The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Custom-House: INTRODUCTORY TO "THE SCARLET LETTER."

It is a little remarkable, that--though disinclined to talk
overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my
personal friends--an autobiographical impulse should twice in my
life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The
first time was three or four years since, when I favored the
reader--inexcusably, and for no earthly reason, that either the
indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine--with a
description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old
Manse. And now--because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to
find a listener or two on the former occasion--I again seize the
public by the button, and talk of my three years' experience in a
Custom-House. The example of the famous "P. P., Clerk of this
Parish," was never more faithfully followed. The truth seems to
be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind,
the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his
volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him,
better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors,
indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such
confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be
addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of
perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the
wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the
writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by
bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous,
however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But--as
thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker
stand in some true relation with his audience--it may be
pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive,
though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and
then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness,
we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of
ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this
extent and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be
autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or
his own.

It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has a
certain propriety, of a kind always recognized in literature, as
explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into
my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a
narrative therein contained. This, in fact,--a desire to put
myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the
most prolix among the tales that make up my volume,--this, and no
other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with
the public. In accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared
allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation
of a mode of life not heretofore described, together with some of
the characters that move in it, among whom the author happened to
make one.

In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century
ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf,--but
which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and
exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps,
a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging
hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out
her cargo of firewood,--at the head, I say, of this dilapidated
wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the
base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many
languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass,--here, with
a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening
prospect, and thence across the 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, beneath which a flight of wide granite
steps descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an
enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a
shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of
intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With
the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy
fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye and the
general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens,
careful of their safety, against intruding on the premises which
she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she
looks, many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter
themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I
presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an
eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her
best of moods, and, sooner or later,--oftener soon than late,--is
apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab
of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.

The pavement round about the above-described edifice--which we
may as well name at once as the Custom-House of the port--has
grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of
late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business. In
some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon
when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions
might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before the last
war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned,
as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit
her wharves to crumble to ruin, while their ventures go to swell,
needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New
York or Boston. On some such morning, when three or four vessels
happen to have arrived at once,--usually from Africa or South
America,--or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward,
there is a sound of frequent feet, passing briskly up and down
the granite steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted him, you
may greet the sea-flushed ship-master, just in port, with his
vessel's papers under his arm in a tarnished tin box. Here, too,
comes his owner, cheerful or sombre, gracious or in the sulks,
accordingly as his scheme of the now accomplished voyage has been
realized in merchandise that will readily be turned to gold, or
has buried him under a bulk of incommodities, such as nobody will
care to rid him of. Here, likewise,--the germ of the
wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded, 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 weather--a row of
venerable figures, sitting in old-fashioned chairs, which were
tipped on their hind legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they
were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, in
voices between speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy
that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses, and all other
human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on
monopolized labor, or any thing 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.

Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a
certain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty
height; with two of its arched windows commanding a view of the
aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a
narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three give
glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and
ship-chandlers; around the doors of which are generally to be
seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such
other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room
itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is
strewn with gray sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen
into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general
slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which
womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very
infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with
a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged stool
beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly
decrepit and infirm; and,--not to forget the library,--on some
shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a
bulky Digest of the Revenue Laws. A tin pipe ascends through the
ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other
parts of the edifice. And here, some six months ago,--pacing from
corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his
elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns
of the morning newspaper,--you might have recognized, honored
reader, the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery
little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through
the willow branches, on the western side of the Old Manse. But
now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain
for the Locofoco Surveyor. The besom of reform 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 affections, the force of which I have
never realized during my seasons of actual residence here.
Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its
flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few
or none of which pretend to architectural beauty,--its
irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only
tame,--its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the
whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea
at one end, and a view of the 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
checkerboard. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere,
there is within me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a
better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment
is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family
has struck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a
quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my
name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered
settlement, which has since become a city. And here his
descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their
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 name is
seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a soldier,
legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the
Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter
persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in
their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity
towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to
be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these
were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and
made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that
their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. So
deep a stain, indeed, that his old dry bones, in the Charter
Street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not
crumbled utterly to dust! I know not whether these ancestors of
mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of Heaven for
their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the heavy
consequences of them, in another state of being. At all events,
I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame
upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by
them--as I have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous
condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to
exist--may be now and henceforth removed.

Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed
Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for
his sins, that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of
the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have
borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim, that I
have ever cherished, would they recognize as laudable; no success
of mine--if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been
brightened by success--would they deem otherwise than worthless,
if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?" murmurs one gray
shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A writer of story-books!
What kind of a business in life,--what mode of glorifying God, or
being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation,--may that
be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a
fiddler!" Such are the compliments bandied between my
great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet,
let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature
have intertwined themselves with mine.

Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by
these two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since
subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as
I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom
or never, on the other hand, after the first two generations,
performing any memorable deed, or so much as putting forward a
claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of
sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get
covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation of new soil.
From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the
sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from
the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took
the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray
and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and grandsire.
The boy, also, in due time, passed from the forecastle to the
cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his
world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with
the natal earth. This long connection of a family with one spot,
as its place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the
human being and the locality, quite independent of any charm in
the scenery or moral circumstances that surround him. It is not
love, but instinct. The new inhabitant--who came himself from a
foreign land, or whose father or grandfather came--has little
claim to be called a Salemite; he has no conception of the
oyster-like tenacity with which an old settler, over whom his
third century is creeping, clings to the spot where his
successive generations have been imbedded. It is no matter that
the place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden
houses, the mud and dust, the dead level of site and sentiment,
the chill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres;--all
these, and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are
nothing to the purpose. The spell survives, and just as
powerfully as if the natal spot were an earthly paradise. So has
it been in my case. I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem
my home; so that the mould of features and cast of character
which had all along been familiar here--ever, as one
representative of the race lay down in his grave, another
assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the Main
Street--might still in my little day be seen and recognized in
the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is an evidence
that the connection, which has become an unhealthy one, should at
last be severed. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a
potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of
generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had
other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my
control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange,
indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town, that brought me
to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when I might as
well, or better, have gone somewhere else. My doom was on me. It
was not the first time, nor the second, that I had gone away,--as
it seemed, permanently,--but yet returned, like the bad
half-penny; or as if Salem were for me the inevitable centre of
the universe. So, one fine morning, I ascended the flight of
granite steps, with the President's commission in my pocket, and
was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my
weighty responsibility, as chief executive officer of the
Custom-House.

I doubt greatly--or rather, I do not doubt at all--whether any
public functionary of the United States, either in the civil or
military line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans
under his orders as myself. The whereabouts of the Oldest
Inhabitant was at once settled, when I looked at them. For
upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent
position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House out of
the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of
office generally so fragile. A soldier,--New England's most
distinguished soldier,--he stood firmly on the pedestal of his
gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of
the successive administrations through which he had held office,
he had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of
danger and heart-quake. General Miller was radically
conservative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight
influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, and with
difficulty moved to change, even when change might have brought
unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking charge of my
department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient
sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tost on every
sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous 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 labors, and soon
afterwards--as if their sole principle of life had been zeal for
their country's service; as I verily believe it was--withdrew to
a better world. It is a pious consolation to me, that, through my
interference, a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance
of the evil and corrupt practices, into which, as a matter of
course, every Custom-House officer must be supposed to fall.
Neither the front nor the back entrance of the Custom-House opens
on the road to Paradise.

The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for their
venerable brotherhood, that the new Surveyor was not a
politician, and, though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither
received nor held his office with any reference to political
services. Had it been otherwise,--had an active politician been
put into this influential post, to assume the easy task of making
head against a Whig Collector, whose infirmities withheld him
from the personal administration of his office,--hardly a man of
the old corps would have drawn the breath of official life,
within a month after the exterminating angel had come up the
Custom-House steps. According to the received code in such
matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a
politician, to bring every one of those white heads under the axe
of the guillotine. It was plain enough to discern, that the old
fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and
at the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that attended
my advent; to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a
century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an
individual as myself; to detect, as one or another addressed me,
the tremor of a voice, which, in long-past days, had been wont to
bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten
Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excellent old
persons, that, by all established rule,--and, as regarded some of
them, weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business,--they
ought to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in
politics, and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our
common Uncle. I knew it too, but could never quite find in my
heart to act upon the knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own
discredit, therefore, and considerably to the detriment of my
official conscience, they continued, during my incumbency, to
creep about the wharves, and loiter up and down the Custom-House
steps. They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their
accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back against the
wall; awaking, however, once or twice in a forenoon, to bore one
another with the several thousandth repetition of old
sea-stories, and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be pass-words
and countersigns among them.

The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had
no great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts, and the happy
consciousness of being usefully employed,--in their own behalf,
at least, if not for our beloved country,--these good old
gentlemen went through the various formalities of office.
Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds
of vessels! Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and
marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones
to slip between their fingers! Whenever such a mischance
occurred,--when a wagon-load of valuable merchandise had been
smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their
unsuspicious noses,--nothing could exceed the vigilance and
alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and
secure with tape and sealing-wax, all the avenues of the
delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous
negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on
their praiseworthy caution, after the mischief had happened; a
grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal, the moment
that there was no longer any remedy!

Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my
foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part of
my companion's character, if it have a better part, is that which
usually comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type whereby
I recognize the man. As most of these old Custom-House officers
had good traits, and as my position in reference to them, being
paternal and protective, was favorable to the growth of friendly
sentiments, I soon grew to like them all. It was pleasant, in the
summer forenoons,--when the fervent heat, that almost liquefied
the rest of the human family, merely communicated a genial warmth
to their half-torpid systems,--it was pleasant to hear them
chatting in the back entry, a row of them all tipped against the
wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of past generations
were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from their lips.
Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the
mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of
humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a
gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery
aspect alike to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In
one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more
resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to
represent all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the
first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were
men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and
energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent
mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then,
moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the
thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as
respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no
wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of
wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation
from their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung
away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had
enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully
to have stored their memories with the husks. They spoke with far
more interest and unction of their morning's breakfast, or
yesterday's, to-day's, or to-morrow's dinner, than of the
shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world's
wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.

The father of the Custom-House--the patriarch, not only of this
little squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the
respectable body of tide-waiters all over the United States--was
a certain permanent Inspector. He might truly be termed a
legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or
rather, born in the purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary
colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had created an
office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period of the
early ages which few living men can now remember. This Inspector,
when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or
thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of
winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's
search. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly
arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous
step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether, he seemed--not
young, indeed--but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in
the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to
touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through
the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle
of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs,
like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at
him merely as an animal,--and there was very little else to look
at,--he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough
healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity,
at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights
which he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The careless
security of his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income,
and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had
no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The
original and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare
perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of
intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual
ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely
enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on
all-fours. He possessed no power of thought, no depth of feeling,
no troublesome sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few
common-place instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper that
grew inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very
respectably, and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He
had been the husband of three wives, all long since dead; the
father of twenty children, most of whom, at every age of
childhood or maturity, had likewise returned to dust. Here, one
would suppose, might have been sorrow enough to imbue the
sunniest disposition, through and through, with a sable tinge.
Not so with our old Inspector! One brief sigh sufficed to carry
off the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences. The next
moment, he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant; far
readier than the Collector's junior clerk, who, at nineteen years
was much the elder and graver man of the two.

I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I
think, livelier curiosity than any other form of humanity there
presented to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so
perfect in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so
impalpable, such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My
conclusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing,
as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so
cunningly had the few materials of his character been put
together, that there was no painful perception of deficiency,
but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I found in him.
It might be difficult--and it was so--to conceive how he should
exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely
his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his
last breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral
responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger
scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed
immunity from the dreariness and duskiness of age.

One point, in which he had vastly the advantage over his
four-footed brethren, was his ability to recollect the good
dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of
his life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait;
and to hear him talk of roast-meat was as appetizing as a pickle
or an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither
sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all
his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit
of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him
expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's meat, and the most
eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His
reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the
actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under
one's very nostrils. There were flavors on his palate, that had
lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were
still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had
just devoured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips
over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been
food for worms. It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of
bygone meals were continually rising up before him; not in anger
or retribution, but as if grateful for his former appreciation,
and seeking to 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 carcass; and it could only be
divided with an axe and handsaw.

But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I should
be glad to dwell at considerably more length, because, of all men
whom I have ever known, this individual was fittest to be a
Custom-House officer. Most persons, owing to causes which I may
not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this
peculiar mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable of it,
and, were he to continue in office to the end of time, would be
just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just as
good an appetite.

There is one likeness, without which my gallery of Custom-House
portraits would be strangely incomplete; but which my
comparatively few opportunities for observation enable me to
sketch only in the merest outline. It is that of the Collector,
our gallant old General, who, after his brilliant military
service, subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild Western
territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the
decline of his varied and honorable life. The brave soldier had
already numbered, nearly or quite, his threescore years and ten,
and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march, burdened
with infirmities which even the martial music of his own
spirit-stirring recollections could do little towards lightening.
The step was palsied now, that had been foremost in the charge.
It was only with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his
hand heavily on the iron balustrade, that he could slowly and
painfully ascend the Custom-House steps, and, with a toilsome
progress across the floor, attain his customary chair beside the
fireplace. There he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim
serenity of aspect at the figures that came and went; amid the
rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, the discussion of
business, and the casual talk of the office; all which sounds and
circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress his senses, and
hardly to make their way into his inner sphere of contemplation.
His countenance, in this repose, was mild and kindly. If his
notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed
out upon his features; proving that there was light within him,
and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp
that obstructed the rays in their passage. The closer you
penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared.
When no longer called upon to speak, or listen, either of which
operations cost him an evident effort, his face would briefly
subside into its former not uncheerful quietude. It was not
painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the
imbecility of decaying age. The framework of his nature,
originally strong and massive, was not yet crumbled into ruin.

To observe and define his character, however, under such
disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out and build
up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from
a view of its gray and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance,
the walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a
shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown,
through long years of peace and neglect, with grass and alien
weeds.

Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection,--for,
slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards
him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might
not improperly be termed so,--I could discern the main points of
his portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic qualities
which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right,
that he had won a distinguished name. His spirit could never, I
conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity; it must,
at any period of his life, have required an impulse to set him in
motion; but, once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome, and an
adequate object to be attained, it was not in the man to give out
or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded his nature, and
which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and
flickers in a blaze, but, rather, a deep, red glow, as of iron in
a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness; this was the expression of
his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him, at
the period of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then,
that, under some excitement which should go deeply into his
consciousness,--roused by a trumpet-peal, loud enough to awaken
all 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--were the features of stubborn and
ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy
in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other
endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy mass, and was just as
unmalleable 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 charge to which his spirit
imparted its triumphant energy;--but, be that as it might, there
was never in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the
down off a butterfly's wing. I have not known the man, to whose
innate kindliness I would more confidently make an appeal.

Many characteristics--and those, too, which contribute not the
least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch--must have
vanished, or been obscured, before I met the General. All merely
graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does
Nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that
have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and
crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined
fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and
beauty, there were points well worth noting. A ray of humor, now
and then, would make its way through the veil of dim obstruction,
and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of native
elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood
or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness for the sight
and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier might be supposed to
prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one, who
seemed to have a young girl's appreciation of the floral tribe.

There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit;
while the Surveyor--though seldom, when it could be avoided,
taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in
conversation--was fond of standing at a distance, and watching
his quiet and almost slumberous countenance. He seemed away from
us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though we
passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though we might have
stretched forth our hands and touched his own. It might be, that
he lived a more real life within his thoughts, than amid the
unappropriate environment of the Collector's office. The
evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the battle; the flourish
of old, heroic music, heard thirty years before;--such scenes and
sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense.
Meanwhile, the merchants and ship-masters, the spruce clerks, and
uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of this
commercial and Custom-House life kept up its little murmur round
about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the
General appear to sustain the most distant relation. He was as
much out of place as an old sword--now rusty, but which had
flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still a bright
gleam along its blade--would have been, among the inkstands,
paper-folders, and mahogany rulers, on the Deputy Collector's
desk.

There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and
re-creating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier,--the
man of true and simple energy. It was the recollection of those
memorable words of his,--"I'll try, Sir!"--spoken on the very
verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the
soul and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending all
perils, and encountering all. If, in our country, valor were
rewarded by heraldic honor, this phrase--which it seems so easy
to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger and glory
before him, has ever spoken--would be the best and fittest of all
mottoes for the General's shield of arms.

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual
health, to be brought into habits of companionship with
individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and
whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to
appreciate. The accidents of my life have often afforded me this
advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my
continuance in office. There was one man, especially, the
observation of whose character gave me a new idea of talent. His
gifts were emphatically those of a man of business; prompt,
acute, clear-minded; with an eye that saw through all
perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish,
as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood in
the Custom-House, it was his proper field of activity; and the
many intricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper,
presented themselves before him with the regularity of a
perfectly comprehended system. In my contemplation, he stood as
the ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House in
himself; or, at all events, the main-spring that kept its
variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like
this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own
profit and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to
their fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce
seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus, by an
inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did
our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which
everybody met with. With an easy condescension, and kind
forbearance towards our stupidity,--which, to his order of mind,
must have seemed little short of crime,--would he forthwith, by
the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as
clear as daylight. The merchants valued him not less than we, his
esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect; it was a law of
nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it
be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect so
remarkably clear and accurate as his, to be honest and regular in
the administration of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to
any thing 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 subtile influence of an
intellect like Emerson's; after those wild, free days on the
Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations beside our fire of
fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau
about pine-trees and Indian relics, in his hermitage at Walden;
after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement
of Hillard's culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment
at Longfellow's hearth-stone;--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, a change
would come.

Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue, and, so far as
I have been able to understand, as good a Surveyor as need be. A
man of thought, fancy, and sensibility, (had he ten times the
Surveyor's proportion of those qualities,) may, at any time, be a
man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the
trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains
with whom my official duties brought me into any manner of
connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in
no other character. None of them, I presume, had ever read a page
of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the more for me if they
had read them all; nor would it have mended the matter, in the
least, had those same unprofitable pages been written with a pen
like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom was a Custom-House
officer in his day, as well as I. It is a good lesson--though it
may often be a hard one--for a man who has dreamed of literary
fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's
dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle
in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly
devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he
achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that I especially needed
the lesson, either in the way of warning or rebuke; but, at any
rate, I learned it thoroughly; nor, it gives me pleasure to
reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my perception, ever
cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. In the way
of literary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer--an excellent
fellow, who came into office with me, and went out only a little
later--would often engage me in a discussion about one or the
other of his favorite topics, Napoleon or Shakespeare. The
Collector's junior clerk, too,--a young gentleman who, it was
whispered, occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's
letter-paper with what (at the distance of a few yards,) looked
very much like poetry,--used now and then to speak to me of
books, as matters with which I might possibly be conversant. This
was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite sufficient
for my necessities.

No longer seeking nor caring that my name should be blazoned
abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it had now another
kind of vogue. The Custom-House marker imprinted it, with a
stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto,
and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise,
in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone
regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle of
fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it,
was carried where it had never been before, and, I hope, will
never go again.

But the past was not dead. Once in a great while, the thoughts,
that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had been put to rest
so quietly, revived again. One of the most remarkable occasions,
when the habit of bygone days awoke in me, was that which brings
it within the law of literary propriety to offer the public the
sketch which I am now writing.

In the second story of the Custom-House, there is a large room,
in which the brick-work and naked rafters have never been covered
with panelling and plaster. The edifice--originally projected on
a scale adapted to the old commercial enterprise of the port, and
with an idea of subsequent prosperity destined never to be
realized--contains far more space than its occupants know what to
do with. This airy hall, therefore, over the Collector's
apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite of the
aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await
the labor of the carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in
a recess, were a number of barrels, piled one upon another,
containing bundles of official documents. Large quantities of
similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to
think how many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil,
had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an
encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten
corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes. But, then,
what reams of other manuscripts--filled, not with the dulness of
official formalities, but with the thought of inventive brains
and the rich effusion of deep hearts--had gone equally to
oblivion; and that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their
day, as these heaped-up papers had, and--saddest of all--without
purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which the
clerks of the Custom-House had gained by these worthless
scratchings of the pen! Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps, as
materials of local history. Here, no doubt, statistics of the
former commerce of Salem might be discovered, and memorials of
her princely merchants,--old King Derby,--old Billy Gray,--old
Simon Forrester,--and many another magnate in his day; whose
powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his
mountain-pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of the
greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy of
Salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings
of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to the
Revolution, upward to what their children look upon as
long-established rank.

Prior to the Revolution, there is a dearth of records; the
earlier documents and archives of the Custom-House having,
probably, been carried off to Halifax, when all the King's
officials accompanied the British army in its flight from Boston.
It has often been a matter of regret with me; for, going back,
perhaps, to the days of the Protectorate, those papers must have
contained many references to forgotten or remembered men, and to
antique customs, which would have affected me with the same
pleasure as when I used to pick up Indian arrow-heads in the
field near the Old Manse.

