,
- over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees impending
- over it had flung down great branches from time to time, which
- choked up the current, and
-
-
-
- 224 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points;
- while, in its swifter and livelier passages there appeared a
- channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. Letting the
- eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the
- reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the
- forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of
- tree-trunks and underbush, and here and there a huge rock covered
- over with gray lichens. All these giant trees and boulders of
- granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this
- small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing
- loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old
- forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth
- surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the
- streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but
- melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its
- infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among
- sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue.
-
- "Oh, brook! Oh, foolish and tiresome little brook!" cried Pearl,
- after listening awhile to its talk, "Why art thou so sad? Pluck
- up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!"
-
- But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the
- forest trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it
- could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else
- to say. Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of
- her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed
- through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the
- little stream, she
-
-
-
- A FOREST WALK 225
-
-
-
- danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course.
-
- "What does this sad little brook say, mother? inquired she.
-
- "If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee
- of it," answered her mother, "even as it is telling me of mine.
- But now, Pearl, I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise
- of one putting aside the branches. I would have thee betake
- thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes
- yonder,"
-
- "Is it the Black Man?" asked Pearl.
-
- "Wilt thou go and play, child?" repeated her mother, "But do not
- stray far into the wood. And take heed that thou come at my
- first call. "
-
- "Yes, mother," answered Pearl, "But if it be the Black Man, wilt
- thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book
- under his arm?"
-
- "Go, silly child!" said her mother impatiently. "It is no Black
- Man! Thou canst see him now, through the trees. It is the
- minister!"
-
- "And so it is!" said the child. "And, mother, he has his hand
- over his heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name
- in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place? But why
- does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?"
-
- "Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another
- time," cried Hester Prynne. "But do not stray far. Keep where
- thou canst hear the babble of the brook. "
-
- The child went singing away, following up the current of the
- brook, and striving to mingle a more
-
-
-
- 226 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- lightsome cadence with its melancholy voice. But the little
- stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its
- unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had
- happened -- or making a prophetic lamentation about something
- that was yet to happen -- within the verge of the dismal forest.
- So Pearl, who had enough of shadow in her own little life, chose
- to break off all acquaintance with this repining brook. She set
- herself, therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, and
- some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the crevice of
- a high rock.
-
- When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made a step or two
- towards the track that led through the forest, but still remained
- under the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister
- advancing along the path entirely alone, and leaning on a staff
- which he had cut by the wayside. He looked haggard and feeble,
- and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never
- so remarkably characterised him in his walks about the
- settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself
- liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in this intense
- seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy
- trial to the spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait, as
- if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any
- desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of
- anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree,
- and lie there passive for evermore. The leaves might bestrew
- him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock
- over his frame, no matter
-
-
-
- A FOREST WALK 227
-
-
-
- whether there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an
- object to be wished for or avoided.
-
- To Hester's eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale exhibited no
- symptom of positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as
- little Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart.
-
-
-
- XVII.
-
-
-
-
-
- THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER
-
-
-
-
-
- Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before
- Hester Prynne could gather voice enough to attract his
- observation. At length she succeeded.
-
- "Arthur Dimmesdale!" she said, faintly at first, then louder,
- but hoarsely -- "Arthur Dimmesdale!"
-
- "Who speaks?" answered the minister. Gathering himself quickly
- up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood
- to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes
- anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a
- form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little
- relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and
- the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not
- whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be that his pathway
- through life was haunted thus by a spectre that had stolen out
- from among his thoughts.
-
- He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter.
-
- "Hester! Hester Prynne!', said he; "is it thou? Art thou in
- life?"
-
- "Even so. " she answered. "In such life as has
-
-
-
- THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 229
-
-
-
- been mine these seven years past! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale,
- dost thou yet live?"
-
- It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual
- and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So
- strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the
- first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who
- had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood
- coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their
- state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings.
- Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost. They were
- awe-stricken likewise at themselves, because the crisis flung
- back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its
- history and experience, as life never does, except at such
- breathless epochs. The soul beheld its features in the mirror of
- the passing moment. It was with fear, and tremulously, and, as
- it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that Arthur Dimmesdale
- put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of
- Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as it was, took away what was
- dreariest in the interview. They now felt themselves, at least,
- inhabitants of the same sphere.
-
- Without a word more spoken -- neither he nor she assuming the
- guidance, but with an unexpressed consent -- they glided back
- into the shadow of the woods whence Hester had emerged, and sat
- down on the heap of moss where she and Pearl had before been
- sitting. When they found voice to speak, it was at first only to
- utter remarks and inquiries such as any two acquaintances might
- have made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and,
- next,
-
-
-
- 230 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- the health of each. Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step
- by step, into the themes that were brooding deepest in their
- hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed
- something slight and casual to run before and throw open the
- doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led
- across the threshold.
-
- After awhile, the minister fixed his eyes on Hester Prynne's.
-
- "Hester," said he, "hast thou found peace?"
-
- She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.
-
- "Hast thou?" she asked.
-
- "None -- nothing but despair!" he answered. "What else could I
- look for, being what I am, and leading such a life as mine? Were
- I an atheist -- a man devoid of conscience -- a wretch with
- coarse and brutal instincts -- I might have found peace long ere
- now. Nay, I never should have lost it. But, as matters stand
- with my soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in
- me, all of God's gifts that were the choicest have become the
- ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, I am most miserable!"
-
- "The people reverence thee," said Hester. "And surely thou
- workest good among them! Doth this bring thee no comfort?"
-
- "More misery, Hester! -- Only the more misery!" answered the
- clergyman with a bitter smile. "As concerns the good which I may
- appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a
- delusion. What can a ruined soul like mine effect towards the
- redemption of other souls? -- or a polluted soul
-
-
-
- THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 231
-
-
-
- towards their purification? And as for the people's reverence,
- would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem
- it, Hester, a consolation that I must stand up in my pulpit, and
- meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of
- heaven were beaming from it! -- must see my flock hungry for the
- truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were
- speaking! -- and then look inward, and discern the black reality
- of what they idolise? I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of
- heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And
- Satan laughs at it!"
-
- "You wrong yourself in this," said Hester gently.
-
- "You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind
- you in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy,
- in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no
- reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works?
- And wherefore should it not bring you peace?"
-
- "No, Hester -- no!" replied the clergyman. "There is no
- substance in it] It is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me!
- Of penance, I have had enough! Of penitence, there has been
- none! Else, I should long ago have thrown off these garments of
- mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see
- me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the
- scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!
- Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a
- seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognises me for
- what I am! Had I one friend -- or were it my worst enemy! -- to
- whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could
- daily betake myself, and
-
-
-
- 232 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep
- itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me!
- But now, it is all falsehood! -- all emptiness! -- all death!"
-
- Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. Yet,
- uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he did,
- his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in
- which to interpose what she came to say. She conquered her
- fears, and spoke:
-
- "Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for," said she, "with
- whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it!"
- Again she hesitated, but brought out the words with an effort
- "Thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under
- the same roof!"
-
- The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and
- clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his
- bosom.
-
- "Ha! What sayest thou?" cried he. "An enemy! And under mine
- own roof! What mean you?"
-
- Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which
- she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie
- for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy
- of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. The
- very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter
- might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere
- of a being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had been a
- period when Hester was less alive to this consideration; or,
- perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the
- minister to bear what she might picture to
-
-
-
- THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 233
-
-
-
- herself as a more tolerable doom. But of late, since the night
- of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both
- softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more
- accurately. She doubted not that the continual presence of Roger
- Chillingworth -- the secret poison of his malignity, infecting
- all the air about him -- and his authorised interference, as a
- physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmities
- -- that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel
- purpose. By means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been
- kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to
- cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his
- spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be
- insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the Good
- and True, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type.
-
- Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once -- nay,
- why should we not speak it? -- still so passionately loved!
- Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and
- death itself, as she had already told Roger Chillingworth, would
- have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had
- taken upon herself to choose. And now, rather than have had this
- grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have laid down on the
- forest leaves, and died there, at Arthur Dimmesdale's feet
-
- "Oh, Arthur!" cried she, "forgive me! In all things else, I have
- striven to be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have
- held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity; save when
- thy good -- thy life -- thy fame -- were put in question!
-
-
-
- 234 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Then I consented to a deception. But a lie is never good, even
- though death threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see what
- I would say? That old man! -- the physician! -- he whom they
- call Roger Chillingworth! -- he was my husband!"
-
- The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence
- of passion, which -- intermixed in more shapes than one with his
- higher, purer, softer qualities -- was, in fact, the portion of
- him which the devil claimed, and through which he sought to win
- the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than
- Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it lasted, it
- was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been so much
- enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were
- incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down on the
- ground, and buried his face in his hands.
-
- "I might have known it," murmured he -- "I did know it! Was not
- the secret told me, in the natural recoil of my heart at the
- first sight of him, and as often as I have seen him since? Why
- did I not understand? Oh, Hester Prynne, thou little, little
- knowest all the horror of this thing! And the shame! -- the
- indelicacy! -- the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick
- and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!
- Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this! -I cannot forgive
- thee!"
-
- "Thou shalt forgive me!" cried Hester, Singing herself on the
- fallen leaves beside him. "Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!"
-
- With sudden and desperate tenderness she threw her arms around
- him, and pressed his head against her bosom, little caring though
- his cheek rested on
-
-
-
- THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 235
-
-
-
- the scarlet letter. He would have released himself, but strove
- in vain to do so. Hester would not set him free, lest he should
- look her sternly in the face. All the world had frowned on her
- -- for seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely woman --
- and still she bore it all, nor ever once turned away her firm,
- sad eyes. Heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had
- not died. But the frown of this pale, weak, sinful, and
- sorrow-stricken man was what Hester could not bear, and live!
-
- "Wilt thou yet forgive me?" she repeated, over and over again.
- "Wilt thou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?"
-
- "I do forgive you, Hester," replied the minister at length, with
- a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. "I
- freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both. We are not,
- Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than
- even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been
- blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the
- sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!"
