“Silly Pearl,” said she, “what questions are these? There are many
things in this world that a child must not ask about. What know I of
the minister’s heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for the
sake of its gold thread.”
In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never before been
false to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was the talisman of
a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her; as
recognising that, in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new
evil had crept into it, or some old one had never been expelled. As for
little Pearl, the earnestness soon passed out of her face.
But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. Two or three
times, as her mother and she went homeward, and as often at
supper-time, and while Hester was putting her to bed, and once after
she seemed to be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up, with mischief gleaming
in her black eyes.
“Mother,” said she, “what does the scarlet letter mean?”
And the next morning, the first indication the child gave of being
awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and making that other
enquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with her
investigations about the scarlet letter—
“Mother!—Mother!—Why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?”
“Hold thy tongue, naughty child!” answered her mother, with an asperity
that she had never permitted to herself before. “Do not tease me; else
I shall put thee into the dark closet!”
XVI.
A FOREST WALK
Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr.
Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences,
the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For
several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing
him in some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be in the
habit of taking along the shores of the Peninsula, or on the wooded
hills of the neighbouring country. There would have been no scandal,
indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman’s good fame,
had she visited him in his own study, where many a penitent, ere now,
had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by the
scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised
interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her conscious
heart imparted suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly
that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to
breathe in, while they talked together—for all these reasons Hester
never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the
open sky.
At last, while attending a sick chamber, whither the Rev. Mr.
Dimmesdale had been summoned 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 further extremity of some long
vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight—feebly sportive, at
best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scene—withdrew
itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the
drearier, because they had hoped to find them bright.
“Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs
away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.
Now, see! There it is, playing a good way off. Stand you here, and let
me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me—for I
wear nothing on my bosom yet!”
“Nor ever will, my child, I hope,” said Hester.
“And why not, mother?” asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the
beginning of her race. “Will not it come of its own accord when I am a
woman grown?”
“Run away, child,” answered her mother, “and catch the sunshine. It
will soon be gone.”
Pearl set forth at a great pace, and as Hester smiled to perceive, did
actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the midst of it, all
brightened by its splendour, and scintillating with the vivacity
excited by rapid motion. The light lingered about the lonely child, as
if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawn almost nigh
enough to step into the magic circle too.
“It will go now,” said Pearl, shaking her head.
“See!” answered Hester, smiling; “now I can stretch out my hand and
grasp some of it.”
As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge from the
bright expression that was dancing on Pearl’s features, her mother
could have fancied that the child had absorbed it into herself, and
would give it forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they should
plunge into some gloomier shade. There was no other attribute that so
much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigour in
Pearl’s nature, as this never failing vivacity of spirits: she had not
the disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter
days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors.
Perhaps this, too, was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy
with which Hester had fought against her sorrows before Pearl’s birth.
It was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to
the child’s character. She wanted—what some people want throughout
life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanise and make
her capable of sympathy. But there was time enough yet for little
Pearl.
“Come, my child!” said Hester, looking about her from the spot where
Pearl had stood still in the sunshine—“we will sit down a little way
within the wood, and rest ourselves.”
“I am not aweary, mother,” replied the little girl. “But you may sit
down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile.”
“A story, child!” said Hester. “And about what?”
“Oh, a story about the Black Man,” answered Pearl, taking hold of her
mother’s gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into
her face.
“How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big, heavy
book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and
an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they
are to write their names with their own blood; and then he sets his
mark on their bosoms. Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother?”
“And who told you this story, Pearl,” asked her mother, recognising a
common superstition of the period.
“It was the old dame in the chimney corner, at the house where you
watched last night,” said the child. “But she fancied me asleep while
she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and a thousand people
had met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on
them. And that ugly tempered lady, old Mistress Hibbins, was one. And,
mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man’s
mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him
at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And dost thou
go to meet him in the nighttime?”
“Didst thou ever awake and find thy mother gone?” asked Hester.
