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Title: The Scarlet Letter
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Illustrator: Mary Hallock Foote
L. S. Ipsen
Release Date: May 22, May 5, 2008 [eBook #25344]
[Most recently updated: October 19, 2021]
Language: English
Produced by: Markus Brenner, Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCARLET LETTER ***
THE SCARLET LETTER.
BY
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
Illustrated.
[Illustration]
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1878.
COPYRIGHT, 1850 AND 1877.
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
_All rights reserved._
October 22, 1874.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Much to the author’s surprise, and (if he may say so without
additional offence) considerably to his amusement, he finds that his
sketch of official life, introductory to THE SCARLET LETTER, has
created an unprecedented excitement in the respectable community
immediately around him. It could hardly have been more violent,
indeed, had he burned down the Custom-House, and quenched its last
smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable personage, against
whom he is supposed to cherish a peculiar malevolence. As the public
disapprobation would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious of
deserving it, the author begs leave to say, that he has carefully read
over the introductory pages, with a purpose to alter or expunge
whatever might be found amiss, and to make the best reparation in his
power for the atrocities of which he has been adjudged guilty. But it
appears to him, that the only remarkable features of the sketch are
its frank and genuine good-humor, and the general accuracy with which
he has conveyed his sincere impressions of the characters therein
described. As to enmity, or ill-feeling of any kind, personal or
political, he utterly disclaims such motives. The sketch might,
perhaps, have been wholly omitted, without loss to the public, or
detriment to the book; but, having undertaken to write it, he
conceives that it could not have been done in a better or a kindlier
spirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, with a livelier effect
of truth.
The author is constrained, therefore, to republish his introductory
sketch without the change of a word.
SALEM, March 30, 1850.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE CUSTOM HOUSE.—INTRODUCTORY 1
THE SCARLET LETTER.
I. THE PRISON-DOOR 51
II. THE MARKET-PLACE 54
III. THE RECOGNITION 68
IV. THE INTERVIEW 80
V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 90
VI. PEARL 104
VII. THE GOVERNOR’S HALL 118
VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 129
IX. THE LEECH 142
X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 155
XI. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 168
XII. THE MINISTER’S VIGIL 177
XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 193
XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 204
XV. HESTER AND PEARL 212
XVI. A FOREST WALK 223
XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 231
XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 245
XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 253
XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 264
XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 277
XXII. THE PROCESSION 288
XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER 302
XXIV. CONCLUSION 315
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
_Drawn by_ MARY HALLOCK FOOTE _and Engraved by_ A. V. S. ANTHONY. _The
ornamental head-pieces are by_ L. S. IPSEN.
PAGE
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 1
THE PRISON DOOR 49
VIGNETTE,—WILD ROSE 51
THE GOSSIPS 57
“STANDING ON THE MISERABLE EMINENCE” 65
“SHE WAS LED BACK TO PRISON” 78
“THE EYES OF THE WRINKLED SCHOLAR GLOWED” 87
THE LONESOME DWELLING 93
LONELY FOOTSTEPS 99
VIGNETTE 104
A TOUCH OF PEARL’S BABY-HAND 113
VIGNETTE 118
THE GOVERNOR’S BREASTPLATE 125
“LOOK THOU TO IT! I WILL NOT LOSE THE CHILD!” 135
THE MINISTER AND LEECH 148
THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 165
THE VIRGINS OF THE CHURCH 172
“THEY STOOD IN THE NOON OF THAT STRANGE SPLENDOR” 185
HESTER IN THE HOUSE OF MOURNING 195
MANDRAKE 211
“HE GATHERED HERBS HERE AND THERE” 213
PEARL ON THE SEA-SHORE 217
“WILT THOU YET FORGIVE ME?” 237
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE 249
THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 257
CHILLINGWORTH,—“SMILE WITH A SINISTER MEANING” 287
NEW ENGLAND WORTHIES 289
“SHALL WE NOT MEET AGAIN?” 311
HESTER’S RETURN 320
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.
[Illustration: The Custom-House]
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 favored the reader—inexcusably, and
for no earthly reason, that either the indulgent reader or the
intrusive author could imagine—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 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 recognized 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.