But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a
discovery of some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the
heaped-up rubbish in the corner; unfolding one and another
document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago
foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of
merchants, never heard of now on 'Change, nor very readily
decipherable on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters
with the saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow
on the corpse of dead activity,--and exerting my fancy, sluggish
with little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of the
old town's brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and only
Salem knew the way thither,--I chanced to lay my hand on a small
package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow
parchment. This envelope had the air of an official record of
some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and
formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present.
There was something about it that quickened an instinctive
curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape, that tied up the
package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to
light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found
it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor
Shirley, in favor of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of his
Majesty's Customs for the port of Salem, in the Province of
Massachusetts Bay. I 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
grave-yard of St. Peter's Church, during the renewal of that
edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my
respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some
fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle; which,
unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory
preservation. But, on examining the papers which the parchment
commission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue's
mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the
frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.

They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private
nature, or, at least, written in his private capacity, and
apparently with his own hand. I could account for their being
included in the heap of Custom-House lumber only by the fact,
that Mr. Pue's death had happened suddenly; and that these
papers, which he probably kept in his official desk, had never
come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate to
the business of the revenue. On the transfer of the archives to
Halifax, this package, proving to be of no public concern, was
left behind, and had remained ever since unopened.

The ancient Surveyor--being little molested, I suppose, at that
early day, with business pertaining to his office--seems to have
devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local
antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature. These
supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would
otherwise have been eaten up with rust.

A portion of his facts, by the by, did me good service in the
preparation of the article entitled "MAIN STREET," included in
the present volume. The remainder may perhaps be applied to
purposes equally valuable, hereafter, or not impossibly may be
worked up, so far as they go, into a regular history of Salem,
should my veneration for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious
a task. Meanwhile, they shall be at the command of any gentleman,
inclined, and competent, to take the unprofitable labor off my
hands. As a final disposition, I contemplate depositing them with
the Essex Historical Society.

But the object that most drew my attention, in the mysterious
package, was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and
faded. There were traces about it of gold embroidery, which,
however, was greatly frayed and defaced; so that none, or very
little, of the glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy
to perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch
(as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives
evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be recovered even by the
process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet
cloth,--for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth, had reduced
it to little other than a rag,--on careful examination, assumed
the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By an
accurate measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three
inches and a quarter in length. It had been intended, there could
be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to
be worn, or what rank, honor, and dignity, in by-past times, were
signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the
fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope of
solving. And yet it strangely interested me. My eyes fastened
themselves upon the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned
aside. Certainly, there was some deep meaning in it, most worthy
of interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from the
mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities,
but evading the analysis of my mind.

While thus perplexed,--and cogitating, among other hypotheses,
whether the letter might not have been one of those decorations
which the white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes of
Indians,--I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to
me,--the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word,--it seemed
to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether
physical, yet almost so, 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 a period between the early
days of Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth century.
Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from
whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered
her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a
stately and solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an almost
immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of voluntary
nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good she might; taking
upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters, especially
those of the heart; by which means, as a person of such
propensities inevitably must, she gained from many people the
reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine, was looked upon
by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying farther into the
manuscript, I found the record of other doings and sufferings of
this singular woman, for most of which the reader is referred to
the story entitled "THE SCARLET LETTER"; and it should be borne
carefully in mind, that the main facts of that story are
authorized and authenticated by the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue.
The original papers, together with the scarlet letter itself,--a
most curious relic,--are still in my possession, and shall be
freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest of
the narrative, may desire a sight of them. I must not be
understood as affirming, that, in the dressing up of the tale,
and imagining the motives and modes of passion that influenced
the characters who figure in it, I have invariably confined
myself within the limits of the old Surveyor's half a dozen
sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have allowed myself, as to
such points, nearly or altogether as much license as if the facts
had been entirely of my own invention. What I contend for is the
authenticity of the outline.

This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track.
There seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale. It impressed me
as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone
by, and wearing his immortal wig,--which was buried with him, but
did not perish in the grave,--had met me in the deserted chamber
of the Custom-House. In his port was the dignity of one who had
borne his Majesty's commission, and who was therefore illuminated
by a ray of the splendor that shone so dazzlingly about the
throne. How unlike, alas! the hang-dog look of a republican
official, who, as the servant of the people, feels himself less
than the least, and below the lowest, of his masters. With his
own ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but majestic, figure had
imparted to me the scarlet symbol, and the little roll of
explanatory manuscript. With his own ghostly voice, he had
exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and
reverence towards him,--who might reasonably regard himself as my
official ancestor,--to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten
lucubrations before the public. "Do this," said the ghost of Mr.
Surveyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head that looked so
imposing within its memorable wig, "do this, and the profit shall
be all your own! You will shortly need it; for it is not in your
days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease, and
oftentimes an heirloom. But, I charge you, in this matter of old
Mistress Prynne, give to your predecessor's memory the credit
which will be rightfully its 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 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 spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem to lose
their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing
is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire
dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little
wicker carriage; the hobby-horse;--whatever, in a word, has been
used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a
quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as
vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our
familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between
the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary
may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.
Ghosts might enter here, without affrighting us. It would be too
much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to
look about us and discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now
sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an
aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from
afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside.

The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence in
producing the effect which I would describe. It throws its
unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness
upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam from the polish
of the furniture. This warmer light mingles itself with the cold
spirituality of the moonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a
heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which
fancy summons up. It converts them from snow-images into men and
women. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold--deep within its
haunted verge--the smouldering glow of the half-extinguished
anthracite, the white moonbeams on the floor, and a repetition of
all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one remove farther
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 fire-light, were just
alike in my regard; and neither of them was of one whit more
avail than the twinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire class of
susceptibilities, and a gift connected with them,--of no great
richness or value, but the best I had,--was gone from me.

It is my belief, however, that, had I attempted a different order
of composition, my faculties would not have been found so
pointless and inefficacious. I might, for instance, have
contented myself with writing out the narratives of a veteran
shipmaster, one of the Inspectors, whom I should be most
ungrateful not to mention; since scarcely a day passed that he
did not stir me to laughter and admiration by his marvellous
gifts as a story-teller. Could I have preserved the picturesque
force of his style, and the humorous coloring which nature taught
him how to throw over his descriptions, the result, I honestly
believe, would have been something new in literature. Or I might
readily have found a more serious task. It was a folly, with the
materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me,
to attempt to fling myself back into another age; or to insist on
creating the semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at
every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken
by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort
would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the
opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright
transparency; to spiritualize the burden that began to weigh so
heavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value
that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents, and
ordinary characters, with which I was now conversant. The fault
was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me seemed
dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper
import. A better book than I shall ever write was there; leaf
after leaf presenting itself to me, just as it was written out by
the reality of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as
written, only because my brain wanted the insight and my hand the
cunning to transcribe it. At some future day, it may be, I shall
remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and
write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page.

These perceptions have come too late. At the instant, I was only
conscious that what would have been a pleasure once was now a
hopeless toil. There was no occasion to make much moan about this
state of affairs. I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor
tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the
Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is any thing but
agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is
dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like
ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a
smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact, there could be
no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was led to
conclusions in reference to the effect of public office on the
character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In
some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects.
Suffice it here to say that a Custom-House officer, of long
continuance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable
personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he
holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his
business, which--though, I trust, an honest one--is of such a
sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind.

An effect--which I believe to be observable, more or less, in
every individual who has occupied the position--is, that, while
he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper
strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to
the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of
self-support. If he 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 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 any thing 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 was my chief trouble,
therefore, that I was likely to grow gray and decrepit in the
Surveyorship, and become much such another animal as the old
Inspector. Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life
that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with this
venerable friend,--to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the
day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep
in the sunshine or 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
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 an idea of
committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with
the good hap to be murdered. In the Custom-House, as before in
the Old Manse, I had spent three years; a term long enough to
rest a weary brain; long enough to break off old intellectual
habits, and make room for new ones; long enough, and too long, to
have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was really of no
advantage nor delight to any human being, and withholding myself
from toil that would, at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse
in me. Then, moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment,
the late Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be recognized
by the Whigs as an enemy; since his inactivity in political
affairs,--his tendency to roam, at will, in that broad and quiet
field where all mankind may meet, rather than confine himself to
those narrow paths where brethren of the same household must
diverge from one another,--had sometimes made it questionable
with his brother Democrats whether he was a friend. Now, after he
had won the crown of martyrdom, (though with no longer a head to
wear it on,) the point might be looked upon as settled. Finally,
little heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous to be overthrown
in the downfall of the party with which he had been content to
stand, than to remain a forlorn survivor, when so many worthier
men were falling; and, at last, after subsisting for four years
on the mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled then to
define his position anew, and claim the yet more humiliating
mercy of a friendly one.

Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept me, for a
week or two, careering through the public prints, in my
decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman; ghastly and
grim, and longing to be buried, as a 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 every thing was for the best; and,
making an investment in ink, paper, and steel-pens, had opened
his long-disused writing-desk, and was again a literary man.

Now it was, that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor, Mr.
Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty through long idleness, some
little space was requisite before my intellectual machinery could
be brought to work upon the tale, with an effect in any degree
satisfactory. Even yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much
absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a stern and sombre
aspect; too much ungladdened by genial sunshine; too little
relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften
almost every scene of nature and real life, and, undoubtedly,
should soften every picture of them. This uncaptivating effect is
perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished revolution, and
still seething turmoil, in which the story shaped itself. It is
no indication, however, of a lack of cheerfulness in the writer's
mind; for he was happier, while straying through the gloom of
these sunless fantasies, than at any time since he had quitted
the Old Manse. Some of the briefer articles, which contribute to
make up the volume, have likewise been written since my
involuntary withdrawal from the toils and honors of public life,
and the remainder are gleaned from annuals and magazines, of such
antique date that they have gone round the circle, and come back
to novelty again. * 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!

*"At the time of writing this article, the author intended to
publish, along with The Scarlet Letter, several shorter tales and
sketches. These it has been thought advisable to defer."
[Author's note]

The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind me. The old
Inspector,--who, by the by, I regret to say, was overthrown and
killed by a horse, some time ago; else he would certainly have
lived 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 ever. The
merchants,--Pingree, Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram,
Hunt,--these, and many other names, which had such a classic
familiarity for my ear six months ago,--these men of traffic, who
seemed to occupy so important a position in the world,--how
little time has it required to disconnect me from them all, not
merely in act, but recollection! It is with an effort that I
recall the figures and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise,
my old native town will loom upon me through the haze of memory,
a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of
the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only
imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses, and walk its
homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street.
Henceforth, it ceases to be a reality of my life. I am a citizen
of somewhere else. My good 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,--O, transporting and triumphant
thought!--that the great-grandchildren of the present race may
sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days, when the
antiquary of days to come, among the sites memorable in the
town's history, shall point out the locality of THE TOWN-PUMP!

Chapter 1

The Prison-Door

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray,
steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods,
and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden
edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and
studded with iron spikes.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and
happiness they might originally project, have invariably
recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot
a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion
as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may
safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the
first prison-house, somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost
as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on
Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which
subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres
in the old church-yard 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 any thing
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-peru, and such
unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial
in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized
society, a prison. But, on one side of the portal, and rooted
almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this
month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to
offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he
went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his
doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be
kind to him.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in
history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old
wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks
that originally overshadowed it,--or whether, as there is fair
authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of
the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,--we
shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on
the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from
that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck
one of its flowers and present it to the reader. It may serve,
let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be
found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale
of human frailty and sorrow.

Chapter 2

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
fire-water had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven
with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too,
that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered
widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either
case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the
part of the spectators; as befitted a people amongst whom
religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character
both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest
acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful.
Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor
might look for, from such bystanders at the scaffold. On the
other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of
mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost
as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.

It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morning when our
story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were
several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in
whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had
not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained
the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into
the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if
occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an
execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser
fibre in those wives and maidens of old English birth and
breeding, than in their fair descendants, separated from them by
a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain
of ancestry, every successive mother has transmitted to her child
a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a
slighter physical frame, if not a character of less force and
solidity, than her own. The women, who were now standing about
the prison-door, stood within less than half a century of the
period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether
unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen;
and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not
a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The
bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and
well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had
ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or
thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a
boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of
them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day,
whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.

"Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I'll tell ye a
piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof, if
we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute,
should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester
Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for
judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together,
would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful
magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not!"

"People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale,
her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a
scandal should have come upon his congregation."

"The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful
overmuch,--that is a truth," added a third autumnal matron. "At
the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on
Hester Prynne's forehead. 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 no law for it? Truly there is,
both in the Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the
magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if
their own wives and daughters go astray!"

"Mercy on us, goodwife," exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there
no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of
the gallows? That is the hardest word yet! Hush, now, gossips;
for the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes
Mistress Prynne herself."

The door of the jail being flung open from within, there
appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into
sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a
sword by his side and his staff of office in his hand. This
personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole
dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his
business to administer in its final and closest application to
the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left
hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom
he thus drew forward until, on the threshold of the prison-door,
she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and
force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her
own free-will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three
months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the
too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had
brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon,
or other darksome apartment of the prison.

When the young woman--the mother of this child--stood fully
revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to
clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse
of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a
certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a
moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would
but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm,
and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance
that would not be abashed, looked around at her 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
splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly
beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the
colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance, on a
large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it
threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides
being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of
complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and
deep black eyes. She was lady-like, too, after the manner of the
feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain
state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and
indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication.
And never had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like, in the
antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the
prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to
behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were
astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone
out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she
was enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer,
there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which,
indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had
modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude
of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its
wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all
eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,--so that both men
and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne,
were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time,--was
that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated
upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of
the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a
sphere by herself.

"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one
of the female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this
brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it! Why, gossips,
what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates,
and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a
punishment?"

"It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames,
"if we stripped Madam Hester's rich gown off her dainty
shoulders; and as for the red letter, which she hath stitched so
curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to
make a fitter one!"

"O, peace, 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, Madam Hester, and show
your scarlet letter in the market-place!"

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators.
Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession
of stern-browed men and unkindly-visaged women, Hester Prynne set
forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of
eager and curious 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.

In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine,
which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely
historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old
time, to be as effectual an agent in the promotion of good
citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of
France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above
it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so
fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and
thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy
was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and
iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common
nature,--whatever be the delinquencies of the individual,--no
outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face
for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In
Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other
cases, her sentence bore, that she should stand a certain time
upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the
neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the
most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well
her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus
displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a
man's shoulders above the street.

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might
have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire
and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind
him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious
painters have vied with one another to represent; something which
should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred
image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the
world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most
sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world
was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost
for the infant that she had borne.

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always
invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature,
before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead
of shuddering, at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace
had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern
enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence,
without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the
heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a
theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there
been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have
been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no
less dignified than the Governor, and several of his counsellors,
a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town; all of whom
sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon
the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of the
spectacle, without risking the majesty or reverence of rank and
office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a
legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning.
Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit
sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight
of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and
concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne.
Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself
to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely,
wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a
quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular
mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid
countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the
object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude,--each
man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing
their individual parts,--Hester Prynne might have repaid them all
with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden
infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments,
as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs,
and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else
go mad at once.

Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was
the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or,
at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of
imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially
her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up
other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on
the edge of the Western wilderness; other faces than were
lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned
hats. Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages
of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the
little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back
upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest
in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as
another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a
play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to
relieve itself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms,
from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.

Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of
view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which
she had been treading, since her happy infancy. Standing on that
miserable eminence, she saw again her native village, in Old
England, and her paternal home; a decayed house of gray stone,
with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half-obliterated
shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility.
She saw her father's face, with its 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 fancy failed
not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a
trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her, in memory's
picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the
tall, gray houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices,
ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a Continental
city; where a new life had awaited her, still in connection with
the misshapen scholar; a new life, but feeding itself on
time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling
wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the
rude market-place of the Puritan settlement, with all the
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!

Chapter 3

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
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 certain learned man, English by birth, but who
had long dwelt in Amsterdam, whence, some good time agone, he was
minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the
Massachusetts. To this purpose, he sent his wife before him,
remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs. Marry,
good Sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman has been a
dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned
gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being
left to her own misguidance----"

"Ah!--aha!--I conceive you," said the stranger with a bitter
smile. "So learned a man as you speak of should have learned this
too in his books. And who, by your favor, Sir, may be the father
of yonder babe--it is some three or four months old, I should
judge--which Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?"

"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the
Daniel who shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the
townsman. "Madam Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the
magistrates have laid their heads together in vain. Peradventure
the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown
of man, and forgetting that God sees him."

"The learned man," observed the stranger, with another smile,
"should come himself to look into the mystery."

"It behooves him well, if he be still in life," responded the
townsman. "Now, good Sir, our Massachusetts magistracy,
bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and
doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall;--and that, moreover,
as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the
sea;--they have not been bold to put in force the extremity of
our righteous law against her. The penalty thereof is death. But,
in their great mercy and tenderness of heart, they have doomed
Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the
platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the
remainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon her
bosom."

"A wise sentence!" remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his
head. "Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the
ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me,
nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not, at
least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be
known!--he will be known!--he will be known!"

He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and,
whispering a few words to his Indian attendant, they both made
their way through the crowd.

While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her
pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger; so fixed
a gaze, that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects
in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her.
Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than
even to meet him as she now did, with the hot, midday sun burning
down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; with the scarlet
token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her
arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as to a festival, staring
at the features that should have been seen only in the quiet
gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home, or beneath
a matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it was, she was conscious
of a shelter in the presence of these thousand witnesses. It was
better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him and her, than to
greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled for refuge, as
it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its
protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in these
thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her until it had
repeated her name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone,
audible to the whole multitude.

"Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!" said the voice.

It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform on
which Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery,
appended to the meeting-house. It was the place whence
proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the
magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public
observances in those days. Here, to witness the scene which we
are describing, sat Governor Bellingham himself, with four
sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honor.
He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of embroidery on his
cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a gentleman advanced in
years, and 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 he less capable of sitting in judgment on an
erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and
evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne
now turned her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever
sympathy she might expect lay in the larger and warmer heart of
the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony,
the unhappy woman grew pale and trembled.

The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend
and famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a great
scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and
withal a man of kind and genial spirit. This last attribute,
however, had been less carefully developed than his intellectual
gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than
self-congratulation with him. There he stood, with a border of
grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while his gray eyes,
accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking, like
those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He
looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed
to old volumes of sermons; and had no more right than one of
those portraits would have, to step forth, as he now did, and
meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish.

"Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, "I have striven with my
young brother here, under whose preaching of the word you have
been privileged to sit,"--here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the
shoulder of a pale young man beside him,--"I have sought, I say,
to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here
in the face of Heaven, and before these wise and upright rulers,
and in hearing of all the people, as touching the vileness and
blackness of your sin. Knowing your natural temper better than I,
he could the better judge what arguments to use, whether of
tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your hardness
and obstinacy; insomuch that you should no longer hide the name
of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. But he opposes to
me, (with a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond his
years,) that it were wronging the very nature of woman to force
her to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and
in presence of so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to
convince him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not
in the showing of it forth. What say you to it, once again,
brother Dimmesdale? Must it be thou or I that shall deal with
this poor sinner's soul?"

There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of
the balcony; and Governor Bellingham gave expression to its
purport, speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered
with respect towards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed.

"Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of this
woman's soul lies greatly with you. It behooves you, therefore,
to exhort her to repentance, and to confession, as a proof and
consequence thereof."

The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd
upon the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale; a young clergyman, who had come
from one of the great English universities, bringing all the
learning of the age into our wild forest-land. His eloquence and
religious fervor had already given the earnest of high eminence
in his profession. He was a person of very striking aspect, with
a white, lofty, and impending brow, large, brown, melancholy
eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it,
was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and
a vast power of self-restraint. Notwithstanding his high native
gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this
young minister,--an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened
look,--as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss
in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in
some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would
permit, he trode in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself
simple and childlike; coming forth, when occasion was, with a
freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as
many people said, affected them like the speech of an angel.

Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the
Governor had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding
him speak, in the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a
woman's soul, so sacred even in its pollution. The trying nature
of his position drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips
tremulous.

"Speak to the woman, my brother," said Mr. Wilson. "It is of
moment to her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful Governor
says, momentous to thine own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her
to confess the truth!"

The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, in silent prayer, as
it seemed, and then came forward.

"Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony, and looking
down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good man
says, and seest the accountability under which I labor. If thou
feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly
punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I
charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and
fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and
tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to
step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy
pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty
heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it
tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin?
Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou
mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee, and
the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him--who,
perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself--the
bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!"

The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and
broken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than
the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all
hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy.
Even the poor baby, at Hester's bosom, was affected by the same
influence; for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr.
Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms, with a half pleased,
half plaintive murmur. So powerful seemed the minister's appeal,
that the people could not believe but that Hester Prynne would
speak out the guilty name; or else that the guilty one himself,
in whatever high or lowly place he stood, would be drawn forth by
an inward and inevitable necessity, and compelled to ascend the
scaffold.