“Not that I remember,” said the child. “If thou fearest to leave me in
our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I would very gladly
go! But, mother, tell me now! Is there such a Black Man? And didst thou
ever meet him? And is this his mark?”
“Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?” asked her mother.
“Yes, if thou tellest me all,” answered Pearl.
“Once in my life I met the Black Man!” said her mother. “This scarlet
letter is his mark!”
Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to secure
themselves from the observation of any casual passenger along the
forest track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss; which at
some epoch of the preceding century, had been a gigantic pine, with its
roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and its head aloft in the upper
atmosphere. It was a little dell where they had seated themselves, with
a leaf-strewn bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing
through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees
impending over it had flung down great branches from time to time,
which choked up the current, and 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 boulders of granite seemed
intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing,
perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper
tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror
its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed,
as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet,
soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was
spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry
among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue.
“Oh, brook! Oh, foolish and tiresome little brook!” cried Pearl, after
listening awhile to its talk, “Why art thou so sad? Pluck up a spirit,
and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!”
But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest
trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help
talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl
resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a
well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as
heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she 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 crevice of a high rock.
When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made a step or two
towards the track that led through the forest, but still remained under
the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister advancing along
the path entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the
wayside. He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless
despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterised him
in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he
deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in this
intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a
heavy trial to the spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait, as if
he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do
so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling
himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for
evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually
accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether
there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be
wished for or avoided.
To Hester’s eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of
positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little Pearl had
remarked, he kept his hand over his heart.
XVII.
THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER
Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before Hester
Prynne could gather voice enough to attract his observation. At length
she succeeded.
“Arthur Dimmesdale!” she said, faintly at first, then louder, but
hoarsely—“Arthur Dimmesdale!”
“Who speaks?” answered the minister. Gathering himself quickly up, he
stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood to which he
was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the
direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees,
clad in garments so sombre, and so little relieved from the gray
twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened
the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It
may be that his pathway through life was haunted thus by a spectre that
had stolen out from among his thoughts.
He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter.
“Hester! Hester Prynne!”, said he; “is it thou? Art thou in life?”
“Even so.” she answered. “In such life as has been mine these seven
years past! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou yet live?”
It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another’s actual and
bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely did they
meet in the dim wood that it was like the first encounter in the world
beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in
their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as
not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of
disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost.
They were awe-stricken likewise at themselves, because the crisis flung
back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its
history and experience, as life never does, except at such breathless
epochs. The soul beheld its features in the mirror of the passing
moment. It was with fear, and tremulously, and, as it were, by a slow,
reluctant necessity, that Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill
as death, and touched the chill hand of Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold
as it was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. They now felt
themselves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere.
Without a word more spoken—neither he nor she assuming the guidance,
but with an unexpressed consent—they glided back into the shadow of the
woods whence Hester had emerged, and sat down on the heap of moss where
she and Pearl had before been sitting. When they found voice to speak,
it was at first only to utter remarks and inquiries such as any two
acquaintances might have made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening
storm, and, next, the health of each. Thus they went onward, not
boldly, but step by step, into the themes that were brooding deepest in
their hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed
something slight and casual to run before and throw open the doors of
intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led across the
threshold.
After awhile, the minister fixed his eyes on Hester Prynne’s.
“Hester,” said he, “hast thou found peace?”
She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.
“Hast thou?” she asked.
“None—nothing but despair!” he answered. “What else could I look for,
being what I am, and leading such a life as mine? Were I an atheist—a
man devoid of conscience—a wretch with coarse and brutal instincts—I
might have found peace long ere now. Nay, I never should have lost it.
But, as matters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there
originally was in me, all of God’s gifts that were the choicest have
become the ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, I am most
miserable!”
“The people reverence thee,” said Hester. “And surely thou workest good
among them! Doth this bring thee no comfort?”