* * * * *
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 harbor, 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
government 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 thunderbolts 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 community; 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 eider-down 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 shipmaster, just in port, with his vessel’s
papers under his arm, in a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his
owner, cheerful or 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,
care-worn 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 weather—a 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, in voices between speech and a snore, and
with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of
almshouses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on
charity, on monopolized labor, or anything else, but their own
independent exertions. These old gentlemen—seated, like Matthew, at
the receipt of customs, 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 gray 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 tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a
medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. And
here, some six months ago,—pacing from corner to corner, or lounging
on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes
wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper,—you might
have recognized, honored 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 has 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 affections, 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 the peninsula, with Gallows
Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the almshouse 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 phrase,
I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is probably
assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has struck 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 earthy 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 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 old dry
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 recognize as laudable; no success of mine—if my
life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by
success—would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively
disgraceful. “What is he?” murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers
to the other. “A writer of story-books! What kind of a 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 gray-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 connection of a 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 imbedded. 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 his grave,
another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main
street,—might still in my little day be seen and recognized in the
old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is an evidence that the
connection, which has become an unhealthy one, should at last be
severed. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it
be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the
same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so
far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed 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 half-penny; 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 conservative; 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 of my department, I found few but aged men. They were
ancient sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tost on
every sea, and standing up sturdily against life’s tempestuous blasts,
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 bedridden, 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 labors, 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 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 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 wall; awaking, however, once or twice in a
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 wagon-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 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 recognize
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 favorable 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 humor, 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 gray, mouldering trunk. In one case,
however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the
phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.
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
memories with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unction
of their morning’s breakfast, or yesterday’s, to-day’s, or to-morrow’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 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 sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few
commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper that 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 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 savor of pig or turkey under one’s
very nostrils. There were flavors 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 resuscitate 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 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 carcass, 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 the 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 honorable life. The
brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his threescore
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 crumbled
into ruin.
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 gray 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
by 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 trumpet-peal, loud enough to awaken all his energies that 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 demeanor 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—were 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 and 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 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 humor, 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 shipmasters, the
spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of
this 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, valor were rewarded by heraldic honor, 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; 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
main-spring 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 forthwith, 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 a man
very much in the same way, though to a far greater degree, that 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 subtile
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
look 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 never murmur
at the change.
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 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 have made 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, a 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 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 I 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 office with me and went out only a
little later—would often engage me in a discussion about one or the
other of his favorite 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 nor caring that my name should be blazoned 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 story 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 labor 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 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
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 town’s 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 it to be a commission, under the hand and
seal of Governor Shirley, in favor of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of
his Majesty’s Customs for the port of Salem, in the Province of
Massachusetts Bay. I remember 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. Pue’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 ancient Surveyor—being little molested, I 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 labor off my hands. As a final disposition, I
contemplate depositing them with the Essex Historical Society.
But the object that most drew my attention, in 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 recovered 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. 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, honor, 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.
While 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, 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 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 Pue, 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 Pue. 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 as
affirming, that, in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining the
motives 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 met 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 splendor that shone so dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike,
alas! the hang-dog 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 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 hundred-fold 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
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 once have 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 parlor, 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.
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
bookcase; the picture on the wall;—all these details, so completely
seen, are so spiritualized 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 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 from the polish of the furniture. This
warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the
moonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities of
human tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up. 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 moonbeams 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 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 marvellous gifts as a story-teller. Could I have
preserved the picturesque force of his style, and the humorous
coloring 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 spiritualize 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 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 have 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 favorable 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
him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of
his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess 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
forever 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 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 endeavored 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 gray 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
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 form a complete estimate of the advantages of
official life, to view the incumbent at the incoming 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, he would rather be
injured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who has kept his calmness
throughout the contest, to observe the blood-thirstiness 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
neighbors—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 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
were 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, I 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 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 recognized 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 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 politically 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, 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 honors 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.[1] 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!
[Footnote 1: At the time of writing this article the author
intended to publish, along with “The Scarlet Letter,” several
shorter tales and sketches. These it has been thought
advisable to defer.]