-
- "Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration
- of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other. Hast thou
- forgotten it?"
-
- "Hush, Hester!" said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground.
- "No; I have not forgotten!"
-
- They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on
- the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them
- a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so
- long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along -- and
- yet it unclosed a charm that made them linger
-
-
-
- 236 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- upon it, and claim another, and another, and, after all, another
- moment. The forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a
- blast that was passing through it. The boughs were tossing
- heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned
- dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair
- that sat beneath, or constrained to forbode evil to come.
-
- And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-track that
- led backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up
- again the burden of her ignominy and the minister the hollow
- mockery of his good name! So they lingered an instant longer.
- No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this
- dark forest. Here seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need
- not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here seen only by
- her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for
- one moment true!
-
- He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.
-
- "Hester!" cried he, "here is a new horror! Roger Chillingworth
- knows your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he
- continue, then, to keep our secret? What will now be the course
- of his revenge?"
-
- "There is a strange secrecy in his nature," replied Hester,
- thoughtfully; "and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices
- of his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the
- secret. He will doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark
- passion. "
-
- "And I! -- how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with
- this deadly enemy?" exclaimed Arthur
-
-
-
- THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 237
-
-
-
- Dimmesdale, shrinking within himself, and pressing his hand
- nervously against his heart -- a gesture that had grown
- involuntary with him. "Think for me, Hester! Thou art strong.
- Resolve for me!"
-
- "Thou must dwell no longer with this man," said Hester, slowly
- and firmly. "Thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!"
-
- "It were far worse than death!" replied the minister. "But how
- to avoid it? What choice remains to me? Shall I lie down again
- on these withered leaves, where I cast myself when thou didst
- tell me what he was? Must I sink down there, and die at once?"
-
- "Alas! what a ruin has befallen thee!" said Hester, with the
- tears gushing into her eyes. "Wilt thou die for very weakness?
- There is no other cause!"
-
- "The judgment of God is on me," answered the conscience-stricken
- priest. "It is too mighty for me to struggle with!"
-
- "Heaven would show mercy," rejoined Hester, "hadst thou but the
- strength to take advantage of it. "
-
- "Be thou strong for me!" answered he. "Advise me what to do. "
-
- "Is the world, then, so narrow?" exclaimed Hester Prynne, fixing
- her deep eyes on the minister's, and instinctively exercising a
- magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it
- could hardly hold itself erect. "Doth the universe lie within
- the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but
- a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads
- yonder forest-track? Backward to the settlement, thou sayest!
- Yes; but, onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper into the
- wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until some few
-
-
-
- 238 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- miles hence the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white
- man's tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would
- bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to
- one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough
- in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of
- Roger Chillingworth?"
-
- "Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen leaves!" replied the
- minister, with a sad smile.
-
- "Then there is the broad pathway of the sea!" continued Hester.
- "It brought thee hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee
- back again. In our native land, whether in some remote rural
- village, or in vast London -- or, surely, in Germany, in France,
- in pleasant Italy -- thou wouldst be beyond his power and
- knowledge! And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and
- their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too
- long already!"
-
- "It cannot be!" answered the minister, listening as if he were
- called upon to realise a dream. "I am powerless to go. Wretched
- and sinful as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on
- my earthly existence in the sphere where Providence hath placed
- me. Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for
- other human souls! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful
- sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonour, when his
- dreary watch shall come to an end!"
-
- "Thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery,"
- replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own
- energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not
- cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path: neither
- shalt
-
-
-
- THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISSIONER 239
-
-
-
- thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea.
- Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no
- more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility
- in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet
- full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed!
- There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of thine for
- a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the
- teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, as is more thy nature,
- be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of
- the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save
- to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and
- make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear
- without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one
- other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life?
- that have made thee feeble to will and to do? that will leave
- thee powerless even to repent? Up, and away!"
-
- "Oh, Hester!" cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful
- light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, "thou
- tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering
- beneath him! I must die here! There is not the strength or
- courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult
- world alone!"
-
- It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit.
- He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within
- his reach.
-
- He repeated the word -- "Alone, Hester!"
-
- "Thou shall not go alone!" answered she, in a deep whisper.
- Then, all was spoken!
-
-
-
- XVIII
-
-
-
-
-
- A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE
-
-
-
-
-
- Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in which
- hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a
- kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely
- hinted at, but dared not speak.
-
- But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity,
- and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed from
- society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation
- as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered,
- without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness, as vast, as
- intricate, and shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of
- which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their
- fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in
- desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in
- his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged
- point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or
- legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more
- reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the
- judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the
- church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set
- her flee. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions
-
-
-
- A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 141
-
-
-
- where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude!
- These had been her teachers -- stern and wild ones -- and they
- had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
-
- The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an
- experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally
- received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so
- fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them. But this
- had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.
- Since that wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal and
- minuteness, not his acts -- for those it was easy to arrange --
- but each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head
- of the social system, as the clergymen of that day stood, he was
- only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and
- even its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of his order
- inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but who
- kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the
- fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer
- within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all.
-
- Thus we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the whole
- seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a
- preparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! Were
- such a man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in
- extenuation of his crime? None; unless it avail him somewhat
- that he was broker, down by long and exquisite suffering; that
- his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which
- harrowed it; that, between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and
- remaining
-
-
-
- 242 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- as a hypocrite, conscience might find it hard to strike the
- balance; that it was human to avoid the peril of death and
- infamy, and the inscrutable machinations of an enemy; that,
- finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and desert path,
- faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a glimpse of human
- affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange
- for the heavy doom which he was now expiating. And be the stern
- and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made
- into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It
- may be watched and guarded, so that the enemy shall not force his
- way again into the citadel, and might even in his subsequent
- assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where
- he had formerly succeeded. But there is still the ruined wall,
- and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over
- again his unforgotten triumph.
-
- The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. Let it
- suffice that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone.
-
- "If in all these past seven years," thought he, "I could recall
- one instant of peace or hope, 1 would yet endure, for the sake of
- that earnest of Heaven's mercy. But now -- since I am
- irrevocably doomed -- wherefore should I not snatch the solace
- allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution? Or, if
- this be the path to a better life, as Hester would persuade me, I
- surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it! Neither can I
- any longer live without her companionship; so powerful is she to
- sustain -- so tender to soothe! O Thou to whom I dare not lift
- mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me?"
-
-
-
- A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 243
-
-
-
- "Thou wilt go!" said Hester calmly, as he met her glance.
-
- The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its
- flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the
- exhilarating effect -- upon a prisoner just escaped from the
- dungeon of his own heart -- of breathing the wild, free
- atmosphere of an unredeemed, unchristianised, lawless region His
- spirit rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer
- prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had
- kept him grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious
- temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in
- his mood.
-
- "Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself.
- "Methought the germ of it was dead in me! Oh, Hester, thou art
- my better angel! I seem to have flung myself -- sick,
- sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened -- down upon these forest
- leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers
- to glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is already the
- better life! Why did we not find it sooner?"
-
- "Let us not lock back," answered Hester Prynne. "The past is
- gone! Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With this
- symbol I undo it all, and make it as if it had never been!"
-
- So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet
- letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance
- among the withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the
- hither verge of the stream. With a hand's-breadth further
- flight, it would have fallen into the water, and have give, the
- little brook another woe to carry onward, besides
-
-
-
- 244 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about. But
- there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel,
- which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be
- haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and
- unaccountable misfortune.
-
- The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the
- burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O
- exquisite relief! She had not known the weight until she felt
- the freedom! By another impulse, she took off the formal cap
- that confined her hair, and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark
- and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and
- imparting the charm of softness to her features. There played
- around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and
- tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of
- womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had
- been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of
- her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past,
- and clustered themselves with her maiden hope, and a happiness
- before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if
- the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of
- these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at
- once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine,
- pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each
- green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and
- gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects
- that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now.
- The course of the little brook might be traced
-
-
-
- A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 245
-
-
-
- by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which
- had become a mystery of joy.
-
- Such was the sympathy of Nature -- that wild, heathen Nature of
- the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by
- higher truth -- with the bliss of these two spirits! Love,
- whether newly-born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must
- always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance,
- that it overflows upon the outward world. Had the forest still
- kept its gloom, it would have been bright in Hester's eyes, and
- bright in Arthur Dimmesdale's!
-
- Hester looked at him with a thrill of another joy.
-
- "Thou must know Pearl!" said she. "Our little Pearl! Thou hast
- seen her -- yes, I know it! -- but thou wilt see her now with
- other eyes. She is a strange child! I hardly comprehend her!
- But thou wilt love her dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to
- deal with her!"
-
- "Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?" asked the
- minister, somewhat uneasily. "I have long shrunk from children,
- because they often show a distrust -- a backwardness to be
- familiar with me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!"
-
- "Ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "But she will love thee
- dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her.
- Pearl! Pearl!"
-
- "I see the child," observed the minister. "Yonder she is,
- standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other
- side of the brook. So thou thinkest the child will love me?"
-
- Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible at some
- distance, as the minister had described
-
-
-
- 246 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- her, like a bright-apparelled vision in a sunbeam, which fell
- down upon her through an arch of boughs. The ray quivered to and
- fro, making her figure dim or distinct -- now like a real child,
- now like a child's spirit -- as the splendour went and came
- again. She heard her mother's voice, and approached slowly
- through the forest.
-
- Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mother
- sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest -- stern
- as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles
- of the world into its bosom -- became the playmate of the lonely
- infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the
- kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her the
- partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn, but
- ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon
- the withered leaves These Pearl gathered, and was pleased with
- their wild flavour. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly
- took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a
- brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon
- repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to
- be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to
- come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm.
- A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered
- either in anger or merriment -- for the squirrel is such a
- choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to
- distinguish between his moods -- so he chattered at the child,
- and flung down a nut upon her bead. It was a last year's nut,
- and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his
- sleep
-
-
-
- A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 247
-
-
-
- by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively at
- Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, or renew
- his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said -- but here the
- tale has surely lapsed into the improbable -- came up and smelt
- of Pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her
- hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest,
- and these wild things which it nourished, all recognised a
- kindred wilderness in the human child.