“More misery, Hester!—Only the more misery!” answered the clergyman
with a bitter smile. “As concerns the good which I may appear to do, I
have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined
soul like mine effect towards the redemption of other souls?—or a
polluted soul towards their purification? And as for the people’s
reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou
deem it, Hester, a consolation that I must stand up in my pulpit, and
meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of heaven
were beaming from it!—must see my flock hungry for the truth, and
listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking!—and
then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolise? I
have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between
what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it!”
“You wrong yourself in this,” said Hester gently. “You have deeply and
sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you in the days long past.
Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in
people’s eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and
witnessed by good works? And wherefore should it not bring you peace?”
“No, Hester—no!” replied the clergyman. “There is no substance in it!
It is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me! Of penance, I have had
enough! Of penitence, there has been none! Else, I should long ago have
thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to
mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you,
Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns
in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment
of a seven years’ cheat, to look into an eye that recognises me for
what I am! Had I one friend—or were it my worst enemy!—to whom, when
sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake
myself, and 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 authorised interference, as a
physician, with the minister’s physical and spiritual infirmities—that
these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of
them, the sufferer’s conscience had been kept in an irritated state,
the tendency of which was, not to cure by wholesome pain, but to
disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being. Its result, on earth,
could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter, that eternal
alienation from the Good and True, of which madness is perhaps the
earthly type.
Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once—nay, why
should we not speak it?—still so passionately loved! Hester felt that
the sacrifice of the clergyman’s good name, and death itself, as she
had already told Roger Chillingworth, would have been infinitely
preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to
choose. And now, rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess,
she would gladly have laid down on the forest leaves, and died there,
at Arthur Dimmesdale’s feet.
“Oh, Arthur!” cried she, “forgive me! In all things else, I have
striven to be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have held
fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity; save when thy good—thy
life—thy fame—were put in question! Then I consented to a deception.
But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side!
Dost thou not see what I would say? That old man!—the physician!—he
whom they call Roger Chillingworth!—he was my husband!”
The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of
passion, which—intermixed in more shapes than one with his higher,
purer, softer qualities—was, in fact, the portion of him which the
devil claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest. Never was
there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Hester now encountered. For the
brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his
character had been so much enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower
energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down
on the ground, and buried his face in his hands.
“I might have known it,” murmured he—“I did know it! Was not the secret
told me, in the natural recoil of my heart at the first sight of him,
and as often as I have seen him since? Why did I not understand? Oh,
Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this
thing! And the shame!—the indelicacy!—the horrible ugliness of this
exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat
over it! Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this!—I cannot forgive
thee!”
“Thou shalt forgive me!” cried Hester, 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 unclosed 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 forbode evil to come.
And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-track that led
backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up again the
burden of her ignominy and the minister the hollow mockery of his good
name! So they lingered an instant longer. No golden light had ever been
so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. Here seen only by his
eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen
woman! Here seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and
man, might be, for one moment true!
He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.
“Hester!” cried he, “here is a new horror! Roger Chillingworth knows
your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he continue, then, to
keep our secret? What will now be the course of his revenge?”
“There is a strange secrecy in his nature,” replied Hester,
thoughtfully; “and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of his
revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. He will
doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark passion.”
“And I!—how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with this
deadly enemy?” exclaimed Arthur 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 realise a dream. “I am powerless to go. Wretched and sinful as
I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on my earthly existence
in the sphere where Providence hath placed me. Lost as my own soul is,
I would still do what I may for other human souls! I dare not quit my
post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death and
dishonour, when his dreary watch shall come to an end!”
“Thou art crushed under this seven years’ weight of misery,” replied
Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. “But
thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as
thou treadest along the forest-path: neither shalt thou freight the
ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and
ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all
anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial?
Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness
to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of
thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission,
the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, as is more thy nature, be a
scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the
cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and
die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another,
and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why
shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have
so gnawed into thy life? that have made thee feeble to will and to do?
that will leave thee powerless even to repent? Up, and away!”
“Oh, Hester!” cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light,
kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, “thou tellest of
running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must
die here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into
the wide, strange, difficult world alone!”
It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. He
lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his reach.