Hester shook her head.

"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!"
cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before. "That
little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm
the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and
thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy
breast."

"Never!" replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but
into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is
too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might
endure his agony, as well as mine!"

"Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly,
proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold. "Speak; and give
your child a father!"

"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death, but
responding to this voice, which she too surely recognized. "And
my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an
earthly one!"

"She will not speak!" murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over
the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result
of his appeal. He now drew back, with a long respiration.
"Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! She will
not speak!"

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind,
the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the
occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all
its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious
letter. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour
or more during which his periods were rolling over the people's
heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and
seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal
pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal
of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. She
had borne, that morning, all that nature could endure; and as her
temperament was not of the order that escapes from too intense
suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself
beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of
animal life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the
preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her
ears. The infant, during the latter portion of her ordeal,
pierced the air with its wailings and screams; she strove to hush
it, mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathize with its
trouble. With the same hard 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.

Chapter 4

The Interview

After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in
a state of nervous excitement that demanded constant
watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or
do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. As night
approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by
rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer,
thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a man
of skill in all Christian modes of physical science, and likewise
familiar with whatever the savage people could teach, in respect
to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. To say the
truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely
for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child; who,
drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have
drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish, and despair, which
pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of
pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral
agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared
that individual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowd
had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet
letter. He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any
offence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode of
disposing of him, until the magistrates should have conferred
with the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was
announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him
into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative
quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had
immediately become as still as death, although the child
continued to moan.

"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the
practitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have
peace in your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall
hereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may have
found her heretofore."

"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master
Brackett, "I shall own you for a man of skill indeed! Verily, the
woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little,
that I should take in hand to drive Satan out of her with
stripes."

The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic
quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as
belonging. Nor did his 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
certain medical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup
of water.

"My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for
above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly
properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than
many that claim the medical degree. Here, woman! The child is
yours,--she is none of mine,--neither will she recognize my voice
or aspect as a father's. Administer this draught, therefore, with
thine own hand."

Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing
with strongly marked apprehension into his face.

"Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whispered
she.

"Foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, half
soothingly. "What should ail me to harm this misbegotten and
miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were it my
child,--yea, mine own, as well as thine!--I could do no better
for it."

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of
mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered
the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the
leech's pledge. The moans of the little patient subsided; its
convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and in a few moments, as is
the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into
a profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had a fair
right to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother.
With calm and intent scrutiny, he felt her pulse, looked into her
eyes,--a gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because so
familiar, and yet so strange and cold,--and, finally, satisfied
with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught.

"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I have learned
many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them,--a
recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of
my own, that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less
soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But
it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil
thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea."

He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow,
earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet
full of doubt and questioning, as to what his purposes might be.
She looked also at her slumbering child.

"I have thought of death," said she,--"have wished for it,--would
even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray
for any thing. Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee think
again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is even now at my
lips."

"Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure.
"Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes wont
to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what
could I do better for my object than to let thee live,--than to
give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life,--so that
this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?"--As he spoke,
he laid his long forefinger on the scarlet letter, which
forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's breast, as if it had
been red-hot. He noticed her involuntary gesture, and
smiled.--"Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in
the eyes of men and women,--in the eyes of him whom thou didst
call thy husband,--in the eyes of yonder child! And, that thou
mayest live, take off this draught."

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained the
cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on
the bed where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only
chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her.
She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt
that--having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if so
it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for the relief of
physical suffering--he was next to treat with her as the man whom
she had most deeply and irreparably injured.

"Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast
fallen into the pit, or say rather, thou hast ascended to the
pedestal of infamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not far
to seek. It was my folly, and thy weakness. I,--a man of
thought,--the 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!"

"Thou knowest," said Hester,--for, depressed as she was, she
could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her
shame,--"thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love,
nor feigned any."

"True!" replied he. "It was my folly! I have said it. But, up to
that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had been so
cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many
guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I
longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream,--old as I
was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,--that the
simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to
gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my
heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the
warmth which thy presence made there!"

"I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.

"We have wronged each other," answered he. "Mine was the first
wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and
unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not
thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no
evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly
balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both!
Who is he?"

"Ask me not!" replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his
face. "That thou shalt never know!"

"Never, sayest thou?" rejoined he, with a smile of dark and
self-relying intelligence. "Never know him! Believe me, Hester,
there are few things,--whether in the outward world, or, to a
certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought,--few things
hidden from the man, who devotes himself earnestly and
unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover up
thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it,
too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this
day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, and
give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come to
the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek
this man, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold
in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of
him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder,
suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!"

The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her,
that Hester Prynne clasped her hands over her heart, dreading
lest he should read the secret there at once.

"Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine," resumed
he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one with
him. "He bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as
thou dost; but I shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for
him! Think not that I shall interfere with Heaven's own method of
retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him to the gripe of human
law. Neither do thou imagine that I shall contrive aught against
his life; no, nor against his fame; if, as I judge, he be a man
of fair repute. Let him live! Let him hide himself in outward
honor, if he may! Not the less he shall be mine!"

"Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled.
"But thy words interpret thee as a terror!"

"One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon thee,"
continued the scholar. "Thou hast kept the secret of thy
paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land that
know me. Breathe not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever
call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I
shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from
human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst
whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No matter
whether of love or hate; no matter whether of right or wrong!
Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is where
thou art, and where he is. But betray me not!"

"Wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired Hester, shrinking, she
hardly knew why, from this secret bond. "Why not announce thyself
openly, and cast me off at once?"

"It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the
dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may
be for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die
unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband be to the world as one
already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize
me not, by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, above
all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou fail me in this,
beware! His fame, his position, his life, will be in my hands.
Beware!"

"I will keep thy secret, as I have his," said Hester.

"Swear it!" rejoined he.

And she took the oath.

"And now, Mistress Prynne," said old Roger Chillingworth, as he
was hereafter to be named, "I leave thee alone; alone with thy
infant, and the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy
sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not
afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?"

"Why dost thou smile so at me?" inquired Hester, troubled at the
expression of his eyes. "Art thou like the Black Man that haunts
the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that
will prove the ruin of my soul?"

"Not thy soul," he answered, with another smile. "No, not thine!"

Chapter 5

Hester at Her Needle

Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her
prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the
sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and
morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the
scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real
torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of
the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that have
been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which
all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was
supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the
combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert
the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a
separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime,
and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call
up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet
years. The very law that condemned her--a giant of stern
features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in
his iron arm--had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her
ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her
prison-door, began the daily custom, and she must either sustain
and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or
sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future, to
help her through the present grief. To-morrow would bring its own
trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each
its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably
grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil
onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear
along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating
days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap
of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she
would become the general symbol at which the preacher and
moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody
their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the
young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet
letter flaming on her breast,--at her, the child of honorable
parents,--at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a
woman,--at her, who had once been innocent,--as the figure, the
body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she
must carry thither would be her only monument.

It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her,--kept by
no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of
the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure,--free to return
to her birthplace, or to any other European land, and there hide
her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as
if emerging into another state of being,--and having also the
passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the
wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people
whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned
her,--it may seem marvellous, that this woman should still call
that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the
type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible
and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost
invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt,
ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given
the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the
darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the
roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new
birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted
the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and
wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long
home. All other scenes of earth--even that village of rural
England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet
to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long
ago--were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her
here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but never
could be broken.

It might be, too,--doubtless it was so, although she hid the
secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of
her heart, like a serpent from its hole,--it might be that
another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had
been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom
she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on
earth, would bring them together before the bar of final
judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint
futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again, the tempter
of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation, and
laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she
seized, and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked
the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What
she compelled herself to believe,--what, finally, she reasoned
upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of New
England,--was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. Here, she
said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should
be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the
torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and
work out another purity than that which she had lost; more
saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the
town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close
vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched
cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned,
because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while
its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that
social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants.
It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the
forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of scrubby trees,
such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the
cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some object
which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed.
In this little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that
she possessed, and by the license of the magistrates, who still
kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself,
with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately
attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend
wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human
charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her
needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the door-way, or
laboring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway
that led townward; and, discerning the scarlet letter on her
breast, would scamper off, with a strange, contagious fear.

Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth
who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of
want. She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that
afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply
food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art--then,
as now, almost the only one within a woman's grasp--of
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 characterized the Puritanic modes of
dress, there might be an infrequent call for the finer
productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age, demanding
whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail
to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast
behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to
dispense with. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the
installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to
the forms in which a new government manifested itself to the
people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and
well-conducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied
magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously
embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official
state of men assuming the reins of power; and were readily
allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while
sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the
plebeian order. In the array of funerals, too,--whether for the
apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic
devices of sable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the
survivors,--there was a frequent and characteristic demand for
such labor as Hester Prynne could supply. Baby-linen--for babies
then wore robes of state--afforded still another possibility of
toil and emolument.

By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now
be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of
so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a
fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by
whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now,
sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in
vain; or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise
have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly
requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy
with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by
putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that
had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her 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 aid to embroider the white veil which was to
cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the
ever relentless vigor with which society frowned upon her sin.

Hester sought not to acquire any thing 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 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 repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest
scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in
the universal heart. It was not an age of delicacy; and her
position, although she understood it well, and was in little
danger of forgetting it, was often brought before her vivid
self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the
tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom she
sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the
hand that was stretched forth to succor them. Dames of elevated
rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her
occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into
her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by
which women can concoct a subtile poison from ordinary trifles;
and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the
sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated
wound. Hester had schooled herself long and well; she never
responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose
irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again subsided into the
depths of her bosom. She was patient,--a martyr, indeed,--but she
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 street to address words
of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and
frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she entered a church,
trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it
was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse.
She grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from
their parents a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary
woman, gliding silently through the town, with never any
companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to
pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the
utterance of a word that had no distinct purport to their own
minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from
lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a
diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have
caused her no deeper pang, had the leaves of the trees whispered
the dark story among themselves,--had the summer breeze murmured
about it,--had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another
peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When
strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter,--and none ever
failed to do so,--they branded it afresh into Hester's soul; so
that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did
refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. But then, again,
an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its
cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in
short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a
human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed,
on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture.

But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months,
she felt an eye--a human eye--upon the ignominious brand, that
seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were
shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a
deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she had sinned
anew. Had Hester sinned alone?

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a
softer moral and intellectual fibre, would have been still more
so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to
and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with
which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to
Hester,--if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to
be resisted,--she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter
had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet
could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic
knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was
terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were
they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad
angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet
only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a
lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet
letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's?
Or, must she receive those intimations--so obscure, yet so
distinct--as truth? In all her miserable experience, there was
nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It
perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent
inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid
action. Sometimes, the red infamy upon her breast would give a
sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or
magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of
antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship
with angels. "What evil thing is at hand?" would Hester say to
herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human
within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint!
Again, a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as
she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to
the rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom
throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and
the burning shame on Hester Prynne's,--what had the two in
common? Or, once more, the electric thrill would give her
warning,--"Behold, Hester, here is a companion!"--and, looking
up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the
scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted, with a
faint, chill crimson in her cheeks; as if her purity were
somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, whose
talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing,
whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?--Such
loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it
accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim
of her own frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yet
struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like
herself.

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always
contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their
imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might
readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred, that the
symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot,
but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all
alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time.
And we must needs say, it seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that
perhaps there was more truth in the rumor than our modern
incredulity may be inclined to admit.

Chapter 6

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 dishonored 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 for good. Day after day, she looked
fearfully into the child's expanding nature; ever dreading to
detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should correspond
with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape,
its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its
untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth
in Eden; worthy to have been left there, to be the plaything of
the angels, after the world's first parents were driven out. The
child had a native grace which does not invariably coexist with
faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed
the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it
best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother,
with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter,
had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and
allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement
and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before the
public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus
arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty,
shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished
a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance
around her, on the darksome cottage-floor. And yet a russet gown,
torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her
just as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of
infinite variety; in this one child there were many children,
comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness
of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant
princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion,
a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any of
her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have
ceased to be herself;--it would have been no longer Pearl!

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly
express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature
appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but--or else
Hester's fears deceived her--it lacked reference and adaptation
to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made
amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great law had been
broken; and the result was a being, whose elements were perhaps
beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder; or with an order
peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and
arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered. Hester
could only account for the child's character--and even then, most
vaguely and imperfectly--by recalling what she herself had been,
during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her soul
from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material
of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the medium
through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of
its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had
taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the
black shadow, and the untempered light, of the intervening
substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit, at that
epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize her wild,
desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even
some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had
brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated by the morning
radiance of a young child's disposition, but, later in the day of
earthly existence, might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind.

The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more
rigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent
application of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were
used, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences,
but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all
childish virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the lonely mother
of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side of undue
severity. Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes,
she early sought to impose a tender, but strict, control over the
infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the task
was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles and frowns, and
proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable
influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside, and
permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical
compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it
lasted. As to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to
her mind or heart, little Pearl might or might not be within its
reach, in accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her
mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a
certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labor
thrown away to insist, persuade, or plead. It was a look so
intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so
malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits,
that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether
Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which,
after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the
cottage-floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever
that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it
invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was
as if she were hovering in the air and might vanish, like a
glimmering light that comes we know not whence, and goes we know
not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards
the child,--to pursue the little elf in the flight which she
invariably began,--to snatch her to her bosom, with a close
pressure and earnest kisses,--not so much from overflowing love,
as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not
utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught, though
full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than
before.

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so
often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had
bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst
into passionate tears. Then, perhaps,--for there was no
foreseeing how it might affect her,--Pearl would frown, and
clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a
stern, unsympathizing look of discontent. Not seldom, she would
laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and
unintelligent of human sorrow. Or--but this more rarely
happened--she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob
out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on
proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Hester was
hardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness; it
passed, as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters,
the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some
irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the
master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible
intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child lay in the
placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of
quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until--perhaps with that
perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening
lids--little Pearl awoke!

How soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed!--did Pearl arrive
at an age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the
mother's ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a
happiness would it have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her
clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish
voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's
tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive
children! But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of
the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin,
she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more
remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child
comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had drawn an
inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in
short, of her position in respect to other children. Never, since
her release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without
her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there;
first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl,
small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her
whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four
footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the children of the
settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or at the
domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion
as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to
church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a
sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks
of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never
sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak
again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did,
Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching
up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations
that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound
of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue.

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most
intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of
something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary
fashions, in the mother and child; and therefore scorned them in
their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their
tongues. Pearl felt the sentiment, and requited it with the
bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish
bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value,
and even comfort, for her mother; because there was at least an
intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitful
caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's manifestations.
It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy
reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. All this
enmity and passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out
of Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood together in the same
circle of seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the
child seemed to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had
distracted Hester Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had since
begun to be soothed away by the softening influences of
maternity.

At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not
a wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went
forth from her ever creative spirit, and communicated itself to a
thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be
applied. The unlikeliest materials, a stick, a bunch of rags, a
flower, were the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without
undergoing any outward change, became spiritually adapted to
whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. Her one
baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary personages, old and
young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged, black, and solemn,
and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the
breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders;
the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl
smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the
vast variety of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no
continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing, always in a state
of preternatural activity,--soon sinking down, as if exhausted by
so rapid and feverish a tide of life,--and succeeded by other
shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as
the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere
exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing
mind, there might be little more than was observable in other
children of bright faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of
human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which
she created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with
which the child regarded all these 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 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 agonized
gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little Pearl
look into her eyes, and smile! From that epoch, except when the
child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment's safety; not a
moment's calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would
sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's gaze might never once be
fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at
unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that
peculiar smile, and odd expression of the eyes.

Once, this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes,
while Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are
fond of doing; and, suddenly,--for women in solitude, and with
troubled hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions,--she
fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but
another face in the small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a
face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the
semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom
with a smile, and never with malice, in them. It was as if an
evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth
in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured,
though less vividly, by the same illusion.

In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big
enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls
of wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's
bosom; dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit
the scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her
bosom with her clasped hands. But, whether from pride or
resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought
out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat
erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's wild
eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably
hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts for
which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek
it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the child
stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing image
of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, her mother
so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes.

"Child, what art thou?" cried the mother.

"O, I am your little Pearl!" answered the child.

But, while she said it, Pearl laughed and began to dance up and
down, with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp, whose
next freak might be to fly up the chimney.

"Art thou my child, in very truth?" asked Hester.

Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the
moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was
Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted
whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her
existence, and might not now reveal herself.

"Yes; I am little Pearl!" repeated the child, continuing her
antics.

"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said the
mother, half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive
impulse came over her, in the midst of her deepest suffering.
"Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?"

"Tell me, mother!" said the child, seriously, coming up to
Hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell
me!"

"Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!" answered Hester Prynne.

But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the
acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary
freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up
her small forefinger, and touched the scarlet letter.

"He did not send me!" cried she, positively. "I have no Heavenly
Father!"

"Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered the mother,
suppressing a groan. "He sent us all into 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
mothers' 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.

Chapter 7

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 honorable and influential place
among the colonial magistracy.

Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair
of embroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an
interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the
affairs of the settlement. It had reached her ears, that there
was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants,
cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and
government, to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that
Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people
not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother's
soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her
path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of
moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of
ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer
prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and
better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who
promoted the design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of
the most busy. It may appear singular, and, indeed, not a little
ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which, in later days,
would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of
the selectmen of the town, should then have been a question
publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took
sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of
even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight
than the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed up
with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. The
period was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story,
when a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig, not
only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body
of the colony, but resulted in an important modification of the
framework itself of the legislature.

Full of concern, therefore,--but so conscious of her own right,
that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on
the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of
nature, on the other,--Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary
cottage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now
of an age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and,
constantly in motion from morn till sunset, could have
accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often,
nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to
be taken up in arms, but was soon as imperious to be set down
again, and frisked onward before Hester on the grassy pathway,
with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have spoken of Pearl's
rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone with deep and
vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both
of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and
which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was
fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated
offshoot of a passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the
child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her
imagination their full play; arraying her in a crimson velvet
tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies
and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of coloring,
which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a
fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made
her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon
the earth.

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of
the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably
reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed
to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another
form; the scarlet letter endowed with life! The mother
herself--as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her
brain, that all her conceptions assumed its form--had carefully
wrought out the similitude; lavishing many hours of morbid
ingenuity, to create an analogy between the object of her
affection, and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But, in
truth, Pearl was the one, as well as the other; and only in
consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to
represent the scarlet letter in her appearance.

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the
children of the Puritans looked up from their play,--or what
passed for play with those sombre little urchins,--and spake
gravely one to another:--

"Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and,
of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter
running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud
at them!"

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping
her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of
threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her
enemies, and put them all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce
pursuit of them, an infant pestilence,--the scarlet fever, or
some such half-fledged angel of judgment,--whose mission was to
punish the sins of the rising generation. She screamed and
shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which doubtless
caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. The
victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother, and
looked up smiling into her face.

Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor
Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of
which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our
elder towns; now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy
at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences remembered
or forgotten, that have happened, and passed away, within their
dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the
passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming
forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation into which
death had never entered. It had indeed a very cheery aspect; the
walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments
of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the
sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it
glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it
by the double handful. The brilliancy might have befitted
Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan
ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly
cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of
the age, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on,
and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after
times.

Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house, began to caper
and dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of
sunshine should be stripped off its front, and given her to play
with.

"No, my little Pearl!" said her mother. "Thou must gather thine
own sunshine. I have none to give thee!"

They approached the door; which was of an arched form, and
flanked on each side by a narrow tower or projection of the
edifice, in both of which were lattice-windows, with wooden
shutters to close over them at need. Lifting the iron hammer that
hung at the portal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was
answered by one of the Governor's bond-servants; a free-born
Englishman, but now a seven years' slave. During that term he was
to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of
bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf wore the
blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men at that
period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of England.

"Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within?" inquired Hester.

"Yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open
eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the
country, he had never before seen. "Yea, his honorable worship is
within. But he hath a godly minister or two with him, and
likewise a leech. Ye may not see his worship now."

"Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne; and the
bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air and
the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in
the land, offered no opposition.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of
entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his
building-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of
social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation
after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native
land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending
through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of
general communication, more or less directly, with all the other
apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by
the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on
either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly
muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one
of those embowed hall-windows which we read of in old books, and
which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the
cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England,
or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days,
we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over
by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted of some
ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with
wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste;
the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and
heirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor's paternal home.
On the table--in token that the sentiment of old English
hospitality had not been left behind--stood a large pewter
tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into
it, they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught
of ale.

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers
of the Bellingham lineage, some with armour on their breasts, and
others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were
characterized by the sternness and severity which old portraits
so invariably put on; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the
pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and
intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of living
men.