-
- And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of
- the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The Bowers appeared
- to know it, and one and another whispered as she passed, "Adorn
- thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!"
- -- and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, and
- anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green,
- which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she
- decorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymph child,
- or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with
- the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned herself, when
- she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly back
-
- Slowly -- for she saw the clergyman.
-
-
-
- XIX.
-
-
-
-
-
- THE CHILD AT THE BROOKSIDE
-
-
-
-
-
- "Thou will love her dearly," repeated Hester Prynne, as she and
- the minister sat watching little Pearl. "Dost thou not think her
- beautiful? And see with what natural skill she has made those
- simple flowers adorn her! Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds,
- and rubies in the wood, they could not have become her better!
- She is a splendid child! But I know whose brow she has!"
-
- "Dost thou know, Hester," said Arthur Dimmesdale, with an unquiet
- smile, "that this dear child, tripping about always at thy side,
- hath caused me many an alarm? Methought -- oh, Hester, what a
- thought is that, and how terrible to dread it! -- that my own
- features were partly repeated in her face, and so strikingly that
- the world might see them! But she is mostly thine!"
-
- "No, no! Not mostly!" answered the mother, with a tender smile.
- "A little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace
- whose child she is. But how strangely beautiful she looks with
- those wild flowers in her hair! It is as if one of the fairies,
- whom we left in dear old England, had decked her out to meet us.
- "
-
- It was with a feeling which neither of them had
-
-
-
- THE CHILD AT THE BROOKSIDE 249
-
-
-
- ever before experienced, that they sat and watched Pearl's slow
- advance. In her was visible the tie that united them. She had
- been offered to the world, these seven past years, as the living
- hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly
- sought to hide -- all written in this symbol -- all plainly
- manifest -- had there been a prophet or magician skilled to read
- the character of flame! And Pearl was the oneness of their
- being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how could they doubt
- that their earthly lives and future destinies were conjoined when
- they beheld at once the material union, and the spiritual idea,
- in whom they met, and were to dwell immortally together; thoughts
- like these -- and perhaps other thoughts, which they did not
- acknowledge or define -- threw an awe about the child as she came
- onward.
-
- "Let her see nothing strange -- no passion or eagerness -- in thy
- way of accosting her," whispered Hester. "Our Pearl is a fitful
- and fantastic little elf sometimes. Especially she is generally
- intolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why
- and wherefore. But the child hath strong affections! She loves
- me, and will love thee!"
-
- "Thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing aside at
- Hester Prynne, "how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns
- for it! But, in truth, as I already told thee, children are not
- readily won to be familiar with me. They will not climb my knee,
- nor prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile, but stand apart,
- and eye me strangely. Even little babes, when I take them in my
- arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl, twice in her little lifetime,
- hath been kind to me!
-
-
-
- 250 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- The first time -- thou knowest it well! The last was when thou
- ledst her with thee to the house of yonder stern old Governor. "
-
- "And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!"
- answered the mother. "I remember it; and so shall little Pearl.
- Fear nothing. She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon
- learn to love thee!"
-
- By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood
- on the further side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman,
- who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk waiting to receive
- her. Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool
- so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her
- little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her
- beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but
- more refined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so
- nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to communicate
- somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child
- herself. It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking
- so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest
- gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine,
- that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the
- brook beneath stood another child -- another and the same -- with
- likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some
- indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl, as if
- the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed
- out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and
- was now vainly seeking to return to it.
-
-
-
- THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 351
-
-
-
- There were both truth and error in the impression; the child and
- mother were estranged, but through Hester's fault, not Pearl's.
- Since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been
- admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, and so
- modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning
- wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where
- she was.
-
- "I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister, "that
- this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou
- canst never meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit,
- who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to
- cross a running stream? Pray hasten her, for this delay has
- already imparted a tremor to my nerves. "
-
- "Come, dearest child!" said Hester encouragingly, and stretching
- out both her arms. "How slow thou art! When hast thou been so
- sluggish before now? Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy
- friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much love henceforward as
- thy mother alone could give thee! Leap across the brook and come
- to us. Thou canst leap like a young deer!"
-
- Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet
- expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she
- fixed her bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister,
- and now included them both in the same glance, as if to detect
- and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one
- another. For some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale
- felt the child's eyes upon himself, his hand -- with that gesture
- so habitual as to have
-
-
-
- 653 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- become involuntary -- stole over his heart. At length, assuming
- a singular air of authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with
- the small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her
- mother's breast. And beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there
- was the flower-girdled and sunny image of little Pearl, pointing
- her small forefinger too.
-
- "Thou strange child! why dost thou not come to me?" exclaimed
- Hester.
-
- Pearl still pointed with her forefinger, and a frown gathered on
- her brow -- the more impressive from the childish, the almost
- baby-like aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother
- still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday
- suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a
- yet more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was
- the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its
- pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the
- aspect of little Pearl.
-
- "Hasten, Pearl, or I shall be angry with thee!" cried Hester
- Prynne, who, however, inured to such behaviour on the elf-child's
- part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly
- deportment now. "Leap across the brook, naughty child, and run
- hither! Else I must come to thee!"
-
- But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats any more
- than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a fit
- of passion, gesticulating violently, and throwing her small
- figure into the most extravagant contortions She accompanied this
- wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated
- on all sides, so that, alone as she was
-
-
-
- THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 253
-
-
-
- in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden
- multitude were lending her their sympathy and encouragement.
- Seen in the brook once more was the shadowy wrath of Pearl's
- image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot,
- wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing
- its small forefinger at Hester's bosom.
-
- "I see what ails the child," whispered Hester to the clergyman,
- and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her
- trouble and annoyance, "Children will not abide any, the
- slightest, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are
- daily before their eyes. Pearl misses something that she has
- always seen me wear!"
-
- "I pray you," answered the minister, "if thou hast any means of
- pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered
- wrath of an old witch like Mistress Hibbins," added he,
- attempting to smile, "I know nothing that I would not sooner
- encounter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's young beauty,
- as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify
- her if thou lovest me!"
-
- Hester turned again towards Pearl with a crimson blush upon her
- cheek, a conscious glance aside clergyman, and then a heavy sigh,
- while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a
- deadly pallor.
-
- "Pearl," said she sadly, "look down at thy feet! There! --
- before thee! -- on the hither side of the brook!"
-
- The child turned her eyes to the point indicated, and there lay
- the scarlet letter so close upon the
-
-
-
- 254 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- margin of the stream that the gold embroidery was reflected in
- it.
-
- "Bring it hither!" said Hester.
-
- "Come thou and take it up!" answered Pearl.
-
- "Was ever such a child!" observed Hester aside to the minister.
- "Oh, I have much to tell thee about her! But, in very truth, she
- is right as regards this hateful token. I must bear its torture
- yet a little longer -- only a few days longer -- until we shall
- have left this region, and look back hither as to a land which we
- have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! The mid-ocean shall
- take it from my hand, and swallow it up for ever!"
-
- With these words she advanced to the margin of the brook, took up
- the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom.
- Hopefully, but a moment ago, as Hester had spoken of drowning it
- in the deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her as
- she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand of fate.
- She had flung it into infinite space! she had drawn an hour's
- free breath! and here again was the scarlet misery glittering on
- the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus typified or no, that
- an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom. Hester
- next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair and confined them
- beneath her cap. As if there were a withering spell in the sad
- letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood,
- departed like fading sunshine, and a gray shadow seemed to fall
- across her.
-
- When the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand to
- Pearl
-
-
-
- THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 255
-
-
-
- "Dost thou know thy mother now, child?", asked she,
- reproachfully, but with a subdued tone. "Wilt thou come across
- the brook, and own thy mother, now that she has her shame upon
- her -- now that she is sad?"
-
- "Yes; now I will!" answered the child, bounding across the
- brook, and clasping Hester in her arms "Now thou art my mother
- indeed! and I am thy little Pearl!"
-
- In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew
- down her mother's head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks.
- But then -- by a kind of necessity that always impelled this
- child to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give with a
- throb of anguish -- Pearl put up her mouth and kissed the scarlet
- letter, too
-
- "That was not kind!" said Hester. "When thou hast shown me a
- little love, thou mockest me!"
-
- "Why doth the minister sit yonder?" asked Pearl.
-
- "He waits to welcome thee," replied her mother. "Come thou, and
- entreat his blessing! He loves thee, my little Pearl, and loves
- thy mother, too. Wilt thou not love him? Come he longs to greet
- thee!"
-
- "Doth he love us?" said Pearl, looking up with acute intelligence
- into her mother's face. "Will he go back with us, hand in hand,
- we three together, into the town?"
-
- "Not now, my child," answered Hester. "But in days to come he
- will walk hand in hand with us. We will have a home and fireside
- of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach
- thee many
-
-
-
- 256 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- things, and love thee dearly. Thou wilt love him -- wilt thou
- not?"
-
- "And will he always keep his hand over his heart?" inquired
- Pearl.
-
- "Foolish child, what a question is that!" exclaimed her mother.
- "Come, and ask his blessing!"
-
- But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive
- with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from
- whatever caprice of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no
- favour to the clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force
- that her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and
- manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since
- her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could
- transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different
- aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. The minister
- -- painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a
- talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier regards -- bent
- forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl broke
- away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it,
- and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite
- washed off and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding
- water. She then remained apart, silently watching Hester and the
- clergyman; while they talked together and made such arrangements
- as were suggested by their new position and the purposes soon to
- be fulfilled.
-
- And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was
- to be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with
- their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had
- passed there, and no
-
-
-
- THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 257
-
-
-
- mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this
- other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already
- overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble,
- with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages
- heretofore.
-
-
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE
-
-
-
-
-
- As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and little
- Pearl, he threw a backward glance, half expecting that he should
- discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the
- mother and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the
- woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be
- received as real. But there was Hester, clad in her gray robe,
- still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast had
- overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since
- been covering with moss, so that these two fated ones, with
- earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together,
- and find a single hour's rest and solace. And there was Pearl,
- too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook -- now that the
- intrusive third person was gone -- and taking her old place by
- her mother's side. So the minister had not fallen asleep and
- dreamed!