The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind me. The old
Inspector,—who, by the by, I regret to say, was overthrown and killed
by a horse, some time ago; else he would certainly have lived
forever,—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 forever. The merchants,—Pingree, Phillips, Shepard,
Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt,—these, and many other names, which had
such a 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 towns-people 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,—O, transporting and triumphant thought!—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!
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The Prison Door]
[Illustration: Vignette,—Wild Rose]
THE SCARLET LETTER.
I.
THE PRISON-DOOR.
[Illustration]
A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray,
steeple-crowned hats, intermixed 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 recognized 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 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, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which
evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early
borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But on one side
of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild
rose-bush, 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 fair 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 than pluck one of its flowers, and
present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some
sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the
darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 noted
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 and vagrant Indian, whom the white man’s fire-water
had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into
the shadow of the forest. It might be, 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 demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted a
people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in
whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest
and the 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 be 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 has
transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer
beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a 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 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. Madam 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.”
[Illustration: The Gossips]
“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 grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and
his 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 acquainted only with the gray 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 towns-people and neighbors. 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
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 splendor 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
lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those
days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the
delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized
as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more
lady-like, 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
something 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 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 Madam 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!”
“O, peace, neighbors, 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, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the
market-place!”
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 school-boys, 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 demeanor
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 citizenship, 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,
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 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 lowering 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 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 gray 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 bald 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
lamplight 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 the
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, gray houses, the huge
cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in
architecture, of a Continental city; where a new life had awaited her,
still in connection with the misshapen scholar; a new life, but
feeding itself on 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
towns-people 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!
[Illustration: “Standing on the Miserable Eminence”]
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!
[Illustration]
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 endeavored to conceal or abate the
peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne, that one of
this man’s shoulders rose 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 next 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?”
“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 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—”
“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 favor, 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. “Madam
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 behooves 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 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 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 honor. 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 be
less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman’s heart, and
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 gray 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 your sin. Knowing
your natural temper better than I, 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 behooves 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; a 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 fervor had
already given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. He was a
person of 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 the 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, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the truth!”
The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, in 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 hearest what this good man says, and
seest the accountability under which I labor. 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 inevitable necessity, and
compelled to ascend to 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 recognized. “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
and generosity of a woman’s heart! She will not speak!”
[Illustration: “She was led back to Prison”]
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 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 sympathize with its trouble. With the same hard demeanor,
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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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, 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
demeanor 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 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 recognize 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, 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
forefinger 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 bookworm 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 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
philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee.
Between thee and 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 hands 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 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 honor, 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, I 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!”
[Illustration: “The Eyes of the wrinkled Scholar glowed”]
“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 dishonor
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 already dead, and of
whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize 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!”
[Illustration]
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 stern features, but with vigor 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 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. To-morrow 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 honorable 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
birthplace, 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 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 color 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, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before
the bar of final judgment, and make that their 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.
[Illustration: The Lonesome Dwelling]
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 license of the 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 laboring 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 needlework. 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 characterized 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. 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 labor as Hester Prynne could supply.
Baby-linen—for babies then wore robes of state—afforded still
another possibility of toil and emolument.
By degrees, nor 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 requited employment for as many
hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be,
chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and
state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her
needlework 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 aid to embroider the white veil
which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception
indicated the ever-relentless rigor 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 might 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 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 manner, 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 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 succor 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; 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 forbore to pray for her 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, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal.
Clergymen paused in the street 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
utterance 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 into
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 seemed, on the
contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture.
[Illustration: Lonely Footsteps]
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 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 rumor 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 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
rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VI.
PEARL.
[Illustration]
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 dishonored bosom, to connect her
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally
a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester 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
vigor, 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 coexist 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 splendor 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 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 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 lonely 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 labor thrown away to insist,
persuade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable,
so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a
wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such
moments, whether Pearl were 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, unsympathizing 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 rarely happened—she would be convulsed with a 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 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 fashion
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 her mother; 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 preternatural 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 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 offspring 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.
[Illustration: A touch of Pearl’s baby-hand]
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 endeavoring 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 agonized 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 fond of
doing; and, 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.