He repeated the word—“Alone, Hester!”
“Thou shall not go alone!” answered she, in a deep whisper. Then, all
was spoken!
XVIII.
A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE
Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester’s face with a look in which hope
and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of
horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but
dared not speak.
But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for
so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed from society, had
habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether
foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance,
in a moral wilderness, as vast, as intricate, and shadowy as the
untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a
colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart had
their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as
the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked from this
estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or
legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence
than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe,
the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of
her fate and fortunes had been to set her 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,
unchristianised, lawless region. His spirit rose, as it were, with a
bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than throughout all
the misery which had kept him grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply
religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional
in his mood.
“Do I feel joy again?” cried he, wondering at himself. “Methought the
germ of it was dead in me! Oh, Hester, thou art my better angel! I seem
to have flung myself—sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened—down upon
these forest leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new
powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is already the
better life! Why did we not find it sooner?”
“Let us not 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 if it had never been!”
So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and,
taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered
leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the stream.
With a hand’s-breadth further flight, it would have fallen into the
water, and have 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.
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 a thrill of another joy.
“Thou must know Pearl!” said she. “Our little Pearl! Thou hast seen
her—yes, I know it!—but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. She is a
strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love her dearly,
as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her!”
“Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?” asked the
minister, somewhat uneasily. “I have long shrunk from children, because
they often show a distrust—a backwardness to be familiar with me. I
have even been afraid of little Pearl!”
“Ah, that was sad!” answered the mother. “But she will love thee
dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her. Pearl!
Pearl!”
“I see the child,” observed the minister. “Yonder she is, standing in a
streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other side of the brook. So
thou thinkest the child will love me?”
Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible at some
distance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelled
vision in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of
boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or
distinct—now like a real child, now like a child’s spirit—as the
splendour went and came again. She heard her mother’s voice, and
approached slowly through the forest.
Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mother sat
talking with the clergyman. The great black forest—stern as it showed
itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into
its bosom—became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew
how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome
her. It offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding
autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood
upon the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was pleased with
their wild flavour. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly took
pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten
behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repented of her
fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon,
alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a
sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty depths
of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merriment—for the
squirrel is such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is
hard to distinguish between his moods—so he chattered at the child, and
flung down a nut upon her 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 recognised
a kindred wilderness in the human child.
And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of the
settlement, or in her mother’s cottage. The 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!
XIX.
THE CHILD AT THE BROOKSIDE
“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—oh, Hester, what a thought is that,
and how terrible to dread it!—that my own features were partly repeated
in her face, and so strikingly that the world might see them! But she
is mostly thine!”
“No, no! Not mostly!” answered the mother, with a tender smile. “A
little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose child
she is. But how strangely beautiful she looks with those wild flowers
in her hair! It is as if one of the fairies, whom we left in dear old
England, had decked her out to meet us.”
It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before
experienced, that they sat and watched Pearl’s slow advance. In her was
visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to the world,
these seven past years, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was
revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide—all written in this
symbol—all plainly manifest—had there been a prophet or magician
skilled to read the character of flame! And Pearl was the oneness of
their being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how could they doubt
that their earthly lives and future destinies were conjoined when they
beheld at once the material union, and the spiritual idea, in whom they
met, and were to dwell immortally together; thoughts like these—and
perhaps other thoughts, which they did not acknowledge or define—threw
an awe about the child as she came onward.
“Let her see nothing strange—no passion or eagerness—in thy way of
accosting her,” whispered Hester. “Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic
little elf sometimes. Especially she is generally intolerant of
emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But
the child hath strong affections! She loves me, and will love thee!”
“Thou canst not think,” said the minister, glancing aside at Hester
Prynne, “how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns for it! But, in
truth, as I already told thee, children are not readily won to be
familiar with me. They will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear,
nor answer to my smile, but stand apart, and eye me strangely. Even
little babes, when I take them in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl,
twice in her little lifetime, hath been kind to me! The first time—thou
knowest it well! The last was when thou ledst her with thee to the
house of yonder stern old Governor.”