-
- In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity
- of impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he
- recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and
- himself had sketched for their departure. It had been determined
- between them that the Old World, with its crowds
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 259
-
-
-
- and cities, offered them a more eligible shelter and concealment
- than the wilds of New England or all America, with its
- alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the few settlements of
- Europeans scattered thinly along the sea-board. Not to speak of
- the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of
- a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his entire
- development would secure him a home only in the midst of
- civilization and refinement; the higher the state the more
- delicately adapted to it the man. In futherance of this choice,
- it so happened that a ship lay in the harbour; one of those
- unquestionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without
- being absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface
- with a remarkable irresponsibility of character. This vessel had
- recently arrived from the Spanish Main, and within three days'
- time would sail for Bristol. Hester Prynne -- whose vocation, as
- a self-enlisted Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted
- with the captain and crew -- could take upon herself to secure
- the passage of two individuals and a child with all the secrecy
- which circumstances rendered more than desirable.
-
- The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the
- precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It
- would probably be on the fourth day from the present. "This is
- most fortunate!" he had then said to himself. Now, why the
- Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate we
- hesitate to reveal. Nevertheless -- to hold nothing back from
- the reader -- it was because, on the third day from the present,
- he was to preach the Election Sermon; and, as such an occasion
- formed
-
-
-
- 260 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- an honourable epoch in the life of a New England Clergyman, he
- could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of
- terminating his professional career. "At least, they shall say
- of me," thought this exemplary man, "that I leave no public duty
- unperformed or ill-performed!" Sad, indeed, that an introspection
- so profound and acute as this poor minister's should be so
- miserably deceived! We have had, and may still have, worse
- things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak;
- no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle
- disease that had long since begun to eat into the real substance
- of his character. No man, for any considerable period, can wear
- one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally
- getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
-
- The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale's feelings as he returned from
- his interview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy,
- and hurried him townward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the
- woods seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural
- obstacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he
- remembered it on his outward journey. But he leaped across the
- plashy places, thrust himself through the clinging underbush,
- climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow, and overcame, in
- short, all the difficulties of the track, with an unweariable
- activity that astonished him. He could not but recall how
- feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath he had toiled
- over the same ground, only two days before. As he drew near the
- town, he took an impression of change from the series of familiar
- objects that presented themselves. It seemed not yesterday,
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 261
-
-
-
- not one, not two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had
- quitted them. There, indeed, was each former trace of the
- street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the
- houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and a weather-cock
- at every point where his memory suggested one. Not the less,
- however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. The
- same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all
- the well-known shapes of human life, about the little town. They
- looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were
- no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his
- feet to-day; it was impossible to describe in what respect they
- differed from the individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed
- a parting glance; and yet the minister's deepest sense seemed to
- inform him of their mutability. A similar impression struck him
- most remarkably a he passed under the walls of his own church.
- The edifice had so very strange, and yet so familiar an aspect,
- that Mr. Dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas; either
- that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was
- merely dreaming about it now.
-
- This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed,
- indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a
- change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the
- intervening space of a single day had operated on his
- consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister's own will,
- and Hester's will, and the fate that grew between them, had
- wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore,
- but the same minister returned not from the
-
-
-
- 262 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- forest. He might have said to the friends who greeted him -- "I
- am not the man for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the
- forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree trunk, and
- near a melancholy brook! Go, seek your minister, and see if his
- emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled
- brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment!" His
- friends, no doubt, would still have insisted with him -- "Thou
- art thyself the man!" but the error would have been their own,
- not his.
-
- Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him other
- evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling.
- In truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral
- code, in that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the
- impulses now communicated to the unfortunate and startled
- minister. At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild,
- wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once
- involuntary and intentional, in spite of himself, yet growing out
- of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse. For
- instance, he met one of his own deacons. The good old man
- addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchal
- privilege which his venerable age, his upright and holy
- character, and his station in the church, entitled him to use
- and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost worshipping respect,
- which the minister's professional and private claims alike
- demanded. Never was there a more beautiful example of how the
- majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and
- respect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank, and
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 263
-
-
-
- inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. Now, during a
- conversation of some two or three moments between the Reverend
- Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it
- was only by the most careful self-control that the former could
- refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose
- into his mind, respecting the communion-supper. He absolutely
- trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag
- itself in utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own
- consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. And,
- even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid
- laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon
- would have been petrified by his minister's impiety.
-
- Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying along the
- street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest
- female member of his church, a most pious and exemplary old dame,
- poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences
- about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long
- ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied gravestones. Yet all
- this, which would else have been such heavy sorrow, was made
- almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by religious
- consolations and the truths of Scripture, wherewith she had fed
- herself continually for more than thirty years. And since Mr.
- Dimmesdale had taken her in charge, the good grandam's chief
- earthly comfort -- which, unless it had been likewise a heavenly
- comfort, could have been none at all -- was to meet her pastor,
- whether casually, or of set purpose, and be refreshed with a word
- of warm, fragrant, heaven-
-
-
-
- 264 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- breathing Gospel truth, from his beloved lips, into her dulled,
- but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the
- moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr.
- Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could
- recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief,
- pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument
- against the immortality of the human soul. The instilment
- thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister
- to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely
- poisonous infusion. What he really did whisper, the minister
- could never afterwards recollect. There was, perhaps, a
- fortunate disorder in his utterance, which failed to impart any
- distinct idea to the good widows comprehension, or which
- Providence interpreted after a method of its own. Assuredly, as
- the minister looked back, he beheld an expression of divine
- gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial
- city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale.
-
- Again, a third instance. After parting from the old church
- member, he met the youngest sister of them all. It was a maiden
- newly-won -- and won by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's own
- sermon, on the Sabbath after his vigil -- to barter the
- transitory pleasures of the world for the heavenly hope that was
- to assume brighter substance as life grew dark around her, and
- which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. She was fair
- and pure as a lily that had bloomed in Paradise. The minister
- knew well that he was himself enshrined within the stainless
- sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 265
-
-
-
- curtains about his image, imparting to religion the warmth of
- love, and to love a religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had
- surely led the poor young girl away from her mother's side, and
- thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or -- shall
- we not rather say? -- this lost and desperate man. As she drew
- nigh, the arch-fiend whispered him to condense into small
- compass, and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would
- be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes.
- Such was his sense of power over this virgin soul, trusting him
- as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight all the field
- of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its
- opposite with but a word. So -- with a mightier struggle than he
- had yet sustained -- he held his Geneva cloak before his face,
- and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving
- the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. She
- ransacked her conscience -- which was full of harmless little
- matters, like her pocket or her work-bag -- and took herself to
- task, poor thing! for a thousand imaginary faults, and went
- about her household duties with swollen eyelids the next morning.
-
-
- Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this
- last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more
- ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It was -- we blush to tell it
- -- it was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked
- words to a knot of little Puritan children who were playing
- there, and had but just begun to talk. Denying himself this
- freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of
- the ship's crew from the
-
-
-
- 266 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- Spanish Main. And here, since he had so valiantly forborne all
- other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale longed at least to shake
- hands with the tarry black-guard, and recreate himself with a few
- improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a
- volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying
- oaths! It was not so much a better principle, as partly his
- natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of
- clerical decorum, that carried him safely through the latter
- crisis.
-
- "What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?" cried the minister
- to himself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his
- hand against his forehead.
-
- "Am I mad? or am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make
- a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood?
- And does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the
- performance of every wickedness which his most foul imagination
- can conceive?"
-
- At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale thus communed
- with himself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old Mistress
- Hibbins, the reputed witch-lady, is said to have been passing by.
- She made a very grand appearance, having on a high head-dress, a
- rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow
- starch, of which Anne Turner, her especial friend, had taught her
- the secret, before this last good lady had been hanged for Sir
- Thomas Overbury's murder. Whether the witch had read the
- minister's thoughts or no, she came to a full stop, looked
- shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and -- though little
- given to converse with clergymen -- began a conversation.
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 267
-
-
-
- "So, reverend sir, you have made a visit into the forest,"
- observed the witch-lady, nodding her high head-dress at him.
- "The next time I pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I
- shall be proud to bear you company. Without taking overmuch upon
- myself my good word will go far towards gaining any strange
- gentleman a fair reception from yonder potentate you wot of. "
-
- "I profess, madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave
- obeisance, such as the lady's rank demanded, and his own good
- breeding made imperative -- " I profess, on my conscience and
- character, that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport
- of your words! I went not into the forest to seek a potentate,
- neither do I, at any future time, design a visit thither, with a
- view to gaining the favour of such personage. My one sufficient
- object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot,
- and rejoice with him over the many precious souls he hath won
- from heathendom!"
-
- "Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high
- head-dress at the minister. "Well, well! we must needs talk
- thus in the daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at
- midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!"
-
- She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back
- her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognise a
- secret intimacy of connexion.
-
- "Have I then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend
- whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag
- has chosen for her prince and master?"
-
-
-
- 268 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it!
- Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself with
- deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew
- was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been
- thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It bad
- stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the
- whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked
- malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was
- good and holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened
- him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a
- real incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship with
- wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.
-
- He had by this time reached his dwelling on the edge of the
- burial ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his
- study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter,
- without first betraying himself to the world by any of those
- strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been
- continually impelled while passing through the streets. He
- entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books,
- its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the
- walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted
- him throughout his walk from the forest dell into the town and
- thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here gone through
- fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray;
- here borne a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in
- its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him,
- and God's voice through all
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 269
-
-
-
- There on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an
- unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his
- thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page two days before.
- He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister,
- who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into
- the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this
- former self with scornful pitying, but half-envious curiosity.
- That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the forest
- -- a wiser one -- with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the
- simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind
- of knowledge that!
