Nathaniel Hawthorne/Nathaniel Hawthorne.iso/pc/articles/a1/t0024

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                                                       XXII                                                  269
                                            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 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 honorable fame--was
composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled with gentlemen,
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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, 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 were strong in him,--bestowed it on the white hair and venerable
brow of age; on long-tried integrity; on solid wisdom and sad-colored
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experience; on endowments of that grave and weighty order, which gives
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 made the Privy
Council of the sovereign.
     Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently
distinguished divine, from whose lips 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
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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 angelic 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 heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless,
so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale
even 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 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 stedfastly 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.
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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 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 market-place of what happens to us in the forest."
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     "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--or insanity, as we should
term 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 was 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
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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 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
connection 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
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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 it 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?"
     "No matter, darting!" 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 the 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
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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 intentness, and sympathized so intimately, that
the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its
indistinguishable 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
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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
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
tiptoe dance, because it was played upon and vibrated with her mother's
disquietude. Whenever Pearl saw any thing 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
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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 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 nighttime.
     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?"
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     "Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" cried Pearl,
with her naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill name, I shall tell him of
thee; and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!"
     Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returned to
her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester's strong,
calm, stedfastly 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 roundabout, who
had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had been made terrific
by a hundred false or exaggerated rumors, 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,
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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 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 self-same 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 tune 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 market-place! What
imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same
scorching stigma was on them both?