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Title: The Scarlet Letter

Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Posting Date: December 18, 2011 [EBook #33] Release Date: February, 1992 Last

Updated: June 2, 2017

Language: English

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Produced by Dartmouth College

1

THE SCARLET LETTER

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

EDITOR'S NOTE

Nathaniel Hawthorne was already a man of forty-six, and a tale writer of some

twenty-four years' standing, when "The Scarlet Letter" appeared. He was born at

Salem, Mass., on July 4th, 1804, son of a sea-captain. He led there a shy and rather

sombre life; of few artistic encouragements, yet not wholly uncongenial, his moody,

intensely meditative temperament being considered. Its colours and shadows are

marvelously reflected in his "Twice-Told Tales" and other short stories, the product of

his first literary period. Even his college days at Bowdoin did not quite break through

his acquired and inherited reserve; but beneath it all, his faculty of divining men and

women was exercised with almost uncanny prescience and subtlety. "The Scarlet

Letter," which explains as much of this unique imaginative art, as is to be gathered

from reading his highest single achievement, yet needs to be ranged with his other

writings, early and late, to have its last effect. In the year that saw it published, he

began "The House of the Seven Gables," a later romance or prose-tragedy of the

Puritan-American community as he had himself known it— defrauded of art and the

joy of life, "starving for symbols" as Emerson has it. Nathaniel Hawthorne died at

Plymouth, New Hampshire, on May 18th, 1864.

The following is the table of his romances, stories, and other works:

Fanshawe, published anonymously, 1826; Twice-Told Tales, 1st

Series, 1837; 2nd Series, 1842; Grandfather's Chair, a history

for youth, 1845: Famous Old People (Grandfather's Chair), 1841

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Liberty Tree: with the last words of Grandfather's Chair, 1842;

Biographical Stories for Children, 1842; Mosses from an Old

Manse, 1846; The Scarlet Letter, 1850; The House of the Seven

Gables, 1851: True Stories from History and Biography (the whole

History of Grandfather's Chair), 1851 A Wonder Book for Girls and

Boys, 1851; The Snow Image and other Tales, 1851: The Blithedale

Romance, 1852; Life of Franklin Pierce, 1852; Tanglewood Tales

(2nd Series of the Wonder Book), 1853; A Rill from the Town-Pump,

with remarks, by Telba, 1857; The Marble Faun; or, The Romance of

Monte Beni (4 EDITOR'S NOTE) (published in England under the

title of "Transformation"), 1860, Our Old Home, 1863; Dolliver

Romance (1st Part in "Atlantic Monthly"), 1864; in 3 Parts, 1876;

Pansie, a fragment, Hawthorne' last literary effort, 1864;

American Note-Books, 1868; English Note Books, edited by Sophia

Hawthorne, 1870; French and Italian Note Books, 1871; Septimius

Felton; or, the Elixir of Life (from the "Atlantic Monthly"),

1872; Doctor Grimshawe's Secret, with Preface and Notes by

Julian Hawthorne, 1882.

Tales of the White Hills, Legends of New England, Legends of the

Province House, 1877, contain tales which had already been

printed in book form in "Twice-Told Tales" and the "Mosses"

"Sketched and Studies," 1883.

Hawthorne's contributions to magazines were numerous, and most of his tales

appeared first in periodicals, chiefly in "The Token," 1831-1838, "New England

Magazine," 1834,1835; "Knickerbocker," 1837-1839; "Democratic Review," 1838-

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1846; "Atlantic Monthly," 1860-1872 (scenes from the Dolliver Romance, Septimius

Felton, and passages from Hawthorne's Note-Books).

Works: in 24 volumes, 1879; in 12 volumes, with introductory notes by Lathrop,

Riverside Edition, 1883.

Biography, etc.; A. H. Japp (pseud. H. A. Page), Memoir of N. Hawthorne, 1872; J. T.

Field's "Yesterdays with Authors," 1873 G. P. Lathrop, "A Study of Hawthorne,"

1876; Henry James English Men of Letters, 1879; Julian Hawthorne, "Nathaniel

Hawthorne and his wife," 1885; Moncure D. Conway, Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne,

1891; Analytical Index of Hawthorne's Works, by E. M. O'Connor 1882.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY. THE CUSTOM-HOUSE

CHAPTER I. THE PRISON-DOOR

CHAPTER II. THE MARKET-PLACE

CHAPTER III. THE RECOGNITION

CHAPTER IV. THE INTERVIEW

CHAPTER V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE

CHAPTER VI. PEARL

CHAPTER VII. THE GOVERNOR'S HALL

CHAPTER VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER

CHAPTER IX. THE LEECH

CHAPTER X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT

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CHAPTER XI. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART

CHAPTER XII. THE MINISTER'S VIGIL

CHAPTER XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER

CHAPTER XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN

CHAPTER XV. HESTER AND PEARL

CHAPTER XVI. A FOREST WALK

CHAPTER XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER

CHAPTER XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE

CHAPTER XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE

CHAPTER XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE

CHAPTER XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY

CHAPTER XXII. THE PROCESSION

CHAPTER XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER

CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION

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THE CUSTOM-HOUSE

INTRODUCTORY TO "THE SCARLET LETTER"

It is a little remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my

affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should

twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time

was three or four years since, when I favoured the reader—inexcusably, and for no

earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine—

with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And

now—because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on

the former occasion—I again seize the public by the button, and talk of my three

years' experience in a Custom-House. The example of the famous "P. P., Clerk of this

Parish," was never more faithfully followed. The truth seems to be, however, that

when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who

will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him

better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more

than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could

fittingly be addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of perfect

sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to

find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of

existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however,

to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and

utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience,

it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the

closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this

genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even

of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent, and within these

6

limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the

reader's rights or his own.

It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has a certain propriety, of a

kind always recognised in literature, as explaining how a large portion of the

following pages came into my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of

a narrative therein contained. This, in fact—a desire to put myself in my true position

as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my

volume—this, and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with

the public. In accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few

extra touches, to give a faint representation of a mode of life not heretofore described,

together with some of the characters that move in it, among whom the author

happened to make one.

In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old

King Derby, was a bustling wharf—but which is now burdened with decayed wooden

warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a

bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at

hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood—at the head, I say,

of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base

and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a

border of unthrifty grass—here, with a view from its front windows adown this not

very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of

brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of

each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with

the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a

civil, and not a military, post of Uncle Sam's government is here established. Its front

is ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony,

7

beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over the

entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings,

a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled

thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper

that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and

eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive

community; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding

on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she

looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the

wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness

and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her best

of moods, and, sooner or later—oftener soon than late—is apt to fling off her nestlings

with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed

arrows.

The pavement round about the above-described edifice—which we may as well name

at once as the Custom-House of the port—has grass enough growing in its chinks to

show that it has not, of late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business.

In some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon when affairs

move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of

that period, before the last war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not

scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit her

wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and

imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston. On some such

morning, when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once usually from

Africa or South America—or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward, there is

a sound of frequent feet passing briskly up and down the granite steps. Here, before

his own wife has greeted him, you may greet the sea-flushed ship-master, just in port,

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with his vessel's papers under his arm in a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his

owner, cheerful, sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the

now accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will readily be turned

to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of incommodities such as nobody will care to

rid him of. Here, likewise—the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded,

careworn merchant—we have the smart young clerk, who gets the taste of traffic as a

wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends adventures in his master's ships, when he

had better be sailing mimic boats upon a mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is the

outward-bound sailor, in quest of a protection; or the recently arrived one, pale and

feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital. Nor must we forget the captains of the rusty

little schooners that bring firewood from the British provinces; a rough-looking set of

tarpaulins, without the alertness of the Yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no

slight importance to our decaying trade.

Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were, with other

miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for the time being, it made the

Custom-House a stirring scene. More frequently, however, on ascending the steps,

you would discern— in the entry if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms

if wintry or inclement weathers—a row of venerable figures, sitting in old-fashioned

chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they

were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, in voices between a

speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of

alms-houses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on

monopolized labour, or anything else but their own independent exertions. These old

gentlemen—seated, like Matthew at the receipt of custom, but not very liable to be

summoned thence, like him, for apostolic errands—were Custom-House officers.

9

Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a certain room or office,

about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty height, with two of its arched windows

commanding a view of the aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a

narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three give glimpses of the shops

of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers, around the doors of which

are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other

wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room itself is cobwebbed, and

dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere

fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness of the

place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the

broom and mop, has very infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove

with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a three-legged stool beside it; two or

three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and—not to forget the

library—on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a

bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a

medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. And here, some six

months ago—pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with

his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the

morning newspaper—you might have recognised, honoured reader, the same

individual who welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine

glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the western side of the Old

Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the

Locofoco Surveyor. The besom of reform hath swept him out of office, and a worthier

successor wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments.

This old town of Salem—my native place, though I have dwelt much away from it

both in boyhood and maturer years—possesses, or did possess, a hold on my

affection, the force of which I have never realized during my seasons of actual

10

residence here. Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried

surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to

architectural beauty—its irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only

tame—its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of the

peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-

house at the other—such being the features of my native town, it would be quite as

reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged checker-board. And yet,

though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for Old Salem,

which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is

probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has stuck into the

soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest

emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement

which has since become a city. And here his descendants have been born and died,

and have mingled their earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it

must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I walk the

streets. In part, therefore, the attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous

sympathy of dust for dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as

frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need they consider it desirable

to know.

But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of that first ancestor,

invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish

imagination as far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of

home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of

the town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave,

bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor—who came so early, with his

Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so

large a figure, as a man of war and peace—a stronger claim than for myself, whose

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name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a soldier, legislator, judge;

he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He

was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him

in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their

sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds,

although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made

himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be

said to have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his dry old bones, in

the Charter-street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly

to dust! I know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent,

and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under

the heavy consequences of them in another state of being. At all events, I, the present

writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and

pray that any curse incurred by them—as I have heard, and as the dreary and

unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist—

may be now and henceforth removed.

Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritans would have

thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins that, after so long a lapse of years,

the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have

borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim that I have ever cherished

would they recognise as laudable; no success of mine—if my life, beyond its domestic

scope, had ever been brightened by success—would they deem otherwise than

worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?" murmurs one grey shadow of

my forefathers to the other. "A writer of story books! What kind of business in life—

what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and

generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a

fiddler!" Such are the compliments bandied between my great grandsires and myself,

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across the gulf of time! And yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their

nature have intertwined themselves with mine.

Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by these two earnest and

energetic men, the race has ever since subsisted here; always, too, in respectability;

never, so far as I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom or

never, on the other hand, after the first two generations, performing any memorable

deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice. Gradually, they have

sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered

half-way to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a

hundred years, they followed the sea; a grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation,

retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the

hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale which had

blustered against his sire and grandsire. The boy, also in due time, passed from the

forecastle to the cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his world-

wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with the natal earth. This long

connexion of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a kindred

between the human being and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the

scenery or moral circumstances that surround him. It is not love but instinct. The new

inhabitant—who came himself from a foreign land, or whose father or grandfather

came—has little claim to be called a Salemite; he has no conception of the oyster-like

tenacity with which an old settler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to

the spot where his successive generations have been embedded. It is no matter that the

place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and dust,

the dead level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind, and the chillest of social

atmospheres;—all these, and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are

nothing to the purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natal spot

were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case. I felt it almost as a destiny to

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make Salem my home; so that the mould of features and cast of character which had

all along been familiar here—ever, as one representative of the race lay down in the

grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main street—might

still in my little day be seen and recognised in the old town. Nevertheless, this very

sentiment is an evidence that the connexion, which has become an unhealthy one,

should at last be severed. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it

be planted and re-planted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out

soil. My children have had other birth-places, and, so far as their fortunes may be

within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent, unjoyous

attachment for my native town that brought me to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick

edifice, when I might as well, or better, have gone somewhere else. My doom was on

me. It was not the first time, nor the second, that I had gone away—as it seemed,

permanently—but yet returned, like the bad halfpenny, or as if Salem were for me the

inevitable centre of the universe. So, one fine morning I ascended the flight of granite

steps, with the President's commission in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps

of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility as chief executive

officer of the Custom-House.

I doubt greatly—or, rather, I do not doubt at all—whether any public functionary of

the United States, either in the civil or military line, has ever had such a patriarchal

body of veterans under his orders as myself. The whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant

was at once settled when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty years before this

epoch, the independent position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House

out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office

generally so fragile. A soldier—New England's most distinguished soldier—he stood

firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality

14

of the successive administrations through which he had held office, he had been the

safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger and heart-quake. General Miller

was radically conservative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight

influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to

change, even when change might have brought unquestionable improvement. Thus,

on taking charge of my department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient sea-

captains, for the most part, who, after being tossed on every sea, and standing up

sturdily against life's tempestuous blast, had finally drifted into this quiet nook, where,

with little to disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential election, they

one and all acquired a new lease of existence. Though by no means less liable than

their fellow-men to age and infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that

kept death at bay. Two or three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and

rheumatic, or perhaps bed-ridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the

Custom-House during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid winter, would creep

out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go lazily about what they termed duty,

and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake themselves to bed again. I must

plead guilty to the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one of these

venerable servants of the republic. They were allowed, on my representation, to rest

from their arduous labours, and soon afterwards—as if their sole principle of life had

been zeal for their country's service—as I verily believe it was—withdrew to a better

world. It is a pious consolation to me that, through my interference, a sufficient space

was allowed them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices into which, as a

matter of course, every Custom-House officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the

front nor the back entrance of the Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.

The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for their venerable

brotherhood that the new Surveyor was not a politician, and though a faithful

Democrat in principle, neither received nor held his office with any reference to

15

political services. Had it been otherwise—had an active politician been put into this

influential post, to assume the easy task of making head against a Whig Collector,

whose infirmities withheld him from the personal administration of his office—hardly

a man of the old corps would have drawn the breath of official life within a month

after the exterminating angel had come up the Custom-House steps. According to the

received code in such matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a

politician, to bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine. It

was plain enough to discern that the old fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my

hands. It pained, and at the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that attended

my advent, to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a century of storm, turn

ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or

another addressed me, the tremor of a voice which, in long-past days, had been wont

to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas himself to

silence. They knew, these excellent old persons, that, by all established rule—and, as

regarded some of them, weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business—they

ought to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in politics, and altogether

fitter than themselves to serve our common Uncle. I knew it, too, but could never

quite find in my heart to act upon the knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own

discredit, therefore, and considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they

continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and loiter up and down

the Custom-House steps. They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their

accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back against the walls; awaking, however,

once or twice in the forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth

repetition of old sea-stories and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be passwords and

countersigns among them.

The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had no great harm in

him. So, with lightsome hearts and the happy consciousness of being usefully

16

employed—in their own behalf at least, if not for our beloved country—these good

old gentlemen went through the various formalities of office. Sagaciously under their

spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels. Mighty was their fuss about little

matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip

between their fingers Whenever such a mischance occurred—when a waggon-load of

valuable merchandise had been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly

beneath their unsuspicious noses—nothing could exceed the vigilance and alacrity

with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and secure with tape and sealing-

wax, all the avenues of the delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous

negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy

caution after the mischief had happened; a grateful recognition of the promptitude of

their zeal the moment that there was no longer any remedy.

Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish habit to contract

a kindness for them. The better part of my companion's character, if it have a better

part, is that which usually comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type whereby

I recognise the man. As most of these old Custom-House officers had good traits, and

as my position in reference to them, being paternal and protective, was favourable to

the growth of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like them all. It was pleasant in the

summer forenoons—when the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human

family, merely communicated a genial warmth to their half torpid systems—it was

pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them all tipped against the

wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and

came bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has

much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense

of humour, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the

surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch and grey,

17

mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more

resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent all my excellent old

friends as in their dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old;

there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy,

and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil

stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to

be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority

of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done if I characterize them generally

as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from

their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all the golden grain of

practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and

most carefully to have stored their memory with the husks. They spoke with far more

interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or

tomorrow's dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's

wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.

The father of the Custom-House—the patriarch, not only of this little squad of

officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of tide-waiters all over the

United States—was a certain permanent Inspector. He might truly be termed a

legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or rather born in the purple;

since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had created

an office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages which few

living men can now remember. This Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of

fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of

winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's search. With his florid

cheek, his compact figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and

18

vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young,

indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom

age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-

echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of

an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or

the blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal—and there was very little

else to look at—he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness

and wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all,

or nearly all, the delights which he had ever aimed at or conceived of. The careless

security of his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but slight and

infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass

lightly over him. The original and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare

perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very

trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed,

being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all-fours.

He possessed no power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities:

nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful

temper which grew inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very

respectably, and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband of

three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children, most of whom, at every

age of childhood or maturity, had likewise returned to dust. Here, one would suppose,

might have been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest disposition through and through

with a sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector. One brief sigh sufficed to carry off

the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences. The next moment he was as ready for

sport as any unbreeched infant: far readier than the Collector's junior clerk, who at

nineteen years was much the elder and graver man of the two.

19

I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I think, livelier curiosity

than any other form of humanity there presented to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare

phenomenon; so perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable

such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My conclusion was that he had no soul, no

heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so

cunningly had the few materials of his character been put together that there was no

painful perception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I

found in him. It might be difficult—and it was so—to conceive how he should exist

hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely his existence here,

admitting that it was to terminate with his last breath, had been not unkindly given;

with no higher moral responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger

scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity from the

dreariness and duskiness of age.

One point in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed brethren was his

ability to recollect the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the

happiness of his life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear

him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. As he possessed no

higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by

devoting all his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his maw,

it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's

meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His

reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed

to bring the savour of pig or turkey under one's very nostrils. There were flavours on

his palate that had lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still

apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had just devoured for his

breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guest at which, except

himself, had long been food for worms. It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts

20

of bygone meals were continually rising up before him—not in anger or retribution,

but as if grateful for his former appreciation, and seeking to reduplicate an endless

series of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual: a tenderloin of beef, a hind-quarter

of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey,

which had perhaps adorned his board in the days of the elder Adams, would be

remembered; while all the subsequent experience of our race, and all the events that

brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over him with as little

permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chief tragic event of the old man's life, so

far as I could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some

twenty or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table,

proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife would make no impression on its

carcase, and it could only be divided with an axe and handsaw.

But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I should be glad to dwell at

considerably more length, because of all men whom I have ever known, this

individual was fittest to be a Custom-House officer. Most persons, owing to causes

which I may not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this peculiar mode

of life. The old Inspector was incapable of it; and, were he to continue in office to the

end of time, would be just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just as

good an appetite.

There is one likeness, without which my gallery of Custom-House portraits would be

strangely incomplete, but which my comparatively few opportunities for observation

enable me to sketch only in the merest outline. It is that of the Collector, our gallant

old General, who, after his brilliant military service, subsequently to which he had

ruled over a wild Western territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the

decline of his varied and honourable life.

21

The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his three-score years and ten,

and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march, burdened with infirmities which

even the martial music of his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little towards

lightening. The step was palsied now, that had been foremost in the charge. It was

only with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron

balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the Custom-House steps, and,

with a toilsome progress across the floor, attain his customary chair beside the

fireplace. There he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the

figures that came and went, amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, the

discussion of business, and the casual talk of the office; all which sounds and

circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make their

way into his inner sphere of contemplation. His countenance, in this repose, was mild

and kindly. If his notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed

out upon his features, proving that there was light within him, and that it was only the

outward medium of the intellectual lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage. The

closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. When no

longer called upon to speak or listen—either of which operations cost him an evident

effort—his face would briefly subside into its former not uncheerful quietude. It was

not painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying

age. The framework of his nature, originally strong and massive, was not yet

crumpled into ruin.

To observe and define his character, however, under such disadvantages, was as

difficult a task as to trace out and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like

Ticonderoga, from a view of its grey and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance, the

walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a shapeless mound,

cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown, through long years of peace and

neglect, with grass and alien weeds.

22

Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection—for, slight as was the

communication between us, my feeling towards him, like that of all bipeds and

quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be termed so,—I could discern the

main points of his portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic qualities which

showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right, that he had won a distinguished

name. His spirit could never, I conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy

activity; it must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse to set him in

motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome, and an adequate object to be

attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded

his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and

flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow, as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity,

firmness—this was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept

untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then, that,

under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness—roused by a

trumpet's peal, loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not dead, but only

slumbering—he was yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick man's gown,

dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once more a warrior.

And, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have still been calm. Such an

exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor

desired. What I saw in him—as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old

Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate simile—was the features of

stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in

his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a

somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable as a ton of iron

ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort

Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical

philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught I know—

certainly, they had fallen like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the

23

charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant energy—but, be that as it might,

there was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a

butterfly's wing. I have not known the man to whose innate kindliness I would more

confidently make an appeal.

Many characteristics—and those, too, which contribute not the least forcibly to impart

resemblance in a sketch—must have vanished, or been obscured, before I met the

General. All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does

nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that have their roots and

proper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers

over the ruined fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and beauty,

there were points well worth noting. A ray of humour, now and then, would make its

way through the veil of dim obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A

trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or

early youth, was shown in the General's fondness for the sight and fragrance of

flowers. An old soldier might be supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow;

but here was one who seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the floral tribe.

There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit; while the Surveyor—

though seldom, when it could be avoided, taking upon himself the difficult task of

engaging him in conversation—was fond of standing at a distance, and watching his

quiet and almost slumberous countenance. He seemed away from us, although we saw

him but a few yards off; remote, though we passed close beside his chair;

unattainable, though we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own. It

might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts than amid the unappropriate

environment of the Collector's office. The evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the

battle; the flourish of old heroic music, heard thirty years before—such scenes and

sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the

24

merchants and ship-masters, the spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and

departed; the bustle of his commercial and Custom-House life kept up its little

murmur round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the General

appear to sustain the most distant relation. He was as much out of place as an old

sword—now rusty, but which had flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still a

bright gleam along its blade—would have been among the inkstands, paper-folders,

and mahogany rulers on the Deputy Collector's desk.

There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and re-creating the stalwart

soldier of the Niagara frontier—the man of true and simple energy. It was the

recollection of those memorable words of his—"I'll try, Sir"—spoken on the very

verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the soul and spirit of New

England hardihood, comprehending all perils, and encountering all. If, in our country,

valour were rewarded by heraldic honour, this phrase—which it seems so easy to

speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger and glory before him, has ever

spoken—would be the best and fittest of all mottoes for the General's shield of arms.

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health to be brought into

habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his

pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. The

accidents of my life have often afforded me this advantage, but never with more

fulness and variety than during my continuance in office. There was one man,

especially, the observation of whose character gave me a new idea of talent. His gifts

were emphatically those of a man of business; prompt, acute, clear-minded; with an

eye that saw through all perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them

vanish as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood in the

Custom-House, it was his proper field of activity; and the many intricacies of

business, so harassing to the interloper, presented themselves before him with the

25

regularity of a perfectly comprehended system. In my contemplation, he stood as the

ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House in himself; or, at all events, the

mainspring that kept its variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution

like this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit and

convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to their fitness for the duty to be

performed, they must perforce seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them.

Thus, by an inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did our man of

business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody met with. With an easy

condescension, and kind forbearance towards our stupidity—which, to his order of

mind, must have seemed little short of crime—would he forth-with, by the merest

touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as daylight. The merchants

valued him not less than we, his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect; it was a

law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it be otherwise than

the main condition of an intellect so remarkably clear and accurate as his to be honest

and regular in the administration of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to anything

that came within the range of his vocation, would trouble such a man very much in the

same way, though to a far greater degree, than an error in the balance of an account, or

an ink-blot on the fair page of a book of record. Here, in a word—and it is a rare

instance in my life—I had met with a person thoroughly adapted to the situation

which he held.

Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. I took it in

good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to

my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be

had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren

of Brook Farm; after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect

like Emerson's; after those wild, free days on the Assabeth, indulging fantastic

speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with

26

Thoreau about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden; after growing

fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard's culture; after becoming

imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow's hearthstone—it was time, at length, that

I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which

I had hitherto had little appetite. Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of

diet, to a man who had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some

measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a

thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once

with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change.

Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my regard. I cared

not at this period for books; they were apart from me. Nature—except it were human

nature—the nature that is developed in earth and sky, was, in one sense, hidden from

me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had been spiritualized passed away

out of my mind. A gift, a faculty, if it had not been departed, was suspended and

inanimate within me. There would have been something sad, unutterably dreary, in all

this, had I not been conscious that it lay at my own option to recall whatever was

valuable in the past. It might be true, indeed, that this was a life which could not, with

impunity, be lived too long; else, it might make me permanently other than I had been,

without transforming me into any shape which it would be worth my while to take.

But I never considered it as other than a transitory life. There was always a prophetic

instinct, a low whisper in my ear, that within no long period, and whenever a new

change of custom should be essential to my good, change would come.

Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue and, so far as I have been able to

understand, as good a Surveyor as need be. A man of thought, fancy, and sensibility

(had he ten times the Surveyor's proportion of those qualities), may, at any time, be a

man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the trouble. My fellow-officers,

27

and the merchants and sea-captains with whom my official duties brought me into any

manner of connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in no other

character. None of them, I presume, had ever read a page of my inditing, or would

have cared a fig the more for me if they had read them all; nor would it have mended

the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been written with a pen like

that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom was a Custom-House officer in his day, as

well as I. It is a good lesson—though it may often be a hard one—for a man who has

dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's

dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims

are recognized and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all

that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that I especially needed the lesson,

either in the way of warning or rebuke; but at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it

gives me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my perception, ever cost

me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is true,

the Naval Officer—an excellent fellow, who came into the office with me, and went

out only a little later—would often engage me in a discussion about one or the other

of his favourite topics, Napoleon or Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too a

young gentleman who, it was whispered occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's

letter paper with what (at the distance of a few yards) looked very much like poetry—

used now and then to speak to me of books, as matters with which I might possibly be

conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite sufficient for my

necessities.

No longer seeking nor caring that my name should be blasoned abroad on title-pages,

I smiled to think that it had now another kind of vogue. The Custom-House marker

imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and

cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these

commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on

28

such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it,

was carried where it had never been before, and, I hope, will never go again.

But the past was not dead. Once in a great while, the thoughts that had seemed so vital

and so active, yet had been put to rest so quietly, revived again. One of the most

remarkable occasions, when the habit of bygone days awoke in me, was that which

brings it within the law of literary propriety to offer the public the sketch which I am

now writing.

In the second storey of the Custom-House there is a large room, in which the brick-

work and naked rafters have never been covered with panelling and plaster. The

edifice—originally projected on a scale adapted to the old commercial enterprise of

the port, and with an idea of subsequent prosperity destined never to be realized—

contains far more space than its occupants know what to do with. This airy hall,

therefore, over the Collector's apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite

of the aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await the labour of

the carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in a recess, were a number of

barrels piled one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. Large

quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think how

many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil had been wasted on these musty

papers, which were now only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this

forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes. But then, what reams of

other manuscripts—filled, not with the dulness of official formalities, but with the

thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts—had gone equally to

oblivion; and that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their day, as these heaped-

up papers had, and—saddest of all—without purchasing for their writers the

comfortable livelihood which the clerks of the Custom-House had gained by these

worthless scratchings of the pen. Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps, as materials of

29

local history. Here, no doubt, statistics of the former commerce of Salem might be

discovered, and memorials of her princely merchants—old King Derby—old Billy

Gray—old Simon Forrester—and many another magnate in his day, whose powdered

head, however, was scarcely in the tomb before his mountain pile of wealth began to

dwindle. The founders of the greater part of the families which now compose the

aristocracy of Salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings of

their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to the Revolution, upward to what

their children look upon as long-established rank.

Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier documents and archives

of the Custom-House having, probably, been carried off to Halifax, when all the

king's officials accompanied the British army in its flight from Boston. It has often

been a matter of regret with me; for, going back, perhaps, to the days of the

Protectorate, those papers must have contained many references to forgotten or

remembered men, and to antique customs, which would have affected me with the

same pleasure as when I used to pick up Indian arrow-heads in the field near the Old

Manse.

But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery of some little

interest. Poking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish in the corner, unfolding

one and another document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago

foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants never heard of now

on 'Change, nor very readily decipherable on their mossy tombstones; glancing at

such matters with the saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow on the

corpse of dead activity—and exerting my fancy, sluggish with little use, to raise up

from these dry bones an image of the old town's brighter aspect, when India was a

new region, and only Salem knew the way thither—I chanced to lay my hand on a

small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment. This

30

envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past, when clerks

engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at

present. There was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and

made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package, with the sense that a

treasure would here be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment

cover, I found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor Shirley, in

favour of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of His Majesty's Customs for the Port of

Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. I remembered to have read (probably in

Felt's "Annals") a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about fourscore years

ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent times, an account of the digging up of his

remains in the little graveyard of St. Peter's Church, during the renewal of that edifice.

Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my respected predecessor, save an

imperfect skeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle,

which, unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory preservation. But,

on examining the papers which the parchment commission served to envelop, I found

more traces of Mr. Pue's mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the

frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.

They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private nature, or, at least, written

in his private capacity, and apparently with his own hand. I could account for their

being included in the heap of Custom-House lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pue's

death had happened suddenly, and that these papers, which he probably kept in his

official desk, had never come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate

to the business of the revenue. On the transfer of the archives to Halifax, this package,

proving to be of no public concern, was left behind, and had remained ever since

unopened.

31

The ancient Surveyor—being little molested, I suppose, at that early day with business

pertaining to his office—seems to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to

researches as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature. These

supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would otherwise have been eaten up

with rust.

A portion of his facts, by-the-by, did me good service in the preparation of the article

entitled "MAIN STREET," included in the present volume. The remainder may

perhaps be applied to purposes equally valuable hereafter, or not impossibly may be

worked up, so far as they go, into a regular history of Salem, should my veneration for

the natal soil ever impel me to so pious a task. Meanwhile, they shall be at the

command of any gentleman, inclined and competent, to take the unprofitable labour

off my hands. As a final disposition I contemplate depositing them with the Essex

Historical Society. But the object that most drew my attention to the mysterious

package was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded, There were traces

about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and defaced, so that

none, or very little, of the glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy to

perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch (as I am assured by ladies

conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be

discovered even by the process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet cloth—

for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a rag—

on careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter.

It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be

precisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had been intended, there could be no

doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or what rank,

honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was a riddle which (so

evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope of

32

solving. And yet it strangely interested me. My eyes fastened themselves upon the old

scarlet letter, and would not be turned aside. Certainly there was some deep meaning

in it most worthy of interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from the

mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the

analysis of my mind.

When thus perplexed—and cogitating, among other hypotheses, whether the letter

might not have been one of those decorations which the white men used to contrive in

order to take the eyes of Indians—I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to

me—the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word—it seemed to me, then, that I

experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and

as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered, and involuntarily let

it fall upon the floor.

In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had hitherto neglected to

examine a small roll of dingy paper, around which it had been twisted. This I now

opened, and had the satisfaction to find recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a

reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair. There were several foolscap

sheets, containing many particulars respecting the life and conversation of one Hester

Prynne, who appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our

ancestors. She had flourished during the period between the early days of

Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth century. Aged persons, alive in the

time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his

narrative, remembered her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a

stately and solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an almost immemorial date, to

go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous

good she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters, especially

those of the heart, by which means—as a person of such propensities inevitably

33

must—she gained from many people the reverence due to an angel, but, I should

imagine, was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying further into

the manuscript, I found the record of other doings and sufferings of this singular

woman, for most of which the reader is referred to the story entitled "THE SCARLET

LETTER"; and it should be borne carefully in mind that the main facts of that story

are authorized and authenticated by the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue. The original

papers, together with the scarlet letter itself—a most curious relic—are still in my

possession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest

of the narrative, may desire a sight of them. I must not be understood affirming that,

in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of passion that

influenced the characters who figure in it, I have invariably confined myself within

the limits of the old Surveyor's half-a-dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I

have allowed myself, as to such points, nearly, or altogether, as much license as if the

facts had been entirely of my own invention. What I contend for is the authenticity of

the outline.

This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track. There seemed to be

here the groundwork of a tale. It impressed me as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb

of a hundred years gone by, and wearing his immortal wig—which was buried with

him, but did not perish in the grave—had met me in the deserted chamber of the

Custom-House. In his port was the dignity of one who had borne His Majesty's

commission, and who was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendour that shone

so dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike alas the hangdog look of a republican

official, who, as the servant of the people, feels himself less than the least, and below

the lowest of his masters. With his own ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but majestic,

figure had imparted to me the scarlet symbol and the little roll of explanatory

manuscript. With his own ghostly voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred

consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him—who might reasonably

34

regard himself as my official ancestor—to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten

lucubrations before the public. "Do this," said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue,

emphatically nodding the head that looked so imposing within its memorable wig; "do

this, and the profit shall be all your own. You will shortly need it; for it is not in your

days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease, and oftentimes an

heirloom. But I charge you, in this matter of old Mistress Prynne, give to your

predecessor's memory the credit which will be rightfully due" And I said to the ghost

of Mr. Surveyor Pue—"I will".

On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much thought. It was the subject of

my meditations for many an hour, while pacing to and fro across my room, or

traversing, with a hundredfold repetition, the long extent from the front door of the

Custom-House to the side entrance, and back again. Great were the weariness and

annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers and Gaugers, whose slumbers were

disturbed by the unmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps.

Remembering their own former habits, they used to say that the Surveyor was walking

the quarter-deck. They probably fancied that my sole object—and, indeed, the sole

object for which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary motion—was to get

an appetite for dinner. And, to say the truth, an appetite, sharpened by the east wind

that generally blew along the passage, was the only valuable result of so much

indefatigable exercise. So little adapted is the atmosphere of a Custom-house to the

delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility, that, had I remained there through ten

Presidencies yet to come, I doubt whether the tale of "The Scarlet Letter" would ever

have been brought before the public eye. My imagination was a tarnished mirror. It

would not reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures with which I did my

best to people it. The characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered

malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge. They would take

neither the glow of passion nor the tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the

35

rigidity of dead corpses, and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin of

contemptuous defiance. "What have you to do with us?" that expression seemed to

say. "The little power you might have once possessed over the tribe of unrealities is

gone! You have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go then, and earn your

wages!" In short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with

imbecility, and not without fair occasion.

It was not merely during the three hours and a half which Uncle Sam claimed as his

share of my daily life that this wretched numbness held possession of me. It went with

me on my sea-shore walks and rambles into the country, whenever—which was

seldom and reluctantly—I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of Nature

which used to give me such freshness and activity of thought, the moment that I

stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the

capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in the

chamber which I most absurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me when, late at

night, I sat in the deserted parlour, lighted only by the glimmering coal-fire and the

moon, striving to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out

on the brightening page in many-hued description.

If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it might well be deemed a

hopeless case. Moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and

showing all its figures so distinctly—making every object so minutely visible, yet so

unlike a morning or noontide visibility—is a medium the most suitable for a romance-

writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. There is the little domestic scenery of

the well-known apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-

table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa;

the book-case; the picture on the wall—all these details, so completely seen, are so

spiritualised by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance, and

36

become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this change,

and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker

carriage; the hobby-horse—whatever, in a word, has been used or played with during

the day is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still

almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar

room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-

land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the

nature of the other. Ghosts might enter here without affrighting us. It would be too

much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about us and

discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic

moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from

afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside.

The somewhat dim coal fire has an essential Influence in producing the effect which I

would describe. It throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint

ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam upon the polish of the

furniture. This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moon-

beams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to

the forms which fancy summons up. It converts them from snow-images into men and

women. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold—deep within its haunted verge—

the smouldering glow of the half-extinguished anthracite, the white moon-beams on

the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one remove

further from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. Then, at such an hour, and with

this scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and

make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House experience, moonlight and

sunshine, and the glow of firelight, were just alike in my regard; and neither of them

37

was of one whit more avail than the twinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire class of

susceptibilities, and a gift connected with them—of no great richness or value, but the

best I had—was gone from me.

It is my belief, however, that had I attempted a different order of composition, my

faculties would not have been found so pointless and inefficacious. I might, for

instance, have contented myself with writing out the narratives of a veteran

shipmaster, one of the Inspectors, whom I should be most ungrateful not to mention,

since scarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laughter and admiration by his

marvelous gifts as a story-teller. Could I have preserved the picturesque force of his

style, and the humourous colouring which nature taught him how to throw over his

descriptions, the result, I honestly believe, would have been something new in

literature. Or I might readily have found a more serious task. It was a folly, with the

materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself

back into another age, or to insist on creating the semblance of a world out of airy

matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken

by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to

diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to

make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise the burden that began to weigh so

heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the

petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters with which I was now

conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me

seemed dull and commonplace only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A

better book than I shall ever write was there; leaf after leaf presenting itself to me, just

as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written,

only because my brain wanted the insight, and my hand the cunning, to transcribe it.

At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken

paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page.

38

These perceptions had come too late. At the Instant, I was only conscious that what

would have been a pleasure once was now a hopeless toil. There was no occasion to

make much moan about this state of affairs. I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably

poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs.

That was all. But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a

suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your

consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and

less volatile residuum. Of the fact there could be no doubt and, examining myself and

others, I was led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on the

character, not very favourable to the mode of life in question. In some other form,

perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here to say that a Custom-

House officer of long continuance can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable

personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation,

and another, the very nature of his business, which—though, I trust, an honest one—is

of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind.

An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who

has occupied the position—is, that while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic,

his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the

weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possesses

an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too

long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—

fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a

struggling world—may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. But

this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin,

and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of

life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity—that his tempered steel and

elasticity are lost—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of

39

support external to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a hallucination,

which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts

him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments

him for a brief space after death—is, that finally, and in no long time, by some happy

coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than

anything else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream

of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick

himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle

will raise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold

in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little

pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle's pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how

slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle

Sam's gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect,

a quality of enchantment like that of the devil's wages. Whoever touches it should

look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if

not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and

constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly

character.

Here was a fine prospect in the distance. Not that the Surveyor brought the lesson

home to himself, or admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by continuance

in office or ejectment. Yet my reflections were not the most comfortable. I began to

grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, to discover which of

its poor properties were gone, and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the

remainder. I endeavoured to calculate how much longer I could stay in the Custom-

House, and yet go forth a man. To confess the truth, it was my greatest

apprehension—as it would never be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an

individual as myself; and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign—it

40

was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the

Surveyorship, and become much such another animal as the old Inspector. Might it

not, in the tedious lapse of official life that lay before me, finally be with me as it was

with this venerable friend—to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the day, and to

spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade? A

dreary look-forward, this, for a man who felt it to be the best definition of happiness

to live throughout the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities. But, all this while,

I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had meditated better things

for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.

A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorship—to adopt the tone of "P. P.

"—was the election of General Taylor to the Presidency. It is essential, in order to

form a complete estimate of the advantages of official life, to view the incumbent at

the in-coming of a hostile administration. His position is then one of the most

singularly irksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched mortal

can possibly occupy; with seldom an alternative of good on either hand, although

what presents itself to him as the worst event may very probably be the best. But it is

a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are

within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and by whom,

since one or the other must needs happen, he would rather be injured than obliged.

Strange, too, for one who has kept his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the

bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is

himself among its objects! There are few uglier traits of human nature than this

tendency—which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours—to grow

cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as

applied to office-holders, were a literal fact, instead of one of the most apt of

metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the active members of the victorious party were

sufficiently excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have thanked Heaven for

41

the opportunity! It appears to me—who have been a calm and curious observer, as

well in victory as defeat—that this fierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge has

never distinguished the many triumphs of my own party as it now did that of the

Whigs. The Democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they need them, and

because the practice of many years has made it the law of political warfare, which

unless a different system be proclaimed, it was weakness and cowardice to murmur at.

But the long habit of victory has made them generous. They know how to spare when

they see occasion; and when they strike, the axe may be sharp indeed, but its edge is

seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their custom ignominiously to kick the head

which they have just struck off.

In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, I saw much reason to

congratulate myself that I was on the losing side rather than the triumphant one. If,

heretofore, I had been none of the warmest of partisans I began now, at this season of

peril and adversity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my predilections

lay; nor was it without something like regret and shame that, according to a

reasonable calculation of chances, I saw my own prospect of retaining office to be

better than those of my democratic brethren. But who can see an inch into futurity

beyond his nose? My own head was the first that fell.

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think,

precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our

misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it,

if the sufferer will but make the best rather than the worst, of the accident which has

befallen him. In my particular case the consolatory topics were close at hand, and,

indeed, had suggested themselves to my meditations a considerable time before it was

requisite to use them. In view of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts

of resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain

42

an idea of committing suicide, and although beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap

to be murdered. In the Custom-House, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent three

years—a term long enough to rest a weary brain: long enough to break off old

intellectual habits, and make room for new ones: long enough, and too long, to have

lived in an unnatural state, doing what was really of no advantage nor delight to any

human being, and withholding myself from toil that would, at least, have stilled an

unquiet impulse in me. Then, moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the

late Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be recognised by the Whigs as an

enemy; since his inactivity in political affairs—his tendency to roam, at will, in that

broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather than confine himself to

those narrow paths where brethren of the same household must diverge from one

another—had sometimes made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he

was a friend. Now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though with no longer a

head to wear it on), the point might be looked upon as settled. Finally, little heroic as

he was, it seemed more decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party with

which he had been content to stand than to remain a forlorn survivor, when so many

worthier men were falling: and at last, after subsisting for four years on the mercy of a

hostile administration, to be compelled then to define his position anew, and claim the

yet more humiliating mercy of a friendly one.

Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept me for a week or two careering

through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman,

ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a political dead man ought. So much for

my figurative self. The real human being all this time, with his head safely on his

shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for

the best; and making an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens, had opened his long-

disused writing desk, and was again a literary man.

43

Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor, Mr. Surveyor Pue, came

into play. Rusty through long idleness, some little space was requisite before my

intellectual machinery could be brought to work upon the tale with an effect in any

degree satisfactory. Even yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much absorbed in

the task, it wears, to my eye, a stern and sombre aspect: too much ungladdened by

genial sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften

almost every scene of nature and real life, and undoubtedly should soften every

picture of them. This uncaptivating effect is perhaps due to the period of hardly

accomplished revolution, and still seething turmoil, in which the story shaped itself. It

is no indication, however, of a lack of cheerfulness in the writer's mind: for he was

happier while straying through the gloom of these sunless fantasies than at any time

since he had quitted the Old Manse. Some of the briefer articles, which contribute to

make up the volume, have likewise been written since my involuntary withdrawal

from the toils and honours of public life, and the remainder are gleaned from annuals

and magazines, of such antique date, that they have gone round the circle, and come

back to novelty again. Keeping up the metaphor of the political guillotine, the whole

may be considered as the POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED

SURVEYOR: and the sketch which I am now bringing to a close, if too

autobiographical for a modest person to publish in his lifetime, will readily be excused

in a gentleman who writes from beyond the grave. Peace be with all the world! My

blessing on my friends! My forgiveness to my enemies! For I am in the realm of

quiet!

The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind me. The old Inspector—who,

by-the-bye, I regret to say, was overthrown and killed by a horse some time ago, else

he would certainly have lived for ever—he, and all those other venerable personages

who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view: white-headed

and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has now flung aside for

44

ever. The merchants—Pingree, Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt—

these and many other names, which had such classic familiarity for my ear six months

ago,—these men of traffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position in the

world—how little time has it required to disconnect me from them all, not merely in

act, but recollection! It is with an effort that I recall the figures and appellations of

these few. Soon, likewise, my old native town will loom upon me through the haze of

memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth,

but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its

wooden houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main

street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life; I am a citizen of somewhere else.

My good townspeople will not much regret me, for—though it has been as dear an

object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes, and to win

myself a pleasant memory in this abode and burial-place of so many of my

forefathers—there has never been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man

requires in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. I shall do better amongst other

faces; and these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will do just as well without me.

It may be, however—oh, transporting and triumphant thought—that the great-

grandchildren of the present race may sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of

bygone days, when the antiquary of days to come, among the sites memorable in the

town's history, shall point out the locality of THE TOWN PUMP.

45

THE SCARLET LETTER

I. THE PRISON DOOR

A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats,

inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled

in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and

studded with iron spikes.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they

might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical

necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the

site of a prison. In accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the

forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of

Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac

Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of

all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is

that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was

already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet

darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-

work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World.

Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before

this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot,

much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation,

which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the

black flower of civilised society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted

almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its

delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to

46

the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his

doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had

merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic

pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is fair authority

for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson as

she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so

directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that

inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and

present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral

blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of

human frailty and sorrow.

47

II. THE MARKET-PLACE

The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less

than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of

Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst

any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim

rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have

augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the

anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal

had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the

Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might

be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given

over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that

an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the

town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous

about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might

be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the

magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same

solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among

whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so

thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike

made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a

transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand,

a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule,

might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.

It was a circumstance to be noted on the summer morning when our story begins its

course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a

48

peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had

not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of

petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their

not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at

an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives

and maidens of old English birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated

from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of

ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more

delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not character of less force

and solidity than her own. The women who were now standing about the prison-door

stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had

been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her

countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit

more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun,

therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and

ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or

thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and

rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would

startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.

"Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I'll tell ye a piece of my mind. It

would be greatly for the public behoof if we women, being of mature age and church-

members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this

Hester Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us

five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as

the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not."

49

"People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor,

takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his

congregation."

"The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch—that is a truth,"

added a third autumnal matron. "At the very least, they should have put the brand of a

hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madame Hester would have winced at that, I

warrant me. But she—the naughty baggage—little will she care what they put upon

the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like

heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever!"

"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, "let her

cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart."

"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown or the flesh

of her forehead?" cried another female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these

self-constituted judges. "This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die;

is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book. Then

let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives

and daughters go astray."

"Mercy on us, goodwife!" exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there no virtue in

woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows? That is the hardest

word yet! Hush now, gossips for the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here

comes Mistress Prynne herself."

The door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in the first place,

like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town-

beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. This personage

prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic

50

code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application

to the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon

the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward, until, on the threshold

of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and

force of character, and stepped into the open air as if by her own free will. She bore in

her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its

little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had

brought it acquaintance only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome

apartment of the prison.

When the young woman—the mother of this child—stood fully revealed before the

crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not

so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a

certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however,

wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another,

she took the baby on her arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and

a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and

neighbours. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate

embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so

artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it

had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and

which was of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond

what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had

dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a

face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of

complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes.

51

She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days;

characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent,

and indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication. And never had

Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than

as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to

behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even

startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and

ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer,

there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which indeed, she had

wrought for the occasion in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy,

seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by

its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were,

transfigured the wearer—so that both men and women who had been familiarly

acquainted with Hester Prynne were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first

time—was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated

upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations

with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of her female

spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of

showing it? Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates,

and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?"

"It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if we stripped

Madame Hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter which

she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel to

make a fitter one!"

52

"Oh, peace, neighbours—peace!" whispered their youngest companion; "do not let her

hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter but she has felt it in her heart."

The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "Make way, good people—make

way, in the King's name!" cried he. "Open a passage; and I promise ye, Mistress

Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave

apparel from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous colony of

the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along,

Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!"

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle,

and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged

women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A

crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand,

except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads

continually to stare into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the

ignominious letter on her breast. It was no great distance, in those days, from the

prison door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it

might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she

perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her,

as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In

our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the

sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but

chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore,

Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of

scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the

eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.

53

In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or

three generations past, has been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was

held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship,

as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the platform

of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so

fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the

public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this

contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our

common nature—whatever be the delinquencies of the individual—no outrage more

flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of

this punishment to do. In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in

other cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform,

but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the

proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing

well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the

surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man's shoulders above the street.

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this

beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her

bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many

illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should

remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood,

whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the

most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the

darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle

of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt

54

enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace

had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her

death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of

the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an

exhibition like the present. Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into

ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men

no less dignified than the governor, and several of his counsellors, a judge, a general,

and the ministers of the town, all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-

house, looking down upon the platform. When such personages could constitute a part

of the spectacle, without risking the majesty, or reverence of rank and office, it was

safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and

effectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy

culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand

unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost

intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified

herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking

itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the

solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid

countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of

laughter burst from the multitude—each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced

child, contributing their individual parts—Hester Prynne might have repaid them all

with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her

doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full

power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else

go mad at once.

Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was the most

conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered

55

indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her

mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up

other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the western

wilderness: other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those

steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages of

infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her

maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of

whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another;

as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive

device of her spirit to relieve itself by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms,

from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.

Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to

Hester Prynne the entire track along which she had been treading, since her happy

infancy. Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native village, in Old

England, and her paternal home: a decayed house of grey stone, with a poverty-

stricken aspect, but retaining a half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token

of antique gentility. She saw her father's face, with its bold brow, and reverend white

beard that flowed over the old-fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the

look of heedful and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and

which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle

remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own face, glowing with girlish

beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been

wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in

years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light

that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared

optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the

human soul. This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly

56

fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher

than the right. Next rose before her in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate and

narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public

edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new

life had awaited her, still in connexion with the misshapen scholar: a new life, but

feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall.

Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan

settlement, with all the townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at

Hester Prynne—yes, at herself—who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on

her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon

her bosom.

Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast that it sent forth a cry;

she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger,

to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes these were her

realities—all else had vanished!

57

III. THE RECOGNITION

From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal

observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning, on

the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts.

An Indian in his native garb was standing there; but the red men were not so

infrequent visitors of the English settlements that one of them would have attracted

any notice from Hester Prynne at such a time; much less would he have excluded all

other objects and ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side, and evidently sustaining a

companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized

and savage costume.

He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which as yet could hardly be termed

aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so

cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself and

become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless

arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavoured to conceal or abate the

peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne that one of this man's

shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at the first instant of perceiving that thin

visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom with

so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother

did not seem to hear it.

At his arrival in the market-place, and some time before she saw him, the stranger had

bent his eyes on Hester Prynne. It was carelessly at first, like a man chiefly

accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and

import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind. Very soon, however,

his look became keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself across his

features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all

58

its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His face darkened with some powerful

emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will,

that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. After a

brief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finally subsided into the

depths of his nature. When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own,

and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger,

made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips.

Then touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood near to him, he addressed him

in a formal and courteous manner:

"I pray you, good Sir," said he, "who is this woman?—and wherefore is she here set

up to public shame?"

"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered the townsman,

looking curiously at the questioner and his savage companion, "else you would surely

have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne and her evil doings. She hath raised a great

scandal, I promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church."

"You say truly," replied the other; "I am a stranger, and have been a wanderer, sorely

against my will. I have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been

long held in bonds among the heathen-folk to the southward; and am now brought

hither by this Indian to be redeemed out of my captivity. Will it please you, therefore,

to tell me of Hester Prynne's—have I her name rightly?—of this woman's offences,

and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?"

"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your troubles and

sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman, "to find yourself at length in a land

where iniquity is searched out and punished in the sight of rulers and people, as here

in our godly New England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the wife of a

59

certain learned man, English by birth, but who had long ago dwelt in Amsterdam,

whence some good time agone he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us

of the Massachusetts. To this purpose he sent his wife before him, remaining himself

to look after some necessary affairs. Marry, good Sir, in some two years, or less, that

the woman has been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned

gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being left to her own

misguidance—"

"Ah!—aha!—I conceive you," said the stranger with a bitter smile. "So learned a man

as you speak of should have learned this too in his books. And who, by your favour,

Sir, may be the father of yonder babe—it is some three or four months old, I should

judge—which Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?"

"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the Daniel who shall expound it

is yet a-wanting," answered the townsman. "Madame Hester absolutely refuseth to

speak, and the magistrates have laid their heads together in vain. Peradventure the

guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that

God sees him."

"The learned man," observed the stranger with another smile, "should come himself to

look into the mystery."

"It behoves him well if he be still in life," responded the townsman. "Now, good Sir,

our Massachusetts magistracy, bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and

fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall, and that, moreover, as is most

likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea, they have not been bold to put in

force the extremity of our righteous law against her. The penalty thereof is death. But

in their great mercy and tenderness of heart they have doomed Mistress Prynne to

stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and

60

thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life to wear a mark of shame upon her

bosom."

"A wise sentence," remarked the stranger, gravely, bowing his head. "Thus she will be

a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her

tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not at least,

stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be known—he will be known!—he will

be known!"

He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and whispering a few words

to his Indian attendant, they both made their way through the crowd.

While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal, still with a fixed

gaze towards the stranger—so fixed a gaze that, at moments of intense absorption, all

other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an

interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as she now

did, with the hot mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame;

with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her arms;

with a whole people, drawn forth as to a festival, staring at the features that should

have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home,

or beneath a matronly veil at church. Dreadful as it was, she was conscious of a

shelter in the presence of these thousand witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so

many betwixt him and her, than to greet him face to face—they two alone. She fled

for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its

protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in these thoughts, she scarcely

heard a voice behind her until it had repeated her name more than once, in a loud and

solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude.

"Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!" said the voice.

61

It has already been noticed that directly over the platform on which Hester Prynne

stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended to the meeting-house. It was

the place whence proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the

magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public observances in those

days. Here, to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Governor Bellingham

himself with four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honour. 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

62

stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap, while his grey 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:

63

"Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of this woman's soul lies

greatly with you. It behoves 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—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 fervour 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!"

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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 labour. 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 the

scaffold.

Hester shook her head.

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"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 recognised. "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!"

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

66

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 sympathise with

its trouble. With the same hard demeanour, 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.

67

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

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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 demeanour 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 recognise 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."

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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 fore-finger on the

70

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 book-

worm 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!"

71

"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 philosophised 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

72

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 hand 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 honour, 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

73

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!"

"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 dishonour 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. Recognise 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!"

74

V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE

Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown

open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her

sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter

on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps

from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have

been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was

summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the

nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert

the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated

event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of

economy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet

years. The very law that condemned her—a giant of stern features but with vigour to

support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm—had held her up through the terrible

ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison door,

began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the

ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from

the future to help her through the present grief. Tomorrow would bring its own trial

with it; so would the next day, and so would the next: each its own trial, and yet the

very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off

future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along

with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days and added years would

pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her

individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and

moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of

woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look

at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast—at her, the child of honourable

75

parents—at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman—at her, who

had once been innocent—as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her

grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.

It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her—kept by no restrictive clause

of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so

obscure—free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there

hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into

another state of being—and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open

to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose

customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her—it may seem

marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where

only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so

irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably

compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some

great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more

irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots

which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations

than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim

and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other

scenes of earth—even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless

maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long

ago—were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron

links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.

It might be, too—doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and

grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole—it might

be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal.

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There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a

union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final

judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution.

Over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's

contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized,

and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the face, and

hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe—what,

finally, she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a resident of New England—

was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. Here, she said to herself had been the scene

of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so,

perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out

another purity than that which she had lost: more saint-like, because the result of

martyrdom.

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of

the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small

thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the

soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out

of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants.

It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills,

towards the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did

not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some

object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In this little

lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of

the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established

herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached

itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be

shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her

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plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in

her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and,

discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange contagious

fear.

Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show

himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art that sufficed,

even in a land that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food

for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art, then, as now, almost the only one

within a woman's grasp—of needle-work. She bore on her breast, in the curiously

embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the

dames of a court might gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more

spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed,

in the sable simplicity that generally characterised the Puritanic modes of dress, there

might be an infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of

the age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail

to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast behind them so many

fashions which it might seem harder to dispense with.

Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of magistrates, and all that

could give majesty to the forms in which a new government manifested itself to the

people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted

ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully

wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the

official state of men assuming the reins of power, and were readily allowed to

individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and

similar extravagances to the plebeian order. In the array of funerals, too—whether for

the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable

78

cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors—there was a frequent and

characteristic demand for such labour as Hester Prynne could supply. Baby-linen—for

babies then wore robes of state—afforded still another possibility of toil and

emolument.

By degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the

fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from

the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things;

or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow,

on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hester really filled a gap

which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly

requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle.

Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and

state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her needle-work was

seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister

on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and

moulder away, in the coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single

instance, her skill was called in to embroider the white veil which was to cover the

pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever relentless vigour with which

society frowned upon her sin.

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most

ascetic description, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress

was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue, with only that one ornament—

the scarlet letter—which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the other hand,

was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we may rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which

served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the

little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of

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it hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester

bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than

herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time,

which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in

making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance

in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment in

devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a rich,

voluptuous, Oriental characteristic—a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save

in the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of

her life, to exercise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the

other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a

mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys,

she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter

betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something

doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong beneath.

In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in the world. With her

native energy of character and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although

it had set a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart than that which

branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with society, however, there was

nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and

even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often

expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another

sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the

rest of human kind. She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a

ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no

more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it

succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible

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repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the

sole portion that she retained in the universal heart. It was not an age of delicacy; and

her position, although she understood it well, and was in little danger of forgetting it,

was often brought before her vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest

touch upon the tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought

out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to

succour them. Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way

of her occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart;

sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a

subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that

fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound.

Hester had schooled herself long and well; and she never responded to these attacks,

save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again

subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patient—a martyr, indeed—but she

forebore to pray for enemies, lest, in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the words of

the blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into a curse.

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of

anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active

sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the streets, to address words of

exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor,

sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the

Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. She

grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea

of something horrible in this dreary woman gliding silently through the town, with

never any companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to pass, they

pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterances of a word that had no

distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding

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from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her

shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang had the

leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves—had the summer

breeze murmured about it—had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar

torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When strangers looked curiously at the

scarlet letter—and none ever failed to do so—they branded it afresh in Hester's soul;

so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering

the symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own

anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in

short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the

token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive

with daily torture.

But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eye—a

human eye—upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as

if half of her agony were shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a

deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. (Had Hester

sinned alone?)

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer moral and

intellectual fibre would have been still more so, by the strange and solitary anguish of

her life. Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which

she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester—if altogether

fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted—she felt or fancied, then, that the

scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could

not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other

hearts. She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were

they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would

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fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the

outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown,

a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or, must

she receive those intimations—so obscure, yet so distinct—as truth? In all her

miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense.

It perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the

occasions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast

would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate,

the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to

a mortal man in fellowship with angels. "What evil thing is at hand?" would Hester

say to herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the

scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint! Again a mystic sisterhood would

contumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who,

according to the rumour of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom

throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on

Hester Prynne's—what had the two in common? Or, once more, the electric thrill

would give her warning—"Behold Hester, here is a companion!" and, looking up, she

would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside,

and quickly averted, with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks as if her purity were

somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal

symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to

revere?—such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a

proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's hard

law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like

herself.

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque

horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which

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we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred that the symbol was not

mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and

could be seen glowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-

time. And we must needs say it seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there

was more truth in the rumour than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.

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VI. PEARL

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life

had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out

of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as

she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the

intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! Her

Pearl—for so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had

nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the

comparison. But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price—purchased

with all she had—her mother's only treasure! How strange, indeed! Man had marked

this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that

no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct

consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose

place was on that same dishonoured bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the

race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these

thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her

deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good.

Day after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to

detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness to

which she owed her being.

Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigour, and its natural

dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought

forth in Eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything of the angels after the

world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace which does not

invariably co-exist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed

the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl

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was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better

understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and

allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the

dresses which the child wore before the public eye. So magnificent was the small

figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl's own proper beauty,

shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness,

that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor.

And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of

her just as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this

one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-

flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess.

Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which

she never lost; and if in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would

have ceased to be herself—it would have been no longer Pearl!

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various

properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as

variety; but—or else Hester's fears deceived her—it lacked reference and adaptation

to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules.

In giving her existence a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose

elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order

peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was

difficult or impossible to be discovered. Hester could only account for the child's

character—and even then most vaguely and imperfectly—by recalling what she

herself had been during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her soul

from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth. The mother's

impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn

infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had

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taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the

untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit

at that epoch was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize her wild, desperate,

defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of

gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated by

the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but, later in the day of earthly

existence, might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind.

The discipline of the family in those days was of a far more rigid kind than now. The

frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent application of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural

authority, were used, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences, but as a

wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. Hester

Prynne, nevertheless, the loving mother of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the

side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes, she

early sought to impose a tender but strict control over the infant immortality that was

committed to her charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles

and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable

influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside and permit the child to be

swayed by her own impulses. Physical compulsion or restraint was effectual, of

course, while it lasted. As to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her

mind or heart, little Pearl might or might not be within its reach, in accordance with

the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew

acquainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labour

thrown away to insist, persuade or plead.

It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, perverse, sometimes so malicious, but

generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help

questioning at such moments whether Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather an

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airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage

floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her

wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and

intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, and might vanish, like a

glimmering light that comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither.

Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child—to pursue the little elf

in the flight which she invariably began—to snatch her to her bosom with a close

pressure and earnest kisses—not so much from overflowing love as to assure herself

that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she

was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than

before.

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between

herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so dear, and who was all her

world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps—for there was no

foreseeing how it might affect her—Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and

harden her small features into a stern, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom

she would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent

of human sorrow. Or—but this more rarely happened—she would be convulsed with

rage of grief and sob out her love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent on

proving that she had a heart by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardly safe in confiding

herself to that gusty tenderness: it passed as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all

these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some

irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that

should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was

when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours

of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until—perhaps with that perverse expression

glimmering from beneath her opening lids—little Pearl awoke!

