Nathaniel Hawthorne/Nathaniel Hawthorne.iso/pc/articles/a1/t0018

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                                                        XVI                                                   207
                                                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 imputed 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 in a sick-chamber, whither the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale had been summoned 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 Scarlet Letter -- XVI. A Forest Walk                     208

     The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula to the
mainland, was no other than a footpath. 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 farther 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!"
     "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."
                      The Scarlet Letter -- XVI. A Forest Walk                     209

     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 splendor, 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 vigor 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 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 humanize and
make her capable of sympathy. But there was time enough yet for little
Pearl!
                      The Scarlet Letter -- XVI. A Forest Walk                     210

     "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?"
     "O, 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 every body 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, recognizing 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 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?"
                      The Scarlet Letter -- XVI. A Forest Walk                     211

     "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
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 underbrush, and here and there a huge
                      The Scarlet Letter -- XVI. A Forest Walk                     212

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.
     "O brook! O 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 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
                      The Scarlet Letter -- XVI. A Forest Walk                     213

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 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,
                      The Scarlet Letter -- XVI. A Forest Walk                     214

and some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the crevices 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 way-side. He
looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air,
which had never so remarkably characterized 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 farther,
nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of
any thing, 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 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.