-
- While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door
- of the study, and the minister said, "Come in!" -- not wholly
- devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit. And so he
- did! It was old Roger Chillingworth that entered. The minister
- stood white and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew
- Scriptures, and the other spread upon his breast.
-
- "Welcome home, reverend sir," said the physician "And how found
- you that godly man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear sir,
- you look pale, as if the travel through the wilderness had been
- too sore for you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in
- heart and strength to preach your Election Sermon?"
-
- "Nay, I think not so," rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale.
- "My journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the
- free air which I have breathed have done me good, after so long
-
-
-
- 270 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- confinement in my study. I think to need no more of your drugs,
- my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a
- friendly hand. "
-
- All this time Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister
- with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his
- patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the latter was
- almost convinced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his
- confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with
- Hester Prynne. The physician knew then that in the minister's
- regard he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest
- enemy. So much being known, it would appear natural that a part
- of it should he expressed. It is singular, however, how long a
- time often passes before words embody things; and with what
- security two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may
- approach its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus
- the minister felt no apprehension that Roger Chillingworth would
- touch, in express words, upon the real position which they
- sustained towards one another. Yet did the physician, in his
- dark way, creep frightfully near the secret.
-
- "Were it not better," said he, "that you use my poor skill
- tonight? Verily, dear sir, we must take pains to make you strong
- and vigorous for this occasion of the Election discourse. The
- people look for great things from you, apprehending that another
- year may come about and find their pastor gone. "
-
- "Yes, to another world," replied the minister with pious
- resignation. "Heaven grant it be a better one; for, in good
- sooth, I hardly think to tarry with my
-
-
-
- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 271
-
-
-
- flock through the flitting seasons of another year! But touching
- your medicine, kind sir, in my present frame of body I need it
- not. "
-
- "I joy to hear it," answered the physician. "It may be that my
- remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due
- effect. Happy man were I, and well deserving of New England's
- gratitude, could I achieve this cure!"
-
- "I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend," said the
- Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale with a solemn smile. "I thank you, and
- can but requite your good deeds with my prayers. "
-
- "A good man's prayers are golden recompense!" rejoined old Roger
- Chillingworth, as he took his leave. "Yea, they are the current
- gold coin of the New Jerusalem, with the King's own mint mark on
- them!"
-
- Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and
- requested food, which, being set before him, he ate with ravenous
- appetite. Then flinging the already written pages of the
- Election Sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another, which
- he wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that
- he fancied himself inspired; and only wondered that Heaven should
- see fit to transmit the grand and solemn music of its oracles
- through so foul an organ pipe as he. However, leaving that
- mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved for ever, he drove his
- task onward with earnest haste and ecstasy.
-
- Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he
- careering on it; morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the
- curtains; and at
-
-
-
- 272 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study, and laid it
- right across the minister's bedazzled eyes. There he was, with
- the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract
- of written space behind him!
-
-
-
- XXI
-
-
-
-
-
- THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY
-
-
-
-
-
- Betimes in the morning of the day on which the new Governor was
- to receive his office at the hands of the people, Hester Prynne
- and little Pearl came into the market-place. It was already
- thronged with the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the
- town, in considerable numbers, among whom, likewise, were many
- rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked them as
- belonging to some of the forest settlements, which surrounded the
- little metropolis of the colony.
-
- On this public holiday, as on all other occasions for seven years
- past, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. Not
- more by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its
- fashion, it had the effect of making her fade personally out of
- sight and outline; while again the scarlet letter brought her
- back from this twilight indistinctness, and revealed her under
- the moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so long
- familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude which
- they were accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask; or,
- rather like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's features; owing
- this dreary resemblance to the fact that Hester was actually
- dead, in respect to any
-
- 273
-
-
-
- 274 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- claim of sympathy, and had departed out of the world with which
- she still seemed to mingle.
-
- It might be, on this one day, that there was an expression unseen
- before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be detected now; unless some
- preternaturally gifted observer should have first read the heart,
- and have afterwards sought a corresponding development in the
- countenance and mien. Such a spiritual sneer might have
- conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of the multitude
- through several miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and
- something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for
- one last time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in
- order to convert what had so long been agony into a kind of
- triumph. "Look your last on the scarlet letter and its wearer!"
- -- the people's victim and lifelong bond-slave, as they fancied
- her, might say to them. "Yet a little while, and she will be
- beyond your reach! A few hours longer and the deep, mysterious
- ocean will quench and hide for ever the symbol which ye have
- caused to burn on her bosom!" Nor were it an inconsistency too
- improbable to be assigned to human nature, should we suppose a
- feeling of regret in Hester's mind, at the moment when she was
- about to win her freedom from the pain which had been thus deeply
- incorporated with her being. Might there not be an irresistible
- desire to quaff a last, long, breathless draught of the cup of
- wormwood and aloes, with which nearly all her years of womanhood
- had been perpetually flavoured. The wine of life, henceforth to
- be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and
- exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker, or else leave an
- inevitable and
-
-
-
- THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 275
-
-
-
- weary languor, after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had
- been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest potency.
-
- Pearl was decked out with airy gaiety. It would have been
- impossible to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed
- its existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at
- once so gorgeous and so delicate as must have been requisite to
- contrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a
- task perhaps more difficult, in imparting so distinct a
- peculiarity to Hester's simple robe. The dress, so proper was it
- to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development
- and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be
- separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a
- butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright
- flower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of
- one idea with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there
- was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood,
- resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that
- sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on
- which it is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in the
- agitations of those connected with them: always, especially, a
- sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind,
- in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem
- on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her
- spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble
- passiveness of Hester's brow.
-
- This effervescence made her flit with a bird-like movement,
- rather than walk by her mother's side.
-
-
-
- 276 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- She broke continually into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and
- sometimes piercing music. When they reached the market-place,
- she became still more restless, on perceiving the stir and bustle
- that enlivened the spot; for it was usually more like the broad
- and lonesome green before a village meeting-house, than the
- centre of a town's business
-
- "Why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "Wherefore have all the
- people left their work to-day? Is it a play-day for the whole
- world? See, there is the blacksmith! He has washed his sooty
- face, and put on his Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he
- would gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach him how!
- And there is Master Brackett, the old jailer, nodding and
- smiling at me. Why does he do so, mother?"
-
- "He remembers thee a little babe, my child," answered Hester.
-
- "He should not nod and smile at me, for all that -- the black,
- grim, ugly-eyed old man!" said Pearl.
-
- "He may nod at thee, if he will; for thou art clad in gray, and
- wearest the scarlet letter. But see, mother, how many faces of
- strange people, and Indians among them, and sailors! What have
- they all come to do, here in the market-place?"
-
- "They wait to see the procession pass," said Hester. "For the
- Governor and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and
- all the great people and good people, with the music and the
- soldiers marching before them. "
-
- "And will the minister be there?" asked Pearl. "And will he hold
- out both his hands to me, as when thou led'st me to him from the
- brook-side?"
-
-
-
- THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 277
-
-
-
- "He will be there, child," answered her mother, "but he will not
- greet thee to-day, nor must thou greet him. "
-
- "What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking
- partly to herself. "In the dark nighttime he calls us to him,
- and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the
- scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old
- trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee,
- sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, so
- that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But, here, in
- the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor
- must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always
- over his heart!"
-
- "Be quiet, Pearl -- thou understandest not these things," said
- her mother. "Think not now of the minister, but look about thee,
- and see how cheery is everybody's face to-day. The children have
- come from their schools, and the grown people from their
- workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, to-day,
- a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so -- as has been
- the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered --
- they make merry and rejoice: as if a good and golden year were at
- length to pass over the poor old world!"
-
- It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that
- brightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season of
- the year -- as it already was, and continued to be during the
- greater part of two centuries -- the Puritans compressed whatever
- mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human
-
-
-
- 278 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that,
- for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more
- grave than most other communities at a period of general
- affliction.
-
- But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which
- undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age. The
- persons now in the market-place of Boston had not been born to an
- inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen,
- whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan
- epoch; a time when the life of England, viewed as one great mass,
- would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and joyous, as
- the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their hereditary
- taste, the New England settlers would have illustrated all events
- of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and
- processions. Nor would it have been impracticable, in the
- observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful recreation
- with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant
- embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such
- festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an attempt of this
- kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the political
- year of the colony commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered
- splendour, a colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what
- they had beheld in proud old London -- we will not say at a royal
- coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's show -- might be traced in the
- customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the
- annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders of
- the commonwealth -- the statesman, the priest, and the soldier --
- seemed it a duty then to assume the
-
-
-
- THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 279
-
-
-
- outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with antique
- style, was looked upon as the proper garb of public and social
- eminence. All came forth to move in procession before the
- people's eye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple
- framework of a government so newly constructed.
-
- Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in
- relaxing the severe and close application to their various modes
- of rugged industry, which at all other times, seemed of the same
- piece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, were
- none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily
- have found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James
- -- no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp
- and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his
- music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry
- Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred
- years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very
- broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of
- the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly
- repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the
- general sentiment which give law its vitality. Not the less,
- however, the great, honest face of the people smiled -- grimly,
- perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the
- colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country
- fairs and on the village-greens of England; and which it was
- thought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the
- courage and manliness that were essential in them. Wrestling
- matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire,
- were seen here
-
-
-
- 280 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- and there about the market-place; in one corner, there was a
- friendly bout at quarterstaff; and -- what attracted most
- interest of all -- on the platform of the pillory, already so
- noted in our pages, two masters of defence were commencing an
- exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But, much to the
- disappointment of the crowd, this latter business was broken off
- by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea of
- permitting the majesty of the law to be violated by such an abuse
- of one of its consecrated places.
-
- It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being
- then in the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring
- of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day), that they
- would compare favourably, in point of holiday keeping, with their
- descendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. Their
- immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants,
- wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the
- national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not
- sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn again the
- forgotten art of gaiety.
-
- The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general
- tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants,
- was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians
- -- in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin
- robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and
- armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear -- stood
- apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even
- the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted
-
-
-
- THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 281
-
-
-
- barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This
- distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners -- a
- part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main -- who had
- come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were
- rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an
- immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about
- the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and
- sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword.