“And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!” answered the
mother. “I remember it; and so shall little Pearl. Fear nothing. She
may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee!”
By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on
the further side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman, who
still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk waiting to receive her. Just
where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool so smooth and
quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all
the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of
flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than
the reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living Pearl,
seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible
quality to the child herself. It was strange, the way in which Pearl
stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the
forest gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine,
that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the brook
beneath stood another child—another and the same—with likewise its ray
of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some indistinct and
tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl, as if the child, in her
lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in
which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to
return to it.
There were both truth and error in the impression; the child and mother
were estranged, but through Hester’s fault, not Pearl’s. Since the
latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been admitted within
the circle of the mother’s feelings, and so modified the aspect of them
all, that Pearl, the returning wanderer, could not find her wonted
place, and hardly knew where she was.
“I have a strange fancy,” observed the sensitive minister, “that this
brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou canst never
meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends
of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream?
Pray hasten her, for this delay has already imparted a tremor to my
nerves.”
“Come, dearest child!” said Hester encouragingly, and stretching out
both her arms. “How slow thou art! When hast thou been so sluggish
before now? Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend also. Thou
wilt have twice as much love henceforward as thy mother alone could
give thee! Leap across the brook and come to us. Thou canst leap like a
young deer!”
Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet
expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she fixed her
bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and now included
them both in the same glance, as if to detect and explain to herself
the relation which they bore to one another. For some unaccountable
reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt the child’s eyes upon himself, his
hand—with that gesture so habitual as to have become involuntary—stole
over his heart. At length, assuming a singular air of authority, Pearl
stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and
pointing evidently towards her mother’s breast. And beneath, in the
mirror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image of
little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too.
“Thou strange child! why dost thou not come to me?” exclaimed Hester.
Pearl still pointed with her forefinger, and a frown gathered on her
brow—the more impressive from the childish, the almost baby-like aspect
of the features that conveyed it. As her mother still kept beckoning to
her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit of unaccustomed smiles,
the child stamped her foot with a yet more imperious look and gesture.
In the brook, again, was the fantastic beauty of the image, with its
reflected frown, its pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving
emphasis to the aspect of little Pearl.
“Hasten, Pearl, or I shall be angry with thee!” cried Hester Prynne,
who, however, inured to such behaviour on the elf-child’s part at other
seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly deportment now. “Leap
across the brook, naughty child, and run hither! Else I must come to
thee!”
But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother’s threats any more than
mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a fit of passion,
gesticulating violently, and throwing her small figure into the most
extravagant contortions. She accompanied this wild outbreak with
piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on all sides, so that,
alone as she was in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as
if a hidden multitude were lending her their sympathy and
encouragement. Seen in the brook once more was the shadowy wrath of
Pearl’s image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot,
wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing its
small forefinger at Hester’s bosom.
“I see what ails the child,” whispered Hester to the clergyman, and
turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her trouble and
annoyance, “Children will not abide any, the slightest, change in the
accustomed aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearl
misses something that she has always seen me wear!”
“I pray you,” answered the minister, “if thou hast any means of
pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered wrath
of an old witch like Mistress Hibbins,” added he, attempting to smile,
“I know nothing that I would not sooner encounter than this passion in
a child. In Pearl’s young beauty, as in the wrinkled witch, it has a
preternatural effect. Pacify her if thou lovest me!”
Hester turned again towards Pearl with a crimson blush upon her cheek,
a conscious glance aside 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. “Oh, I
have much to tell thee about her! But, in very truth, she is right as
regards this hateful token. I must bear its torture yet a little
longer—only a few days longer—until we shall have left this region, and
look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of. The forest
cannot hide it! The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow
it up for ever!”