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How soon—with what strange rapidity, indeed—did Pearl arrive at an age that was

capable of social intercourse beyond the mother's ever-ready smile and nonsense-

words! And then what a happiness would it have been could Hester Prynne have heard

her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have

distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of

a group of sportive children. But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the

infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among

christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with

which the child comprehended her loneliness: the destiny that had drawn an inviolable

circle round about her: the whole peculiarity, in short, of her position in respect to

other children. Never since her release from prison had Hester met the public gaze

without her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there: first as the babe in

arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a

forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four

footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the children of the settlement on the grassy

margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim

fashions as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance,

or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham fight with the Indians, or scaring

one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but

never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the

children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively

terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent

exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound of a

witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue.

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever

lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with

ordinary fashions, in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them in their hearts,

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and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt the sentiment, and

requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom.

These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value, and even comfort for the

mother; because there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of

the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's manifestations. It appalled

her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had

existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right,

out of Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle of

seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the child seemed to be perpetuated

those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had

since begun to be soothed away by the softening influences of maternity.

At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not a wide and various

circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and

communicated itself to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may

be applied. The unlikeliest materials—a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower—were the

puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward change, became

spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. Her one

baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal.

The pine-trees, aged, black, and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy

utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders; the

ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted

most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw

her intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing, always in a state

of preternatural activity—soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish

a tide of life—and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like

nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere

exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might

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be a little more than was observable in other children of bright faculties; except as

Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng

which she created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child

regarded all these offsprings of her own heart and mind. She never created a friend,

but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest

of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad—then

what depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the cause—to observe, in

one so young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of

the energies that were to make good her cause in the contest that must ensue.

Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out

with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself

betwixt speech and a groan—"O Father in Heaven—if Thou art still my Father—what

is this being which I have brought into the world?" And Pearl, overhearing the

ejaculation, or aware through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish,

would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like

intelligence, and resume her play.

One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. The very first thing

which she had noticed in her life, was—what?—not the mother's smile, responding to

it, as other babies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so

doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile.

By no means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was—shall

we say it?—the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom! One day, as her mother stooped over

the cradle, the infant's eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery

about the letter; and putting up her little hand she grasped at it, smiling, not

doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older

child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively

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endeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent

touch of Pearl's baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonised gesture were meant

only to make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile. From that

epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment's safety: not

a moment's calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during

which Pearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it

would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that

peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.

Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes while Hester was looking at

her own image in them, as mothers are fond of doing; and suddenly—for women in

solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions—she

fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face in the small

black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing

the semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile,

and never with malice in them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had

just then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured,

though less vividly, by the same illusion.

In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big enough to run about,

she amused herself with gathering handfuls of wild flowers, and flinging them, one by

one, at her mother's bosom; dancing up and down like a little elf whenever she hit the

scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped

hands. But whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best

be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as

death, looking sadly into little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers,

almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts for

which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in another. At

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last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that

little laughing image of a fiend peeping out—or, whether it peeped or no, her mother

so imagined it—from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes.

"Child, what art thou?" cried the mother.

"Oh, I am your little Pearl!" answered the child.

But while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down with the

humoursome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly up the

chimney.

"Art thou my child, in very truth?" asked Hester.

Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment, with a portion of

genuine earnestness; for, such was Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half

doubted whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and

might not now reveal herself.

"Yes; I am little Pearl!" repeated the child, continuing her antics.

"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said the mother half playfully; for

it was often the case that a sportive impulse came over her in the midst of her deepest

suffering. "Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?"

"Tell me, mother!" said the child, seriously, coming up to Hester, and pressing herself

close to her knees. "Do thou tell me!"

"Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!" answered Hester Prynne.

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But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of the child. Whether

moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she

put up her small forefinger and touched the scarlet letter.

"He did not send me!" cried she, positively. "I have no Heavenly Father!"

"Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered the mother, suppressing a

groan. "He sent us all into the world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more

thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence didst thou come?"

"Tell me! Tell me!" repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing and capering

about the floor. "It is thou that must tell me!"

But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt.

She remembered—betwixt a smile and a shudder—the talk of the neighbouring

townspeople, who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing

some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring:

such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through

the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose.

Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish

breed; nor was Pearl the only child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned

among the New England Puritans.

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VII. THE GOVERNOR'S HALL

Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellingham, with a pair of

gloves which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to be

worn on some great occasion of state; for, though the chances of a popular election

had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still

held an honourable and influential place among the colonial magistracy.

Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of embroidered

gloves, impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview with a personage of so much

power and activity in the affairs of the settlement. It had reached her ears that there

was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid

order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her child. On the

supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not

unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother's soul required them to

remove such a stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were

really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate

salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by

being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those

who promoted the design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy.

It may appear singular, and, indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind,

which in later days would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the

select men of the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on

which statesmen of eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity,

however, matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight than

the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed up with the deliberations of

legislators and acts of state. The period was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our

story, when a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce

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and bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important

modification of the framework itself of the legislature.

Full of concern, therefore—but so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely

an unequal match between the public on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by

the sympathies of nature, on the other—Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary

cottage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to run

lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion from morn till sunset,

could have accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often,

nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms;

but was soon as imperious to be let down again, and frisked onward before Hester on

the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have spoken of Pearl's

rich and luxuriant beauty—a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints, a bright

complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a

deep, glossy brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There

was fire in her and throughout her: she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a

passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had allowed the

gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson

velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of

gold thread. So much strength of colouring, which must have given a wan and pallid

aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and

made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth.

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of the child's whole

appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token

which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in

another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life! The mother herself—as if the red

ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed its

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form—had carefully wrought out the similitude, lavishing many hours of morbid

ingenuity to create an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of

her guilt and torture. But, in truth, Pearl was the one as well as the other; and only in

consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to represent the scarlet

letter in her appearance.

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the

Puritans looked up from their play,—or what passed for play with those sombre little

urchins—and spoke gravely one to another.

"Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and of a truth, moreover, there

is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let

us fling mud at them!"

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking

her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot

of her enemies, and put them all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them,

an infant pestilence—the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment—

whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. She screamed and

shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of

the fugitives to quake within them. The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly

to her mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.

Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor Bellingham. This

was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant

in the streets of our older towns now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and

melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or

forgotten, that have happened and passed away within their dusky chambers. Then,

however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the

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cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into

which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a very cheery aspect, the walls being

overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully

intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it

glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful.

The brilliancy might have be fitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a

grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic

figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age which had been drawn in

the stucco, when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the

admiration of after times.

Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house began to caper and dance, and

imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine should be stripped off its

front, and given her to play with.

"No, my little Pearl!" said her mother; "thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have

none to give thee!"

They approached the door, which was of an arched form, and flanked on each side by

a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice-windows, the

wooden shutters to close over them at need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the

portal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor's

bond servant—a free-born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave. During that term

he was to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale

as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf wore the customary garb of serving-men at that

period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of England.

"Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within?" inquired Hester.

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"Yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes at the scarlet

letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had never before seen. "Yea, his

honourable worship is within. But he hath a godly minister or two with him, and

likewise a leech. Ye may not see his worship now."

"Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne; and the bond-servant, perhaps

judging from the decision of her air, and the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she

was a great lady in the land, offered no opposition.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance. With many

variations, suggested by the nature of his building materials, diversity of climate, and

a different mode of social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation

after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a

wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and

forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the other

apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the

two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end,

though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of

those embowed hall windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided

with a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the

Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days,

we scatter gilded volumes on the centre table, to be turned over by the casual guest.

The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were

elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same

taste, the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms,

transferred hither from the Governor's paternal home. On the table—in token that the

sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left behind—stood a large pewter

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tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have

seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale.

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham

lineage, some with armour on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of

peace. All were characterised by the sternness and severity which old portraits so

invariably put on, as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed

worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and

enjoyments of living men.

At about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall was suspended a suit of

mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had

been manufactured by a skilful armourer in London, the same year in which Governor

Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a

gorget and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and

especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white

radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. This bright

panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on

many a solemn muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a

regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of

Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch, as his professional associates, the exigencies of this

new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a

statesman and ruler.

Little Pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armour as she had been

with the glittering frontispiece of the house, spent some time looking into the polished

mirror of the breastplate.

"Mother," cried she, "I see you here. Look! Look!"

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Hester looked by way of humouring the child; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar

effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and

gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance.

In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upwards also, at a

similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence

that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty

merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of

effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child,

but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl's shape.

"Come along, Pearl," said she, drawing her away, "Come and look into this fair

garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful ones than we find in the

woods."

Pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further end of the hall, and looked

along the vista of a garden walk, carpeted with closely-shaven grass, and bordered

with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared

already to have relinquished as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of the

Atlantic, in a hard soil, and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English

taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine,

rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of its

gigantic products directly beneath the hall window, as if to warn the Governor that

this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament as New England earth

would offer him. There were a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-

trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the

first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage who rides through our

early annals, seated on the back of a bull.

Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified.

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"Hush, child—hush!" said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry, dear little Pearl! I hear

voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, and gentlemen along with him."

In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue, a number of persons were seen

approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet

her, gave an eldritch scream, and then became silent, not from any notion of

obedience, but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited

by the appearance of those new personages.

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VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER

Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap—such as elderly gentlemen

loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic privacy—walked foremost, and

appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements.

The wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his grey beard, in the antiquated

fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of John the

Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and

frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances

of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround

himself. But it is an error to suppose that our great forefathers—though accustomed to

speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and though

unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life at the behest of duty—made it a

matter of conscience to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly

within their grasp. This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,

John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over Governor

Bellingham's shoulders, while its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet

be naturalised in the New England climate, and that purple grapes might possibly be

compelled to flourish against the sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at

the rich bosom of the English Church, had a long established and legitimate taste for

all good and comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in the

pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still,

the genial benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was

accorded to any of his professional contemporaries.

Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests—one, the Reverend

Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having taken a brief and

reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's disgrace; and, in close companionship

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with him, old Roger Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who for two or

three years past had been settled in the town. It was understood that this learned man

was the physician as well as friend of the young minister, whose health had severely

suffered of late by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labours and duties of the

pastoral relation.

The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps, and, throwing

open the leaves of the great hall window, found himself close to little Pearl. The

shadow of the curtain fell on Hester Prynne, and partially concealed her.

"What have we here?" said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise at the scarlet

little figure before him. "I profess, I have never seen the like since my days of vanity,

in old King James's time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favour to be admitted to

a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions in holiday time,

and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a guest into my

hall?"

"Ay, indeed!" cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of scarlet plumage may

this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures when the sun has been shining through

a richly painted window, and tracing out the golden and crimson images across the

floor. But that was in the old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has

ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian child—

ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies whom

we thought to have left behind us, with other relics of Papistry, in merry old

England?"

"I am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name is Pearl!"

"Pearl?—Ruby, rather—or Coral!—or Red Rose, at the very least, judging from thy

hue!" responded the old minister, putting forth his hand in a vain attempt to pat little

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Pearl on the cheek. "But where is this mother of thine? Ah! I see," he added; and,

turning to Governor Bellingham, whispered, "This is the selfsame child of whom we

have held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester Prynne, her

mother!"

"Sayest thou so?" cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged that such a child's

mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type of her of Babylon! But she

comes at a good time, and we will look into this matter forthwith."

Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed by his three

guests.

"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the wearer of the scarlet

letter, "there hath been much question concerning thee of late. The point hath been

weightily discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge

our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder child, to the

guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen amid the pitfalls of this world. Speak

thou, the child's own mother! Were it not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal

and eternal welfare that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and

disciplined strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst thou

do for the child in this kind?"

"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!" answered Hester Prynne,

laying her finger on the red token.

"Woman, it is thy badge of shame!" replied the stern magistrate. "It is because of the

stain which that letter indicates that we would transfer thy child to other hands."

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"Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, "this badge hath

taught me—it daily teaches me—it is teaching me at this moment—lessons whereof

my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself."

"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we

are about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this

Pearl—since that is her name—and see whether she hath had such

Christian nurture as befits a child of her age."

The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair and made an effort to draw Pearl

betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch or familiarity of any but

her mother, escaped through the open window, and stood on the upper step, looking

like a wild tropical bird of rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr.

Wilson, not a little astonished at this outbreak—for he was a grandfatherly sort of

personage, and usually a vast favourite with children—essayed, however, to proceed

with the examination.

"Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to instruction, that so, in

due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. Canst thou tell

me, my child, who made thee?"

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her, for Hester Prynne, the daughter of a

pious home, very soon after her talk with the child about her Heavenly Father, had

begun to inform her of those truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of

immaturity, imbibes with such eager interest. Pearl, therefore—so large were the

attainments of her three years' lifetime—could have borne a fair examination in the

New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although

unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that

perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a

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tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of

her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger

in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's question,

the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by

her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door.

This phantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the Governor's red

roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window, together with her recollection of the

prison rose-bush, which she had passed in coming hither.

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something in the young

clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate

hanging in the balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his

features—how much uglier they were, how his dark complexion seemed to have

grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen—since the days when she had

familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately

constrained to give all her attention to the scene now going forward.

"This is awful!" cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the astonishment into

which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here is a child of three years old, and she

cannot tell who made her! Without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul,

its present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no

further."

Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old

Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it,

and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed

indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death.

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"God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her in requital of all things else which

ye had taken from me. She is my happiness—she is my torture, none the less! Pearl

keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me, too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only

capable of being loved, and so endowed with a millionfold the power of retribution

for my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!"

"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be well cared

for—far better than thou canst do for it."

"God gave her into my keeping!" repeated Hester Prynne, raising her voice almost to a

shriek. "I will not give her up!" And here by a sudden impulse, she turned to the

young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed

hardly so much as once to direct her eyes. "Speak thou for me!" cried she. "Thou wast

my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. I

will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest—for thou hast sympathies which

these men lack—thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and

how much the stronger they are when that mother has but her child and the scarlet

letter! Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!"

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's situation had

provoked her to little less than madness, the young minister at once came forward,

pale, and holding his hand over his heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly

nervous temperament was thrown into agitation. He looked now more careworn and

emaciated than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and

whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes

had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth.

"There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice sweet, tremulous,

but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed and the hollow armour rang with it—

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"truth in what Hester says, and in the feeling which inspires her! God gave her the

child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements—

both seemingly so peculiar—which no other mortal being can possess. And,

moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this

mother and this child?"

"Ay—how is that, good Master Dimmesdale?" interrupted the

Governor. "Make that plain, I pray you!"

"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it otherwise, do we not

thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognised a

deed of sin, and made of no account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy

love? This child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame has come from the hand of

God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly and with such

bitterness of spirit the right to keep her. It was meant for a blessing—for the one

blessing of her life! It was meant, doubtless, the mother herself hath told us, for a

retribution, too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a sting,

an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! Hath she not expressed this

thought in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol

which sears her bosom?"

"Well said again!" cried good Mr. Wilson. "I feared the woman had no better thought

than to make a mountebank of her child!"

"Oh, not so!—not so!" continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She recognises, believe me, the

solemn miracle which God hath wrought in the existence of that child. And may she

feel, too—what, methinks, is the very truth—that this boon was meant, above all

things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths of

sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her! Therefore it is good for

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this poor, sinful woman, that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal

joy or sorrow, confided to her care—to be trained up by her to righteousness, to

remind her, at every moment, of her fall, but yet to teach her, as if it were by the

Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring

its parents thither! Herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For

Hester Prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as

Providence hath seen fit to place them!"

"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old

Roger Chillingworth, smiling at him.

"And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken," added the

Rev. Mr. Wilson.

"What say you, worshipful Master Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor

woman?"

"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate; "and hath adduced such arguments, that

we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so long, at least, as there shall be no

further scandal in the woman. Care must be had nevertheless, to put the child to due

and stated examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale's.

Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she go both to

school and to meeting."

The young minister, on ceasing to speak had withdrawn a few steps from the group,

and stood with his face partially concealed in the heavy folds of the window-curtain;

while the shadow of his figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous

with the vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty little elf stole softly

towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against

it; a caress so tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on,

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asked herself—"Is that my Pearl?" Yet she knew that there was love in the child's

heart, although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her lifetime

had been softened by such gentleness as now. The minister—for, save the long-sought

regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of childish preference,

accorded spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us

something truly worthy to be loved—the minister looked round, laid his hand on the

child's head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her brow. Little Pearl's unwonted

mood of sentiment lasted no longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall so

airily, that old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the

floor.

"The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess," said he to Mr. Dimmesdale. "She

needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal!"

"A strange child!" remarked old Roger Chillingworth. "It is easy to see the mother's

part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher's research, think ye, gentlemen, to

analyse that child's nature, and, from it make a mould, to give a shrewd guess at the

father?"

"Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clue of profane philosophy,"

said Mr. Wilson. "Better to fast and pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave

the mystery as we find it, unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby,

every good Christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the poor,

deserted babe."

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with Pearl, departed from

the house. As they descended the steps, it is averred that the lattice of a chamber-

window was thrown open, and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress

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Hibbins, Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few years

later, was executed as a witch.

"Hist, hist!" said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed to cast a shadow

over the cheerful newness of the house. "Wilt thou go with us to-night? There will be

a merry company in the forest; and I well-nigh promised the Black Man that comely

Hester Prynne should make one."

"Make my excuse to him, so please you!" answered Hester, with a triumphant smile.

"I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her from

me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the

Black Man's book too, and that with mine own blood!"

"We shall have thee there anon!" said the witch-lady, frowning, as she drew back her

head.

But here—if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to

be authentic, and not a parable—was already an illustration of the young minister's

argument against sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her

frailty. Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan's snare.

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IX. THE LEECH

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will remember, was hidden

another name, which its former wearer had resolved should never more be spoken. It

has been related, how, in the crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious

exposure, stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous

wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and

cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her matronly fame

was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the public

market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the

companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her

dishonour; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion

with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship. Then why—since the

choice was with himself—should the individual, whose connexion with the fallen

woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate

his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried beside

her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the

lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind,

and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out of life as completely as if

he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumour had long ago consigned him.

This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise

a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full

strength of his faculties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritan town as Roger

Chillingworth, without other introduction than the learning and intelligence of which

he possessed more than a common measure. As his studies, at a previous period of his

life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was

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as a physician that he presented himself and as such was cordially received. Skilful

men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in the colony.

They seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious zeal that brought other

emigrants across the Atlantic. In their researches into the human frame, it may be that

the higher and more subtle faculties of such men were materialised, and that they lost

the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous mechanism,

which seemed to involve art enough to comprise all of life within itself. At all events,

the health of the good town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had

hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and

godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his favour than any that he could have

produced in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one who combined the

occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To

such a professional body Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He soon

manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of antique

physic; in which every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and

heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result had

been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much

knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his

patients that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite

as large a share of his own confidence as the European Pharmacopoeia, which so

many learned doctors had spent centuries in elaborating.

This learned stranger was exemplary as regarded at least the outward forms of a

religious life; and early after his arrival, had chosen for his spiritual guide the

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived

in Oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a heavenly

ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labour for the ordinary term of life, to

do as great deeds, for the now feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had

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achieved for the infancy of the Christian faith. About this period, however, the health

of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with his

habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest

devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and more than all, to

the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the

grossness of this earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some

declared, that if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it was cause enough that

the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the

other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence should

see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its

humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as to the cause of

his decline, there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated; his voice,

though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was

often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his

heart with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.

Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect that his

dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when Roger Chillingworth made

his advent to the town. His first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence,

dropping down as it were out of the sky or starting from the nether earth, had an

aspect of mystery, which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known

to be a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs and the blossoms of wild-

flowers, and dug up roots and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees like one

acquainted with hidden virtues in what was valueless to common eyes. He was heard

to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby and other famous men—whose scientific attainments

were esteemed hardly less than supernatural—as having been his correspondents or

associates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come hither? What,

could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? In answer to

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this query, a rumour gained ground—and however absurd, was entertained by some

very sensible people—that Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting

an eminent Doctor of Physic from a German university bodily through the air and

setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study! Individuals of wiser faith,

indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the stage-

effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential

hand in Roger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival.

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician ever

manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as a parishioner, and

sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility.

He expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the

cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favourable result. The

elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens of Mr.

Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he should make trial of the

physician's frankly offered skill. Mr. Dimmesdale gently repelled their entreaties.

"I need no medicine," said he.