- From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes
- which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal
- ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules
- of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco
- under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost
- a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts
- of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely
- tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably
- characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we
- call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not
- merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate
- deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go
- near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be
- little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no
- unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been
- guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish
- commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern
- court of justice.
-
- But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very
- much at its own will, or subject only
-
-
-
- 282 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation
- by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his
- calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and
- piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life,
- was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to
- traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their
- black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled
- not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these
- jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor
- animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger
- Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place
- in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable
- vessel.
-
- The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far
- as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. He
- wore a profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold lace on his
- hat, which was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted
- with a feather. There was a sword at his side and a sword-cut on
- his forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed
- anxious rather to display than hide. A landsman could hardly
- have worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them
- both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question
- before a magistrate, and probably incurring a fine or
- imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. As
- regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as
- pertaining to the character, as to a fish his glistening scales.
-
- After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristol
- ship strolled idly through the market-
-
-
-
- THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 283
-
-
-
- place; until happening to approach the spot where Hester Prynne
- was standing, he appeared to recognise, and did not hesitate to
- address her. As was usually the case wherever Hester stood, a
- small vacant area -- a sort of magic circle -- had formed itself
- about her, into which, though the people were elbowing one
- another at a little distance, none ventured or felt disposed to
- intrude. It was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which
- the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own
- reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so
- unkindly, withdrawal of her fellow-creatures. Now, if never
- before, it answered a good purpose by enabling Hester and the
- seaman to speak together without risk of being overheard; and so
- changed was Hester Prynne's repute before the public, that the
- matron in town, most eminent for rigid morality, could not have
- held such intercourse with less result of scandal than herself.
-
- "So, mistress," said the mariner, "I must bid the steward make
- ready one more berth than you bargained for! No fear of scurvy
- or ship fever this voyage. What with the ship's surgeon and this
- other doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more by
- token, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which I
- traded for with a Spanish vessel. "
-
- "What mean you?" inquired Hester, startled more than she
- permitted to appear. "Have you another passenger?
-
- "Why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physician
- here -- Chillingworth he calls himself -- is minded to try my
- cabin-fare with you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he
- tells me he
-
-
-
- 284 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke
- of -- he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan rulers. "
-
- "They know each other well, indeed," replied Hester, with a mien
- of calmness, though in the utmost consternation. "They have long
- dwelt together. "
-
- Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne.
- But at that instant she beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself,
- standing in the remotest comer of the market-place and smiling on
- her; a smile which -- across the wide and bustling square, and
- through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods,
- and interests of the crowd -- conveyed secret and fearful
- meaning.
-
- XXII
-
-
-
- THE PROCESSION
-
-
-
- Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and
- consider what was practicable to be done in this new and
- startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military music was
- heard approaching along a contiguous street. It denoted the
- advance of the procession of magistrates and citizens on its way
- towards the meeting-house: where, in compliance with a custom
- thus early established, and ever since observed, the Reverend Mr.
- Dimmesdale was to deliver an Election Sermon.
-
- Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and
- stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across the
- market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety of
- instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and
- played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object
- for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the
- multitude -- that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to
- the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at
- first clapped her hands, but then lost for an instant the
- restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence
- throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to be
- borne upward like a
-
-
-
- 286 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- floating sea-bird on the long heaves and swells of sound. But
- she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the
- sunshine on the weapons and bright armour of the military
- company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary
- escort of the procession. This body of soldiery -- which still
- sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages
- with an ancient and honourable fame -- was composed of no
- mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled with gentlemen who
- felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to establish a
- kind of College of Arms, where, as in an association of Knights
- Templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful
- exercise would teach them, the practices of war. The high
- estimation then placed upon the military character might be seen
- in the lofty port of each individual member of the company. Some
- of them, indeed, by their services in the Low Countries and on
- other fields of European warfare, had fairly won their title to
- assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array,
- moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over
- their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern
- display can aspire to equal.
-
- And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind
- the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's
- eye. Even in outward demeanour they showed a stamp of majesty
- that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not
- absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less
- consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce
- stability and dignity of character a great deal more. The people
- possessed
-
-
-
- THE PROCESSION 287
-
-
-
- by hereditary right the quality of reverence, which, in their
- descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion,
- and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and estimate
- of public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is partly,
- perhaps, for both. In that old day the English settler on these
- rude shores -- having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful
- rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence
- was strong in him -- bestowed it on the white hair and venerable
- brow of age -- on long-tried integrity -- on solid wisdom and
- sad-coloured experience -- on endowments of that grave and
- weighty order which gave the idea of permanence, and comes under
- the general definition of respectability. These primitive
- statesmen, therefore -- Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham,
- and their compeers -- who were elevated to power by the early
- choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but
- distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of
- intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of
- difficulty or peril stood up for the welfare of the state like a
- line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The traits of
- character here indicated were well represented in the square cast
- of countenance and large physical development of the new colonial
- magistrates. So far as a demeanour of natural authority was
- concerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see
- these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted into the House
- of Peers, or make the Privy Council of the Sovereign.
-
- Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently
- distinguished divine, from whose lips
-
-
-
- 188 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
- the religious discourse of the anniversary was expected. His was
- the profession at that era in which intellectual ability
- displayed itself far more than in political life; for -- leaving
- a higher motive out of the question it offered inducements
- powerful enough in the almost worshipping respect of the
- community, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service.
- Even political power -- as in the case of Increase Mather -- was
- within the grasp of a successful priest.
-
- It was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never,
- since Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England
- shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and
- air with which he kept his pace in the procession. There was no
- feebleness of step as at other times; his frame was not bent, nor
- did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the
- clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the
- body. It might be spiritual and imparted to him by angelical
- ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that potent
- cordial which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest
- and long-continued thought. Or perchance his sensitive
- temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music that
- swelled heaven-ward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave.
- Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned
- whether Mr. Dimmesdale ever heard the music. There was his
- body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But where
- was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying itself,
- with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of stately
- thoughts that were soon to
-
-
-
- THE PROCESSION 289
-
-
-
- issue thence; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing
- of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the
- feeble frame and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and
- converting it to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon intellect,
- who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty
- effort, into which they throw the life of many days and then are
- lifeless for as many more.
-
- Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary
- influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not,
- unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly
- beyond her reach. One glance of recognition she had imagined
- must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest,
- with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the
- mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand-in-hand, they had mingled
- their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the
- brook. How deeply had they known each other then! And was this
- the man? She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly past,
- enveloped as it were, in the rich music, with the procession of
- majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in his
- worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his
- unsympathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld him! Her
- spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and
- that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond
- betwixt the clergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was
- there in Hester, that she could scarcely forgive him -- least of
- all now, when the heavy footstep of their
-
-
-
- 290 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer! -- for
- being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual
- world -- while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold
- hands, and found him not.
-
- Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or
- herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen
- around the minister. While the procession passed, the child was
- uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of
- taking flight. When the whole had gone by, she looked up into
- Hester's face --
-
- "Mother," said she, "was that the same minister that kissed me by
- the brook?"
-
- "Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We
- must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in
- the forest. "
-
- "I could not be sure that it was he -- so strange he looked,"
- continued the child. "Else I would have run to him, and bid him
- kiss me now, before all the people, even as he did yonder among
- the dark old trees. What would the minister have said, mother?
- Would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me,
- and bid me begone?"
-
- "What should he say, Pearl," answered Hester, "save that it was
- no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the
- market-place? Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not
- speak to him!"
-
- Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr.
- Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose eccentricities --
- insanity, as we should term
-
-
-
- THE PROCESSION 291
-
-
-
- it -- led her to do what few of the townspeople would have
- ventured on -- to begin a conversation with the wearer of the
- scarlet letter in public. It was Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed
- in great magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher,
- a gown of rich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to
- see the procession. As this ancient lady had the renown (which
- subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a
- principal actor in all the works of necromancy that were
- continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and
- seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the
- plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester
- Prynne -- kindly as so many now felt towards the latter -- the
- dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins had doubled, and caused a
- general movement from that part of the market-place in which the
- two women stood.
-
- "Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it?" whispered the
- old lady confidentially to Hester. "Yonder divine man! That
- saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and as -- I must
- needs say -- he really looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the
- procession, would think how little while it is since he went
- forth out of his study -- chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in
- his mouth, I warrant -- to take an airing in the forest! Aha!
- we know what that means, Hester Prynne! But truly, forsooth, I
- find it hard to believe him the same man. Many a church member
- saw I, walking behind the music, that has danced in the same
- measure with me, when Somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an
- Indian powwow or a Lapland wizard changing hands with
-
-
-
- 291 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- us! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But
- this minister. Couldst thou surely tell, Hester, whether he was
- the same man that encountered thee on the forest path?"
-
- "Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered Hester Prynne,
- feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely
- startled and awe-stricken by the confidence with which she
- affirmed a personal connexion between so many persons (herself
- among them) and the Evil One. "It is not for me to talk lightly
- of a learned and pious minister of the Word, like the Reverend
- Mr. Dimmesdale. "
-
- "Fie, woman -- fie!" cried the old lady, shaking her finger at
- Hester. "Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many
- times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there?
- Yea, though no leaf of the wild garlands which they wore while
- they danced be left in their hair! I know thee, Hester, for I
- behold the token. We may all see it in the sunshine! and it
- glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it openly, so
- there need be no question about that. But this minister! Let me
- tell thee in thine ear! When the Black Man sees one of his own
- servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is
- the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters
- so that the mark shall be disclosed, in open daylight, to the
- eyes of all the world! What is that the minister seeks to hide,
- with his hand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne?"
-
- "What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?" eagerly asked little Pearl.
- "Hast thou seen it?"
-
-
-
- THE PROCESSION 293
-
-
-
- "No matter, darling!" responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a
- profound reverence. "Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or
- another. They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince
- of Air! Wilt thou ride with me some fine night to see thy
- father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his
- hand over his heart!"