At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall, was
suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral
relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured
by a skilful armorer in London, the same year in which Governor
Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel
head-piece, a cuirass, a gorget, and greaves, with a pair of
gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the
helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white
radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the
floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but
had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn muster and
training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a
regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and
accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch, as his
professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had
transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a
statesman and ruler.

Little Pearl--who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming 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!"

Hester looked, by way of humoring the child; and she saw that,
owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet
letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions,
so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance.
In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed
upward, also, at a similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at
her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an
expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty
merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much
breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel
as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp
who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl's shape.

"Come along, Pearl!" said she, drawing her away, "Come and look
into this fair garden. It may be, we shall see flowers there;
more beautiful ones than we find in the woods."

Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of
the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted
with closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and
immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared
already to have relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to
perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid
the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for
ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin
vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening
space, and deposited one of its gigantic products directly
beneath the hall-windows, as if to warn the Governor that this
great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament as New
England earth would offer him. There were a few rose-bushes,
however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the descendants of
those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler
of the peninsula; that half mythological personage who rides
through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.

Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and
would not be pacified.

"Hush, child, hush!" said her mother earnestly. "Do not cry, dear
little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is
coming, and gentlemen along with him!"

In fact, adown the vista of the garden-avenue, a number of
persons were seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter
scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch
scream, and then became silent; not from any notion of obedience,
but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was
excited by the appearance of those new personages.

Chapter 8

The Elf-child and the Minister

Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap,--such as
elderly gentlemen loved to indue themselves with, in their
domestic privacy,--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing
off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements.
The wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray
beard, in the antiquated fashion of King James's reign, caused
his head to look not a little like that of John the Baptist in a
charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe,
and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in
keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had
evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it is an error
to suppose that our 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
naturalized 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 with him, old
Roger Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for
two or three years past, had been settled in the town. It was
understood that this learned man was the physician as well as
friend of the young minister, whose health had severely suffered,
of late, by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and
duties of the pastoral relation.

The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two
steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window,
found himself close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain
fell on Hester Prynne, and partially concealed her.

"What have we here?" said Governor Bellingham, looking with
surprise at the scarlet little figure before him. "I profess, I
have never seen the like, since my days of vanity, in old King
James's time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favor to be
admitted to a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small
apparitions, in holiday-time; and we called them children of the
Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a guest into my hall?"

"Ay, indeed!" cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of
scarlet plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such
figures, when the sun has been shining through a richly painted
window, and tracing out the golden and crimson images across the
floor. But that was in the old land. Prithee, young one, who art
thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this
strange fashion? Art thou a Christian child,--ha? Dost know thy
catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies, whom
we thought to have left behind us, with other relics of Papistry,
in merry old England?"

"I am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name
is Pearl!"

"Pearl?--Ruby, rather!--or Coral!--or Red Rose, at the very
least, judging from thy hue!" responded the old minister, putting
forth his hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the
cheek. "But where is this mother of thine? Ah! I see," he added;
and, turning to Governor Bellingham, whispered,--"This is the
selfsame child of whom we have held speech together; and behold
here the unhappy woman, Hester Prynne, her mother!"

"Sayest thou so?" cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged
that such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a
worthy type of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and
we will look into this matter forthwith."

Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall,
followed by his three guests.

"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on
the wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question
concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily
discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do
well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such
as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath
stumbled and fallen, amid the pitfalls of this world. Speak thou,
the child's own mother! Were it not, thinkest thou, for thy
little one's temporal and eternal welfare, that she be taken out
of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and
instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst thou do
for the child, in this kind?"

"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!"
answered Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.

"Woman, it is thy badge of shame!" replied the stern magistrate.
"It is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we
would transfer thy child to other hands."

"Nevertheless," said the mother calmly, though growing more pale,
"this badge hath taught me,--it daily teaches me,--it is teaching
me at this moment,--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and
better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself."

"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we
are about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this
Pearl,--since that is her name,--and see whether she hath had
such Christian nurture as befits a child of her age."

The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an
effort to draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child,
unaccustomed to the touch or familiarity of any but her mother,
escaped through the open window and stood on the upper step,
looking like a wild, tropical bird, of rich plumage, ready to
take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not a little
astonished at this outbreak,--for he was a grandfatherly sort of
personage, and usually a vast favorite with children,--essayed,
however, to proceed with the examination.

"Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to
instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy
bosom the pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who
made thee?"

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the
daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child
about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those
truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity,
imbibes with such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were
the attainments of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a
fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first column
of the Westminster Catechism, although unacquainted with the
outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that
perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which
little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune
moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or
impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in
her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr.
Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not
been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush
of wild roses, that grew by the prison-door.

This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the
Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window;
together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she
had passed in coming hither.

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered
something in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at
the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the
balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his
features,--how much uglier they were,--how his dark complexion
seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more
misshapen,--since the days when she had familiarly known him. She
met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to
give all her attention to the scene now going forward.

"This is awful!" cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the
astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here is
a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her!
Without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its
present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we
need inquire no further."

Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms,
confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce
expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this
sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she
possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to
defend them to the death.

"God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her, in requital of
all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my
happiness!--she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here
in life! Pearl punishes me, too! See ye not, she is the scarlet
letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a
million-fold the power of retribution for my sin? Ye shall not
take her! I will die first!"

"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child
shall be well cared for!--far better than thou canst do it."

"God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising
her voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up!"--And here
by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr.
Dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so
much as once to direct her eyes.--"Speak thou for me!" cried she.
"Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me
better than these men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for
me! Thou knowest,--for thou hast sympathies which these men
lack!--thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's
rights, and how much the stronger they are, when that mother has
but her child and the scarlet letter! Look thou to it! I will not
lose the child! Look to it!"

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester
Prynne's situation had provoked her to little less than madness,
the young minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his
hand over his heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly
nervous temperament was thrown into agitation. He looked now more
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 armor rang with it--"truth in what
Hester says, and in the feeling which inspires her! God gave her
the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its
nature and requirements,--both seemingly so peculiar,--which no
other mortal being can possess. And, moreover, is there not a
quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother
and this child?"

"Ay!--how is that, good Master Dimmesdale?" interrupted the
Governor. "Make that plain, I pray you!"

"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it
otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the
Creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and
made of no account the distinction between unhallowed lust and
holy love? This child of its father's guilt and its mother's
shame 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, as the
mother herself hath told us, for a retribution too; a torture, to
be felt at many an unthought of moment; a pang, a sting, an
ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! Hath she
not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor child, so
forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her bosom?"

"Well said, again!" cried good Mr. Wilson. "I feared the woman
had no better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!"

"O, not so!--not so!" continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She recognizes,
believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought, in the
existence of that child. And may she feel, too,--what, methinks,
is the very truth,--that this boon was meant, above all things
else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from
blacker depths of sin into which Satan might else have sought to
plunge her! Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that
she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or
sorrow, confided to her care,--to be trained up by her to
righteousness,--to remind her, at every moment, of her fall,--but
yet to teach her, as it were by the Creator's sacred pledge,
that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring
its parent thither! Herein is the sinful mother happier than the
sinful father. For Hester Prynne's sake, then, and no less for
the poor child's sake, let us leave them as Providence hath seen
fit to place them!"

"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old
Roger Chillingworth, smiling at him.

"And there is weighty import in what my young brother hath
spoken," added the Reverend Mr. Wilson. "What say you, worshipful
Master Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman?"

"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate, "and hath adduced such
arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands;
so long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the
woman. Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due
and stated examination in the catechism at thy hands or Master
Dimmesdale's. Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must
take heed that she go both to school and to meeting."

The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had withdrawn a few
steps from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed
in the heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his
figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous
with the vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty
little elf, stole softly towards him, and, taking his hand in the
grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so
tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was
looking on, asked herself,--"Is that my Pearl?" Yet she knew that
there was love in the child's heart, although it mostly revealed
itself in passion, and hardly twice in her lifetime had been
softened by such gentleness as now. The minister,--for, save the
long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks
of childish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual
instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us something truly
worthy to be loved,--the minister looked round, laid his hand on
the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her brow.
Little Pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no longer; she
laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily, that old Mr.
Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the
floor.

"The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess," said he
to Mr. Dimmesdale. "She needs no old woman's broomstick to fly
withal!"

"A strange child!" remarked old Roger Chillingworth. "It is easy
to see the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a
philosopher's research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyze that
child's nature, and, from its make and mould, to give a shrewd
guess at the father?"

"Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clew
of profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. "Better to fast and pray
upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we
find it, unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby,
every good Christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness
towards the poor, deserted babe."

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with
Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it
is averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open,
and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress
Hibbins, Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the
same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch.

"Hist, hist!" said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed
to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. "Wilt
thou go with us to-night? There will be a merry company in the
forest; and I wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester
Prynne should make one."

"Make my excuse to him, so please you!" answered Hester, with a
triumphant smile. "I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my
little Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have
gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black
Man's book too, and that with mine own blood!"

"We shall have thee there anon!" said the witch-lady, frowning,
as she drew back her head.

But here--if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins
and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable--was already
an illustration of the young minister's argument against
sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her
frailty. Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan's
snare.

Chapter 9

The Leech

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will
remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had
resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how,
in the crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure,
stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the
perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find
embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of
sin before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all
men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the public
market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach
them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there
remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonor; which would
not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion
with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship.
Then why--since the choice was with himself--should the
individual, whose connection with the fallen woman had been the
most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate
his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not
to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to
all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her
silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind,
and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out of
life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the
ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him. This purpose
once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and
likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of
force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the
Puritan town, as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction
than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more
than a common measure. As his studies, at a previous period of
his life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical
science of the day, it was as a physician that he presented
himself, and as such was cordially received. Skilful men, of the
medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in
the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of the
religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic.
In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the
higher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized,
and that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the
intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve
art enough to comprise all of life within itself. At all events,
the health of the good town of Boston, so far as medicine had
aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an
aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were
stronger testimonials in his favor, than any that he could have
produced in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one who
combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily
and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a professional body
Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He soon
manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing
machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a
multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as
elaborately compounded as if the proposed result had been the
Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained
much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor
did he conceal from his patients, that these simple medicines,
Nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share
of his own confidence as the European 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 heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and
labor for the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the
now feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved
for the infancy of the Christian faith. About this period,
however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to
fail. By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of
the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest
devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty,
and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which he made a
frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly
state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some
declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it
was cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer
trodden by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with
characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence
should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own
unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. With
all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline,
there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated;
his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy
prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight
alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart,
with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.

Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the
prospect that his dawning light would be extinguished, all
untimely, when Roger Chillingworth made his advent to the town.
His first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence,
dropping down, as it were, out of the sky, or starting from the
nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily
heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be a man of
skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and the blossoms
of wild-flowers, and dug up roots and plucked off twigs from the
forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was
valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm
Digby, and other famous men,--whose scientific attainments were
esteemed hardly less than supernatural,--as having been his
correspondents or associates. Why, with such rank in the learned
world, had he come hither? What could he, whose sphere was in
great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? In answer to this
query, a rumor gained ground,--and, however absurd, was
entertained by some very sensible people,--that Heaven had
wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent Doctor of
Physic, from a German university bodily through the air, and
setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study!
Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes
its purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called
miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential
hand in Roger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival.

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the
physician ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached
himself to him as a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly
regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility. He
expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was
anxious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not
despondent of a favorable result. The elders, the deacons, the
motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens, of Mr.
Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he should make
trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. Mr. Dimmesdale
gently repelled their entreaties.

"I need no medicine," said he.

But how could the young minister say so, when, with every
successive Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his
voice more tremulous than before,--when it had now become a
constant habit, rather than a casual gesture, to press his hand
over his heart? Was he weary of his labors? Did he wish to die?
These questions were solemnly propounded to Mr. Dimmesdale by the
elder ministers of Boston and the deacons of his church, who, to
use their own phrase, "dealt with him," on the sin of rejecting
the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He listened in
silence, and finally promised to confer with the physician.

"Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in
fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth's
professional advice, "I could be well content, that my labors,
and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end
with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and
the spiritual go with me to my eternal state, rather than that
you should put your skill to the proof in my behalf."

"Ah," replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness which,
whether imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, "it is
thus that a young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not
having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily!
And saintly men, who walk with God on earth, would fain be away,
to walk with him on the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem."

"Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his
heart, with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, "were I
worthier to walk there, I could be better content to toil here."

"Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the
physician.

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 seashore, or in the forest; mingling various
talk with the plash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn
wind-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the
guest of the other, in his place of study and retirement. There
was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of
science, in whom he recognized an intellectual cultivation of no
moderate depth or scope; together with a range and freedom of
ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the members of
his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to
find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a true
priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment
largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself
powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage
continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society
would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it
would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a
faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its
iron framework. Not the less, however, though with a tremulous
enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the
universe through the medium of another kind of intellect than
those with which he habitually held converse. It was as if a
window were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the
close and stifled study, where his life was wasting itself away,
amid 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 scrutinized his patient carefully, both
as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway
in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when
thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might
call out something new to the surface of his character. He deemed
it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before attempting
to do him good. Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the
diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities
of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so
active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity
would be likely to have its groundwork there. So Roger
Chillingworth--the man of skill, the kind and friendly
physician--strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving
among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing
every thing with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a
dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has
opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to
follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially
avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native
sagacity, and a nameless something more,--let us call it
intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably
prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which
must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with
his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he
imagines himself only to have thought; if such revelations be
received without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by an
uttered sympathy, as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here
and there a word, to indicate that all is understood; if, to
these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages
afforded by his recognized character as a physician;--then, at
some inevitable moment, will the soul of the sufferer be
dissolved, and flow forth in a dark, but transparent stream,
bringing all its mysteries into the daylight.

Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes
above enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy,
as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated minds,
which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human thought
and study, to meet upon; they discussed every topic of ethics and
religion, of public affairs, and private character; they talked
much, on both sides, of matters that seemed personal to
themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied must
exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness into
his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions, indeed, that
even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bodily disease had never
fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!

After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of
Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were
lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the
minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and
attached physician. There was much joy throughout the town, when
this greatly desirable object was attained. It was held to be the
best possible measure for the young clergyman's welfare; unless,
indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorized to do so, he
had selected some one of the many blooming damsels, spiritually
devoted to him, to become his devoted wife. This latter step,
however, there was no present prospect that Arthur Dimmesdale
would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all suggestions of
the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of
church-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as Mr.
Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always at
another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his
lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it
truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent, old
physician, with his concord of paternal and reverential love for
the young pastor, was the very man, of all mankind, to be
constantly within reach of his voice.

The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good
social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site
on which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since been
built. It had the grave-yard, originally Isaac Johnson's
home-field, on one side, and so was well adapted to call up
serious reflections, suited to their respective employments, in
both minister and man of physic. The motherly care of the good
widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny
exposure, and heavy window-curtains to create a noontide shadow,
when desirable. The walls were hung round with tapestry, said to
be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the
Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan the Prophet,
in colors still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the
scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer.
Here, the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with
parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis,
and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even
while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet
constrained often to avail themselves. On the other side of the
house, old Roger Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory;
not such as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably
complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus, and the means
of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised alchemist
knew well how to turn to purpose. With such commodiousness of
situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in
his own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the
other, and bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into
one another's business.

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as
we have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of
Providence had done all this, for the purpose--besought in so
many public, and domestic, and secret prayers--of restoring the
young minister to health. But--it must now be said--another
portion of the community had latterly begun to take its own view
of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old
physician. When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with
its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it
forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its
great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so
profound and so unerring, as to possess the character of truths
supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which we
speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger Chillingworth by
no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation. There was an
aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London
at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty
years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under
some other name, which the narrator of the story had now
forgotten, in company with Doctor Forman, the famous old
conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or
three individuals hinted, that the man of skill, during his
Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining
in the incantations of the savage priests; who were universally
acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing
seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black art. A
large number--and many of these were persons of such sober sense
and practical observation, that their opinions would have been
valuable, in other matters--affirmed that Roger Chillingworth's
aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in
town, and especially since his abode with Mr. Dimmesdale. At
first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like.
Now, there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they
had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious
to sight, the oftener they looked upon him. According to the
vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the
lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel; and so, as might
be expected, his visage was getting sooty with the smoke.

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion,
that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages
of especial sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was
haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the
guise of old Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the
Divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's
intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible man, it was
confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. The
people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come
forth out of the conflict, transfigured with the glory which he
would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it was sad to
think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must
struggle towards his triumph.

Alas, to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of the
poor minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one, and the victory
any thing but secure!

Chapter 10

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 door-way in the hill-side, 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 farther in the direction of this vein!"

Then, after long search into the minister's dim interior, and
turning over many precious materials, in the shape of high
aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure
sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and
illuminated by revelation,--all of which invaluable gold was
perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker,--he would turn
back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards another point. He
groped along as stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary
an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only
half asleep,--or, it may be, broad awake,--with purpose to steal
the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his eye.
In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would now and
then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his
presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his
victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of
nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would
become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had
thrust itself into relation with him. But Old Roger
Chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive;
and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there
the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathizing, but never
intrusive friend.

Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's
character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick
hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all
mankind. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize
his enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still
kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old
physician in his study; or visiting the laboratory, and, for
recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were
converted into drugs of potency.

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the
sill of the open window, that looked towards the 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
straightforth at any object, whether human or inanimate,--"where,
my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark,
flabby leaf?"

"Even in the grave-yard, 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 fantasy 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 with a human
heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must
perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be
revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to
understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then
to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That,
surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless
I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual
satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting,
on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A
knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest
solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the
hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield
them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy
unutterable."

"Then why not reveal them here?" asked Roger Chillingworth,
glancing quietly aside at the minister. "Why should not the
guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?"

"They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast,
as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. "Many, many a
poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the
death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. And
ever, after such an outpouring, O, what a relief have I witnessed
in those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last draws free
air, after long stifling with his own polluted breath. How can it
be otherwise? Why should a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of
murder, prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his own heart,
rather than fling it forth at once, and let the universe take
care of it!"

"Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm
physician.

"True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But, not to
suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent
by the very constitution of their nature. Or,--can we not suppose
it?--guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for
God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying
themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because,
thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the
past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable
torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure
as new-fallen snow; while their hearts are all speckled and
spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves."

"These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with
somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture
with his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame that
rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for
God's service,--these holy impulses may or may not coexist in
their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has
unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed
within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not lift
heavenward their unclean hands! If they would serve their
fellow-men, let them do it by making manifest the power and
reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential
self-abasement! Wouldst thou have me to believe, O wise and pious
friend, that a false show can be better--can be more for God's
glory, or man's welfare--than God's own truth? Trust me, such men
deceive themselves!"

"It may be so," said the young clergyman indifferently, as
waiving a discussion that he considered irrelevant or
unseasonable. He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from
any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous
temperament.--"But, now, I would ask of my well-skilled
physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have profited
by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine?"

Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear,
wild laughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the
adjacent burial-ground. Looking instinctively from the open
window,--for it was summer-time,--the minister beheld Hester
Prynne and little Pearl passing along the footpath that traversed
the inclosure. Pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was in
one of those moods of perverse merriment which, whenever they
occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the sphere of
sympathy or human contact. She now skipped irreverently from one
grave to another; until, coming to the broad, flat, armorial
tombstone of a departed worthy,--perhaps of Isaac Johnson
himself,--she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's
command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously,
little Pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall
burdock, which grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these,
she arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter that
decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature
was, tenaciously adhered. Hester did not pluck them off.

Roger Chillingworth had by this time approached the window, and
smiled grimly down.

"There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for
human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that
child's composition," remarked he, as much to himself as to his
companion. "I saw her, the other day, bespatter the Governor
himself with water, at the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in
Heaven's name, is she? Is the imp altogether evil? Hath she
affections? Hath she any discoverable principle of being?"

"None,--save the freedom of a broken law," answered Mr.
Dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the
point within himself. "Whether capable of good, I know not."

The child probably overheard their voices; for, looking up to the
window, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and
intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensitive clergyman shrank, with nervous
dread, from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl
clapped her little hands in the most extravagant ecstasy. Hester
Prynne, likewise, had involuntarily looked up; and all these four
persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the
child laughed aloud, and shouted,--"Come away, mother! Come away,
or yonder old Black Man will catch you! He hath got hold of the
minister already. Come away, mother, or he will catch you! But he
cannot catch little Pearl!"

So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking
fantastically among the hillocks of the dead people, like a
creature that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried
generation, nor owned herself akin to it. It was as if she had
been made afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be
permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself,
without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.

"There goes a woman," resumed Roger Chillingworth, after a pause,
"who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of
hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is
Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet
letter on her breast?"

"I do verily believe it," answered the clergyman. "Nevertheless,
I cannot answer for her. There was a look of pain in her face,
which I would gladly have been spared the sight of. But still,
methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to
show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all
up in his heart."