But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive Sabbath, his

cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous than before—when it had

now become a constant habit, rather than a casual gesture, to press his hand over his

heart? Was he weary of his labours? Did he wish to die? These questions were

solemnly propounded to Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston, and the

deacons of his church, who, to use their own phrase, "dealt with him," on the sin of

rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He listened in silence, and

finally promised to confer with the physician.

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"Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in fulfilment of this

pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth's professional advice, "I could be well

content that my labours, and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly

end with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go

with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your skill to the proof in

my behalf."

"Ah," replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness, which, whether imposed or

natural, marked all his deportment, "it is thus that a young clergyman is apt to speak.

Youthful men, not having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily! And

saintly men, who walk with God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on

the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem."

"Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart, with a flush of pain

flitting over his brow, "were I worthier to walk there, I could be better content to toil

here."

"Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the physician.

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the medical adviser of

the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the disease interested the physician, but

he was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two

men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. For the sake of

the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in

them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various walks

with the splash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the

tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other in his place of study and

retirement. There was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of

science, in whom he recognised an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or

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scope; together with a range and freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked

for among the members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not

shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest, a

true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order of mind

that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage

continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society would he have been

what is called a man of liberal views; it would always be essential to his peace to feel

the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron

framework. Not the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the

occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of another kind of

intellect than those with which he habitually held converse. It was as if a window

were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where

his life was wasting itself away, amid lamp-light, or obstructed day-beams, and the

musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But the air was too

fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. So the minister, and the physician

with him, withdrew again within the limits of what their Church defined as orthodox.

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, both as he saw him in his

ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to

him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of

which might call out something new to the surface of his character. He deemed it

essential, it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good.

Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged

with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were

so active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have

its groundwork there. So Roger Chillingworth—the man of skill, the kind and friendly

physician—strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles,

prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a

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treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has

opportunity and licence to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. A man

burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the

latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more,—let us call it intuition;

if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeable prominent characteristics of his

own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such

affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines

himself only to have thought; if such revelations be received without tumult, and

acknowledged not so often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate

breath, and here and there a word to indicate that all is understood; if to these

qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his recognised

character as a physician;—then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of the

sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark but transparent stream, bringing all its

mysteries into the daylight.

Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above enumerated.

Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up between

these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human

thought and study to meet upon; they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of

public affairs, and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters that

seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied must

exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness into his companion's ear. The

latter had his suspicions, indeed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bodily

disease had never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!

After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr. Dimmesdale

effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the same house; so that

every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious

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and attached physician. There was much joy throughout the town when this greatly

desirable object was attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the

young clergyman's welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorised to

do so, he had selected some one of the many blooming damsels, spiritually devoted to

him, to become his devoted wife. This latter step, however, there was no present

prospect that Arthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all

suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of Church

discipline. Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently

was, to eat his unsavoury morsel always at another's board, and endure the life-long

chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it

truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his

concord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very man, of all

mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.

The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good social rank, who

dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site on which the venerable structure of

King's Chapel has since been built. It had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's

home-field, on one side, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suited

to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. The motherly

care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny

exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create a noontide shadow when desirable.

The walls were hung round with tapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at

all events, representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan the

Prophet, in colours still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the scene almost

as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer. Here the pale clergyman piled up

his library, rich with parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis,

and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they vilified and

decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves. On the

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other side of the house, old Roger Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory:

not such as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but

provided with a distilling apparatus and the means of compounding drugs and

chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to purpose. With such

commodiousness of situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in

his own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the other, and

bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into one another's business.

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as we have intimated,

very reasonably imagined that the hand of Providence had done all this for the

purpose—besought in so many public and domestic and secret prayers—of restoring

the young minister to health. But, it must now be said, another portion of the

community had latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr.

Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed multitude

attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it

forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the

conclusions thus attained are often so profound and so unerring as to possess the

character of truth supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which we speak,

could justify its prejudice against Roger Chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy

of serious refutation. There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a

citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty

years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which

the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Dr. Forman, the famous

old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals

hinted that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical

attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage priests, who were universally

acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly miraculous

cures by their skill in the black art. A large number—and many of these were persons

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of such sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have been

valuable in other matters—affirmed that Roger Chillingworth's aspect had undergone

a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with

Mr. Dimmesdale. At first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like.

Now there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously

noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon

him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the

lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage

was getting sooty with the smoke.

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion that the Rev. Arthur

Dimmesdale, like many other personages of special sanctity, in all ages of the

Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself or Satan's emissary, in the guise

of old Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a

season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible

man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. The people

looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come forth out of the conflict

transfigured with the glory which he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile,

nevertheless, it was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must

struggle towards his triumph.

Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depth of the poor minister's eyes, the

battle was a sore one, and the victory anything but secure.

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X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT

Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly,

though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure

and upright man. He had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and

equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved no

more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human

passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination,

a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and

never set him free again until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor

clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into

a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom,

but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas, for his own soul, if

these were what he sought!

Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous,

like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire

that darted from Bunyan's awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's

face. The soil where this dark miner was working had perchance shown indications

that encouraged him.

"This man," said he, at one such moment, to himself, "pure as they deem him—all

spiritual as he seems—hath inherited a strong animal nature from his father or his

mother. Let us dig a little further in the direction of this vein!"

Then after long search into the minister's dim interior, and turning over many precious

materials, in the shape of high aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of

souls, pure sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and

illuminated by revelation—all of which invaluable gold was perhaps no better than

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rubbish to the seeker—he would turn back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards

another point. He groped along as stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary an

outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep—or, it may

be, broad awake—with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the

apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would now and

then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden

proximity, would be thrown across his victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale,

whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would

become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into

relation with him. But Old Roger Chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost

intuitive; and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there the

physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathising, but never intrusive friend.

Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's character more

perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not rendered him

suspicious of all mankind. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his

enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still kept up a familiar

intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study, or visiting the

laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were

converted into drugs of potency.

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open

window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he talked with Roger Chillingworth,

while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants.

"Where," asked he, with a look askance at them—for it was the clergyman's

peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked straight forth at any object, whether

human or inanimate, "where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a

dark, flabby leaf?"

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"Even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician, continuing his

employment. "They are new to me. I found them growing on a grave, which bore no

tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken

upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and typify,

it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done

better to confess during his lifetime."

"Perchance," said Mr. Dimmesdale, "he earnestly desired it, but could not."

"And wherefore?" rejoined the physician.

"Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of

sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest, an

outspoken crime?"

"That, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours," replied the minister. "There can be, if I

forbode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered

words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human heart. The

heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day

when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ,

as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is

intended as a part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these

revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual

satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the

dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to

the completest solution of that problem. And, I conceive moreover, that the hearts

holding such miserable secrets as you speak of, will yield them up, at that last day, not

with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable."

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"Then why not reveal it here?" asked Roger Chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at

the minister. "Why should not the guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this

unutterable solace?"

"They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast, as if afflicted with an

importunate throb of pain. "Many, many a poor soul hath given its confidence to me,

not only on the death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever,

after such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful brethren!

even as in one who at last draws free air, after a long stifling with his own polluted

breath. How can it be otherwise? Why should a wretched man—guilty, we will say, of

murder—prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it

forth at once, and let the universe take care of it!"

"Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm physician.

"True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But not to suggest more

obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by the very constitution of their

nature. Or—can we not suppose it?—guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a

zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black

and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by

them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable

torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow,

while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid

themselves."

"These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with somewhat more

emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with his forefinger. "They fear to

take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for

God's service—these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the

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evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs

propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not

lift heavenward their unclean hands! If they would serve their fellowmen, let them do

it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to

penitential self-abasement! Would thou have me to believe, O wise and pious friend,

that a false show can be better—can be more for God's glory, or man' welfare—than

God's own truth? Trust me, such men deceive themselves!"

"It may be so," said the young clergyman, indifferently, as waiving a discussion that

he considered irrelevant or unseasonable. He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping

from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous temperament.—"But, now, I

would ask of my well-skilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have

profited by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine?"

Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear, wild laughter of a

young child's voice, proceeding from the adjacent burial-ground. Looking

instinctively from the open window—for it was summer-time—the minister beheld

Hester Prynne and little Pearl passing along the footpath that traversed the enclosure.

Pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perverse

merriment which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the

sphere of sympathy or human contact. She now skipped irreverently from one grave to

another; until coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy—

perhaps of Isaac Johnson himself—she began to dance upon it. In reply to her

mother's command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little Pearl

paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside the tomb.

Taking a handful of these, she arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter that

decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously

adhered. Hester did not pluck them off.

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Roger Chillingworth had by this time approached the window and smiled grimly

down.

"There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human ordinances or

opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that child's composition," remarked he, as

much to himself as to his companion. "I saw her, the other day, bespatter the

Governor himself with water at the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in heaven's

name, is she? Is the imp altogether evil? Hath she affections? Hath she any

discoverable principle of being?"

"None, save the freedom of a broken law," answered Mr. Dimmesdale, in a quiet way,

as if he had been discussing the point within himself, "Whether capable of good, I

know not."

The child probably overheard their voices, for, looking up to the window with a

bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs

at the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensitive clergyman shrank, with nervous dread,

from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little hands in the

most extravagant ecstacy. Hester Prynne, likewise, had involuntarily looked up, and

all these four persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the child

laughed aloud, and shouted—"Come away, mother! Come away, or yonder old black

man will catch you! He hath got hold of the minister already. Come away, mother or

he will catch you! But he cannot catch little Pearl!"

So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically among the

hillocks of the dead people, like a creature that had nothing in common with a bygone

and buried generation, nor owned herself akin to it. It was as if she had been made

afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and

be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.

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"There goes a woman," resumed Roger Chillingworth, after a pause, "who, be her

demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you

deem so grievous to be borne. Is Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that

scarlet letter on her breast?"

"I do verily believe it," answered the clergyman. "Nevertheless, I cannot answer for

her. There was a look of pain in her face which I would gladly have been spared the

sight of. But still, methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show

his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it up in his heart."

There was another pause, and the physician began anew to examine and arrange the

plants which he had gathered.

"You inquired of me, a little time agone," said he, at length, "my judgment as

touching your health."

"I did," answered the clergyman, "and would gladly learn it.

Speak frankly, I pray you, be it for life or death."

"Freely then, and plainly," said the physician, still busy with his plants, but keeping a

wary eye on Mr. Dimmesdale, "the disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself nor

as outwardly manifested,—in so far, at least as the symptoms have been laid open to

my observation. Looking daily at you, my good sir, and watching the tokens of your

aspect now for months gone by, I should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not

so sick but that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure you. But

I know not what to say, the disease is what I seem to know, yet know it not."

"You speak in riddles, learned sir," said the pale minister, glancing aside out of the

window.

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"Then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician, "and I crave pardon, sir,

should it seem to require pardon, for this needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask

as your friend, as one having charge, under Providence, of your life and physical well

being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly laid open and recounted to

me?"

"How can you question it?" asked the minister. "Surely it were child's play to call in a

physician and then hide the sore!"

"You would tell me, then, that I know all?" said Roger Chillingworth, deliberately,

and fixing an eye, bright with intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's

face. "Be it so! But again! He to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid

open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. A bodily

disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a

symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon once again, good sir, if

my speech give the shadow of offence. You, sir, of all men whom I have known, are

he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with

the spirit whereof it is the instrument."

"Then I need ask no further," said the clergyman, somewhat hastily rising from his

chair. "You deal not, I take it, in medicine for the soul!"

"Thus, a sickness," continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in an unaltered tone,

without heeding the interruption, but standing up and confronting the emaciated and

white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure,—"a sickness, a

sore place, if we may so call it, in your spirit hath immediately its appropriate

manifestation in your bodily frame. Would you, therefore, that your physician heal the

bodily evil? How may this be unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in

your soul?"

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"No, not to thee! not to an earthly physician!" cried Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately,

and turning his eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger

Chillingworth. "Not to thee! But, if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit myself to

the one Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with His good pleasure, can cure, or he

can kill. Let Him do with me as, in His justice and wisdom, He shall see good. But

who art thou, that meddlest in this matter? that dares thrust himself between the

sufferer and his God?"

With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room.

"It is as well to have made this step," said Roger Chillingworth to himself, looking

after the minister, with a grave smile. "There is nothing lost. We shall be friends again

anon. But see, now, how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of

himself! As with one passion so with another. He hath done a wild thing ere now, this

pious Master Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart."

It proved not difficult to re-establish the intimacy of the two companions, on the same

footing and in the same degree as heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few hours

of privacy, was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him into an

unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in the physician's words

to excuse or palliate. He marvelled, indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust

back the kind old man, when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty to

bestow, and which the minister himself had expressly sought. With these remorseful

feelings, he lost no time in making the amplest apologies, and besought his friend still

to continue the care which, if not successful in restoring him to health, had, in all

probability, been the means of prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. Roger

Chillingworth readily assented, and went on with his medical supervision of the

minister; doing his best for him, in all good faith, but always quitting the patient's

apartment, at the close of the professional interview, with a mysterious and puzzled

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smile upon his lips. This expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but

grew strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold.

"A rare case," he muttered. "I must needs look deeper into it. A strange sympathy

betwixt soul and body! Were it only for the art's sake, I must search this matter to the

bottom."

It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that the Reverend Mr.

Dimmesdale, noon-day, and entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting

in his chair, with a large black-letter volume open before him on the table. It must

have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature. The profound

depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of

those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared away, as

a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his

spirit now withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old Roger

Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The

physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and

thrust aside the vestment, that hitherto had always covered it even from the

professional eye.

Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred.

After a brief pause, the physician turned away.

But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! With what a ghastly rapture, as

it were, too mighty to be expressed only by the eye and features, and therefore

bursting forth through the whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even

riotously manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his arms

towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor! Had a man seen old Roger

Chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how

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Satan comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into

his kingdom.

But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was the trait of wonder in

it!

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XI. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART

After the incident last described, the intercourse between the clergyman and the

physician, though externally the same, was really of another character than it had

previously been. The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain

path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to

tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth

of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him

to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy.

To make himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the

remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts,

expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart

would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless—to him, the

Unforgiving! All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing

else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance!

The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme. Roger

Chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with the

aspect of affairs, which Providence—using the avenger and his victim for its own

purposes, and, perchance, pardoning, where it seemed most to punish—had

substituted for his black devices. A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted

to him. It mattered little for his object, whether celestial or from what other region. By

its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely

the external presence, but the very inmost soul of the latter, seemed to be brought out

before his eyes, so that he could see and comprehend its every movement. He became,

thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor in the poor minister's interior world.

He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? The

victim was for ever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the

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engine: and the physician knew it well. Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at

the waving of a magician's wand, up rose a grisly phantom—up rose a thousand

phantoms—in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about

the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at his breast!

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister, though he had

constantly a dim perception of some evil influence watching over him, could never

gain a knowledge of its actual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully—even, at

times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred—at the deformed figure of the old

physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent

acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token

implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was

willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for

such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one

morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments

to no other cause. He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to Roger

Chillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn from them, and did

his best to root them out. Unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of

principle, continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and thus gave

him constant opportunities for perfecting the purpose to which—poor forlorn creature

that he was, and more wretched than his victim—the avenger had devoted himself.

While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black

trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He

won it indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral

perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a

state of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. His fame,

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though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his

fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them were. There are scholars among them,

who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine

profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived; and who might well, therefore, be more

profoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful brother.

There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far

greater share of shrewd, hard iron, or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with

a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious,

and unamiable variety of the clerical species. There were others again, true saintly

fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by

patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by spiritual communications with the

better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these holy

personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them. All that they lacked

was, the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of

flame; symbolising, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown

languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native

language. These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and rarest

attestation of their office, the Tongue of Flame. They would have vainly sought—had

they ever dreamed of seeking—to express the highest truths through the humblest

medium of familiar words and images. Their voices came down, afar and indistinctly,

from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt.

Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr. Dimmesdale, by many of

his traits of character, naturally belonged. To the high mountain peaks of faith and

sanctity he would have climbed, had not the tendency been thwarted by the burden,

whatever it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. It

kept him down on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose

voice the angels might else have listened to and answered! But this very burden it was

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that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that

his heart vibrated in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself and sent its

own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad, persuasive

eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes terrible! The people knew not the

power that moved them thus. They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of

holiness. They fancied him the mouth-piece of Heaven's messages of wisdom, and

rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very ground on which he trod was sanctified. The

virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a passion so imbued with

religious sentiment, that they imagined it to be all religion, and brought it openly, in

their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. The aged

members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they were

themselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would go heavenward before

them, and enjoined it upon their children that their old bones should be buried close to

their young pastor's holy grave. And all this time, perchance, when poor Mr.

Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass

would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!

It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him. It was

his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and

utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their

life. Then what was he?—a substance?—or the dimmest of all shadows? He longed to

speak out from his own pulpit at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what

he was. "I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood—I, who

ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold

communion in your behalf with the Most High Omniscience—I, in whose daily life

you discern the sanctity of Enoch—I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam

along my earthly track, whereby the Pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided

to the regions of the blest—I, who have laid the hand of baptism upon your children—

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I, who have breathed the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen

sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted—I, your pastor, whom you so

reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!"

More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to

come down its steps until he should have spoken words like the above. More than

once he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath,

which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul.

More than once—nay, more than a hundred times—he had actually spoken! Spoken!

But how? He had told his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the

vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity, and that

the only wonder was that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their

eyes by the burning wrath of the Almighty! Could there be plainer speech than this?

Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him

down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so, indeed! They heard it all, and did but

reverence him the more. They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-

condemning words. "The godly youth!" said they among themselves. "The saint on

earth! Alas! if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle

would he behold in thine or mine!" The minister well knew—subtle, but remorseful

hypocrite that he was!—the light in which his vague confession would be viewed. He

had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience,

but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the

momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and

transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he

loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things

else, he loathed his miserable self!

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His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted

faith of Rome than with the better light of the church in which he had been born and

bred. In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody

scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own

shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more

pitilessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of

many other pious Puritans, to fast—not however, like them, in order to purify the

body, and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination—but rigorously, and

until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise,

night after night, sometimes in utter darkness, sometimes with a glimmering lamp,

and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light

which he could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith

he tortured, but could not purify himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brain often

reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint

light of their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly and close

beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that

grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a

group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more

ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded

father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother turning her face away as she passed by.

Ghost of a mother—thinnest fantasy of a mother—methinks she might yet have

thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through the chamber which these

spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided Hester Prynne leading along little Pearl,

in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom,

and then at the clergyman's own breast.

None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by an effort of his will,

he could discern substances through their misty lack of substance, and convince

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himself that they were not solid in their nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that

big, square, leather-bound and brazen-clasped volume of divinity. But, for all that,

they were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor minister

now dealt with. It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the

pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were

meant by Heaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole

universe is false—it is impalpable—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he

himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed,

ceases to exist. The only truth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence

on this earth was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled expression of it

in his aspect. Had he once found power to smile, and wear a face of gaiety, there

would have been no such man!

On one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, but forborne to picture

forth, the minister started from his chair. A new thought had struck him. There might

be a moment's peace in it. Attiring himself with as much care as if it had been for

public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly down the staircase,

undid the door, and issued forth.

XII. THE MINISTER'S VIGIL

Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actually under the

influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale reached the spot where,

now so long since, Hester Prynne had lived through her first hours of public

ignominy. The same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or

sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who

had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house.

The minister went up the steps.

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It was an obscure night in early May. An unvaried pall of cloud muffled the whole

expanse of sky from zenith to horizon. If the same multitude which had stood as eye-

witnesses while Hester Prynne sustained her punishment could now have been

summoned forth, they would have discerned no face above the platform nor hardly the

outline of a human shape, in the dark grey of the midnight. But the town was all

asleep. There was no peril of discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so

pleased him, until morning should redden in the east, without other risk than that the

dank and chill night air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with

rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the

expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No eye could see him, save

that ever-wakeful one which had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody scourge.

Why, then, had he come hither? Was it but the mockery of penitence? A mockery,

indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself! A mockery at which angels blushed

and wept, while fiends rejoiced with jeering laughter! He had been driven hither by

the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and

closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with

her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a

disclosure. Poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden itself with

crime? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it

press too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it

off at once! This feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually

did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony

of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.

And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr.

Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing

at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth,

there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain.

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Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud: an

outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to

another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a company of devils,

detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were

bandying it to and fro.

"It is done!" muttered the minister, covering his face with his hands. "The whole town

will awake and hurry forth, and find me here!"