“O, I am your little Pearl!” answered the child.
But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down,
with the humorsome 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 us all into this 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, being herself in a dismal
labyrinth of doubt. She remembered—betwixt a smile and a shudder—the
talk of the neighboring towns-people; 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VII.
THE GOVERNOR’S HALL.
[Illustration]
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
honorable 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
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 selectmen 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 be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester on
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 with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So much
strength of coloring, 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.
As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the
children of the Puritans looked up from their play,—or what passed
for play with those sombre little urchins,—and spake 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 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
befitted 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, with 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-servants; 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 blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men of
that period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of England.
“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 honorable 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 cushioned
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
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 armor on their breasts, and others
with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterized 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.
[Illustration: The Governor’s Breastplate]
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
armorer 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 worn by the Governor on many a solemn
muster and training 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 exigencies 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 armor 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 humoring 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 upward, 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 farther end of the
hall, and looked along the vista of 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 notion of obedience, but because the quick
and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance
of these new personages.
[Illustration]
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 gray 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 grave 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 shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears
and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and
that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, 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 labors 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. “I profess, I have never seen
the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James’s time, when I
was wont to esteem it a high favor 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.”
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 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 favorite 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 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 fantasy 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
indefeasible 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 million-fold the power of retribution for
my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!”
[Illustration: “Look thou to it! I will not lose the child!”]
“My poor woman,” said the not unkind old minister, “the child shall be
well cared for!—far better than thou canst do 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 nervous temperament
was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn 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 armor 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 thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator
of all flesh, hath lightly recognized 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 hath 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, as the mother herself hath told us, for a
retribution too; 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. “I feared the woman had no
better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!”
“O, not so!—not so!” continued Mr. Dimmesdale. “She recognizes,
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 it
were by the Creator’s sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to
heaven, the child also will bring its parent 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 Reverend Mr. Wilson. “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; 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 analyze that child’s nature, and,
from its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?”
“Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clew 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
wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make
one.”
“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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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
dishonor; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance
and proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous
relationship. Then why—since the choice was with himself—should the
individual, whose connection 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 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 interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay
at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor 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 subtile faculties of such men were materialized, 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
favor 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 pharmacopœia, 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
heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor 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 earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of
parochial duty, and, more than all, by 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 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 rumor 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 favorable 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, 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
labors? 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 labors, 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.”
“Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly,” said the physician.
[Illustration: The Minister and Leech]
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 talk with the plash 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 recognized 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, 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 lamplight, 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 scrutinized 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 license to undertake such a 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 disagreeably 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 recognized 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. 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 authorized 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 unsavory 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 had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson’s home-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 colors 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 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 truths 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 Doctor 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
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 Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial
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 depths of the poor
minister’s eyes, the battle was a sore one and the victory anything
but secure.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 face. The soil
where this dark miner was working had 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,
sympathizing, but never intrusive friend.
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 the 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 graveyard, 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, nowadays, looked straightforth
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, nor 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. “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 unspoken crime?”
“That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours,” replied the minister.
“There can be, if I forebode 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 with a 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 them 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, after such an
outpouring, O, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful
brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after 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 they
seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands!
If they would serve their fellow-men, let them do it by making
manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to
penitential self-abasement! Wouldst 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’s 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 to 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 Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The
sensitive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the light
missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little hands, in the
most extravagant ecstasy. 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 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 all 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.”
“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 operation 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
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 takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! As
with one passion, so with another! He hath done a wild thing erenow,
this pious Master Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart!”
[Illustration: The Leech and his Patient]
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 a 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 recorded, that the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noonday, 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 horror! 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!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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, 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 forever 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, uprose a grisly
phantom,—uprose 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 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 were scholars among them, who had spent more 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 etherealized, 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; symbolizing, 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.
[Illustration: The Virgins of the Church]
Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr.
Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of 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 mouthpiece 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
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 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 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 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,
leathern-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 gayety, 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 of early May. An unvaried 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 gray 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 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 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 witch-lady had heard Mr.
