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.