-
- Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the
- weird old gentlewoman took her departure.
-
- By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the
- meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale
- were heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling
- kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much
- thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close
- beside the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient
- proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of
- an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister's very
- peculiar voice.
-
- This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a
- listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the
- preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the
- mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion
- and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to
- the human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by
- its passage through the church walls, Hester Prynne listened with
- such intenseness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon
- had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its
- indistinguishable
-
-
-
- 294 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been
- only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now
- she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to
- repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through
- progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume
- seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn
- grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there
- was for ever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. A
- loud or low expression of anguish -- the whisper, or the shriek,
- as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a
- sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of pathos
- was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard sighing amid a
- desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high
- and commanding -- when it gushed irrepressibly upward -- when it
- assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church
- as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself
- in the open air -- still, if the auditor listened intently, and
- for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was
- it? The complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance
- guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the
- great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,
- -- at every moment, -- in each accent, -- and never in vain! It
- was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman
- his most appropriate power.
-
- During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of
- the scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there,
- there would, nevertheless, have
-
-
-
- THE PROCESSION 295
-
-
-
- been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the
- first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense within her
- -- too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily on
- her mind -- that her whole orb of life, both before and after,
- was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it
- unity.
-
- Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was
- playing at her own will about the market-place. She made the
- sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray, even as
- a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky
- foliage by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid
- the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an undulating,
- but oftentimes a sharp and irregular movement. It indicated the
- restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly
- indefatigable in its tip-toe dance, because it was played upon
- and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever Pearl saw
- anything to excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she
- flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man or
- thing as her own property, so far as she desired it, but without
- yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in
- requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none
- the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from
- the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone
- through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She
- ran and looked the wild Indian in the face, and he grew conscious
- of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity,
- but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the
-
-
-
- 296 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the
- ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and they gazed
- wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the
- sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted
- with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in the
- night-time.
-
- One of these seafaring men the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken
- to Hester Prynne was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that he
- attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss.
- Finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird
- in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted
- about it, and threw it to the child. Pearl immediately twined it
- around her neck and waist with such happy skill, that, once seen
- there, it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine
- her without it.
-
- "Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the
- seaman, "Wilt thou carry her a message from me?"
-
- "If the message pleases me, I will," answered Pearl.
-
- "Then tell her," rejoined he, "that I spake again with the
- black-a-visaged, hump shouldered old doctor, and he engages to
- bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So
- let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt
- thou tell her this, thou witch-baby?"
-
- "Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" cried
- Pearl, with a naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill-name,
- I shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a
- tempest!"
-
-
-
- THE PROCESSION 297
-
-
-
- Pursuing a zigzag course across the marketplace, the child
- returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had
- said. Hester's strong, calm steadfastly-enduring spirit almost
- sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an
- inevitable doom, which at the moment when a passage seemed to
- open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of
- misery -- showed itself with an unrelenting smile, right in the
- midst of their path.
-
- With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the
- shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to
- another trial. There were many people present from the country
- round about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to
- whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated
- rumours, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes.
- These, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged
- about Hester Prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness.
- Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer
- than a circuit of several yards. At that distance they
- accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the
- repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of
- sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and
- learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their
- sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the
- Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's
- curiosity and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their
- snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom, conceiving, perhaps,
- that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must
-
-
-
- 298 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- needs be a personage of high dignity among her people Lastly, the
- inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out
- subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw
- others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented
- Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool,
- well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and
- recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who had
- awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door seven years ago; all
- save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose
- burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was
- so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely
- become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus
- made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since
- the first day she put it on.
-
- While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the
- cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for
- ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred
- pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to
- his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of
- the scarlet letter in the marketplace! What imagination would
- have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching
- stigma was on them both!
-
- XXIII.
-
-
-
-
-
- THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET
-
-
-
- LETTER
-
-
-
-
-
- The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience
- had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at
- length came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound
- as what should follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a
- murmur and half-hushed tumult, as if the auditors, released from
- the high spell that had transported them into the region of
- another's mind, were returning into themselves, with all their
- awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment more the crowd
- began to gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that there
- was an end, they needed more breath, more fit to support the
- gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than that
- atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame,
- and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought.
-
- In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and
- the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with
- applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they
- had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell
- or hear.
-
-
-
- 300 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- According to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so
- wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day;
- nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more
- evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be seen,
- as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and
- continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay
- before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as
- marvellous to himself as to his audience, His subject, it
- appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the
- communities of mankind, with a special reference to the New
- England which they were here planting in the wilderness. And, as
- he drew towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon
- him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old
- prophets of Israel were constrained, only with this difference,
- that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin
- on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and
- glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. But,
- throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had
- been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be
- interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to
- pass away. Yes; their minister whom they so loved -- and who so
- loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a
- sigh -- had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would
- soon leave them in their tears. This idea of his transitory stay
- on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher
- had produced; it was if an angel, in his passage to the skies,
- had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant -- at
- once a shadow and a
-
-
-
- THE REVELATION 301
-
-
-
- splendour -- and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon
- them.
-
- Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale -- as to
- most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognised
- until they see it far behind them -- an epoch of life more
- brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any
- which could hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very
- proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts or
- intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of
- whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's
- earliest days, when the professional character was of itself a
- lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister
- occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the
- pulpit at the close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester
- Prynne was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the
- scarlet letter still burning on her breast!
-
- Now was heard again the clamour of the music, and the measured
- tramp of the military escort issuing from the church door. The
- procession was to be marshalled thence to the town hall, where a
- solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the day.
-
- Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers
- were seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew
- back reverently, on either side, as the Governor and magistrates,
- the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were
- eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When they
- were fairly in the marketplace, their presence was greeted by a
- shout. This -- though doubtless it might acquire additional
- force and
-
-
-
- 302 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- volume from the child-like loyalty which the age awarded to its
- rulers -- was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm
- kindled in the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which
- was yet reverberating in their ears. Each felt the impulse in
- himself, and in the same breath, caught it from his neighbour.
- Within the church, it had hardly been kept down; beneath the sky
- it pealed upward to the zenith. There were human beings enough,
- and enough of highly wrought and symphonious feeling to produce
- that more impressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or
- the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mighty swell of
- many voices, blended into one great voice by the universal
- impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of the many.
- Never, from the soil of New England had gone up such a shout!
- Never, on New England soil had stood the man so honoured by his
- mortal brethren as the preacher!
-
- How fared it with him, then? Were there not the brilliant
- particles of a halo in the air about his head? So etherealised
- by spirit as he was, and so apotheosised by worshipping admirers,
- did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust
- of earth?
-
- As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all
- eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was seen to
- approach among them. The shout died into a murmur, as one
- portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of him.
- How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph! The energy
- -- or say, rather, the inspiration which had held him up, until
- he should have
-
-
-
- THE REVELATION 303
-
-
-
- delivered the sacred message that had brought its own strength
- along with it from heaven -- was withdrawn, now that it had so
- faithfully performed its office. The glow, which they had just
- before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished, like a
- flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late decaying embers.
- It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a death-like
- hue: it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on his
- path so nervously, yet tottered, and did not fall!
-
- One of his clerical brethren -- it was the venerable John Wilson
- -- observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by the
- retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward
- hastily to offer his support. The minister tremulously, but
- decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. He still walked onward,
- if that movement could be so described, which rather resembled
- the wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's arms in view,
- outstretched to tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible
- as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite
- the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long
- since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne
- had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood
- Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand! And there was the
- scarlet letter on her breast! The minister here made a pause;
- although the music still played the stately and rejoicing march
- to which the procession moved. It summoned him onward -- inward
- to the festival! -- but here he made a pause.
-
- Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye
- upon him. He now left his own place in
-
-
-
-
-
- 304 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- the procession, and advanced to give assistance judging, from Mr.
- Dimmesdale's aspect that he must otherwise inevitably fall. But
- there was something in the latter's expression that warned back
- the magistrate, although a man not readily obeying the vague
- intimations that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd,
- meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly
- faintness, was, in their view, only another phase of the
- minister's celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle
- too high to be wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before
- their eyes, waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into
- the light of heaven!
-
- He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.
-
- "Hester," said he, "come hither! Come, my little Pearl!"
-
- It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was
- something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The
- child, with the bird-like motion, which was one of her
- characteristics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his
- knees. Hester Prynne -- slowly, as if impelled by inevitable
- fate, and against her strongest will -- likewise drew near, but
- paused before she reached him. At this instant old Roger
- Chillingworth thrust himself through the crowd -- or, perhaps, so
- dark, disturbed, and evil was his look, he rose up out of some
- nether region -- to snatch back his victim from what he sought to
- do! Be that as it might, the old man rushed forward, and caught
- the minister by the arm.
-
- "Madman, hold! what is your purpose?" whispered
-
-
-
- THE REVELATION 305
-
-
-
- he. "Wave back that woman! Cast off this child All shall be
- well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonour! I can
- yet save you! Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?"
-
- "Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late!" answered the
- minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. "Thy
- power is not what it was! With God's help, I shall escape thee
- now!"
-
- He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter.
-
- "Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, "in the
- name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at
- this last moment, to do what -- for my own heavy sin and
- miserable agony -- I withheld myself from doing seven years ago,
- come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength,
- Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted
- me! This wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all
- his might! -- with all his own might, and the fiend's! Come,
- Hester -- come! Support me up yonder scaffold. "
-
- The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who
- stood more immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by
- surprise, and so perplexed as to the purport of what they saw --
- unable to receive the explanation which most readily presented
- itself, or to imagine any other -- that they remained silent and
- inactive spectators of the judgement which Providence seemed
- about to work. They beheld the minister, leaning on Hester's
- shoulder, and supported by her arm around him, approach the
- scaffold, and ascend its steps; while still the little
-
-
-
- 306 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his. Old Roger
- Chillingworth followed, as one intimately connected with the
- drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and
- well entitled, therefore to be present at its closing scene.