Dimmesdale’s outcry, and interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes
and reverberations, as the clamor of the fiends and night-hags, with
whom she was well known to make excursions into 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
doorstep. 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, he 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 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
personages 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 were going 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 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 neighborhood 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’s 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, 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 by, 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 he knew not whether
of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute,—he recognized 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 sidewalk, 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, 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.
“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.
[Illustration: “They stood in the noon of that strange splendor”]
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 stories 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 than 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 splendor, 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 occurred 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 this 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 colored,
magnifying, and distorting medium of his imagination, and shaped it
more distinctly in his after-thought. It 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 expansive for Providence to write a people’s doom upon. The
belief was a favorite 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 characterized 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 pointing 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 that discerned the miraculous letter. To his
features, 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 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
noontide!”
“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 strange 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-whimseys will grow upon
you.”
“I will go home with you,” said Mr. Dimmesdale.
With a chill despondency, like one awaking, all nerveless, from an
ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physician, and was led away.
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 gray-bearded sexton met
him, holding up a black glove, which the minister recognized 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.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no other,
nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest
of human kind—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 towns-people. 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
largely in her favor. 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.
[Illustration: Hester in the House of Mourning]
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 labor 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-creatures. 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 hard 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 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
sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by
its original signification. They said that it meant Able; 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,
society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign
countenance than she cared to be favored 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 framework of reasoning, that
made it a far tougher labor 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 she fallen among thieves, it would have
kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indian
had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it,
but 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
tenderness 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 woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment
become a woman again if there were only the magic touch to effect the
transfiguration. 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 fragments of 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 stigmatized by the scarlet
letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited
her, such as dared to enter no 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 of 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 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 woman 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 clew
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 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 a
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 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 medicines withal.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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, and
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 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 common weal,
yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your bosom. On my life,
Hester, I made my entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might
be done forthwith!”
“It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off this
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 gayly 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 vigor 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 an eager, searching,
almost fierce, yet 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 analyzed 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 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 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. O, 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 heart-strings, 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 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 recognize, 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.
“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 have 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 thy 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 wellnigh pity thee!” said Roger Chillingworth, unable
to restrain a thrill of admiration too; for there was a quality almost
majestic in 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.
[Illustration: Mandrake]
[Illustration]
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 an 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 himself? 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?
[Illustration: “He gathered herbs here and there”]
“Be it sin or no,” said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as she still 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 it 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 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 emotions 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?”
[Illustration: Pearl on the Sea-Shore]
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, 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 snail-shells, 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 horseshoe 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 snow-flakes 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 sea-weed, 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 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. “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 misdemeanors, 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 coloring. But now the idea
came strongly into Hester’s mind, that Pearl, with her remarkable
precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when
she could be 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,—a
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 flavors 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 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 recognizing 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 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 inquiry, 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 shut thee into the dark closet!”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 neighboring 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 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.”
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.
“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 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, 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 night-time?”
“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 rock covered over with gray lichens. All these
giant trees and bowlders 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 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, 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 wayside. 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 anything, to fling himself down at the root of the
nearest tree, and lie there passive, forevermore. 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 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 acquaintance might have made, about the gloomy sky, the
threatening storm, and, next, 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 a while, 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 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 idolize?
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 recognizes
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 be 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
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 authorized
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 lain down on the forest-leaves, and died there,
at Arthur Dimmesdale’s feet.
“O 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! 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!”
[Illustration: “Wilt thou yet forgive me?”]
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? O 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, flinging 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 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 enclosed a charm
that made them linger 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 forebode 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 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 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 realize 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 dishonor, 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 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!”
“O 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 shalt not go alone!” answered she, in a deep whisper.
Then, all was spoken!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 free. The
scarlet letter was her passport into regions 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 broken 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 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, I 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!”
“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, unchristianized, 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! O 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 look 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 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 farther flight it would have fallen into
the water, and have given the little brook another woe to carry
onward, besides 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.
[Illustration: A Gleam of Sunshine]
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 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 the 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 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
splendor 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 flavor. 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 a 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 head. It was a
last year’s nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox,
startled from his sleep 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 recognized a kindred wildness 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 flowers 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.
[Illustration]
XIX.
THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE.
“Thou wilt 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—O 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 our dear old England, had decked her out to meet us.”
It was with a feeling which neither of them had 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 years past, 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 nor eagerness—in thy way of
accosting her,” whispered Hester. “Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic
little elf, sometimes. Especially, she is seldom tolerant 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! 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 farther 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.
There was 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!”
[Illustration: The Child at the Brook-Side]
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 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 behavior 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 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 which 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 at the 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 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. “O, 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 forever!”
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.
“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, dear 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
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 favor 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 a solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their
multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there,
and no 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XX.
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 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 seaboard. 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 furtherance of this choice, it so happened
that a ship lay in the harbor; one of those questionable 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. “That 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 an honorable 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, nor 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 underbrush, 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, not one,
nor 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 weathercock 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, as 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 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 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-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 widow’s 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 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 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
blackguard, 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 Ann
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.
“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 favor of such a
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 recognize a secret
intimacy of connection.
“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!”
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 had 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 his 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! 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 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 be 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 to-night?
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.”
“Yea, 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 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
forever, 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 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!
[Illustration]
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 towns-people, 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 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 seer might have conceived, that, after
sustaining the gaze of the multitude through seven 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 life-long 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 forever the symbol which ye have caused to burn
upon 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 flavored? 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 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 gayety. 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. 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 ledst me to him from the
brook-side?”
“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 night-time 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 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
splendor, a colorless 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—deemed it a duty then to
assume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with
antique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of public or 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
applicances 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 hundreds of 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 gives 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 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
favorably, 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 gayety.
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 deer-skin 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 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 humors 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 behavior 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-vitæ from
pocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around
them. It remarkably characterized the incomplete morality of the age,
rigid as we call it, that a license 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 unfavorable 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 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 clamor 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
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-place; until, happening to approach
the spot where Hester Prynne was standing, he appeared to recognize,
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 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!”
[Illustration: Chillingworth,—“Smile with a sinister meaning”]
“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 corner 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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration: New England Worthies]
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 armor 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, 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 demeanor, 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 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 demeanor 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
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 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 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.”
“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 be gone?”
“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 towns-people 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
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 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, 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 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
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 forever 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 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 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 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!”
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, 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 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, 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 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 forever, 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!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 other 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. 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 as 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
splendor,—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 recognized 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 of 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 clangor 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 was
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 market-place, their presence was greeted by a shout. This—though
doubtless it might acquire additional force and volume from the
childlike 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 neighbor. 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 honored 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 etherealized by spirit as he was,
and so apotheosized 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 delivered the
sacred message that 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 nervelessly, 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,—onward 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 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 he. “Wave back that
woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your
fame, and perish in dishonor! 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
judgment 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 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 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 child.
“It was on him!” he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so
determined was he to speak out the whole. “God’s eye beheld it! The
angels were forever 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!”
[Illustration: “Shall we not meet again?”]
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 concentred 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!”
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 all
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!—the sin here so 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 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 forever!
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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 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 connection, 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 among us has but attained so far above
his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which 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
demeanor 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 of revenge;
and when, by its completest triumph and 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 unhumanized 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
life 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.
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
drift-wood tost 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 all 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.
[Illustration: Hester’s Return]
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.
But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England,
than 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 prophetess,
but had long since recognized 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 tombstone 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 might 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.”
[Illustration]
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected; for the details, see
below. Most illustrations have been linked to the larger versions; to
see the larger version, click on the illustration.
Typos fixed:
page 072—spelling normalized: changed ‘midday’ to ‘mid-day’
page 132—inserted a missing closing quote after ‘a child of her age’
page 137—spelling normalized: changed ‘careworn’ to ‘care-worn’
page 147—typo fixed: changed ‘physican’ to ‘physician’
page 171—typo fixed: changed ‘vocies’ to ‘voices’
page 262—removed an extra closing quote after ‘scarlet letter too!’
page 291—spelling normalized: changed ‘birdlike’ to ‘bird-like’
page 300—typo fixed: changed ‘intruments’ to ‘instruments’
page 306—spelling normalized: changed ‘deathlike’ to ‘death-like’
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