There was another pause; and the physician began anew to examine
and arrange the plants which he had gathered.

"You inquired of me, a little time agone," said he, at length,
"my judgment as touching your health."

"I did," answered the clergyman, "and would gladly learn it.
Speak frankly, I pray you, be it for life or death."

"Freely, then, and plainly," said the physician, still busy with
his plants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr. Dimmesdale, "the
disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself, nor as
outwardly manifested,--in so far, at least, as the symptoms have
been laid open to my observation. Looking daily at you, my good
Sir, and watching the tokens of your aspect, now for months gone
by, I should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick
but that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to
cure you. But--I know not what to say--the disease is what I seem
to know, yet know it not."

"You speak in riddles, learned Sir," said the pale minister,
glancing aside out of the window.

"Then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician, "and I
crave pardon, Sir,--should it seem to require pardon,--for this
needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask,--as your friend,--as
one having charge, under Providence, of your life and physical
well-being,--hath all the 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?"

"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 reëstablish 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 smile upon his lips. This
expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but grew
strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold.

"A rare case!" he muttered. "I must needs look deeper into it. A
strange sympathy betwixt soul and body! Were it only for the
art's sake, I must search this matter to the bottom!"

It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noonday, and entirely unawares,
fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a
large black-letter volume open before him on the table. It must
have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of
literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the
more remarkable; inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose
sleep, ordinarily, is as light, as fitful, and as easily scared
away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted
remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself,
that he stirred not in his chair, when old Roger Chillingworth,
without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The
physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his
hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment, that,
hitherto, had always covered it even from the professional eye.

Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred.

After a brief pause, the physician turned away.

But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! With what a
ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by
the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the
whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously
manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his
arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor!
Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his
ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports
himself, when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won
into his kingdom.

But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was
the trait of wonder in it!

Chapter 11

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 engine;--and the physician knew it well! Would he
startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's
wand, uprose a grisly phantom,--uprose a thousand phantoms,--in
many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round
about the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at his
breast!

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the
minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil
influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its
actual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully,--even, at
times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred,--at the deformed
figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled
beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion
of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token,
implicitly to be relied on, of a deeper antipathy in the breast
of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself. For,
as it was impossible to assign a reason for such distrust and
abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one
morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire substance,
attributed all his presentiments to no other cause. He took
himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to Roger
Chillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn
from them, and did his best to root them out. Unable to
accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle,
continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and
thus gave him constant opportunities for perfecting the purpose
to which--poor, forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched
than his victim--the avenger had devoted himself.

While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and
tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the
machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale
had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won
it, indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual
gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and
communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural
activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. His fame,
though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the
soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several
of them were. There 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
etherealized, moreover, by spiritual communications with the
better world, into which their purity of life had almost
introduced these holy personages, with their garments of
mortality still clinging to them. All that they lacked was the
gift that descended upon the chosen disciples, at Pentecost, in
tongues of flame; symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of
speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing
the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language. These
fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and rarest
attestation of their office, the Tongue of Flame. They would have
vainly sought--had they ever dreamed of seeking--to express the
highest truths through the humblest medium of familiar words and
images. Their voices came down, afar and indistinctly, from the
upper heights where they habitually dwelt.

Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr.
Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of character, naturally
belonged. To their high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he
would have climbed, had not the tendency been thwarted by the
burden, whatever it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath which
it was his doom to totter. It kept him down, on a level with the
lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the
angels might else have listened to and answered! But this very
burden it was, that gave him sympathies so intimate with the
sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated in
unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself, and sent
its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes
of sad, persuasive eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes
terrible! The people knew not the power that moved them thus.
They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. They
fancied him the 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,--I, who have breathed the
parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded
faintly from a world which they had quitted,--I, your pastor,
whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a
lie!"

More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a
purpose never to come down its steps, until he should have spoken
words like the above. More than once, he had cleared his throat,
and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when
sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of
his soul. More than once--nay, more than a hundred times--he had
actually spoken! Spoken! But how? He had told his hearers that he
was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst
of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity; and
that the only wonder was, that they did not see his wretched body
shrivelled up before their eyes, by the burning wrath of the
Almighty! Could there be plainer speech than this? Would not the
people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and
tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so, indeed!
They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. They
little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those
self-condemning words. "The godly youth!" said they among
themselves. "The saint on earth! Alas, if he discern such
sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he
behold in thine or mine!" The minister well knew--subtle, but
remorseful hypocrite that he was!--the light in which his vague
confession would be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat upon
himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had
gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without
the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the
very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And
yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and
loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things
else, he loathed his miserable self!

His inward trouble drove him to practices, more in accordance
with the old, corrupted faith of Rome, than with the better light
of the church in which he had been born and bred. In Mr.
Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a
bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine
had plied it on his own shoulders; laughing bitterly at himself
the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly, because of
that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of
many other pious Puritans, to fast,--not, however, like them, in
order to purify the body and render it the fitter medium of
celestial illumination,--but rigorously, and until his knees
trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils,
likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness;
sometimes with a glimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own
face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he
could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection
wherewith he tortured, but could not purify, himself. In these
lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to
flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of
their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly,
and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it was a herd
of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale minister,
and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining angels,
who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more ethereal
as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth, and his
white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother,
turning her face away as she passed by. Ghost of a
mother,--thinnest fantasy of a mother,--methinks she might yet
have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through
the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly,
glided Hester Prynne, leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet
garb, and pointing her forefinger, first, at the scarlet letter
on her bosom, and then at the clergyman's own breast.

None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by
an effort of his will, he could discern substances through their
misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not
solid in their nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that
big, square, leathern-bound and brazen-clasped volume of
divinity. But, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest
and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt
with. It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his,
that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities
there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the
spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe
is false,--it is impalpable,--it shrinks to nothing within his
grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in a false
light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. The only
truth, that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on
this earth, was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the
undissembled expression of it in his aspect. Had he once found
power to smile, and wear a face of gayety, there would have been
no such man!

On one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, but
forborne to picture forth, the minister started from his chair. A
new thought had struck him. There might be a moment's peace in
it. Attiring himself with as much care as if it had been for
public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly
down the staircase, undid the door, and issued forth.

Chapter 12

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 hour of public ignominy. The
same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the
storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with
the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained
standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The minister
went up the steps.

It was an obscure night of early May. An unvaried pall of cloud
muffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon. If the
same multitude which had stood as eyewitnesses while Hester
Prynne sustained her punishment could now have been summoned
forth, they would have discerned no face above the platform, nor
hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark gray of the
midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was no peril of
discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so pleased him,
until morning should redden in the east, without other risk than
that the dank and chill night-air would creep into his frame, and
stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his throat with
catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the expectant audience of
to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No eye could see him, save that
ever-wakeful one which had seen him in his closet, wielding the
bloody scourge. Why, then, had he come hither? Was it but the
mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soul
trifled with itself! A mockery at which angels blushed and wept,
while fiends rejoiced, with jeering laughter! He had been driven
hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him
everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was
that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous
gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge
of a disclosure. Poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity
like his to burden itself with crime? Crime is for the
iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it
press too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a
good purpose, and fling it off at once! This feeble and most
sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one
thing or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable
knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.

And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of
expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of
mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his
naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth,
there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous
tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power to
restrain himself, he shrieked aloud; an outcry that went pealing
through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another,
and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a
company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had
made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro.

"It is done!" muttered the minister, covering his face with his
hands. "The whole town will awake, and hurry forth, and find me
here!"

But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded with a far
greater power, to his own startled ears, than it actually
possessed. The town did not awake; or, if it did, the drowsy
slumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in a
dream, or for the noise of witches; whose voices, at that period,
were often heard to pass over the settlements or lonely cottages,
as they rode with Satan through the air. The clergyman,
therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes
and looked about him. At one of the chamber-windows of Governor
Bellingham's mansion, which stood at some distance, on the line
of another street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistrate
himself, with a lamp in his hand, a white night-cap on his head,
and a long white gown enveloping his figure. He looked like a
ghost, evoked unseasonably from the grave. The cry had evidently
startled him. At another window of the same house, moreover,
appeared old Mistress Hibbins, the Governor's sister, also with a
lamp, which, even thus far off, revealed the expression of her
sour and discontented face. She thrust forth her head from the
lattice, and looked anxiously upward. Beyond the shadow of a
doubt, this venerable witch-lady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale's
outcry, and interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and
reverberations, as the clamor of the fiends and night-hags, with
whom she was well known to make excursions into the forest.

Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp, the old lady
quickly extinguished her own, and vanished. Possibly, she went up
among the clouds. The minister saw nothing further of her
motions. The magistrate, after a wary observation of the
darkness--into which, nevertheless, he could see but little
farther 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 personages of olden times, with a radiant halo, that
glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin,--as if the departed
Governor had left him an inheritance of his glory, or as if he
had caught upon himself the distant shine of the celestial city,
while looking thitherward to see the triumphant pilgrim pass
within its gates,--now, in short, good Father Wilson was moving
homeward, aiding his footsteps with a lighted lantern! The
glimmer of this luminary suggested the above conceits to Mr.
Dimmesdale, who smiled,--nay, almost laughed at them,--and then
wondered if he were going mad.

As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed beside the scaffold, closely
muffling his Geneva cloak about him with one arm, and holding the
lantern before his breast with the other, the minister could
hardly restrain himself from speaking.

"A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson! Come up hither,
I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me!"

Good Heavens! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually spoken? For one
instant, he believed that these words had passed his lips. But
they were uttered only within his imagination. The venerable
Father Wilson continued to step slowly onward, looking carefully
at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his
head towards the guilty platform. When the light of the
glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the minister discovered,
by the faintness which came over him, that the last few moments
had been a crisis of terrible anxiety; although his mind had made
an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid
playfulness.

Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again
stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his
limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the
night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps
of the scaffold. Morning would break, and find him there. The
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
disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old Governor Bellingham
would come grimly forth, with his King James's ruff fastened
askew; and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest
clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having
hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good Father
Wilson, too, after spending half the night at a death-bed, and
liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his dreams about
the glorified saints. Hither, likewise, would come the elders and
deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's church, and the young virgins who so
idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for him in their
white bosoms; which, now, by the by, in their hurry and
confusion, they would scantly have given themselves time to cover
with their kerchiefs. All people, in a word, would come stumbling
over their thresholds, and turning up their amazed and
horror-stricken visages around the scaffold. Whom would they
discern there, with the red eastern light upon his brow? Whom,
but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half frozen to death,
overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had
stood!

Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the
minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a
great peal of laughter. It was immediately responded to by a
light, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of the
heart,--but he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as
acute,--he recognized the tones of little Pearl.

"Pearl! Little Pearl!" cried he, after a moment's pause; then,
suppressing his voice,--"Hester! Hester Prynne! Are you there?"

"Yes; it is Hester Prynne!" she replied, in a tone of surprise;
and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from the
sidewalk, along which she had been passing.--"It is I, and my
little Pearl."

"Whence come you, Hester?" asked the minister. "What sent you
hither?"

"I have been watching at a death-bed," answered Hester
Prynne;--"at Governor Winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his
measure for a robe, and am now going homeward to my dwelling."

"Come up hither, Hester, thou and little Pearl," said the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. "Ye have both been here before, but I
was not with you. Come up hither once again, and we will stand
all three together!"

She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform,
holding little Pearl by the hand. The minister felt for the
child's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there
came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than
his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying
through all his veins, as if the mother and the child were
communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. The
three formed an electric chain.

"Minister!" whispered little Pearl.

"What wouldst thou say, child?" asked Mr. Dimmesdale.

"Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?"
inquired Pearl.

"Nay; not so, my little Pearl!" answered the minister; for, with
the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure,
that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon
him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction in
which--with a strange joy, nevertheless--he now found himself.
"Not so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and
thee one other day, but not to-morrow!"

Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. But the
minister held it fast.

"A moment longer, my child!" said he.

"But wilt thou promise," asked Pearl, "to take my hand, and
mother's hand, to-morrow noontide?"

"Not then, Pearl," said the minister, "but another time!"

"And what other time?" persisted the child.

"At the great judgment day!" whispered the minister,--and,
strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of
the truth impelled him to answer the child so. "Then, and there,
before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I, must stand
together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our
meeting!"

Pearl laughed again.

But, before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far
and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one
of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe
burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So
powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the
dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault
brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the
familiar scene of the street, with the distinctness of mid-day,
but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar
objects by an unaccustomed light. The wooden houses, with their
jutting stories and quaint gable-peaks; the doorsteps and
thresholds, with the early grass springing up about them; the
garden-plots, black with freshly turned earth; the wheel-track,
little worn, and, even in the market-place, margined with green
on either side;--all were visible, but with a singularity of
aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the
things of this world than they had ever borne before. And there
stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and Hester
Prynne, with the embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom; and
little Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between
those two. They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn
splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets,
and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another.

There was witchcraft in little Pearl's eyes; and her face, as she
glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smile which
made its expression frequently so elvish. She withdrew her hand
from Mr. Dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. But he
clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes towards
the zenith.

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all
meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena, that occurred
with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so
many revelations from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing
spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows, seen in the
midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to
have been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. We doubt
whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell New
England, from its settlement down to Revolutionary times, of
which the inhabitants had not been previously warned by some
spectacle of this nature. Not seldom, it had been seen by
multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested on the faith
of some lonely eyewitness, who beheld the wonder through the
colored, magnifying, and distorting medium of his imagination,
and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought. It was,
indeed, a majestic idea, that the destiny of nations should be
revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. A
scroll so wide might not be deemed too expansive for Providence
to write a people's doom upon. The belief was a favorite one with
our forefathers, as betokening that their infant commonwealth was
under a celestial guardianship of peculiar intimacy and
strictness. But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a
revelation, addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of
record! In such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly
disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly
self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had
extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the
firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for
his soul's history and fate.

We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and
heart, that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld
there the appearance of an immense letter,--the letter A,--marked
out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown
itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud;
but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it; or, at
least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might
have seen another symbol in it.

There was a singular circumstance that characterized Mr.
Dimmesdale's psychological state, at this moment. All the time
that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless,
perfectly aware that little Pearl was pointing her finger towards
old Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the
scaffold. The minister appeared to see him, with the same glance
that discerned the miraculous letter. To his features, as to all
other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or
it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at
all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked
upon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and
disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester
Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger
Chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing
there, with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid was the
expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that
it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness, after the
meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all
things else were at once annihilated.

"Who is that man, Hester?" gasped Mr. Dimmesdale, overcome with
terror. "I shiver at him! Dost thou know the man? I hate him,
Hester!"

She remembered her oath, and was silent.

"I tell thee, my soul shivers at him," muttered the minister
again. "Who is he? Who is he? Canst thou do nothing for me? I
have a nameless horror of the man."

"Minister," said little Pearl, "I can tell thee who he is!"

"Quickly, then, child!" said the minister, bending his ear close
to her lips. "Quickly!--and as low as thou canst whisper."

Pearl mumbled something into his ear, that sounded, indeed, like
human language, but was only such gibberish as children may be
heard amusing themselves with, by the hour together. At all
events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old
Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite
clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind. The
elvish child then laughed aloud.

"Dost thou mock me now?" said the minister.

"Thou wast not bold!--thou wast not true!" answered the child.
"Thou wouldst not promise to take my hand, and mother's hand,
to-morrow noontide!"

"Worthy Sir," said the physician, who had now advanced to the
foot of the platform. "Pious Master Dimmesdale! can this be you?
Well, well, indeed! We men of study, whose heads are in our
books, have need to be straitly looked after! We dream in our
waking moments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good Sir, and my
dear friend, I pray you, let me lead you home!"

"How knewest thou that I was here?" asked the minister,
fearfully.

"Verily, and in good faith," answered Roger Chillingworth, "I
knew nothing of the matter. I had spent the better part of the
night at the bedside of the worshipful Governor Winthrop, doing
what my poor skill might to give him ease. He going home to a
better world, I, likewise, was on my way homeward, when this
strange light shone out. Come with me, I beseech you, Reverend
Sir; else you will be poorly able to do Sabbath duty to-morrow.
Aha! see now, how they trouble the brain,--these books!--these
books! You should study less, good Sir, and take a little
pastime; or these night-whimseys will grow upon you!"

"I will go home with you," said Mr. Dimmesdale.

With a chill despondency, like one awaking, all nerveless, from
an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physician, and was led
away.

The next day, however, being the Sabbath, he preached a discourse
which was held to be the richest and most powerful, and the most
replete with heavenly influences, that had ever proceeded from
his lips. Souls, it is said, more souls than one, were brought to
the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within
themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards Mr. Dimmesdale
throughout the long hereafter. But, as he came down the
pulpit-steps, the gray-bearded sexton met him, holding up a black
glove, which the minister recognized as his own.

"It was found," said the sexton, "this morning, on the scaffold,
where evil-doers are set up to public shame. Satan dropped it
there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your
reverence. But, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and
always is. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!"

"Thank you, my good friend," said the minister gravely, but
startled at heart; for, so confused was his remembrance, that he
had almost brought himself to look at the events of the past
night as visionary. "Yes, it seems to be my glove, indeed!"

"And, since Satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs
handle him without gloves, henceforward," remarked the old
sexton, grimly smiling. "But did your reverence hear of the
portent that was seen last night? a great red letter in the
sky,--the letter A,--which we interpret to stand for Angel. For,
as our good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past night,
it was doubtless held fit that there should be some notice
thereof!"

"No," answered the minister; "I had not heard of it."

Chapter 13

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 human
kind--links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the
material--had all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual
crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties,
it brought along with it its obligations.

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in
which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy.
Years had come, and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her
mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its
fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the
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, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up
in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human
nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play,
it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and
quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the
change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original
feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne, there was
neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the
public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she
made no claim upon it, in requital for what she suffered; she did
not weigh upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity
of her life, during all these years in which she had been set
apart to infamy, was reckoned largely in her favor. With nothing
now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and
seemingly no wish, of gaining any thing, 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,--farther
than to breathe the common air, and earn daily bread for little
Pearl and herself by the faithful labor of her hands,--she was
quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man,
whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to
give of her little substance to every demand of poverty; even
though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of
the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought
for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's
robe. None so self-devoted as Hester, when pestilence stalked
through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether
general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found
her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate,
into the household that was darkened by trouble; as if its gloomy
twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold
intercourse with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered the
embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere
the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick-chamber. It had
even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across
the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while
the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of
futurity could reach him. In such emergencies, Hester's nature
showed itself warm and rich; a well-spring of human tenderness,
unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest.
Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow
for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of
Mercy; or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so
ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to
this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such
helpfulness was found in her,--so much power to do, and power to
sympathize,--that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A
by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so
strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.

It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When
sunshine came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded
across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without
one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any
were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously.
Meeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive
their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her, she laid her
finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. This might be pride,
but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening
influence of the latter quality on the public mind. The public is
despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice,
when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently
it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots
love to have it made, entirely to its generosity. Interpreting
Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal of this nature, society
was inclined to show its former victim a more benign countenance
than she cared to be favored with, or, perchance, than she
deserved.

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were
longer in acknowledging the influence of Hester's good qualities
than the people. The prejudices which they shared in common with
the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron framework of
reasoning, that made it a far tougher labor to expel them. Day by
day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing
into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to
be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men
of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship
of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had
quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had
begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that
one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance,
but of her many good deeds since. "Do you see that woman with the
embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers. "It is our
Hester,--the town's own Hester,--who is so kind to the poor, so
helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!" Then, it
is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of
itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain
them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was none
the less a fact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who
spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a
nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness,
which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. Had she
fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe. It was
reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his
arrow against the badge, but 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 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 any thing in Hester's face for
Love to dwell upon; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic and
statue-like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its
embrace; nothing in Hester's bosom, to make it ever again the
pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the
permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such
is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the
feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered,
and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be
all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will
either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is
the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show
itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She who has
once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become
a woman again, if there were only the magic touch to effect the
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 fragments of a broken
chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in
which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more
active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of
the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these
had overthrown and rearranged--not actually, but within the
sphere of theory, which was their most real abode--the whole
system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient
principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a
freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of
the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known of it,
would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by
the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore,
thoughts visited her, such as dared to enter no other dwelling in
New England; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as
demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as
knocking at her door.

It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly
often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external
regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without
investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed
to be with Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to her from
the spiritual world, it might have been far otherwise. Then, she
might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Ann
Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She might, in
one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She might, and not
improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of
the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the
Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the
mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself
upon. Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned
to Hester's charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be
cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Every thing
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
eccepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own
individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative,
and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation,
though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her
sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As
a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down, and
built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its
long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be
essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what
seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other
difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these
preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have undergone a
still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence,
wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have
evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any
exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one
way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus,
Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy
throb, wandered without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind; now
turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back
from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around
her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times, a fearful doubt
strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send
Pearl at once to heaven, and go herself to such futurity as
Eternal Justice should provide.