With these words she advanced to the margin of the brook, took up the
scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom. Hopefully, but a
moment ago, as Hester had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea, there
was a sense of inevitable doom upon her as she thus received back this
deadly symbol from the hand of fate. She had flung it into infinite
space! she had drawn an hour’s free breath! and here again was the
scarlet misery glittering on the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus
typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of
doom. Hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair and
confined them beneath her cap. As if there were a withering spell in
the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood,
departed like fading sunshine, and a gray shadow seemed to fall across
her.
When the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand to Pearl.
“Dost thou know thy mother now, child?”, asked she, reproachfully, but
with a subdued tone. “Wilt thou come across the brook, and own thy
mother, now that she has her shame upon her—now that she is sad?”
“Yes; now I will!” answered the child, bounding across the brook, and
clasping Hester in her arms “Now thou art my mother indeed! and I am
thy little Pearl!”
In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew down her
mother’s head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks. But then—by a
kind of necessity that always impelled this child to alloy whatever
comfort she might chance to give with a throb of anguish—Pearl put up
her mouth and kissed the scarlet letter, too.
“That was not kind!” said Hester. “When thou hast shown me a little
love, thou mockest me!”
“Why doth the minister sit yonder?” asked Pearl.
“He waits to welcome thee,” replied her mother. “Come thou, and entreat
his blessing! He loves thee, my little Pearl, and loves thy mother,
too. Wilt thou not love him? Come he longs to greet thee!”
“Doth he love us?” said Pearl, looking up with acute intelligence into
her mother’s face. “Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three
together, into the town?”
“Not now, my child,” answered Hester. “But in days to come he will walk
hand in hand with us. We will have a home and fireside of our own; and
thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach thee many things, and
love thee dearly. Thou wilt love him—wilt thou not?”
“And will he always keep his hand over his heart?” inquired Pearl.
“Foolish child, what a question is that!” exclaimed her mother. “Come,
and ask his blessing!”
But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with
every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from whatever caprice
of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no favour to the clergyman. It
was only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her up to him,
hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which,
ever since her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and
could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different
aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. The
minister—painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a
talisman to admit him into the child’s kindlier regards—bent forward,
and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her
mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her
forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off and diffused
through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then remained apart,
silently watching Hester and the clergyman; while they talked together
and made such arrangements as were suggested by their new position and
the purposes soon to be fulfilled.
And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was to be
left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their
multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and
no 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.
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 sea-board. Not to speak of the clergyman’s
health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life, his
native gifts, his culture, and his entire development would secure him
a home only in the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the
state the more delicately adapted to it the man. In furtherance of this
choice, it so happened that a ship lay in the harbour; one of those
unquestionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being
absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a
remarkable irresponsibility of character. This vessel had recently
arrived from the Spanish Main, and within three days’ time would sail
for Bristol. Hester Prynne—whose vocation, as a self-enlisted Sister of
Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain and crew—could
take upon herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child
with all the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable.
The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the
precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It would
probably be on the fourth day from the present. “This is most
fortunate!” he had then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate we hesitate to reveal.
Nevertheless—to hold nothing back from the reader—it was because, on
the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election Sermon;
and, as such an occasion formed an honourable epoch in the life of a
New England Clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable
mode and time of terminating his professional career. “At least, they
shall say of me,” thought this exemplary man, “that I leave no public
duty unperformed or ill-performed!” Sad, indeed, that an introspection
so profound and acute as this poor minister’s should be so miserably
deceived! We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him;
but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so
slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease that had long since begun
to eat into the real substance of his character. No man, for any
considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the
multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the
true.
The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale’s feelings as he returned from his
interview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, and
hurried him townward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods
seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and less
trodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it on his outward
journey. But he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself through
the clinging 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, not two, but many days,
or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There, indeed, was each
former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the
peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and
a weather-cock at every point where his memory suggested one. Not the
less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. The
same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the
well-known shapes of human life, about the little town. They looked
neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter,
nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet today; 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 Anne
Turner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before this
last good lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder.
Whether the witch had read the minister’s thoughts or no, she came to a
full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and—though
little given to converse with clergymen—began a conversation.
“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.”