But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded with a far greater power, to his own

startled ears, than it actually possessed. The town did not awake; or, if it did, the

drowsy slumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in a dream, or for

the noise of witches, whose voices, at that period, were often heard to pass over the

settlements or lonely cottages, as they rode with Satan through the air. The clergyman,

therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes and looked about

him. At one of the chamber-windows of Governor Bellingham's mansion, which stood

at some distance, on the line of another street, he beheld the appearance of the old

magistrate himself with a lamp in his hand a white night-cap on his head, and a long

white gown enveloping his figure. He looked like a ghost evoked unseasonably from

the grave. The cry had evidently startled him. At another window of the same house,

moreover appeared old Mistress Hibbins, the Governor's sister, also with a lamp,

which even thus far off revealed the expression of her sour and discontented face. She

thrust forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiously upward. Beyond the

shadow of a doubt, this venerable witch-lady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale's outcry, and

interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamour of the

fiends and night-hags, with whom she was well known to make excursions in the

forest.

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Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp, the old lady quickly

extinguished her own, and vanished. Possibly, she went up among the clouds. The

minister saw nothing further of her motions. The magistrate, after a wary observation

of the darkness—into which, nevertheless, he could see but little further than he might

into a mill-stone—retired from the window.

The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, however, were soon greeted by a

little glimmering light, which, at first a long way off was approaching up the street. It

threw a gleam of recognition, on here a post, and there a garden fence, and here a

latticed window-pane, and there a pump, with its full trough of water, and here again

an arched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and a rough log for the door-step. The

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale noted all these minute particulars, even while firmly

convinced that the doom of his existence was stealing onward, in the footsteps which

he now heard; and that the gleam of the lantern would fall upon him in a few moments

more, and reveal his long-hidden secret. As the light drew nearer, he beheld, within its

illuminated circle, his brother clergyman—or, to speak more accurately, his

professional father, as well as highly valued friend—the Reverend Mr. Wilson, who,

as Mr. Dimmesdale now conjectured, had been praying at the bedside of some dying

man. And so he had. The good old minister came freshly from the death-chamber of

Governor Winthrop, who had passed from earth to heaven within that very hour. And

now surrounded, like the saint-like personage of olden times, with a radiant halo, that

glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin—as if the departed Governor had left him

an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the distant shine of the

celestial city, while looking thitherward to see the triumphant pilgrim pass within its

gates—now, in short, good Father Wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps

with a lighted lantern! The glimmer of this luminary suggested the above conceits to

Mr. Dimmesdale, who smiled—nay, almost laughed at them—and then wondered if

he was going mad.

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As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed beside the scaffold, closely muffling his Geneva

cloak about him with one arm, and holding the lantern before his breast with the other,

the minister could hardly restrain himself from speaking—

"A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson. Come up hither, I pray you, and

pass a pleasant hour with me!"

Good Heavens! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually spoken? For one instant he believed

that these words had passed his lips. But they were uttered only within his

imagination. The venerable Father Wilson continued to step slowly onward, looking

carefully at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his head

towards the guilty platform. When the light of the glimmering lantern had faded quite

away, the minister discovered, by the faintness which came over him, that the last few

moments had been a crisis of terrible anxiety, although his mind had made an

involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid playfulness.

Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again stole in among the

solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the

unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to

descend the steps of the scaffold. Morning would break and find him there. The

neighbourhood would begin to rouse itself. The earliest riser, coming forth in the dim

twilight, would perceive a vaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and

half-crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking from door to door,

summoning all the people to behold the ghost—as he needs must think it—of some

defunct transgressor. A dusky tumult would flap its wings from one house to another.

Then—the morning light still waxing stronger—old patriarchs would rise up in great

haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly dames, without pausing to put off their

night-gear. The whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been

seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view with the

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disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old Governor Bellingham would come

grimly forth, with his King James' ruff fastened askew, and Mistress Hibbins, with

some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having

hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good Father Wilson too, after

spending half the night at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of

his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, likewise, would come the elders and

deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's church, and the young virgins who so idolized their

minister, and had made a shrine for him in their white bosoms, which now, by-the-

bye, in their hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given themselves time to

cover with their kerchiefs. All people, in a word, would come stumbling over their

thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the

scaffold. Whom would they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his brow?

Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half-frozen to death, overwhelmed with

shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had stood!

Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister, unawares, and to

his own infinite alarm, burst into a great peal of laughter. It was immediately

responded to by a light, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart—but

he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute—he recognised the tones

of little Pearl.

"Pearl! Little Pearl!" cried he, after a moment's pause; then, suppressing his voice—

"Hester! Hester Prynne! Are you there?"

"Yes; it is Hester Prynne!" she replied, in a tone of surprise; and the minister heard

her footsteps approaching from the side-walk, along which she had been passing. "It is

I, and my little Pearl."

"Whence come you, Hester?" asked the minister. "What sent you hither?"

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"I have been watching at a death-bed," answered Hester Prynne "at Governor

Winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his measure for a robe, and am now going

homeward to my dwelling."

"Come up hither, Hester, thou and little Pearl," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale.

"Ye have both been here before, but I was not with you. Come up hither once again,

and we will stand all three together."

She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform, holding little Pearl by the

hand. The minister felt for the child's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did

so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own

pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if the

mother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system.

The three formed an electric chain.

"Minister!" whispered little Pearl.

"What wouldst thou say, child?" asked Mr. Dimmesdale.

"Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?" inquired Pearl.

"Nay; not so, my little Pearl," answered the minister; for, with the new energy of the

moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life,

had returned upon him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction in which—

with a strange joy, nevertheless—he now found himself—"not so, my child. I shall,

indeed, stand with thy mother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow."

Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. But the minister held it fast.

"A moment longer, my child!" said he.

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"But wilt thou promise," asked Pearl, "to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow

noontide?"

"Not then, Pearl," said the minister; "but another time."

"And what other time?" persisted the child.

"At the great judgment day," whispered the minister; and, strangely enough, the sense

that he was a professional teacher of the truth impelled him to answer the child so.

"Then, and there, before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I must stand

together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!"

Pearl laughed again.

But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all

the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-

watcher may so often observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the

atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense

medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome

of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of

mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an

unaccustomed light. The wooden houses, with their jutting storeys and quaint gable-

peaks; the doorsteps and thresholds with the early grass springing up about them; the

garden-plots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn, and even in

the market-place margined with green on either side—all were visible, but with a

singularity of aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of

this world than they had ever borne before. And there stood the minister, with his

hand over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered letter glimmering on her

bosom; and little Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those two.

They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendour, as if it were the light

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that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one

another.

There was witchcraft in little Pearl's eyes; and her face, as she glanced upward at the

minister, wore that naughty smile which made its expression frequently so elvish. She

withdrew her hand from Mr. Dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. But he

clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes towards the zenith.

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoric appearances,

and other natural phenomena that occurred with less regularity than the rise and set of

sun and moon, as so many revelations from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing

spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows seen in the midnight sky,

prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to have been foreboded by a shower

of crimson light. We doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell

New England, from its settlement down to revolutionary times, of which the

inhabitants had not been previously warned by some spectacle of its nature. Not

seldom, it had been seen by multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested on the

faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder through the coloured,

magnifying, and distorted medium of his imagination, and shaped it more distinctly in

his after-thought. It was, indeed, a majestic idea that the destiny of nations should be

revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. A scroll so wide might

not be deemed too expensive for Providence to write a people's doom upon. The belief

was a favourite one with our forefathers, as betokening that their infant

commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness.

But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself

alone, on the same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only be the symptom

of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-

contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the

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whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a

fitting page for his soul's history and fate.

We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the

minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense

letter—the letter A—marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may

have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no

such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that

another's guilt might have seen another symbol in it.

There was a singular circumstance that characterised Mr. Dimmesdale's psychological

state at this moment. All the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was,

nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Pearl was pointing her finger towards old

Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold. The minister

appeared to see him, with the same glance that discerned the miraculous letter. To his

feature as to all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or it

might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at all other times, to hide the

malevolence with which he looked upon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled

up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne

and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth have

passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim

his own. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that

it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness after the meteor had vanished, with

an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated.

"Who is that man, Hester?" gasped Mr. Dimmesdale, overcome with terror. "I shiver

at him! Dost thou know the man? I hate him, Hester!"

She remembered her oath, and was silent.

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"I tell thee, my soul shivers at him!" muttered the minister again. "Who is he? Who is

he? Canst thou do nothing for me? I have a nameless horror of the man!"

"Minister," said little Pearl, "I can tell thee who he is!"

"Quickly, then, child!" said the minister, bending his ear close to her lips. "Quickly,

and as low as thou canst whisper."

Pearl mumbled something into his ear that sounded, indeed, like human language, but

was only such gibberish as children may be heard amusing themselves with by the

hour together. At all events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old

Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did

but increase the bewilderment of his mind. The elvish child then laughed aloud.

"Dost thou mock me now?" said the minister.

"Thou wast not bold!—thou wast not true!" answered the child. "Thou wouldst not

promise to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow noon-tide!"

"Worthy sir," answered the physician, who had now advanced to the foot of the

platform—"pious Master Dimmesdale! can this be you? Well, well, indeed! We men

of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straitly looked after! We

dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good sir, and my dear

friend, I pray you let me lead you home!"

"How knewest thou that I was here?" asked the minister, fearfully.

"Verily, and in good faith," answered Roger Chillingworth, "I knew nothing of the

matter. I had spent the better part of the night at the bedside of the worshipful

Governor Winthrop, doing what my poor skill might to give him ease. He, going

home to a better world, I, likewise, was on my way homeward, when this light shone

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out. Come with me, I beseech you, Reverend sir, else you will be poorly able to do

Sabbath duty to-morrow. Aha! see now how they trouble the brain—these books!—

these books! You should study less, good sir, and take a little pastime, or these night

whimsies will grow upon you."

"I will go home with you," said Mr. Dimmesdale.

With a chill despondency, like one awakening, all nerveless, from an ugly dream, he

yielded himself to the physician, and was led away.

The next day, however, being the Sabbath, he preached a discourse which was held to

be the richest and most powerful, and the most replete with heavenly influences, that

had ever proceeded from his lips. Souls, it is said, more souls than one, were brought

to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within themselves to cherish a

holy gratitude towards Mr. Dimmesdale throughout the long hereafter. But as he came

down the pulpit steps, the grey-bearded sexton met him, holding up a black glove,

which the minister recognised as his own.

"It was found," said the Sexton, "this morning on the scaffold where evil-doers are set

up to public shame. Satan dropped it there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against

your reverence. But, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. A

pure hand needs no glove to cover it!"

"Thank you, my good friend," said the minister, gravely, but startled at heart; for so

confused was his remembrance, that he had almost brought himself to look at the

events of the past night as visionary.

"Yes, it seems to be my glove, indeed!"

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"And, since Satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs handle him without

gloves henceforward," remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. "But did your

reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night? a great red letter in the sky—the

letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor Winthrop

was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some

notice thereof!"

"No," answered the minister; "I had not heard of it."

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XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER

In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne was shocked at the

condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely

destroyed. His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It grovelled

helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine

strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have

given them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others,

she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a

terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating, on Mr.

Dimmesdale's well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor fallen man had once

been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed

to her—the outcast woman—for support against his instinctively discovered enemy.

She decided, moreover, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little accustomed, in her

long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard

external to herself, Hester saw—or seemed to see—that there lay a responsibility upon

her in reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no other, nor to the whole

world besides. The links that united her to the rest of humankind—links of flowers, or

silk, or gold, or whatever the material—had all been broken. Here was the iron link of

mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought

along with it its obligations.

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her

during the earlier periods of her ignominy. Years had come and gone. Pearl was now

seven years old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its

fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the townspeople. As is apt to

be the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the community, and, at

the same time, interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience,

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a species of general regard had ultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It

is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play,

it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be

transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of

the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne there was neither

irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the public, but submitted

uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it in requital for what she

suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity of

her life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy was reckoned

largely in her favour. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no

hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard

for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.

It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put forward even the humblest title to

share in the world's privileges—further than to breathe the common air and earn daily

bread for little Pearl and herself by the faithful labour of her hands—she was quick to

acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man whenever benefits were to be

conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of

poverty, even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the

food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that

could have embroidered a monarch's robe. None so self-devoted as Hester when

pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether

general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not

as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble,

as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse

with her fellow-creature. There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its

unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. It had

even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had

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shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and

ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such emergencies Hester's nature showed

itself warm and rich—a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real

demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but

the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of

Mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when

neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of

her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her—so much power to do, and power to

sympathise—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original

signification. They said that it meant Able, so strong was Hester Prynne, with a

woman's strength.

It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When sunshine came again, she

was not there. Her shadow had faded across the threshold. The helpful inmate had

departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were

in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously. Meeting them in the street,

she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her,

she laid her finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. This might be pride, but was so

like humility, that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on the

public mind. The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common

justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards

more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely

to its generosity. Interpreting Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal of this nature,

society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign countenance than she

cared to be favoured with, or, perchance, than she deserved.

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longer in

acknowledging the influence of Hester's good qualities than the people. The

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prejudices which they shared in common with the latter were fortified in themselves

by an iron frame-work of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labour to expel them.

Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something

which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost

benevolence. Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position

imposed the guardianship of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile,

had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look

upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin for which she had borne so long

and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. "Do you see that woman

with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers. "It is our Hester—the

town's own Hester—who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable

to the afflicted!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst

of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper

the black scandal of bygone years. It was none the less a fact, however, that in the

eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a

nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to

walk securely amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her

safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his arrow

against the badge, and that the missile struck it, and fell harmless to the ground.

The effect of the symbol—or rather, of the position in respect to society that was

indicated by it—on the mind of Hester Prynne herself was powerful and peculiar. All

the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot

brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might

have been repulsive had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it.

Even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It might be

partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of

demonstration in her manners. It was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and

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luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a

shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was due in part to all these

causes, but still more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in

Hester's face for Love to dwell upon; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic and

statue like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in

Hester's bosom to make it ever again the pillow of Affection. Some attribute had

departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman.

Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character

and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of

peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness

will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—

crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. The latter is

perhaps the truest theory. She who has once been a woman, and ceased to be so, might

at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the magic touch to effect

the transformation. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever afterwards so

touched and so transfigured.

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be attributed to the

circumstance that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling to

thought. Standing alone in the world—alone, as to any dependence on society, and

with little Pearl to be guided and protected—alone, and hopeless of retrieving her

position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable—she cast away the

fragment of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in

which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider

range than for many centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and

kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged—not actually, but within

the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode—the whole system of ancient

prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed

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this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other

side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to

be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage,

by the seashore, thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New

England; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their

entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door.

It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the

most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thought suffices

them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with

Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have

been far otherwise. Then she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand

with Ann Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She might, in one of her

phases, have been a prophetess. She might, and not improbably would, have suffered

death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the

foundations of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the

mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. Providence, in the

person of this little girl, had assigned to Hester's charge, the germ and blossom of

womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything

was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature had something wrong

in it which continually betokened that she had been born amiss—the effluence of her

mother's lawless passion—and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of heart,

whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all.

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole

race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting even to the happiest among

them? As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the

negative, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may

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keep women quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a

hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn

down and built up anew. Then the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long

hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified before

woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all

other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary

reforms until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change, in which,

perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have

evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought.

They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost,

they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb,

wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an

insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and

ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times a fearful

doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to

Heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provide.

The scarlet letter had not done its office. Now, however, her interview with the

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of

reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and

sacrifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath which the

minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that

he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. It was

impossible to doubt that, whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting

of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief.

A secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and

helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with

the delicate springs of Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. Hester could not but ask herself

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whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and loyalty on her

own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil

was to be foreboded and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in

the fact that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker

ruin than had overwhelmed herself except by acquiescing in Roger Chillingworth's

scheme of disguise. Under that impulse she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it

now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She determined to redeem

her error so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn

trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on

that night, abased by sin and half-maddened by the ignominy that was still new, when

they had talked together in the prison-chamber. She had climbed her way since then to

a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her

level, or, perhaps, below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for.

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and do what might be in

her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The

occasion was not long to seek. One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of

the peninsula, she beheld the old physician with a basket on one arm and a staff in the

other hand, stooping along the ground in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his

medicine withal.

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XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN

Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the water, and play with the shells

and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of

herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feet went

pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a full stop,

and peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see

her face in. Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around her

head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid whom Pearl, having no

other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race with her. But the visionary

little maid on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say—"This is a better place; come

thou into the pool." And Pearl, stepping in mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at

the bottom; while, out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary

smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.

Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. "I would speak a word with you,"

said she—"a word that concerns us much."

"Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word for old Roger Chillingworth?"

answered he, raising himself from his stooping posture. "With all my heart! Why,

mistress, I hear good tidings of you on all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve, a

magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Mistress Hester,

and whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the council. It was

debated whether or no, with safety to the commonweal, yonder scarlet letter might be

taken off your bosom. On my life, Hester, I made my intreaty to the worshipful

magistrate that it might be done forthwith."

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"It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off the badge," calmly replied

Hester. "Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be

transformed into something that should speak a different purport."

"Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better," rejoined he, "A woman must needs follow

her own fancy touching the adornment of her person. The letter is gaily embroidered,

and shows right bravely on your bosom!"

All this while Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as

well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within

the past seven years. It was not so much that he had grown older; for though the traces

of advancing life were visible he bore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigour

and alertness. But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and

quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been

succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed

to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile, but the latter played

him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively that the spectator could see his

blackness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of

his eyes, as if the old man's soul were on fire and kept on smouldering duskily within

his breast, until by some casual puff of passion it was blown into a momentary flame.

This he repressed as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind

had happened.

In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of

transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time,

undertake a devil's office. This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by

devoting himself for seven years to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and

deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he

analysed and gloated over.

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The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was another ruin, the

responsibility of which came partly home to her.

"What see you in my face," asked the physician, "that you look at it so earnestly?"

"Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears bitter enough for it,"

answered she. "But let it pass! It is of yonder miserable man that I would speak."

"And what of him?" cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and

were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make

a confidant. "Not to hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to

be busy with the gentleman. So speak freely and I will make answer."

"When we last spake together," said Hester, "now seven years ago, it was your

pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy as touching the former relation betwixt

yourself and me. As the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands there

seemed no choice to me, save to be silent in accordance with your behest. Yet it was

not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for, having cast off all duty

towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards him, and something

whispered me that I was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since

that day no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are

beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in

his heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and

still he knows you not. In permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only

man to whom the power was left me to be true!"

"What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger, pointed at this man,

would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the

gallows!"

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"It had been better so!" said Hester Prynne.

"What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth again. "I tell thee,

Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have

bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid his life

would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the perpetration

of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne

up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly

secret! But enough. What art can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes

and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!"

"Better he had died at once!" said Hester Prynne.

"Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire

of his heart blaze out before her eyes. "Better had he died at once! Never did mortal

suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has

been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse.

He knew, by some spiritual sense—for the Creator never made another being so

sensitive as this—he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and

that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But

he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his

brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful

dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a

foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my

presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged, and

who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea,

indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a

human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment."

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The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of

horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognise,

usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments—which

sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man's moral aspect is faithfully

revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably he had never before viewed himself as he

did now.

"Hast thou not tortured him enough?" said Hester, noticing the old man's look. "Has

he not paid thee all?"

"No, no! He has but increased the debt!" answered the physician, and as he proceeded,

his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. "Dost thou

remember me, Hester, as I was nine years agone? Even then I was in the autumn of

my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been made up of earnest,

studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own

knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the other—

faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. No life had been more peaceful and

innocent than mine; few lives so rich with benefits conferred. Dost thou remember

me? Was I not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for

others, craving little for himself—kind, true, just and of constant, if not warm

affections? Was I not all this?"

"All this, and more," said Hester.

"And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole

evil within him to be written on his features. "I have already told thee what I am—a

fiend! Who made me so?"

"It was myself," cried Hester, shuddering. "It was I, not less than he. Why hast thou

not avenged thyself on me?"

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"I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied Roger

Chillingworth. "If that has not avenged me, I can do no more!"

He laid his finger on it with a smile.

"It has avenged thee," answered Hester Prynne.

"I judged no less," said the physician. "And now what wouldst thou with me touching

this man?"

"I must reveal the secret," answered Hester, firmly. "He must discern thee in thy true

character. What may be the result I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due

from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far as

concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and

perchance his life, he is in my hands. Nor do I—whom the scarlet letter has

disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron entering into the soul—nor

do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that I

shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him,

no good for me, no good for thee. There is no good for little Pearl. There is no path to

guide us out of this dismal maze."