-
- "Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he looking darkly
- at the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret -- no high
- place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me -- save
- on this very scaffold!"
-
- "Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither!" answered the minister.
-
-
- Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester, with an expression of
- doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed,
- that there was a feeble smile upon his lips.
-
- "Is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed of in
- the forest?"
-
- I know not! I know not!" she hurriedly replied "Better? Yea; so
- we may both die, and little Pearl die with us!"
-
- "For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order," said the
- minister; "and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which He
- hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying man.
- So let me make haste to take my shame upon me!"
-
- Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of little
- Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the dignified and
- venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren;
- to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled yet
- overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep
- life-matter -- which, if full of sin, was
-
-
-
- THE REVELATION 307
-
-
-
- full of anguish and repentance likewise -- was now to be laid
- open to them. The sun, but little past its meridian, shone down
- upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he
- stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the
- bar of Eternal Justice.
-
- "People of New England!" cried he, with a voice that rose over
- them, high, solemn, and majestic -- yet had always a tremor
- through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a
- fathomless depth of remorse and woe -- "ye, that have loved me!
- -- ye, that have deemed me holy! -- behold me here, the one
- sinner of the world! At last -- at last! -- I stand upon the
- spot where, seven years since, I should have stood, here, with
- this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I
- have crept hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment, from
- grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter which
- Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk
- hath been -- wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped
- to find repose -- it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible
- repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of
- you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!"
-
- It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the
- remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the
- bodily weakness -- and, still more, the faintness of heart --
- that was striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all
- assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the
- woman and the children.
-
- "It was on him!" he continued, with a kind of
-
-
-
- 308 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- fierceness; so determined was he to speak out tile whole. "God's
- eye beheld it! The angels were for ever pointing at it! (The
- Devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of
- his burning finger!) But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked
- among you with the mien of a spirit, mournful, because so pure in
- a sinful world! -- and sad, because he missed his heavenly
- kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you! He
- bids you look again at Hester's scarlet letter! He tells you,
- that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of
- what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red
- stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost
- heart! Stand any here that question God's judgment on a sinner!
- Behold! Behold, a dreadful witness of it!"
-
- With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from
- before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to
- describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the
- horror-stricken multitude was concentrated on the ghastly
- miracle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his
- face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a
- victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly
- raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger
- Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull
- countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed,
-
- "Thou hast escaped me!" he repeated more than once. "Thou hast
- escaped me!"
-
- "May God forgive thee!" said the minister. "Thou, too, hast
- deeply sinned!"
-
-
-
- THE REVELATION 309
-
-
-
- He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on
- the woman and the child.
-
- "My little Pearl," said he, feebly and there was a sweet and
- gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep
- repose; nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as
- if he would be sportive with the child -- "dear little Pearl,
- wilt thou kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest!
- But now thou wilt?"
-
- Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of
- grief, in which the wild infant bore a part had developed all her
- sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they
- were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow,
- nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.
- Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish
- was fulfilled.
-
- "Hester," said the clergyman, "farewell!"
-
- "Shall we not meet again?" whispered she, bending her face down
- close to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life together?
- Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe!
- Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes!
- Then tell me what thou seest!"
-
- "Hush, Hester -- hush!" said he, with tremulous solemnity. "The
- law we broke I -- the sin here awfully revealed! -- let these
- alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that,
- when we forgot our God -- when we violated our reverence each for
- the other's soul -- it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could
- meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion. God knows;
- and He is merciful! He hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my
- afflictions. By
-
-
-
- 310 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! By
- sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture
- always at red-heat! By bringing me hither, to die this death of
- triumphant ignominy before the people! Had either of these
- agonies been wanting, I had been lost for ever! Praised be His
- name! His will be done! Farewell!"
-
- That final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath.
- The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep
- voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance,
- save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed
- spirit.
-
- XXIV.
-
-
-
-
-
- CONCLUSION
-
-
-
-
-
- After many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange
- their thoughts in reference to the foregoing scene, there was
- more than one account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold.
-
-
- Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of
- the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER -- the very semblance of
- that worn by Hester Prynne -- imprinted in the flesh. As
- regarded its origin there were various explanations, all of which
- must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the
- Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne
- first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance
- -- which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out
- -- by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended
- that the stigma had not been produced until a long time
- subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potent
- necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic
- and poisonous drugs. Others, again and those best able to
- appreciate the minister's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful
- operation of his spirit upon the body -- whispered their belief,
- that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever-active
-
-
-
- 312 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at
- last manifesting Heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible
- presence of the letter. The reader may choose among these
- theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the
- portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase
- its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has
- fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.
-
- It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were
- spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have
- removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that
- there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a
- new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words
- acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any -- the slightest --
- connexion on his part, with the guilt for which Hester Prynne had
- so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these
- highly-respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was
- dying -- conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude
- placed him already among saints and angels -- had desired, by
- yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to
- express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of
- man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts
- for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death
- a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and
- mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are
- sinners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest
- amongst us has but attained so far above his fellows as to
- discern more clearly the Mercy which
-
-
-
- CONCLUSION 313
-
-
-
- looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human
- merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a
- truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version
- of Mr. Dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn
- fidelity with which a man's friends -- and especially a
- clergyman's -- will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs,
- clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish
- him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust.
-
- The authority which we have chiefly followed -- a manuscript of
- old date, drawn up from the verbal testimony of individuals, some
- of whom had known Hester Prynne, while others had heard the tale
- from contemporary witnesses fully confirms the view taken in the
- foregoing pages. Among many morals which press upon us from the
- poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a
- sentence: -- "Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the
- world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be
- inferred!"
-
- Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place,
- almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the
- appearance and demeanour of the old man known as Roger
- Chillingworth. All his strength and energy -- all his vital and
- intellectual force -- seemed at once to desert him, insomuch that
- he positively withered up, shrivelled away and almost vanished
- from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the
- sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to
- consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise revenge; and when,
- by its completest triumph
-
-
-
- 314 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- consummation that evil principle was left with no further
- material to support it -- when, in short, there was no more
- Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the
- unhumanised mortal to betake himself whither his master would
- find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But, to all
- these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances -- as well
- Roger Chillingworth as his companions we would fain be merciful.
- It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether
- hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its
- utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and
- heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the
- food of his affections and spiritual fife upon another: each
- leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater,
- forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject.
- Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem
- essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a
- celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In
- the spiritual world, the old physician and the minister -- mutual
- victims as they have been -- may, unawares, have found their
- earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden
- love.
-
- Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to
- communicate to the reader. At old Roger Chillingworth's decease,
- (which took place within the year), and by his last will and
- testament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr.
- Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount
- of property, both here and in England to little Pearl, the
- daughter of Hester Prynne.
-
-
-
- CONCLUSION 315
-
-
-
- So Pearl -- the elf child -- the demon offspring, as some people
- up to that epoch persisted in considering her -- became the
- richest heiress of her day in the New World. Not improbably this
- circumstance wrought a very material change in the public
- estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little
- Pearl at a marriageable period of life might have mingled her
- wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan among them
- all. But, in no long time after the physician's death, the
- wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, and Pearl along with
- her. For many years, though a vague report would now and then
- find its way across the sea -- like a shapeless piece of
- driftwood tossed ashore with the initials of a name upon it --
- yet no tidings of them unquestionably authentic were received.
- The story of the scarlet letter grew into a legend. Its spell,
- however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the
- poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore
- where Hester Prynne had dwelt. Near this latter spot, one
- afternoon some children were at play, when they beheld a tall
- woman in a gray robe approach the cottage-door. In all those
- years it had never once been opened; but either she unlocked it
- or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided
- shadow-like through these impediments -- and, at all events, went
- in.
-
- On the threshold she paused -- turned partly round -- for
- perchance the idea of entering alone and all so changed, the home
- of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than
- even she could bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant,
- though long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast.
-
-
-
- 316 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
-
-
- And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken
- shame! But where was little Pearl? If still alive she must now
- have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. None knew
- -- nor ever learned with the fulness of perfect certainty --
- whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave;
- or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued
- and made capable of a woman's gentle happiness. But through the
- remainder of Hester's life there were indications that the
- recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest
- with some inhabitant of another land. Letters came, with
- armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to English
- heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and
- luxury such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth
- could have purchased and affection have imagined for her. There
- were trifles too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a
- continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate
- fingers at the impulse of a fond heart And once Hester was seen
- embroidering a baby-garment with such a lavish richness of golden
- fancy as would have raised a public tumult had any infant thus
- apparelled, been shown to our sober-hued community.
-
- In fine, the gossips of that day believed -- and Mr. Surveyor
- Pue, who made investigations a century later, believed -- and one
- of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes
- -- that Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and
- mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have
- entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside.
-
-
-
- CONCLUSION 317
-
-
-
- But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here, in New
- England, that in that unknown region where Pearl had found a
- home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet
- to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed of
- her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron
- period would have imposed it -- resumed the symbol of which we
- have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her
- bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and
- self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter
- ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and
- bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over,
- and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Hester
- Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own
- profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and
- perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself
- gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially -- in the
- continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged,
- misplaced, or erring and sinful passion -- or with the dreary
- burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought came
- to Hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and
- what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them, as best
- she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at
- some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for
- it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order
- to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer
- ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hester had vainly
- imagined that she herself might be the destined
-
-
-
- 318 THE SCARLET LETTER
-
- prophetess, but had long since recognised the impossibility that
- any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to
- a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened
- with a life-long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming
- revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and
- beautiful, and wise; moreover, not through dusky grief, but the
- ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make
- us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end.
-
-
- So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the
- scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was
- delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside
- which King's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old
- and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the
- two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tomb-stone served
- for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial
- bearings; and on this simple slab of slate -- as the curious
- investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the
- purport -- there appeared the semblance of an engraved
- escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of which may
- serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded
- legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing
- point of light gloomier than the shadow: --
-
-
-
- "ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES"
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-