The scarlet letter had not done its office.

Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on
the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection,
and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion
and sacrifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense
misery beneath which the minister struggled, or, to speak more
accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the
verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. It was
impossible to doubt, that, whatever painful efficacy there might
be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been
infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. A secret enemy
had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend
and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus
afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of Mr.
Dimmesdale's nature. Hester could not but ask herself, whether
there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and
loyalty, on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown
into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded, and
nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the
fact, that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him
from a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself, except by
acquiescing in Roger Chillingworth's scheme of disguise. Under
that impulse, she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it now
appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She
determined to redeem her error, so far as it might yet be
possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she
felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger
Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin, and half maddened
by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together
in the prison-chamber. She had climbed her way, since then, to a
higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself
nearer to her level or perhaps, below it, by the revenge which he
had stooped for.

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and
do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on
whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not long
to seek. One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of
the peninsula, she beheld the old physician, with a basket on one
arm, and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground, in
quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicine withal.

Chapter 14

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 entreaty to the worshipful
magistrate that it might be done forthwith!"

"It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off this
badge," calmly replied Hester. "Were I worthy to be quit of it,
it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into
something that should speak a different purport."

"Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better," rejoined he, "A
woman must needs follow her own fancy, touching the adornment of
her person. The letter is gayly embroidered, and shows right
bravely on your bosom!"

All this while, Hester had been looking steadily at the old man,
and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a
change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. It
was not so much that he had grown older; for though the traces of
advancing life were visible, he bore his age well, and seemed to
retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But the former aspect of an
intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she
best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been
succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully
guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this
expression with a smile; but the latter played him false, and
flickered over his visage so derisively, that the spectator could
see his blackness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too,
there came a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old
man's soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily within
his breast, until, by some casual puff of passion, it was blown
into a momentary flame. This he repressed as speedily as
possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had
happened.

In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of
man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will
only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.
This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by
devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a
heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and
adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated
over.

The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was
another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to
her.

"What see you in my face," asked the physician, "that you look at
it so earnestly?"

"Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears
bitter enough for it," answered she. "But let it pass! It is of
yonder miserable man that I would speak."

"And what of him?" cried Roger Chillingworth eagerly, as if he
loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it
with the only person of whom he could make a confidant. "Not to
hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to
be busy with the gentleman. So speak freely; and I will make
answer."

"When we last spake together," said Hester, "now seven years ago,
it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy, as touching
the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and good
fame of yonder man were in your hands, there seemed no choice to
me, save to be silent, in accordance with your behest. Yet it was
not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself; for,
having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there
remained a duty towards him; and something whispered me that I
was betraying it, in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since
that day, no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his
every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You
search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart! Your
clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living
death; and still he knows you not. In permitting this, I have
surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was
left me to be true!"

"What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger,
pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a
dungeon,--thence, peradventure, to the gallows!"

"It had been better so!" said Hester Prynne.

"What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth again.
"I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician
earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have
wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid, his life would
have burned away in torments, within the first two years after
the perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit
lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has,
beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. O, I could reveal a
goodly secret! But enough! What art can do, I have exhausted on
him. That he now breathes, and creeps about on earth, is owing
all to me!"

"Better he had died at once!" said Hester Prynne.

"Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old Roger Chillingworth,
letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes.
"Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this
man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy!
He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling
always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritual
sense,--for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as
this,--he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his
heart-strings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him,
which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that the
eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his
brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be
tortured with frightful dreams, and desperate thoughts, the sting
of remorse, and despair of pardon; as a foretaste of what awaits
him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my
presence!--the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most
vilely wronged!--and who had grown to exist only by this
perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed!--he did not
err!--there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a
human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment!"

The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his
hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful
shape, which he could not recognize, usurping the place of his
own image in a glass. It was one of those moments--which
sometimes occur only at the interval of years--when a man's moral
aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably,
he had never before viewed himself as he did now.

"Hast thou not tortured him enough?" said Hester, noticing the
old man's look. "Has he not paid thee all?"

"No!--no!--He has but increased the debt!" answered the
physician; and, as he proceeded, his manner lost its fiercer
characteristics, and subsided into gloom. "Dost thou remember me,
Hester, as I was nine years agone? Even then, I was in the autumn
of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been
made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed
faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, and
faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the
other,--faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. No life
had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich
with benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? Was I not, though
you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others,
craving little for himself,--kind, true, just, and of constant,
if not warm affections? Was I not all this?"

"All this, and more," said Hester.

"And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and
permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his
features. "I have already told thee what I am! A fiend! Who made
me so?"

"It was myself!" cried Hester, shuddering. "It was I, not less
than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?"

"I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied Roger
Chillingworth. "If that have not avenged me, I can do no more!"

He laid his finger on it, with a smile.

"It has avenged thee!" answered Hester Prynne.

"I judged no less," said the physician. "And now, what wouldst
thou with me touching this man?"

"I must reveal the secret," answered Hester, firmly. "He must
discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result, I
know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him,
whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far
as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and
his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in thy hands.
Nor do I,--whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth,
though it be the truth of red-hot iron, entering into the
soul,--nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer
a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thy
mercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him,--no
good for me,--no good for thee! There is no good for little
Pearl! There is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze!"

"Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!" said Roger Chillingworth,
unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too; for there was a
quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. "Thou
hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a
better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for
the good that has been wasted in thy nature!"

"And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has
transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge
it out of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake, then
doubly for thine own! Forgive, and leave his further retribution
to the Power that claims it! I said, but now, that there could be
no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering
together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling, at every
step, over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not
so! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast
been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou
give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless
benefit?"

"Peace, Hester, peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy
sternness. "It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power
as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back
to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy
first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but, since
that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have
wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion;
neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from
his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it
may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man."

He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of
gathering herbs.

Chapter 15

Hester and Pearl

So Roger Chillingworth--a deformed old figure, with a face that
haunted men's memories longer than they liked--took leave of
Hester Prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. He
gathered here and there an herb, or grubbed up a root, and put it
into the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched the
ground, as he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a little
while, looking with a half-fantastic curiosity to see whether the
tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him,
and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown,
across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they
were, which the old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not the
earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye,
greet him with poisonous shrubs, of species hitherto unknown,
that would start up under his fingers? Or might it suffice him,
that every wholesome growth should be converted into something
deleterious and malignant at his touch? Did the sun, which shone
so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or was there,
as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with
his deformity, whichever way he turned himself? And whither was
he now going? Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving
a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be
seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of
vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing
with hideous luxuriance? Or would he spread bat's wings and flee
away, looking so much the uglier, the higher he rose towards
heaven?

"Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne bitterly, as she still
gazed after him, "I hate the man!"

She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome
or lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought of those long-past
days, in a distant land, when he used to emerge at eventide from
the seclusion of his study, and sit down in the fire-light of
their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile. He needed to
bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that the chill of
so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the
scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than
happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal medium of her
subsequent life, they classed themselves among her ugliest
remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes could have been! She
marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him!
She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever
endured, and reciprocated, the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and
had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt
into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger
Chillingworth, than any which had since been done him, that, in
the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to
fancy herself happy by his side.

"Yes, I hate him!" repeated Hester, more bitterly than before.
"He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!"

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along
with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their
miserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some
mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her
sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the
marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her
as the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to have done with
this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long years, under
the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of misery,
and wrought out no repentance?

The emotions of that brief space, while she stood gazing after
the crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw a dark light
on Hester's state of mind, revealing much that she might not
otherwise have acknowledged to herself.

He being gone, she summoned back her child.

"Pearl! Little Pearl! Where are you?"

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no
loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer
of herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully
with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom
forth, and--as it declined to venture--seeking a passage for
herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky.
Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal,
she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats
out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snail-shells, and sent
out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in New
England; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore.
She seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and made prize of
several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the
warm sun. Then she took up the white foam, that streaked the line
of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering
after it with winged footsteps, to catch the great snow-flakes
ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds, that fed and
fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron
full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after these
small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them.
One little gray bird, with a white breast, Pearl was almost sure,
had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing.
But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport; because it
grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild
as the sea-breeze, or as wild as Pearl herself.

Her final employment was to gather sea-weed, of various kinds,
and make herself a scarf, or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus
assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's
gift for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her
mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best
she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so
familiar on her mother's. A letter,--the letter A,--but freshly
green, instead of scarlet! The child bent her chin upon her
breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest; even
as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the
world was to make out its hidden import.

"I wonder if mother will ask me what it means!" thought Pearl.

Just then, she heard her mother's voice, and, flitting along as
lightly as one of the little sea-birds, appeared before Hester
Prynne, dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the
ornament upon her bosom.

"My little Pearl," said Hester, after a moment's silence, "the
green letter, and on thy childish bosom, has no purport. But dost
thou know, my child, what this letter means which thy mother is
doomed to wear?"

"Yes, mother," said the child. "It is the great letter A. Thou
hast taught it me in the horn-book."

Hester looked steadily into her little face; but, though there
was that singular expression which she had so often remarked in
her black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Pearl
really attached any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid
desire to ascertain the point.

"Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter?"

"Truly do I!" answered Pearl, looking brightly into her mother's
face. "It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand
over his heart!"

"And what reason is that?" asked Hester, half smiling at the
absurd incongruity of the child's observation; but, on second
thoughts, turning pale. "What has the letter to do with any
heart, save mine?"

"Nay, mother, I have told all I know," said Pearl, more seriously
than she was wont to speak. "Ask yonder old man whom thou hast
been talking with! It may be he can tell. But in good earnest
now, mother dear, what does this scarlet letter mean?--and why
dost thou wear it on thy bosom?--and why does the minister keep
his hand over his heart?"

She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her
eyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and
capricious character. The thought occurred to Hester, that the
child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike
confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she
knew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It showed
Pearl in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore, the mother, while loving
her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled
herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of
an April breeze; which spends its time in airy sport, and has its
gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of
moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take it to
your bosom; in requital of which 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 coloring. But
now the idea came strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with
her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have
approached the age when she could 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,--a
sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect,--and
a bitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, might be
found to have the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed
affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are
the richest flavors of unripe fruit. With all these sterling
attributes, thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her
mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of
this elfish child.

Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the
scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her being. From the
earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this
as her appointed mission. Hester had often fancied that
Providence had a design of justice and retribution, in endowing
the child with this marked propensity; but never, until now, had
she bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that design,
there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence.
If little Pearl were entertained with faith and trust, as a
spirit-messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not be
her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her
mother's heart, and converted it into a tomb?--and to help her to
overcome the passion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead nor
asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart?

Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester's mind,
with as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been
whispered into her ear. And there was little Pearl, all this
while, holding her mother's hand in both her own, and turning her
face upward, while she put these searching questions, once, and
again, and still a third time.

"What does the letter mean, mother?--and why dost thou wear
it?--and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?"

"What shall I say?" thought Hester to herself.--"No! If this be
the price of the child's sympathy, I cannot pay it!"

Then she spoke aloud.

"Silly Pearl," said she, "what questions are these? There are
many things in this world that a child must not ask about. What
know I of the minister's heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I
wear it for the sake of its gold thread!"

In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never before
been false to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was the
talisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who
now forsook her; as recognizing that, in spite of his strict
watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some
old one had never been expelled. As for little Pearl, the
earnestness soon passed out of her face.

But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. Two or
three times, as her mother and she went homeward, and as often at
supper-time, and while Hester was putting her to bed, and once
after she seemed to be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up, with
mischief gleaming in her black eyes.

"Mother," said she, "what does the scarlet letter mean?"

And the next morning, the first indication the child gave of
being awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and
making that other inquiry, which she had so unaccountably
connected with her investigations about the scarlet letter:--

"Mother!--Mother!--Why does the minister keep his hand over his
heart?"

"Hold thy tongue, naughty child!" answered her mother, with an
asperity that she had never permitted to herself before. "Do not
tease me; else I shall shut thee into the dark closet!"

Chapter 16

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 die 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 in a sick-chamber, whither the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt
that he had gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot,
among his Indian converts. He would probably return, by a certain
hour, in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes, therefore, the
next day, Hester took little Pearl,--who was necessarily the
companion of all her mother's expeditions, however inconvenient
her presence,--and set forth.

The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula
to the mainland, was no other than a footpath. It straggled
onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it in
so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and
disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to
Hester's mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which
she had so long been wandering. The day was chill and sombre.
Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however,
by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and
then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting
cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of some long
vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight--feebly sportive,
at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and
scene--withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots
where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find
them bright.

"Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. It
runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on
your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off.
Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It
will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!"

"Nor ever will, my child, I hope," said Hester.

"And why not, mother?" asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the
beginning of her race. "Will not it come of its own accord, when
I am a woman grown?"

"Run away, child," answered her mother, "and catch the sunshine!
It will soon be gone."

Pearl set forth, at a great pace, and, as Hester smiled to
perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in
the midst of it, all brightened by its splendor, and
scintillating with the vivacity excited by rapid motion. The
light lingered about the lonely child, as if glad of such a
playmate, until her mother had drawn almost nigh enough to step
into the magic circle too.

"It will go now!" said Pearl, shaking her head.

"See!" answered Hester, smiling. "Now I can stretch out my hand,
and grasp some of it."

As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge
from the bright expression that was dancing on Pearl's features,
her mother could have fancied that the child had absorbed it into
herself, and would give it forth again, with a gleam about her
path, as they should plunge into some gloomier shade. There was
no other attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new
and untransmitted vigor in Pearl's nature, as this never-failing
vivacity of spirits; she had not the disease of sadness, which
almost all children, in these latter days, inherit, with the
scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors. Perhaps this too
was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy with which
Hester had fought against her sorrows, before Pearl's birth. It
was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre
to the child's character. She wanted--what some people want
throughout life--a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus
humanize and make her capable of sympathy. But there was time
enough yet for little Pearl!

"Come, my child!" said Hester, looking about her, from the spot
where Pearl had stood still in the sunshine. "We will sit down a
little way within the wood, and rest ourselves."

"I am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. "But you may
sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile."

"A story, child!" said Hester. "And about what?"

"O, a story about the Black Man!" answered Pearl, taking hold of
her mother's gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half
mischievously, into her face. "How he haunts this forest, and
carries a book with him,--a big, heavy book, with iron clasps;
and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to
every body that meets him here among the trees; and they are to
write their names with their own blood. And then he sets his mark
on their bosoms! Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother?"

"And who told you this story, Pearl?" asked her mother,
recognizing a common superstition of the period.

"It was the old dame in the chimney-corner, at the house where
you watched last night," said the child. "But she fancied me
asleep while she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and
a thousand people had met him here, and had written in his book,
and have his mark on them. And that ugly-tempered lady, old
Mistress Hibbins, was one. And, mother, the old dame said that
this scarlet letter was the Black Man's mark on thee, and that it
glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight, here in
the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And dost thou go to meet him
in the night-time?"

"Didst thou ever awake, and find thy mother gone?" asked Hester.

"Not that I remember," said the child. "If thou fearest to leave
me in our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I would
very gladly go! But, mother, tell me now! Is there such a Black
Man? And didst thou ever meet him? And is this his mark?"

"Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?" asked her
mother.

"Yes, if thou tellest me all," answered Pearl.

"Once in my life I met the Black Man!" said her mother. "This
scarlet letter is his mark!"

Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to
secure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger
along the forest-track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of
moss; which, at some epoch of the preceding century, had been a
gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade,
and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere. It was a little dell
where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising
gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst,
over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees impending over
it had flung down great branches, from time to time, which choked
up the current, and compelled it to form eddies and black depths
at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier passages,
there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling
sand. Letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream,
they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some
short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces of it
amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush, and here and
there a huge rock, covered over with gray lichens. All these
giant trees and 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.

"O brook! O foolish and tiresome little brook!" cried Pearl,
after listening awhile to its talk. "Why art thou so sad? Pluck
up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!"

But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the
forest-trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it
could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else
to say. Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her
life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed
through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the
little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along
her course.

"What does this sad little brook say, mother?" inquired she.

"If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee
of it," answered her mother, "even as it is telling me of mine!
But now, Pearl, I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise
of one putting aside the branches. I would have thee betake
thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes
yonder."

"Is it the Black Man?" asked Pearl.

"Wilt thou go and play, child?" repeated her mother. "But do not
stray far into the wood. And take heed that thou come at my first
call."

"Yes, mother," answered Pearl, "But, if it be the Black Man, wilt
thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book
under his arm?"

"Go, silly child!" said her mother, impatiently. "It is no Black
Man! Thou canst see him now through the trees. It is the
minister!"

"And so it is!" said the child. "And, mother, he has his hand
over his heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name
in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place? But why
does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?"

"Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another
time," cried Hester Prynne. "But do not stray far. Keep where
thou canst hear the babble of the brook."

The child went singing away, following up the current of the
brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with its
melancholy voice. But the little stream would not be comforted,
and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very
mournful mystery that had happened--or making a prophetic
lamentation about something that was yet to happen--within the
verge of the dismal forest. So Pearl, who had enough of shadow in
her own little life, chose to break off all acquaintance with
this repining brook. She set herself, therefore, to gathering
violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbines that she
found growing in the crevices of a high rock.

When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made a step or two
towards the track that led through the forest, but still remained
under the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister
advancing along the path, entirely alone, and leaning on a staff
which he had cut by the way-side. He looked haggard and feeble,
and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never
so remarkably characterized him in his walks about the
settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself
liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in this intense
seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy
trial to the spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait; as if
he saw no reason for taking one step farther, nor felt any desire
to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of any
thing, 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.

Chapter 17

The Pastor and His Parishioner

Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by, before
Hester Prynne could gather voice enough to attract his
observation. At length, she succeeded.

"Arthur Dimmesdale!" she said, faintly at first; then louder, but
hoarsely. "Arthur Dimmesdale!"

"Who speaks?" answered the minister.

Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man
taken by surprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have
witnesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the
voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in
garments so sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight
into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the
noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow.
It may be, that his pathway through life was haunted thus, by a
spectre that had stolen out from among his thoughts.

He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter.

"Hester! Hester Prynne!" said he. "Is it thou? Art thou in life?"

"Even so!" she answered. "In such life as has been mine these
seven years past! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou yet
live?"

It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual
and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely
did they meet, in the dim wood, that it was like the first
encounter, in the world beyond the grave, of two spirits who had
been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood
coldly shuddering, in mutual dread; as not yet familiar with
their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied
beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost! They
were awe-stricken likewise at themselves; because the crisis
flung back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each
heart its history and experience, as life never does, except at
such breathless epochs. The soul beheld its features in the
mirror of the passing moment. It was with fear, and tremulously,
and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that Arthur
Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the
chill hand of Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as it was, took away
what was dreariest in the interview. They now felt themselves, at
least, inhabitants of the same sphere.

Without a word more spoken,--neither he nor she assuming the
guidance, but with an unexpressed consent,--they glided back into
the shadow of the woods, whence Hester had emerged, and sat down
on the heap of moss where she and Pearl had before been sitting.
When they found voice to speak, it was, at first, only to utter
remarks and inquiries such as any two acquaintance might have
made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and, next, the
health of each. Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by
step, into the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts.
So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed
something slight and casual to run before, and throw open the
doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led
across the threshold.

After a while, the minister fixed his eyes on Hester Prynne's.

"Hester," said he, "hast thou found peace?"

She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.

"Hast thou?" she asked.

"None!--nothing but despair!" he answered. "What else could I
look for, being what I am, and leading such a life as mine? Were
I an atheist,--a man devoid of conscience,--a wretch with coarse
and brutal instincts,--I might have found peace, long ere now.
Nay, I never should have lost it! But, as matters stand with my
soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all
of God's gifts that were the choicest have become the ministers
of spiritual torment. Hester, I am most miserable!"

"The people reverence thee," said Hester. "And surely thou
workest good among them! Doth this bring thee no comfort?"

"More misery, Hester!--only the more misery!" answered the
clergyman, with a bitter smile. "As concerns the good which I may
appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion.
What can a ruined soul, like mine, effect towards the redemption
of other souls?--or a polluted soul, towards their purification?
And as for the people's reverence, would that it were turned to
scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem it, Hester, a consolation, that
I must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward
to my face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from it!--must
see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as
if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking!--and then look inward,
and discern the black reality of what they idolize? I have
laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast
between what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it!"

"You wrong yourself in this," said Hester gently. "You have
deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you, in the
days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in very
truth, than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no reality in the
penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? And wherefore
should it not bring you peace?"

"No, Hester, no!" replied the clergyman. "There is no substance
in it! It is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me! Of penance
I have had enough! Of penitence there has been none! Else, I
should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness,
and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the
judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet
letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little
knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years'
cheat, to look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am! Had
I one friend,--or were it my worst enemy!--to whom, when sickened
with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself,
and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might
keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me!
But now, it is all falsehood!--all emptiness!--all death!"

Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. Yet,
uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he did,
his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in
which to interpose what she came to say. She conquered her fears,
and spoke.

"Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for," said she, "with
whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of
it!"--Again she hesitated, but brought out the words with an
effort.--"Thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him
under the same roof!"

The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and
clutching at his heart as if he would have torn it out of his
bosom.

"Ha! What sayest thou?" cried he. "An enemy! And under mine own
roof! What mean you?"

Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which
she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie
for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy
of one, whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. The
very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter
might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere
of a being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had been a
period when Hester was less alive to this consideration; or,
perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the
minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more
tolerable doom. But of late, since the night of his vigil, all
her sympathies towards him had been both softened and
invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted
not, that the continual presence of Roger Chillingworth,--the
secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about
him,--and his authorized interference, as a physician, with the
minister's physical and spiritual infirmities,--that these bad
opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of
them, the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated
state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by wholesome pain,
but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being. Its result,
on earth, could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter, that
eternal alienation from the Good and True, of which madness is
perhaps the earthly type.

Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once,--nay,
why should we not speak it?--still so passionately loved! Hester
felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and death
itself, as she had already told Roger Chillingworth, would have
been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken
upon herself to choose. And now, rather than have had this
grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have laid down on the
forest-leaves, and died there, at Arthur Dimmesdale's feet.

"O Arthur," cried she, "forgive me! In all things else, I have
striven to be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have
held fast, and did hold fast through all extremity; save when thy
good,--thy life,--thy fame,--were put in question! Then I
consented to a deception. But a lie is never good, even though
death threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see what I would
say? That old man!--the physician!--he whom they call Roger
Chillingworth!--he was my husband!"

The minister looked at her, for an instant, with all that
violence of passion, which--intermixed, in more shapes than one,
with his higher, purer, softer qualities--was, in fact, the
portion of him which the Devil claimed, and through which he
sought to win the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer
frown, than Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it
lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been
so much enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were
incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down on the
ground, and buried his face in his hands.

"I might have known it!" murmured he. "I did know it! Was not the
secret told me in the natural recoil of my heart, at the first
sight of him, and as often as I have seen him since? Why did I
not understand? O Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all
the horror of this thing! And the shame!--the indelicacy!--the
horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to
the very eye that would gloat over it! Woman, woman, thou art
accountable for this! I cannot forgive thee!"

"Thou shalt forgive me!" cried Hester, flinging herself on the
fallen leaves beside him. "Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!"

With sudden and desperate tenderness, she threw her arms around
him, and pressed his head against her bosom; little caring though
his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. He would have released
himself, but strove in vain to do so. Hester would not set him
free, lest he should look her sternly in the face. All the world
had frowned on her,--for seven long years had it frowned upon
this lonely woman,--and still she bore it all, nor ever once
turned away her firm, sad eyes. Heaven, likewise, had frowned
upon her, and she had not died. But the frown of this pale, weak,
sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what Hester could not bear,
and live!

"Wilt thou yet forgive me?" she repeated, over and over again.
"Wilt thou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?"

"I do forgive you, Hester," replied the minister, at length, with
a deep utterance out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. "I
freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both! We are not,
Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than
even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker
than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a
human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!"

"Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration of
its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other! Hast thou
forgotten it?"

"Hush, Hester!" said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground.
"No; I have not forgotten!"

They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on
the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them a
gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long
been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along;--and yet it
inclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim
another, and another, and, after all, another moment. The forest
was obscure around them, and creaked with a blast that was
passing through it. The boughs were tossing heavily above their
heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as
if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or
constrained to forbode evil to come.

And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-track that
led backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up
again the burden of her ignominy, and the minister the hollow
mockery of his good name! So they lingered an instant longer. No
golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark
forest. Here, seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not
burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here, seen only by her
eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for one
moment, true!

He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.

"Hester," cried he, "here is a new horror! Roger Chillingworth
knows your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he
continue, then, to keep our secret? What will now be the course
of his revenge?"

"There is a strange secrecy in his nature," replied Hester,
thoughtfully; "and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices
of his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the
secret. He will doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark
passion."

"And I!--how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with
this deadly enemy?" exclaimed Arthur Dimmesdale, shrinking within
himself, and pressing his hand nervously against his heart,--a
gesture that had grown involuntary with him. "Think for me,
Hester! Thou art strong. Resolve for me!"

"Thou must dwell no longer with this man," said Hester, slowly
and firmly. "Thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!"

"It were far worse than death!" replied the minister. "But how to
avoid it? What choice remains to me? Shall I lie down again on
these withered leaves, where I cast myself when thou didst tell
me what he was? Must I sink down there, and die at once?"

"Alas, what a ruin has befallen thee!" said Hester, with the
tears gushing into her eyes. "Wilt thou die for very weakness?
There is no other cause!"

"The judgment of God is on me," answered the conscience-stricken
priest. "It is too mighty for me to struggle with!"

"Heaven would show mercy," rejoined Hester, "hadst thou but the
strength to take advantage of it."

"Be thou strong for me!" answered he. "Advise me what to do."

"Is the world then so narrow?" exclaimed Hester Prynne, fixing
her deep eyes on the minister's, and instinctively exercising a
magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued, that it
could hardly hold itself erect. "Doth the universe lie within the
compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a
leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads
yonder forest-track? Backward to the settlement, thou sayest!
Yes; but onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper, into the
wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until, some
few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the
white man's tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would
bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to
one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough
in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of
Roger Chillingworth?"

"Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen leaves!" replied the
minister, with a sad smile.

"Then there is the broad pathway of the sea!" continued Hester.
"It brought thee hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee
back again. In our native land, whether in some remote rural
village or in vast London,--or, surely, in Germany, in France, in
pleasant Italy,--thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge!
And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their
opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long
already!"

"It cannot be!" answered the minister, listening as if he were
called upon to realize a dream. "I am powerless to go. Wretched
and sinful as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on
my earthly existence in the sphere where Providence hath placed
me. Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for other
human souls! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful
sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonor, when his
dreary watch shall come to an end!"

"Thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery,"
replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own
energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not
cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path; neither
shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the
sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened!
Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted
possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future
is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness to be
enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of
thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a
mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or,--as is more
thy nature,--be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the
most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do any
thing, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur
Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as
thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so
much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into
thy life!--that have made thee feeble to will and to do!--that
will leave thee powerless even to repent! Up, and away!"

"O Hester!" cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful
light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, "thou
tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering
beneath him! I must die here. There is not the strength or
courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult
world, alone!"

It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit.
He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within
his reach.

He repeated the word.

"Alone, Hester!"

"Thou shall not go alone!" answered she, in a deep whisper.

Then, all was spoken!

Chapter 18

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; criticizing all with hardly more
reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the
judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the
church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her
free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where
other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had
been her teachers,--stern and wild ones,--and they had made her
strong, but taught her much amiss.

The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an
experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally
received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so
fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them. But this
had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.
Since that wretched epoch, he had watched, with morbid zeal and
minuteness, not his acts,--for those it was easy to arrange,--but
each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head of the
social system, as the clergymen of that day stood, he was only
the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even
its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of his order
inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but who
kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the
fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer
within the line of virtue, than if he had never sinned at all.

Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the whole
seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a
preparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! Were such
a man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation
of his crime? None; unless it avail him somewhat, that he was
broken down by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was
darkened and confused by the very remorse which harrowed it;
that, between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as a
hypocrite, conscience might find it hard to strike the balance;
that it was human to avoid the peril of death and infamy, and the
inscrutable machinations of an enemy; that, finally, to this poor
pilgrim, on his dreary and desert path, faint, sick, miserable,
there appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a new
life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doom which he was
now expiating. And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the
breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in
this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded; so
that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel,
and might even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other
avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded.
But there is still the ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy
tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten
triumph.

The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. Let it
suffice, that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone.

"If, in all these past seven years," thought he, "I could recall
one instant of peace or hope, I would yet endure, for the sake of
that earnest of Heaven's mercy. But now,--since I am irrevocably
doomed,--wherefore should I not snatch the solace allowed to the
condemned culprit before his execution? Or, if this be the path
to a better life, as Hester would persuade me, I surely give up
no fairer prospect by pursuing it! Neither can I any longer live
without her companionship; so powerful is she to sustain,--so
tender to soothe! O Thou to whom I dare not lift mine eyes, wilt
Thou yet pardon me!"

"Thou wilt go!" said Hester calmly, as he met her glance.

The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its
flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the
exhilarating effect--upon a prisoner just escaped from the
dungeon of his own heart--of breathing the wild, free atmosphere
of an unredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region. His spirit
rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of
the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept him
grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious temperament, there
was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in his mood.

"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself. "Methought
the germ of it was dead in me! O Hester, thou art my better
angel! I seem to have flung myself--sick, sin-stained, and
sorrow-blackened--down upon these forest-leaves, and to have
risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that
hath been merciful! This is already the better life! Why did we
not find it sooner?"

"Let us not look back," answered Hester Prynne. "The past is
gone! Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With this
symbol, I undo it all, and make it as 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 farther flight
it would have fallen into the water, and have given the little
brook another woe to carry onward, besides the unintelligible
tale which it still kept murmuring about. But there lay the
embroidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel, which some
ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be haunted by
strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and
unaccountable misfortune.

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 deathlike slumber, must always create a
sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it
overflows upon the outward world. Had the forest still kept its
gloom, it would have been bright in Hester's eyes, and bright in
Arthur Dimmesdale's!

Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.

"Thou must know Pearl!" said she. "Our little Pearl! Thou hast
seen her,--yes, I know it!--but thou wilt see her now with other
eyes. She is a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou
wilt love her dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal
with her."

"Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?" asked the
minister, somewhat uneasily. "I have long shrunk from children,
because they often show a distrust,--a backwardness to be
familiar with me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!"

"Ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "But she will love thee
dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her! Pearl!
Pearl!"

"I see the child," observed the minister. "Yonder she is,
standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other
side of the brook. So thou thinkest the child will love me?"

Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible, at
some distance, as the minister had described her, like a
bright-apparelled vision, in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her
through an arch of boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making
her figure dim or distinct,--now like a real child, now like a
child's spirit,--as the splendor went and came again. She heard
her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest.

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while her mother
sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest--stern as
it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of
the world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely
infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the
kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her the
partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn, but
ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon
the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was pleased with
their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly
took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a
brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon
repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to
be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come
beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A
squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered
either in anger or merriment,--for a squirrel is such a choleric
and humorous little personage that it is hard to distinguish
between his moods,--so he chattered at the child, and flung down
a nut upon her head. It was a last year's nut, and already gnawed
by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his sleep by her light
footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively at Pearl, as
doubting whether it were better to steal off, or renew his nap on
the same spot. A wolf, it is said,--but here the tale has surely
lapsed into the improbable,--came up, and smelt of Pearl's robe,
and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand. The truth
seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild
things which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in
the human child.

And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of
the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared
to know it; and one and another whispered, as she passed, "Adorn
thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with
me!"--and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, and
anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green,
which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she
decorated her hair, and her young waist, and became a
nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest
sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned
herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly back.

Slowly; for she saw the clergyman!

Chapter 19

The Child at the Brook-Side

"Thou wilt love her dearly," repeated Hester Prynne, as she and
the minister sat watching little Pearl. "Dost thou not think her
beautiful? And see with what natural skill she has made those
simple flowers adorn her! Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds,
and rubies, in the wood, they could not have become her better.
She is a splendid child! But I know whose brow she has!"

"Dost thou know, Hester," said Arthur Dimmesdale, with an unquiet
smile, "that this dear child, tripping about always at thy side,
hath caused me many an alarm? Methought--O Hester, what a thought
is that, and how terrible to dread it!--that my own features were
partly repeated in her face, and so strikingly that the world
might see them! But she is mostly thine!"

"No, no! Not mostly!" answered the mother with a tender smile. "A
little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose
child she is. But how strangely beautiful she looks, with those
wild flowers in her hair! It is as if one of the fairies, whom we
left in dear old England, had decked her out to meet us."

It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before
experienced, that they sat and watched Pearl's slow advance. In
her was visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to
the world, these seven past years, as the living hieroglyphic, in
which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide,--all
written in this symbol,--all plainly manifest,--had there been a
prophet or magician skilled to read the character of flame! And
Pearl was the oneness of their being. Be the foregone evil what
it might, how could they doubt that their earthly lives and
future destinies were conjoined, when they beheld at once the
material union, and the spiritual idea, in whom they met, and
were to dwell immortally together? Thoughts like these--and
perhaps other thoughts, which they did not acknowledge or
define--threw an awe about the child, as she came onward.

"Let her see nothing strange--no passion or eagerness--in thy way
of accosting her," whispered Hester. "Our Pearl is a fitful and
fantastic little elf, sometimes. Especially, she is seldom
tolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why
and wherefore. But the child hath strong affections! She loves
me, and will love thee!"

"Thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing aside at
Hester Prynne, "how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns
for it! But, in truth, as I already told thee, children are not
readily won to be familiar with me. They will not climb my knee,
nor prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile; but stand apart,
and eye me strangely. Even little babes, when I take them in my
arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl, twice in her little lifetime,
hath been kind to me! The first time,--thou knowest it well! The
last was when thou ledst her with thee to the house of yonder
stern old Governor."

"And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!"
answered the mother. "I remember it; and so shall little Pearl.
Fear nothing! She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon
learn to love thee!"

By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood
on the farther side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman,
who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk, waiting to
receive her. Just where she had paused the brook chanced to form
a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of
her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her
beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but
more refined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so
nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to communicate
somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child
herself. It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking so
steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest-gloom;
herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine, that
was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the brook
beneath stood another child,--another and the same,--with
likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some
indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl; as if
the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed
out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and
was now vainly seeking to return to it.

There were both truth and error in the impression; the child and
mother were estranged, but through Hester's fault, not Pearl's.
Since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been
admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, and so
modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning
wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where
she was.

"I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister, "that
this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou
canst never meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit,
who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to
cross a running stream? Pray hasten her; for this delay has
already imparted a tremor to my nerves."

"Come, dearest child!" said Hester encouragingly, and stretching
out both her arms. "How slow thou art! When hast thou been so
sluggish before now? Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy
friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much love, henceforward, as
thy mother alone could give thee! Leap across the brook and come
to us. Thou canst leap like a young deer!"

Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet
expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she
fixed her bright, wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister,
and now included them both in the same glance; as if to detect
and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one
another. For some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt
the child's eyes upon himself, his hand--with that gesture so
habitual as to have become involuntary--stole over his heart. At
length, assuming a singular air of authority, Pearl stretched out
her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and pointing
evidently towards her mother's breast. And beneath, in the mirror
of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image of
little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too.

"Thou strange child, why dost thou not come to me?" exclaimed
Hester.

Pearl still pointed with her forefinger; and a frown gathered on
her brow; the more impressive from the childish, the almost
baby-like aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother
still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday
suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a
yet more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was the
fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its
pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the
aspect of little Pearl.

"Hasten, Pearl; or I shall be angry with thee!" cried Hester
Prynne, who, however inured to such behaviour on the elf-child's
part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly
deportment now. "Leap across the brook, naughty child, and run
hither! Else I must come to thee!"

But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats, any more
than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a fit
of passion, gesticulating violently, and throwing her small
figure into the most extravagant contortions. She accompanied
this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods
reverberated on all sides; so that, alone as she was in her
childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden
multitude were lending her their sympathy and encouragement. Seen
in the brook, once more, was the shadowy wrath of Pearl's image,
crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly
gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing its small
forefinger at Hester's bosom!

"I see what ails the child," whispered Hester to the clergyman,
and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her
trouble and annoyance. "Children will not abide any, the
slightest, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are
daily before their eyes. Pearl misses something which she has
always seen me wear!"

"I pray you," answered the minister, "if thou hast any means of
pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered
wrath of an old witch, like Mistress Hibbins," added he,
attempting to smile, "I know nothing that I would not sooner
encounter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's young beauty,
as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify
her, if thou lovest me!"

Hester turned again towards Pearl, with a crimson blush upon her
cheek, a conscious glance aside at the clergyman, and then a
heavy sigh; while, even before she had time to speak, the blush
yielded to a deadly pallor.

"Pearl," said she, sadly, "look down at thy feet! There!--before
thee!--on the hither side of the brook!"

The child turned her eyes to the point indicated; and there lay
the scarlet letter, so close upon the margin of the stream, that
the gold embroidery was reflected in it.

"Bring it hither!" said Hester.

"Come thou and take it up!" answered Pearl.

"Was ever such a child!" observed Hester aside to the minister.
"O, I have much to tell thee about her. But, in very truth, she
is right as regards this hateful token. I must bear its torture
yet a little longer,--only a few days longer,--until we shall
have left this region, and look back hither as to a land which we
have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! The mid-ocean shall
take it from my hand, and swallow it up for ever!"

With these words, she advanced to the margin of the brook, took
up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom.
Hopefully, but a moment ago, as Hester had spoken of drowning it
in the deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her,
as she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand of
fate. She had flung it into infinite space!--she had drawn an
hour's free breath!--and here again was the scarlet misery,
glittering on the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus typified
or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of
doom. Hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair, and
confined them beneath her cap. As if there were a withering spell
in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her
womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow
seemed to fall across her.

When the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand to
Pearl.

"Dost thou know thy mother now, child?" asked she, reproachfully,
but with a subdued tone. "Wilt thou come across the brook, and
own thy mother, now that she has her shame upon her,--now that
she is sad?"

"Yes; now I will!" answered the child, bounding across the brook,
and clasping Hester in her arms. "Now thou art my mother indeed!
And I am thy little Pearl!"

In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew
down her mother's head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks.
But then--by a kind of necessity that always impelled this child
to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give with a throb
of anguish--Pearl put up her mouth, and kissed the scarlet
letter, too!

"That was not kind!" said Hester. "When thou hast shown me a
little love, thou mockest me!"

"Why doth the minister sit yonder?" asked Pearl.

"He waits to welcome thee," replied her mother. "Come thou, and
entreat his blessing! He loves thee, my little Pearl, and loves
thy mother too. Wilt thou not love him? Come! he longs to greet
thee!"

"Doth he love us?" said Pearl, looking up with acute intelligence
into her mother's face. "Will he go back with us, hand in hand,
we three together, into the town?"

"Not now, dear child," answered Hester. "But in days to come he
will walk hand in hand with us. We will have a home and fireside
of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach
thee many things, and love thee dearly. Thou wilt love him; wilt
thou not?"

"And will he always keep his hand over his heart?" inquired
Pearl.

"Foolish child, what a question is that!" exclaimed her mother.
"Come and ask his blessing!"

But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive
with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from
whatever caprice of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no
favor to the clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force that
her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting
her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her
babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could
transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different
aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. The
minister--painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might
prove a talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier
regards--bent forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon,
Pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook,
stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome
kiss was quite washed off, and diffused through a long lapse of
the gliding water. She then remained apart, silently watching
Hester and the clergyman; while they talked together, and made
such arrangements as were suggested by their new position, and
the purposes soon to be fulfilled.

And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was
to be left 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.

Chapter 20

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 questionable cruisers,
frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of
the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable
irresponsibility of character. This vessel had recently arrived
from the Spanish Main, and, within three days' time, would sail
for Bristol. Hester Prynne--whose vocation, as a self-enlisted
Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain
and crew--could take upon herself to secure the passage of two
individuals and a child, with all the secrecy which circumstances
rendered more than desirable.

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the
precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It
would probably be on the fourth day from the present. "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 honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergyman,
he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of
terminating his professional career. "At least, they shall say of
me," thought this exemplary man, "that I leave no public duty
unperformed, nor ill performed!" Sad, indeed, that an
introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's
should be so miserably deceived! We have had, and may still have,
worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably
weak; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a
subtle disease, that had long since begun to eat into the real
substance of his character. No man, for any considerable period,
can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude,
without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale's feelings, as he returned from
his interview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy,
and hurried him townward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the
woods seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural
obstacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he
remembered it on his outward journey. But he leaped across the
plashy places, thrust himself through the clinging underbrush,
climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow, and overcame, in
short, all the difficulties of the track, with an unweariable
activity that astonished him. He could not but recall how feebly,
and with what frequent pauses for breath, he had toiled over the
same ground only two days before. As he drew near the town, he
took an impression of change from the series of familiar objects
that presented themselves. It seemed not yesterday, not one, nor
two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them.
There, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he
remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the
due multitude of gable-peaks, and a weathercock at every point
where his memory suggested one. Not the less, however, came this
importunately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true as
regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known
shapes of human life, about the little town. They looked neither
older nor younger, now; the beards of the aged were no whiter,
nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day;
it was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from
the individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting
glance; and yet the minister's deepest sense seemed to inform him
of their mutability. A similar impression struck him most
remarkably, as he passed under the walls of his own church. The
edifice had so very strange, and yet so familiar, an aspect, that
Mr. Dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas; either that he
had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely
dreaming about it now.