"Woman, I could well-nigh pity thee," said Roger Chillingworth, unable to restrain a

thrill of admiration too, for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair which

she expressed. "Thou hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a

better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that has been

wasted in thy nature."

"And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and

just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? If not

for his sake, then doubly for thine own! Forgive, and leave his further retribution to

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the Power that claims it! I said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or

thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and

stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so!

There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged

and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject

that priceless benefit?"

"Peace, Hester—peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness—"it is not

granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long

forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy

first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been

a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical

illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It

is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! Now, go thy ways, and deal as

thou wilt with yonder man."

He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs.

167

XV. HESTER AND PEARL

So Roger Chillingworth—a deformed old figure with a face that haunted men's

memories longer than they liked—took leave of Hester Prynne, and went stooping

away along the earth. He gathered here and there a herb, or grubbed up a root and put

it into the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched the ground as he crept

onward. Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to

see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him and

show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure.

She wondered what sort of herbs they were which the old man was so sedulous to

gather. Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye,

greet him with poisonous shrubs of species hitherto unknown, that would start up

under his fingers? Or might it suffice him that every wholesome growth should be

converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch? Did the sun, which

shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or was there, as it rather

seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way

he turned himself? And whither was he now going? Would he not suddenly sink into

the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be

seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable

wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or

would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier the higher he

rose towards heaven?

"Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as still she gazed after him, "I hate the

man!"

She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or lessen it.

Attempting to do so, she thought of those long-past days in a distant land, when he

used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study and sit down in the firelight

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of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile. He needed to bask himself in that

smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might

be taken off the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than

happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal medium of her subsequent life, they

classed themselves among her ugliest remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes

could have been! She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry

him! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured and

reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips

and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed

by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him, that, in the time

when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his

side.

"Yes, I hate him!" repeated Hester more bitterly than before.

"He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!"

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost

passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Roger

Chillingworth's, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her

sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of

happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. But Hester

ought long ago to have done with this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long

years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of misery and wrought

out no repentance?

The emotion of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old

Roger Chillingworth, threw a dark light on Hester's state of mind, revealing much that

she might not otherwise have acknowledged to herself.

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He being gone, she summoned back her child.

"Pearl! Little Pearl! Where are you?"

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for amusement while

her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs. At first, as already told, she had

flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth,

and—as it declined to venture—seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of

impalpable earth and unattainable sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the

image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats out of

birch-bark, and freighted them with snailshells, and sent out more ventures on the

mighty deep than any merchant in New England; but the larger part of them foundered

near the shore. She seized a live horse-shoe by the tail, and made prize of several five-

fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. Then she took up the white

foam that streaked the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze,

scampering after it with winged footsteps to catch the great snowflakes ere they fell.

Perceiving a flock of beach-birds that fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty

child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after these

small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little gray bird,

with a white breast, Pearl was almost sure had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered

away with a broken wing. But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport,

because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the sea-

breeze, or as wild as Pearl herself.

Her final employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, and make herself a

scarf or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She

inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her

mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass and imitated, as best she could, on her own

bosom the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letter—the

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letter A—but freshly green instead of scarlet. The child bent her chin upon her breast,

and contemplated this device with strange interest, even as if the one only thing for

which she had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import.

"I wonder if mother will ask me what it means?" thought Pearl.

Just then she heard her mother's voice, and, flitting along as lightly as one of the little

sea-birds, appeared before Hester Prynne dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to

the ornament upon her bosom.

"My little Pearl," said Hester, after a moment's silence, "the green letter, and on thy

childish bosom, has no purport. But dost thou know, my child, what this letter means

which thy mother is doomed to wear?"

"Yes, mother," said the child. "It is the great letter A. Thou hast taught me in the horn-

book."

Hester looked steadily into her little face; but though there was that singular

expression which she had so often remarked in her black eyes, she could not satisfy

herself whether Pearl really attached any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid

desire to ascertain the point.

"Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter?"

"Truly do I!" answered Pearl, looking brightly into her mother's face. "It is for the

same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart!"

"And what reason is that?" asked Hester, half smiling at the absurd incongruity of the

child's observation; but on second thoughts turning pale.

"What has the letter to do with any heart save mine?"

171

"Nay, mother, I have told all I know," said Pearl, more seriously than she was wont to

speak. "Ask yonder old man whom thou hast been talking with,—it may be he can

tell. But in good earnest now, mother dear, what does this scarlet letter mean?—and

why dost thou wear it on thy bosom?—and why does the minister keep his hand over

his heart?"

She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes with an

earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capricious character. The thought

occurred to Hester, that the child might really be seeking to approach her with

childlike confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she knew how,

to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It showed Pearl in an unwonted aspect.

Heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection,

had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an April

breeze, which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion,

and is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you

take it to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanours it will sometimes, of its

own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play

gently with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy

pleasure at your heart. And this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of the child's

disposition. Any other observer might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have

given them a far darker colouring. But now the idea came strongly into Hester's mind,

that Pearl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have

approached the age when she could have been made a friend, and intrusted with as

much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to the

parent or the child. In the little chaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerging

and could have been from the very first—the steadfast principles of an unflinching

courage—an uncontrollable will—sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-

respect—and a bitter scorn of many things which, when examined, might be found to

172

have the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto

acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavours of unripe fruit. With all these

sterling attributes, thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother must

be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child.

Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an

innate quality of her being. From the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had

entered upon this as her appointed mission. Hester had often fancied that Providence

had a design of justice and retribution, in endowing the child with this marked

propensity; but never, until now, had she bethought herself to ask, whether, linked

with that design, there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence. If

little Pearl were entertained with faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an

earthly child, might it not be her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her

mother's heart, and converted it into a tomb?—and to help her to overcome the

passion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned

within the same tomb-like heart?

Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester's mind, with as much

vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whispered into her ear. And there

was little Pearl, all this while, holding her mother's hand in both her own, and turning

her face upward, while she put these searching questions, once and again, and still a

third time.

"What does the letter mean, mother? and why dost thou wear it? and why does the

minister keep his hand over his heart?"

"What shall I say?" thought Hester to herself. "No! if this be the price of the child's

sympathy, I cannot pay it."

Then she spoke aloud—

173

"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!"

174

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 foot-path. 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

175

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.

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"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.

177

"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!"

178

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!"

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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."

180

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.

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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

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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—

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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

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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

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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!"

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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!

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"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!

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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!"

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"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!"

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"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!"

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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!

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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 Bowers 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

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guise had Pearl adorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly

back.

Slowly—for she saw the clergyman!

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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 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

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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.

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"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

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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.

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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

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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

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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 to-

day; it was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the individuals

on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting glance; and yet the minister's deepest

sense seemed to inform him of their mutability. A similar impression struck him most

remarkably as he passed under the walls of his own church. The edifice had so very

strange, and yet so familiar an aspect, that Mr. Dimmesdale's mind vibrated between

two ideas; either that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely

dreaming about it now.

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external

change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene,

that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the

lapse of years. The minister's own will, and Hester's will, and the fate that grew

between them, had wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore,

but the same minister returned not from the forest. He might have said to the friends

who greeted him—"I am not the man for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the

forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree trunk, and near a melancholy

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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.

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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 widows

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

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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 black-guard, 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-

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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."

"I profess, madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance, such as the

lady's rank demanded, and his own good breeding made imperative—"I profess, on

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my conscience and character, that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport of

your words! I went not into the forest to seek a potentate, neither do I, at any future

time, design a visit thither, with a view to gaining the favour of such personage. My

one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot, and

rejoice with him over the many precious souls he hath won from heathendom!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high head-dress at the

minister. "Well, well! we must needs talk thus in the daytime! You carry it off like an

old hand! But at midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!"

She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at

him, like one willing to recognise a secret intimacy of connexion.

"Have I then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true,

this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince and master?"

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by a dream of

happiness, he had yielded himself with deliberate choice, as he had never done before,

to what he knew was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus

rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses,

and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness,

unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and

holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened him. And his encounter with old

Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship

with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.

He had by this time reached his dwelling on the edge of the burial ground, and,

hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have

reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the world by any of those

strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while

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passing through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around him

on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the walls, with

the same perception of strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk from the

forest dell into the town and thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here gone

through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray; here borne a

hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses

and the Prophets speaking to him, and God's voice through all.

There on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a

sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page

two days before. He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister,

who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the Election

Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful pitying,

but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the

forest—a wiser one—with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of

the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the study, and the

minister said, "Come in!"—not wholly devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil

spirit. And so he did! It was old Roger Chillingworth that entered. The minister stood

white and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew Scriptures, and the other spread

upon his breast.

"Welcome home, reverend sir," said the physician "And how found you that godly

man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear sir, you look pale, as if the travel through

the wilderness had been too sore for you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in

heart and strength to preach your Election Sermon?"

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"Nay, I think not so," rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. "My journey, and the

sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the free air which I have breathed have done me

good, after so long confinement in my study. I think to need no more of your drugs,

my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand."

All this time Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister with the grave and

intent regard of a physician towards his patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the

latter was almost convinced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his confident

suspicion, with respect to his own interview with Hester Prynne. The physician knew

then that in the minister's regard he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest

enemy. So much being known, it would appear natural that a part of it should be

expressed. It is singular, however, how long a time often passes before words embody

things; and with what security two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject,

may approach its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus the minister felt no

apprehension that Roger Chillingworth would touch, in express words, upon the real

position which they sustained towards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark

way, creep frightfully near the secret.

"Were it not better," said he, "that you use my poor skill tonight? Verily, dear sir, we

must take pains to make you strong and vigorous for this occasion of the Election

discourse. The people look for great things from you, apprehending that another year

may come about and find their pastor gone."

"Yes, to another world," replied the minister with pious resignation. "Heaven grant it

be a better one; for, in good sooth, I hardly think to tarry with my flock through the

flitting seasons of another year! But touching your medicine, kind sir, in my present

frame of body I need it not."

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"I joy to hear it," answered the physician. "It may be that my remedies, so long

administered in vain, begin now to take due effect. Happy man were I, and well

deserving of New England's gratitude, could I achieve this cure!"

"I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend," said the Reverend Mr.

Dimmesdale with a solemn smile. "I thank you, and can but requite your good deeds

with my prayers."

"A good man's prayers are golden recompense!" rejoined old Roger Chillingworth, as

he took his leave. "Yea, they are the current gold coin of the New Jerusalem, with the

King's own mint mark on them!"

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and requested food, which,

being set before him, he ate with ravenous appetite. Then flinging the already written

pages of the Election Sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote

with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied himself inspired;

and only wondered that Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and solemn music

of its oracles through so foul an organ pipe as he. However, leaving that mystery to

solve itself, or go unsolved for ever, he drove his task onward with earnest haste and

ecstasy.

Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he careering on it; morning

came, and peeped, blushing, through the curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden

beam into the study, and laid it right across the minister's bedazzled eyes. There he

was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written

space behind him!

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XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY

Betimes in the morning of the day on which the new Governor was to receive his

office at the hands of the people, Hester Prynne and little Pearl came into the market-

place. It was already thronged with the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the

town, in considerable numbers, among whom, likewise, were many rough figures,

whose attire of deer-skins marked them as belonging to some of the forest settlements,

which surrounded the little metropolis of the colony.

On this public holiday, as on all other occasions for seven years past, Hester was clad

in a garment of coarse gray cloth. Not more by its hue than by some indescribable

peculiarity in its fashion, it had the effect of making her fade personally out of sight

and outline; while again the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilight

indistinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination. Her

face, so long familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude which they

were accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask; or, rather like the frozen

calmness of a dead woman's features; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that

Hester was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had departed out

of the world with which she still seemed to mingle.

It might be, on this one day, that there was an expression unseen before, nor, indeed,

vivid enough to be detected now; unless some preternaturally gifted observer should

have first read the heart, and have afterwards sought a corresponding development in

the countenance and mien. Such a spiritual seer might have conceived, that, after

sustaining the gaze of the multitude through several miserable years as a necessity, a

penance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for one last

time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had so long

been agony into a kind of triumph. "Look your last on the scarlet letter and its

wearer!"—the people's victim and lifelong bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say

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to them. "Yet a little while, and she will be beyond your reach! A few hours longer

and the deep, mysterious ocean will quench and hide for ever the symbol which ye

have caused to burn on her bosom!" Nor were it an inconsistency too improbable to be

assigned to human nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret in Hester's mind, at

the moment when she was about to win her freedom from the pain which had been

thus deeply incorporated with her being. Might there not be an irresistible desire to

quaff a last, long, breathless draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which

nearly all her years of womanhood had been perpetually flavoured. The wine of life,

henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating,

in its chased and golden beaker, or else leave an inevitable and weary languor, after

the lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest

potency.

Pearl was decked out with airy gaiety. It would have been impossible to guess that this

bright and sunny apparition owed its existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a

fancy, at once so gorgeous and so delicate as must have been requisite to contrive the

child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a task perhaps more difficult, in

imparting so distinct a peculiarity to Hester's simple robe. The dress, so proper was it

to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward

manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her than the many-hued

brilliancy from a butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower.

As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature. On this

eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her

mood, resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and

flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Children have

always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them: always, especially,

a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic

circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom,

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betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the

marble passiveness of Hester's brow.

This effervescence made her flit with a bird-like movement, rather than walk by her

mother's side.

She broke continually into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and sometimes piercing

music. When they reached the market-place, she became still more restless, on

perceiving the stir and bustle that enlivened the spot; for it was usually more like the

broad and lonesome green before a village meeting-house, than the centre of a town's

business.

"Why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "Wherefore have all the people left their work

to-day? Is it a play-day for the whole world? See, there is the blacksmith! He has

washed his sooty face, and put on his Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would

gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach him how! And there is Master

Brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling at me. Why does he do so, mother?"

"He remembers thee a little babe, my child," answered Hester.

"He should not nod and smile at me, for all that—the black, grim, ugly-eyed old

man!" said Pearl. "He may nod at thee, if he will; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest

the scarlet letter. But see, mother, how many faces of strange people, and Indians

among them, and sailors! What have they all come to do, here in the market-place?"

"They wait to see the procession pass," said Hester. "For the Governor and the

magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and all the great people and good people,

with the music and the soldiers marching before them."

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"And will the minister be there?" asked Pearl. "And will he hold out both his hands to

me, as when thou ledst me to him from the brook-side?"

"He will be there, child," answered her mother, "but he will not greet thee to-day, nor

must thou greet him."

"What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In the

dark nighttime he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood

with him on the scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can

hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And he

kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But, here, in

the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A

strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his heart!"

"Be quiet, Pearl—thou understandest not these things," said her mother. "Think not

now of the minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery is everybody's face to-

day. The children have come from their schools, and the grown people from their

workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, to-day, a new man is

beginning to rule over them; and so—as has been the custom of mankind ever since a

nation was first gathered—they make merry and rejoice: as if a good and golden year

were at length to pass over the poor old world!"

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that brightened the faces of the

people. Into this festal season of the year—as it already was, and continued to be

during the greater part of two centuries—the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and

public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the

customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more

grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.

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But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedly characterized

the mood and manners of the age. The persons now in the market-place of Boston had

not been born to an inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen,

whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan epoch; a time when

the life of England, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been as stately,

magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their

hereditary taste, the New England settlers would have illustrated all events of public

importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have

been impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful

recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to

the great robe of state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. There was some

shadow of an attempt of this kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the

political year of the colony commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered

splendour, a colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in

proud old London—we will not say at a royal coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's

show—might be traced in the customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference

to the annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders of the

commonwealth—the statesman, the priest, and the soldier—seemed it a duty then to

assume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was

looked upon as the proper garb of public and social eminence. All came forth to move

in procession before the people's eye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple

framework of a government so newly constructed.

Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in relaxing the severe

and close application to their various modes of rugged industry, which at all other

times, seemed of the same piece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, were

none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the

England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James—no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no

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minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his

music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the

multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still effective, by their appeals

to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of the several

branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid

discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which give law its vitality. Not the less,

however, the great, honest face of the people smiled—grimly, perhaps, but widely too.

Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago,

at the country fairs and on the village-greens of England; and which it was thought

well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness that were

essential in them. Wrestling matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and

Devonshire, were seen here and there about the market-place; in one corner, there was

a friendly bout at quarterstaff; and—what attracted most interest of all—on the

platform of the pillory, already so noted in our pages, two masters of defence were

commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But, much to the

disappointment of the crowd, this latter business was broken off by the interposition

of the town beadle, who had no idea of permitting the majesty of the law to be

violated by such an abuse of one of its consecrated places.

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being then in the first

stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring of sires who had known how to be

merry, in their day), that they would compare favourably, in point of holiday keeping,

with their descendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. Their immediate

posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of

Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years

have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gaiety.

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The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray,

brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue.

A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes,

wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow

and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond

what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians,

were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be

claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—

who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking

desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short

trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of

gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. From

beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-

nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or

scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under

the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling;

and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks,

which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably

characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was

allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more

desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be

arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this

very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had

been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as

would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice.

But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will,

or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by

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human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at

once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his

reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic

or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and

steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of

these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so

reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the

market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable

vessel.

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far as apparel went,

anywhere to be seen among the multitude. He wore a profusion of ribbons on his

garment, and gold lace on his hat, which was also encircled by a gold chain, and

surmounted with a feather. There was a sword at his side and a sword-cut on his

forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display

than hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face, and

worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question

before a magistrate, and probably incurring a fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an

exhibition in the stocks. As regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as

pertaining to the character, as to a fish his glistening scales.

After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristol ship strolled idly

through the market-place; until happening to approach the spot where Hester Prynne

was standing, he appeared to recognise, and did not hesitate to address her. As was

usually the case wherever Hester stood, a small vacant area—a sort of magic circle—

had formed itself about her, into which, though the people were elbowing one another

at a little distance, none ventured or felt disposed to intrude. It was a forcible type of

the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her

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own reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal

of her fellow-creatures. Now, if never before, it answered a good purpose by enabling

Hester and the seaman to speak together without risk of being overheard; and so

changed was Hester Prynne's repute before the public, that the matron in town, most

eminent for rigid morality, could not have held such intercourse with less result of

scandal than herself.

"So, mistress," said the mariner, "I must bid the steward make ready one more berth

than you bargained for! No fear of scurvy or ship fever this voyage. What with the

ship's surgeon and this other doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more

by token, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which I traded for with a

Spanish vessel."

"What mean you?" inquired Hester, startled more than she permitted to appear. "Have

you another passenger?"

"Why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physician here—Chillingworth

he calls himself—is minded to try my cabin-fare with you? Ay, ay, you must have

known it; for he tells me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you

spoke of—he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan rulers."

"They know each other well, indeed," replied Hester, with a mien of calmness, though

in the utmost consternation. "They have long dwelt together."

Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne. But at that instant she

beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself, standing in the remotest corner of the

market-place and smiling on her; a smile which—across the wide and bustling square,

and through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of the

crowd—conveyed secret and fearful meaning.

227

XXII. THE PROCESSION

Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and consider what was

practicable to be done in this new and startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military

music was heard approaching along a contiguous street. It denoted the advance of the

procession of magistrates and citizens on its way towards the meeting-house: where,

in compliance with a custom thus early established, and ever since observed, the

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver an Election Sermon.

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and stately march, turning

a corner, and making its way across the market-place. First came the music. It

comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and

played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of

drum and clarion addresses itself to the multitude—that of imparting a higher and

more heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at first

clapped her hands, but then lost for an instant the restless agitation that had kept her in

a continual effervescence throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to

be borne upward like a floating sea-bird on the long heaves and swells of sound. But

she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the sunshine on the

weapons and bright armour of the military company, which followed after the music,

and formed the honorary escort of the procession. This body of soldiery—which still

sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages with an ancient and

honourable fame—was composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled

with gentlemen who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to establish a

kind of College of Arms, where, as in an association of Knights Templars, they might

learn the science, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices of

war. The high estimation then placed upon the military character might be seen in the

lofty port of each individual member of the company. Some of them, indeed, by their

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services in the Low Countries and on other fields of European warfare, had fairly won

their title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover,

clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a

brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal.

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind the military escort,

were better worth a thoughtful observer's eye. Even in outward demeanour they

showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not

absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less consideration than now,

but the massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal

more. The people possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence, which, in

their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly

diminished force in the selection and estimate of public men. The change may be for

good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day the English settler on these

rude shores—having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still

the faculty and necessity of reverence was strong in him—bestowed it on the white

hair and venerable brow of age—on long-tried integrity—on solid wisdom and sad-

coloured experience—on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gave the

idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability. These

primitive statesmen, therefore—Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their

compeers—who were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to

have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than

activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of difficulty or

peril stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous

tide. The traits of character here indicated were well represented in the square cast of

countenance and large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. So far

as a demeanour of natural authority was concerned, the mother country need not have

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been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted into the

House of Peers, or make the Privy Council of the Sovereign.

Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently distinguished divine,

from whose lips the religious discourse of the anniversary was expected. His was the

profession at that era in which intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in

political life; for—leaving a higher motive out of the question it offered inducements

powerful enough in the almost worshipping respect of the community, to win the most

aspiring ambition into its service. Even political power—as in the case of Increase

Mather—was within the grasp of a successful priest.

It was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never, since Mr.

Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England shore, had he exhibited such energy

as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in the procession. There

was no feebleness of step as at other times; his frame was not bent, nor did his hand

rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength

seemed not of the body. It might be spiritual and imparted to him by angelical

ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that potent cordial which is distilled only

in the furnace-glow of earnest and long-continued thought. Or perchance his sensitive

temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music that swelled heaven-

ward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his

look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the music. There

was his body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But where was his

mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity, to

marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw

nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing of what was around him; but the spiritual

element took up the feeble frame and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and

converting it to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon intellect, who have grown morbid,

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possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which they throw the life of many

days and then are lifeless for as many more.

Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary influence come over

her, but wherefore or whence she knew not, unless that he seemed so remote from her

own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach. One glance of recognition she had

imagined must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest, with its little

dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand-

in-hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur

of the brook. How deeply had they known each other then! And was this the man?

She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly past, enveloped as it were, in the rich

music, with the procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in his

worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his unsympathizing thoughts,

through which she now beheld him! Her spirit sank with the idea that all must have

been a delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond

betwixt the clergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was there in Hester, that

she could scarcely forgive him—least of all now, when the heavy footstep of their

approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!—for being able so

completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world—while she groped darkly,

and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not.

Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or herself felt the remoteness

and intangibility that had fallen around the minister. While the procession passed, the

child was uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of taking flight.

When the whole had gone by, she looked up into Hester's face—

"Mother," said she, "was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?"

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"Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We must not always talk in

the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest."

"I could not be sure that it was he—so strange he looked," continued the child. "Else I

would have run to him, and bid him kiss me now, before all the people, even as he did

yonder among the dark old trees. What would the minister have said, mother? Would

he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me begone?"

"What should he say, Pearl," answered Hester, "save that it was no time to kiss, and

that kisses are not to be given in the market-place? Well for thee, foolish child, that

thou didst not speak to him!"

Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr. Dimmesdale, was expressed

by a person whose eccentricities—insanity, as we should term it—led her to do what

few of the townspeople would have ventured on—to begin a conversation with the

wearer of the scarlet letter in public. It was Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed in great

magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a

gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. As this ancient lady had the

renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal

actor in all the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, the crowd

gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the

plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester Prynne—kindly as

so many now felt towards the latter—the dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins had

doubled, and caused a general movement from that part of the market-place in which

the two women stood.

"Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it?" whispered the old lady

confidentially to Hester. "Yonder divine man! That saint on earth, as the people

uphold him to be, and as—I must needs say—he really looks! Who, now, that saw

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him pass in the procession, would think how little while it is since he went forth out of

his study—chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in his mouth, I warrant—to take an

airing in the forest! Aha! we know what that means, Hester Prynne! But truly,

forsooth, I find it hard to believe him the same man. Many a church member saw I,

walking behind the music, that has danced in the same measure with me, when

Somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an Indian powwow or a Lapland wizard

changing hands with us! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this

minister. Couldst thou surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same man that

encountered thee on the forest path?"

"Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered Hester Prynne, feeling Mistress

Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely startled and awe-stricken by the

confidence with which she affirmed a personal connexion between so many persons

(herself among them) and the Evil One. "It is not for me to talk lightly of a learned

and pious minister of the Word, like the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale."

"Fie, woman—fie!" cried the old lady, shaking her finger at Hester. "Dost thou think I

have been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has

been there? Yea, though no leaf of the wild garlands which they wore while they

danced be left in their hair! I know thee, Hester, for I behold the token. We may all

see it in the sunshine! and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it

openly, so there need be no question about that. But this minister! Let me tell thee in

thine ear! When the Black Man sees one of his own servants, signed and sealed, so

shy of owning to the bond as is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of

ordering matters so that the mark shall be disclosed, in open daylight, to the eyes of all

the world! What is that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over his

heart? Ha, Hester Prynne?"

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"What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?" eagerly asked little Pearl.

"Hast thou seen it?"

"No matter, darling!" responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a profound

reverence. "Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another. They say, child, thou art of

the lineage of the Prince of Air! Wilt thou ride with me some fine night to see thy

father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart!"

Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the weird old

gentlewoman took her departure.

By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the meeting-house, and the

accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale were heard commencing his discourse. An

irresistible feeling kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much

thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold

of the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in

the shape of an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister's very peculiar

voice.

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a listener,

comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher spoke, might still have

been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed

passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human

heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through the church

walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intenseness, and sympathized so intimately,

that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its

indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been

only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low

undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it

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rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed

to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as

the voice sometimes became, there was for ever in it an essential character of

plaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish—the whisper, or the shriek, as it

might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom!

At times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard

sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high and

commanding—when it gushed irrepressibly upward—when it assumed its utmost

breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid

walls, and diffuse itself in the open air—still, if the auditor listened intently, and for

the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of a

human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or

sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,—at

every moment,—in each accent,—and never in vain! It was this profound and

continual undertone that gave the clergyman his most appropriate power.

During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the scaffold. If the

minister's voice had not kept her there, there would, nevertheless, have been an

inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of

ignominy. There was a sense within her—too ill-defined to be made a thought, but

weighing heavily on her mind—that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was

connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity.

Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was playing at her own will

about the market-place. She made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and

glistening ray, even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky

foliage by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the

clustering leaves. She had an undulating, but oftentimes a sharp and irregular

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movement. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly

indefatigable in its tip-toe dance, because it was played upon and vibrated with her

mother's disquietude. Whenever Pearl saw anything to excite her ever active and

wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man

or thing as her own property, so far as she desired it, but without yielding the minutest

degree of control over her motions in requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they

smiled, were none the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from

the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure,

and sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the face, and he

grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still

with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the

swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and they

gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the

shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath

the prow in the night-time.

One of these seafaring men the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to Hester Prynne

was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with

purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-

bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw

it to the child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist with such happy

skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine her

without it.

"Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the seaman, "Wilt thou

carry her a message from me?"

"If the message pleases me, I will," answered Pearl.

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"Then tell her," rejoined he, "that I spake again with the black-a-visaged, hump

shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of,

aboard with him. So let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt

thou tell her this, thou witch-baby?"

"Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" cried Pearl, with a naughty

smile. "If thou callest me that ill-name, I shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy

ship with a tempest!"

Pursuing a zigzag course across the marketplace, the child returned to her mother, and

communicated what the mariner had said. Hester's strong, calm steadfastly-enduring

spirit almost sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an

inevitable doom, which at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the

minister and herself out of their labyrinth of misery—showed itself with an

unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path.

With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster's

intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to another trial. There were many

people present from the country round about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter,

and to whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumours, but

who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after exhausting other

modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynne with rude and boorish

intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a

circuit of several yards. At that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the

centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole

gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport of

the scarlet letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the

ring. Even the Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's

curiosity and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on

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Hester's bosom, conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered

badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her people. Lastly, the

inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving

itself, by sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter,

and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well-

acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and recognized the selfsame faces

of that group of matrons, who had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door

seven years ago; all save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them,

whose burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to

fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and

excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time

since the first day she put it on.

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her

sentence seemed to have fixed her for ever, the admirable preacher was looking down

from the sacred pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his

control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in the

marketplace! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the

same scorching stigma was on them both!

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XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER

The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience had been borne aloft

as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. There was a

momentary silence, profound as what should follow the utterance of oracles. Then

ensued a murmur and half-hushed tumult, as if the auditors, released from the high

spell that had transported them into the region of another's mind, were returning into

themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment more the

crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that there was an end,

they needed more breath, more fit to support the gross and earthly life into which they

relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame,

and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought.

In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and the market-place

absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of the minister. His hearers

could not rest until they had told one another of what each knew better than he could

tell or hear.

According to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so

holy a spirit, as he that spake this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through

mortal lips more evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be seen, as it

were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and continually lifting him out of the

written discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been

as marvellous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it appeared, had been the

relation between the Deity and the communities of mankind, with a special reference

to the New England which they were here planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew

towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to its

purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were constrained, only with this

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difference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their

country, it was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly

gathered people of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse,

there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted

otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to pass away. Yes; their minister

whom they so loved—and who so loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward

without a sigh—had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would soon

leave them in their tears. This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last

emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as if an angel, in his

passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant—at

once a shadow and a splendour—and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon

them.

Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale—as to most men, in their

various spheres, though seldom recognised until they see it far behind them—an

epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any

which could hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of

superiority, to which the gifts or intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a

reputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days,

when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was the position

which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the

pulpit at the close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing

beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast!

Now was heard again the clamour of the music, and the measured tramp of the

military escort issuing from the church door. The procession was to be marshalled

thence to the town hall, where a solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of

the day.

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Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers were seen moving

through a broad pathway of the people, who drew back reverently, on either side, as

the Governor and magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that

were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When they were fairly

in the marketplace, their presence was greeted by a shout. This—though doubtless it

might acquire additional force and volume from the child-like loyalty which the age

awarded to its rulers—was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in

the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their ears.

Each felt the impulse in himself, and in the same breath, caught it from his neighbour.

Within the church, it had hardly been kept down; beneath the sky it pealed upward to

the zenith. There were human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought and

symphonious feeling to produce that more impressive sound than the organ tones of

the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mighty swell of many voices,

blended into one great voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise one vast

heart out of the many. Never, from the soil of New England had gone up such a shout!

Never, on New England soil had stood the man so honoured by his mortal brethren as

the preacher!

How fared it with him, then? Were there not the brilliant particles of a halo in the air

about his head? So etherealised by spirit as he was, and so apotheosised by

worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust

of earth?

As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes were turned

towards the point where the minister was seen to approach among them. The shout

died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of

him. How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph! The energy—or say, rather,

the inspiration which had held him up, until he should have delivered the sacred

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message that had brought its own strength along with it from heaven—was

withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully performed its office. The glow, which they

had just before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks

down hopelessly among the late decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man

alive, with such a death-like hue: it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on

his path so nervously, yet tottered, and did not fall!

One of his clerical brethren—it was the venerable John Wilson—observing the state

in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility,

stepped forward hastily to offer his support. The minister tremulously, but decidedly,

repelled the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if that movement could be so

described, which rather resembled the wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's

arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible as

were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well-remembered and

weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time

between, Hester Prynne had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood

Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand! And there was the scarlet letter on her breast!

The minister here made a pause; although the music still played the stately and

rejoicing march to which the procession moved. It summoned him onward—inward to

the festival!—but here he made a pause.

Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye upon him. He now left

his own place in the procession, and advanced to give assistance judging, from Mr.

Dimmesdale's aspect that he must otherwise inevitably fall. But there was something

in the latter's expression that warned back the magistrate, although a man not readily

obeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd,

meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness, was, in their view,

only another phase of the minister's celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a

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miracle too high to be wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes,

waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven!

He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.

"Hester," said he, "come hither! Come, my little Pearl!"

It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was something at once

tender and strangely triumphant in it. The child, with the bird-like motion, which was

one of her characteristics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. Hester

Prynne—slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongest will—

likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. At this instant old Roger

Chillingworth thrust himself through the crowd—or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and

evil was his look, he rose up out of some nether region—to snatch back his victim

from what he sought to do! Be that as it might, the old man rushed forward, and

caught the minister by the arm.

"Madman, hold! what is your purpose?" whispered he. "Wave back that woman! Cast

off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonour! I

can yet save you! Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?"

"Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late!" answered the minister, encountering his

eye, fearfully, but firmly. "Thy power is not what it was! With God's help, I shall

escape thee now!"

He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter.

"Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, "in the name of Him, so

terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what—for my

own heavy sin and miserable agony—I withheld myself from doing seven years ago,

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come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be

guided by the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man

is opposing it with all his might!—with all his own might, and the fiend's! Come,

Hester—come! Support me up yonder scaffold."

The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood more

immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so perplexed as to

the purport of what they saw—unable to receive the explanation which most readily

presented itself, or to imagine any other—that they remained silent and inactive

spectators of the judgement which Providence seemed about to work. They beheld the

minister, leaning on Hester's shoulder, and supported by her arm around him,

approach the scaffold, and ascend its steps; while still the little hand of the sin-born

child was clasped in his. Old Roger Chillingworth followed, as one intimately

connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and

well entitled, therefore to be present at its closing scene.

"Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he looking darkly at the clergyman,

"there was no one place so secret—no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst

have escaped me—save on this very scaffold!"

"Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither!" answered the minister.

Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester, with an expression of doubt and anxiety in his

eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that there was a feeble smile upon his lips.

"Is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed of in the forest?"

"I know not! I know not!" she hurriedly replied. "Better? Yea; so we may both die,

and little Pearl die with us!"

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"For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order," said the minister; "and God is merciful!

Let me now do the will which He hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am a

dying man. So let me make haste to take my shame upon me!"

Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of little Pearl's, the

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the dignified and venerable rulers; to the holy

ministers, who were his brethren; to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly

appalled yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep life-

matter—which, if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance likewise—was now

to be laid open to them. The sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon the

clergyman, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all the earth, to

put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eternal Justice.

"People of New England!" cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn,

and majestic—yet had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling

up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and woe—"ye, that have loved me!—ye, that

have deemed me holy!—behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last—at

last!—I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood, here, with

this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept

hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment, from grovelling down upon my face!

Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her

walk hath been—wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find

repose—it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance round about her.

But there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not

shuddered!"

It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder of his secret

undisclosed. But he fought back the bodily weakness—and, still more, the faintness of

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heart—that was striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and

stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and the children.

"It was on him!" he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so determined was he to

speak out the whole. "God's eye beheld it! The angels were for ever pointing at it!

(The Devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning

finger!) But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a

spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world!—and sad, because he missed his

heavenly kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you! He bids you look

again at Hester's scarlet letter! He tells you, that, with all its mysterious horror, it is

but the shadow of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red

stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! Stand any here

that question God's judgment on a sinner! Behold! Behold, a dreadful witness of it!"

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from before his breast. It

was revealed! But it were irreverent to describe that revelation. For an instant, the

gaze of the horror-stricken multitude was concentrated on the ghastly miracle; while

the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of

acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly

raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger Chillingworth knelt

down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have

departed.

"Thou hast escaped me!" he repeated more than once. "Thou hast escaped me!"

"May God forgive thee!" said the minister. "Thou, too, hast deeply sinned!"

He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on the woman and the

child.

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"My little Pearl," said he, feebly and there was a sweet and gentle smile over his face,

as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now that the burden was removed, it

seemed almost as if he would be sportive with the child—"dear little Pearl, wilt thou

kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt?"

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild

infant bore a part had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her

father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and

sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her

mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was fulfilled.

"Hester," said the clergyman, "farewell!"

"Shall we not meet again?" whispered she, bending her face down

close to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life together?

Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe!

Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes!

Then tell me what thou seest!"

"Hush, Hester—hush!" said he, with tremulous solemnity. "The law we broke!—the

sin here awfully revealed!—let these alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be,

that, when we forgot our God—when we violated our reverence each for the other's

soul—it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting

and pure reunion. God knows; and He is merciful! He hath proved his mercy, most of

all, in my afflictions. By giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! By

sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat! By

bringing me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people! Had

either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost for ever! Praised be His name!

His will be done! Farewell!"

247

That final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath. The multitude, silent

till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet

find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit.

248

XXIV. CONCLUSION

After many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange their thoughts in

reference to the foregoing scene, there was more than one account of what had been

witnessed on the scaffold.

Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister,

a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne—

imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin there were various explanations, all of

which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr.

Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge,

had begun a course of penance—which he afterwards, in so many futile methods,

followed out—by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the

stigma had not been produced until a long time subsequent, when old Roger

Chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the

agency of magic and poisonous drugs. Others, again and those best able to appreciate

the minister's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the

body—whispered their belief, that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever-active

tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting

Heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The reader may

choose among these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the

portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of

our own brain, where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.

It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole

scene, and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr.

Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a

new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor

249

even remotely implied, any—the slightest—connexion on his part, with the guilt for

which Hester Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these highly-

respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying—conscious, also, that

the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels—had

desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the

world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. After

exhausting life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of

his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful

lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was to teach

them, that the holiest amongst us has but attained so far above his fellows as to

discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the

phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a

truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale's

story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends—and

especially a clergyman's—will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as

the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained

creature of the dust.

The authority which we have chiefly followed—a manuscript of old date, drawn up

from the verbal testimony of individuals, some of whom had known Hester Prynne,

while others had heard the tale from contemporary witnesses fully confirms the view

taken in the foregoing pages. Among many morals which press upon us from the poor

minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence:—"Be true! Be true!

Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst

may be inferred!"

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately

after Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the appearance and demeanour of the old man

250

known as Roger Chillingworth. All his strength and energy—all his vital and

intellectual force—seemed at once to desert him, insomuch that he positively withered

up, shrivelled away and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that

lies wilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to

consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest

triumph consummation that evil principle was left with no further material to support

it—when, in short, there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only

remained for the unhumanised mortal to betake himself whither his master would find

him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But, to all these shadowy beings, so

long our near acquaintances—as well Roger Chillingworth as his companions we

would fain be merciful. It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether

hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development,

supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual

dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual fife upon another: each leaves

the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the

withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions

seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance,

and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In the spiritual world, the old physician and

the minister—mutual victims as they have been—may, unawares, have found their

earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love.

Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to communicate to the

reader. At old Roger Chillingworth's decease, (which took place within the year), and

by his last will and testament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr.

Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both

here and in England to little Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne.

251

So Pearl—the elf child—the demon offspring, as some people up to that epoch

persisted in considering her—became the richest heiress of her day in the New World.

Not improbably this circumstance wrought a very material change in the public

estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little Pearl at a marriageable

period of life might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest

Puritan among them all. But, in no long time after the physician's death, the wearer of

the scarlet letter disappeared, and Pearl along with her. For many years, though a

vague report would now and then find its way across the sea—like a shapeless piece

of driftwood tossed ashore with the initials of a name upon it—yet no tidings of them

unquestionably authentic were received. The story of the scarlet letter grew into a

legend. Its spell, however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor

minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore where Hester Prynne had

dwelt. Near this latter spot, one afternoon some children were at play, when they

beheld a tall woman in a gray robe approach the cottage-door. In all those years it had

never once been opened; but either she unlocked it or the decaying wood and iron

yielded to her hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments—and, at all

events, went in.

On the threshold she paused—turned partly round—for perchance the idea of entering

alone and all so changed, the home of so intense a former life, was more dreary and

desolate than even she could bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant, though

long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast.

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame! But where

was little Pearl? If still alive she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early

womanhood. None knew—nor ever learned with the fulness of perfect certainty—

whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild,

rich nature had been softened and subdued and made capable of a woman's gentle

252

happiness. But through the remainder of Hester's life there were indications that the

recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of

another land. Letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings

unknown to English heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury

such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased and

affection have imagined for her. There were trifles too, little ornaments, beautiful

tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate fingers

at the impulse of a fond heart. And once Hester was seen embroidering a baby-

garment with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public

tumult had any infant thus apparelled, been shown to our sober-hued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believed—and Mr. Surveyor Pue, who made

investigations a century later, believed—and one of his recent successors in office,

moreover, faithfully believes—that Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy,

and mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad

and lonely mother at her fireside.

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here, in New England, than in that

unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her

sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and

resumed—of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period

would have imposed it—resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale.

Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful,

and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a

stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of

something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too.

And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit

and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her

253

counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more

especially—in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged,

misplaced, or erring and sinful passion—or with the dreary burden of a heart

unyielded, because unvalued and unsought came to Hester's cottage, demanding why

they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them,

as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at some brighter

period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new

truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and

woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hester had vainly

imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since

recognised the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be

confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened

with a life-long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a

woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful, and wise; moreover, not through dusky

grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us

happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end.

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. And,

after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that

burial-ground beside which King's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old

and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no

right to mingle. Yet one tomb-stone served for both. All around, there were

monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate—as the

curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport—there

appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's

254

wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded

legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier

than the shadow:—

"ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES"

End of Project Gutenberg's The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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