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed,
indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a
change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the
intervening space of a single day had operated on his
consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister's own will,
and Hester's will, and the fate that grew between them, had
wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore;
but the same minister returned not from the forest. He might have
said to the friends who greeted him,--"I am not the man for whom
you take me! I left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a
secret dell, by a mossy tree-trunk, and near a melancholy brook!
Go, seek your minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin
cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down
there like a cast-off garment!" His friends, no doubt, would
still have insisted with him,--"Thou art thyself the man!"--but
the error would have been their own, not his.

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him other
evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling.
In truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral
code, in that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the
impulses now communicated to the unfortunate and startled
minister. At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild,
wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once
involuntary and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing out
of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse. For
instance, he met one of his own deacons. The good old man
addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchal
privilege, which his venerable age, his upright and holy
character, and his station in the Church, entitled him to use;
and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost worshipping respect,
which the minister's professional and private claims alike
demanded. Never was there a more beautiful example of how the
majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and
respect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank and
inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. Now, during a
conversation of some two or three moments between the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it
was only by the most careful self-control that the former could
refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose
into his mind, respecting the communion-supper. He absolutely
trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag
itself, in utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own
consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. And,
even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid
laughing to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon
would have been petrified by his minister's impiety!

Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying along the
street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest female
member of his church; a most pious and exemplary old dame; poor,
widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about
her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago,
as a burial-ground is full of storied gravestones. Yet all this,
which would else have been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a
solemn joy to her devout old soul by religious consolations and
the truths of Scripture, wherewith she had fed herself
continually for more than thirty years. And, since Mr. Dimmesdale
had taken her in charge, the good grandam's chief earthly
comfort--which, unless it had been likewise a heavenly comfort,
could have been none at all--was to meet her pastor, whether
casually, or of set purpose, and be refreshed with a word of
warm, fragrant, heaven-breathing Gospel truth from his beloved
lips into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this
occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's
ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it,
could recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a
brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable
argument against the immortality of the human soul. The
instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this
aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an
intensely poisonous infusion. What he really did whisper, the
minister could never afterwards recollect. There was, perhaps, a
fortunate disorder in his utterance, which failed to impart any
distinct idea to the good widow's comprehension, or which
Providence interpreted after a method of its own. Assuredly, as
the minister looked back, he beheld an expression of divine
gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial
city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale.

Again, a third instance. After parting from the old
church-member, he met the youngest sister of them all. It was a
maiden newly won--and won by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's own
sermon, on the Sabbath after his vigil--to barter the transitory
pleasures of the world for the heavenly hope, that was to assume
brighter substance as life grew dark around her, and which would
gild the utter gloom with final glory. She was fair and pure as a
lily that had bloomed in Paradise. The minister knew well that he
was himself enshrined within the stainless sanctity of her heart,
which hung its snowy curtains about his image, imparting to
religion the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity.
Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away
from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of this
sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost and
desperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered him to
condense into small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ
of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black
fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power over this virgin soul,
trusting him as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight
all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop
all its opposite with but a word. So--with a mightier struggle
than he had yet sustained--he held his Geneva cloak before his
face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and
leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might.
She ransacked her conscience,--which was full of harmless little
matters, like her pocket or her work-bag,--and took herself to
task, poor thing, for a thousand imaginary faults; and went about
her household duties with swollen eyelids the next morning.

Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this
last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more
ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It was,--we blush to tell
it,--it was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked
words to a knot of little Puritan children who were playing
there, and had but just begun to talk. Denying himself this
freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of
the ship's crew from the Spanish Main. And, here, since he had so
valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale
longed, at least, to shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and
recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute
sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, solid,
satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths! It was not so much a
better principle, as partly his natural good taste, and still
more his buckramed habit of clerical decorum, that carried him
safely through the latter crisis.

"What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?" cried the minister
to himself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his
hand against his forehead. "Am I mad? or am I given over utterly
to the fiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest, and
sign it with my blood? And does he now summon me to its
fulfilment, by suggesting the performance of every wickedness
which his most foul imagination can conceive?"

At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale thus communed with
himself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old Mistress
Hibbins, the reputed witch-lady, is said to have been passing by.
She made a very grand appearance; having on a high head-dress, a
rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow
starch, of which 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 my conscience and
character, that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport
of your words! I went not into the forest to seek a potentate;
neither do I, at any future time, design a visit thither, with a
view to gaining the favor of such personage. My one sufficient
object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot,
and rejoice with him over the many precious souls he hath won
from heathendom!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high
head-dress at the minister. "Well, well, we must needs talk thus
in the daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at
midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!"

She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back
her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognize a
secret intimacy of connection.

"Have I then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend
whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag
has chosen for her prince and master!"

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it!
Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself with
deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew
was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been
thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had
stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the
whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked
malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was
good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while they frightened
him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a
real incident, did but show 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 passing through the streets. He
entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books,
its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the
walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted
him throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town, and
thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here, gone through
fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here, striven to pray;
here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in
its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him,
and God's voice through all! There, on the table, with the inky
pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken
in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the
page two days before. He knew that it was himself, the thin and
white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things,
and written thus far into the Election Sermon! But he seemed to
stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful pitying, but
half-envious curiosity. That self was gone! Another man had
returned out of the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of
hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could
have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door
of the study, and the minister said, "Come in!"--not wholly
devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit. And so he
did! It was old Roger Chillingworth that entered. The minister
stood, white and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew
Scriptures, and the other spread upon his breast.

"Welcome home, reverend Sir!" said the physician. "And how found
you that godly man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear Sir,
you look pale; as if the travel through the wilderness had been
too sore for you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in
heart and strength to preach your Election Sermon?"

"Nay, I think not so," rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. "My
journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the free
air which I have breathed, have done me good, after so long
confinement in my study. I think to need no more of your drugs,
my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a
friendly hand."

All this time, Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister
with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his
patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the latter was
almost convinced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his
confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with
Hester Prynne. The physician knew, then, that, in the minister's
regard, he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest
enemy. So much being known, it would appear natural that a part
of it should be expressed. It is singular, however, how long a
time often passes before words embody things; and with what
security two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may
approach its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus,
the minister felt no apprehension that Roger Chillingworth would
touch, in express words, upon the real position which they
sustained towards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark
way, creep frightfully near the secret.

"Were it not better," said he, "that you use my poor skill
to-night? Verily, dear Sir, we must take pains to make you strong
and vigorous for this occasion of the Election discourse. The
people look for great things from you; apprehending that another
year may come about, and find their pastor gone."

"Yea, to another world," replied the minister, with pious
resignation. "Heaven grant it be a better one; for, in good
sooth, I hardly think to tarry with my flock through the flitting
seasons of another year! But, touching your medicine, kind Sir,
in my present frame of body I need it not."

"I joy to hear it," answered the physician. "It may be that my
remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due
effect. Happy man were I, and well deserving of New England's
gratitude, could I achieve this cure!"

"I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend," said the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, with a solemn smile. "I thank you, and
can but requite your good deeds with my prayers."

"A good man's prayers are golden recompense!" rejoined old Roger
Chillingworth, as he took his leave. "Yea, they are the current
gold coin of the New Jerusalem, with the King's own mint-mark on
them!"

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and
requested food, which, being set before him, he ate with ravenous
appetite. Then, flinging the already written pages of the
Election Sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another, which
he wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that
he fancied himself inspired; and only wondered that Heaven should
see fit to transmit the grand and solemn music of its oracles
through so foul an organ-pipe as he. However, leaving that
mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved 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!

Chapter 21

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 seven
miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and something which it
was a stern religion to endure, she now, for one last time more,
encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what
had so long been agony into a kind of triumph. "Look your last on
the scarlet letter and its wearer!"--the people's victim and
life-long bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say to them.
"Yet a little while, and she will be beyond your reach! A few
hours longer, and the deep, mysterious ocean will quench and hide
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 flavored?
The wine of life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be
indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and
golden beaker; or else leave an inevitable and weary languor,
after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as
with a cordial of intensest potency.

Pearl was decked out with airy gayety. It would have been
impossible to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed
its existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at
once so gorgeous and so delicate as must have been requisite to
contrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a
task perhaps more difficult, in imparting so distinct a
peculiarity to Hester's simple robe. The dress, so proper was it
to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development
and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be
separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a
butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright
flower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one
idea with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there was a
certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood,
resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that
sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on
which it is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in the
agitations of those connected with them; always, especially, a
sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind,
in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem
on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her
spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble
passiveness of Hester's brow.

This effervescence made her flit with a bird-like movement,
rather than walk by her mother's side. She broke continually into
shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and sometimes piercing music.
When they reached the market-place, she became still more
restless, on perceiving the stir and bustle that enlivened the
spot; for it was usually more like the broad and lonesome green
before a village meeting-house, than the centre of a town's
business.

"Why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "Wherefore have all the
people left their work to-day? Is it a play-day for the whole
world? See, there is the blacksmith! He has washed his sooty
face, and put on his Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he
would gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach him how!
And there is Master Brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling
at me. Why does he do so, mother?"

"He remembers thee a little babe, my child," answered Hester.

"He should not nod and smile at me, for all that,--the black,
grim, ugly-eyed old man!" said Pearl. "He may nod at thee if he
will; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest the scarlet letter.
But, see, mother, how many faces of strange people, and Indians
among them, and sailors! What have they all come to do here in
the market-place?"

"They wait to see the procession pass," said Hester. "For the
Governor and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and
all the great people and good people, with the music, and the
soldiers marching before them."

"And will the minister be there?" asked Pearl. "And will he hold
out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the
brook-side?"

"He will be there, child," answered her mother. "But he will not
greet thee to-day; nor must thou greet him."

"What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking
partly to herself. "In the dark night-time, he calls us to him,
and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the
scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old trees
can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee,
sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, so
that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But, here, in the
sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we
know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his
heart!"

"Be quiet, Pearl! Thou understandest not these things," said her
mother. "Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and
see how cheery is every body's face to-day. The children have
come from their schools, and the grown people from their
workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy. For, to-day,
a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so--as has been the
custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered--they
make merry and rejoice; as if a good and golden year were at
length to pass over the poor old world!"

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that
brightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season of
the year--as it already was, and continued to be during the
greater part of two centuries--the Puritans compressed whatever
mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity;
thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the
space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than
most other communities at a period of general affliction.

But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which
undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age. The
persons now in the market-place of Boston had not been born to an
inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen,
whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan
epoch; a time when the life of England, viewed as one great mass,
would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and joyous, as
the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their hereditary
taste, the New England settlers would have illustrated all events
of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and
processions. Nor would it have been impracticable, in the
observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful recreation
with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant
embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such
festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an attempt of this
kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the political
year of the colony commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered
splendor, a colorless and manifold diluted repetition of what
they had beheld in proud old London,--we will not say at a royal
coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's show,--might be traced in the
customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the
annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders of
the commonwealth--the statesman, the priest, and the
soldier--deemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and
majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked upon
as the proper garb of public 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 minstrel with his
harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman, with an ape dancing to
his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no
Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps
hundreds of years old, but still effective, by their appeals to
the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such
professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been
sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but
by the general sentiment which gives law its vitality. Not the
less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled,
grimly, perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as
the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the
country fairs and on the village-greens of England; and which it
was thought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of
the courage and manliness that were essential in them.
Wrestling-matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and
Devonshire, were seen here and there about the market-place; in
one corner, there was a friendly bout at quarterstaff; and--what
attracted most interest of all--on the platform of the pillory,
already so noted in our pages, two masters of defence were
commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But,
much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter business was
broken off by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no
idea of permitting the majesty of the law to be violated by such
an abuse of one of its consecrated places.

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being
then in the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring
of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day,) that they
would compare favorably, in point of holiday keeping, with their
descendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. Their
immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants,
wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the
national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not
sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten
art of gayety.

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general
tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants,
was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of
Indians--in their savage finery of curiously embroidered
deer-skin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and
feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed
spear--stood apart, with countenances of inflexible gravity,
beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as
were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of
the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some
mariners,--a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish
Main,--who had come ashore to see the humors of Election Day.
They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces,
and an immensity of beard; their wide, short trousers were
confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough
plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and, in some
instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of
palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good nature and merriment,
had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed, without fear or
scruple, the rules of 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 characterized the incomplete morality of the age,
rigid as we call it, that a license was allowed the seafaring
class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more
desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day
would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There
could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew,
though no unfavorable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had
been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the
Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in
a modern court of justice.

But the sea, in those old times, heaved, swelled, and foamed very
much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind,
with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The
buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling, and become at
once, if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even
in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a
personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic, or casually
associate. Thus, the Puritan elders, in their black cloaks,
starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not
unbenignantly at the clamor and rude deportment of these jolly
seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion
when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the
physician, was seen to enter the market-place, in close and
familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far
as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. He wore
a profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold lace on his hat,
which was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a
feather. There was a sword at his side, and a sword-cut on his
forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed
anxious rather to display than hide. A landsman could hardly have
worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them both
with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question
before a magistrate, and probably incurring 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 recognize, and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually
the case wherever Hester stood, a small, vacant area--a sort of
magic circle--had formed itself about her, into which, though the
people were elbowing one another at a little distance, none
ventured, or felt disposed to intrude. It was a forcible type of
the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its
fated wearer; partly by her own reserve, and partly by the
instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal of her
fellow-creatures. Now, if never before, it answered a good
purpose, by enabling Hester and the seaman to speak together
without risk of being overheard; and so changed was Hester
Prynne's repute before the public, that the matron in town most
eminent for rigid morality could not have held such intercourse
with less result of scandal than herself.

"So, mistress," said the mariner, "I must bid the steward make
ready one more berth than you bargained for! No fear of scurvy or
ship-fever, this voyage! What with the ship's surgeon and this
other doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more by
token, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which I
traded for with a Spanish vessel."

"What mean you?" inquired Hester, startled more than she
permitted to appear. "Have you another passenger?"

"Why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physician
here--Chillingworth, he calls himself--is minded to try my
cabin-fare with you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells
me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you
spoke of,--he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan
rulers!"

"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.

Chapter 22

The Procession

Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and
consider what was practicable to be done in this new and
startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military music was
heard approaching along a contiguous street. It denoted the
advance of the procession of magistrates and citizens, on its way
towards the meeting-house; where, in compliance with a custom
thus early established, and ever since observed, the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale was to deliver an Election Sermon.

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and
stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across the
market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety of
instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and
played with no great skill, but yet attaining the great object
for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the
multitude,--that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to the
scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at first
clapped her hands, but then lost, for an instant, the restless
agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence
throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to be
borne upward, like a floating sea-bird, on the long heaves and
swells of sound. But she was brought back to her former mood by
the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armour of
the military company, which followed after the music, and formed
the honorary escort of the procession. This body of
soldiery--which still sustains a corporate existence, and marches
down from past ages with an ancient and honorable fame--was
composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled with
gentlemen, who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought
to establish a kind of College of Arms, where, as in an
association of Knights Templars, they might learn the science,
and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices
of war. The high estimation then placed upon the military
character might be seen in the lofty port of each individual
member of the company. Some of them, indeed, by their services in
the Low Countries and on other fields of European warfare, had
fairly won their title to assume the name and pomp of
soldiership. The entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel,
and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a
brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal.

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind
the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's
eye. Even in outward demeanour they showed a stamp of majesty
that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not
absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less
consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce
stability and dignity of character a great deal more. The people
possessed, by hereditary right, the quality of reverence; which,
in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller
proportion, and with a vastly diminished force in the selection
and estimate of public men. The change may be for good or ill,
and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day, the English
settler on these rude shores,--having left king, nobles, and all
degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and
necessity of reverence were strong in him,--bestowed it on the
white hair and venerable brow of age; on long-tried integrity; on
solid wisdom and sad-colored experience; on endowments of that
grave and weighty order, which gives the idea of permanence, and
comes under the general definition of respectability. These
primitive statesmen, therefore,--Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley,
Bellingham, and their compeers,--who were elevated to power by
the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often
brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than
activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and,
in time of difficulty or peril, stood up for the welfare of the
state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The
traits of character here indicated were well represented in the
square cast of countenance and large physical development of the
new colonial magistrates. So far as a demeanour of natural
authority was concerned, the mother country need not have been
ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted
into the House of Peers, or 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 angelic ministrations. It might
be the exhilaration of that potent cordial, which is distilled
only in the furnace-glow of earnest and long-continued thought.
Or, perchance, his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the
loud and piercing music, that swelled heavenward, and uplifted
him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his
look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard
the music. There was his body, moving onward, and with an
unaccustomed force. But where was his mind? Far and deep in its
own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity, to
marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soon to issue
thence; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, of
what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the feeble
frame, and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and
converting it to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon intellect,
who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty
effort, into which they throw the life of many days, and then are
lifeless for as many more.

Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary
influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not;
unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly
beyond her reach. One glance of recognition, she had imagined,
must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest, with
its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy
tree-trunk, where, sitting hand in hand, they had mingled their
sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the brook.
How deeply had they known each other then! And was this the man?
She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly past, enveloped, as
it were, in the rich music, with the procession of majestic and
venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in his worldly position,
and still more so in that far vista of his unsympathizing
thoughts, through which she now beheld him! Her spirit sank with
the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that, vividly as
she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the
clergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was there in
Hester, that she could scarcely forgive him,--least of all now,
when the heavy footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard,
nearer, nearer, nearer!--for being able so completely to withdraw
himself from their mutual world; while she groped darkly, and
stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not.

Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or
herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen
around the minister. While the procession passed, the child was
uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of
taking flight. When the whole had gone by, she looked up into
Hester's face.

"Mother," said she, "was that the same minister that kissed me by
the brook?"

"Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We
must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in
the forest."

"I could not be sure that it was he; so strange he looked,"
continued the child. "Else I would have run to him, and bid him
kiss me now, before all the people; even as he did yonder among
the dark old trees. What would the minister have said, mother?
Would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me,
and bid me begone?"

"What should he say, Pearl," answered Hester, "save that it was
no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the
market-place? Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not
speak to him!"

Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr.
Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose eccentricities--or
insanity, as we should term it--led her to do what few of the
townspeople would have ventured on; to begin a conversation with
the wearer of the scarlet letter, in public. It was Mistress
Hibbins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a triple ruff,
a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a gold-headed
cane, had come forth to see the procession. As this ancient lady
had the renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than
her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of
necromancy that were continually going forward, the crowd gave
way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as
if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen in
conjunction with Hester Prynne,--kindly as so many now felt
towards the latter,--the dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins 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 him pass in the
procession, would think how little while it is since he went
forth out of his study,--chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in
his mouth, I warrant,--to take an airing in the forest! Aha! we
know what that means, Hester Prynne! But, truly, forsooth, I find
it hard to believe him the same man. Many a church-member saw I,
walking behind the music, that has danced in the same measure
with me, when Somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an Indian
powwow or a Lapland wizard changing hands with us! That is but a
trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister! Couldst
thou surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same man that
encountered thee on the forest-path?"

"Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered Hester Prynne,
feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely
startled and awe-stricken by the confidence with which she
affirmed a personal connection between so many persons (herself
among them) and the Evil One. "It is not for me to talk lightly
of a learned and pious minister of the Word, like the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale!"

"Fie, woman, fie!" cried the old lady, shaking her finger at
Hester. "Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times,
and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there? Yea;
though no leaf of the wild garlands, which they wore while they
danced, be left in their hair! I know thee, Hester; for I behold
the token. We may all see it in the sunshine; and it glows like a
red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it openly; so there need be
no question about that. But this minister! Let me tell thee in
thine ear! When the Black Man sees one of his own servants,
signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters so
that the mark shall be disclosed in open daylight to the eyes of
all the world! What is that the minister seeks to hide, with his
hand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne!"

"What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?" eagerly asked little Pearl.
"Hast thou seen it?"

"No matter, darling!" responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a
profound reverence. "Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or
another. They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince
of the Air! Wilt thou ride with me, some fine night, to see thy
father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his
hand over his heart!"

Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the
weird old gentlewoman took her departure.

By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the
meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale
were heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept
Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged
to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside
the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to
bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of an
indistinct, but varied, murmur and flow of the minister's very
peculiar voice.

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment; insomuch that a
listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the
preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the
mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion
and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to
the human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by
its passage through the church-walls, Hester Prynne listened with
such intentness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon
had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its
indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly
heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged
the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low undertone, as of the
wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it
rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until
its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and
solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became,
there was 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 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
any thing to excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she
flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man or
thing as her own property, so far as she desired it; but without
yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in
requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none
the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from
the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone
through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She
ran and looked the wild Indian in the face; and he grew conscious
of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity,
but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the
midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the
ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and they gazed
wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the
sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted
with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in the
night-time.

One of these seafaring men--the shipmaster, indeed, who had
spoken to Hester Prynne--was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that
he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a
kiss. Finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a
humming-bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that
was twisted about it, and threw it to the child. Pearl
immediately twined it around her neck and waist, with such happy
skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her, and it was
difficult to imagine her without it.

"Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the
seaman. "Wilt thou carry her a message from me?"

"If the message pleases me I will," answered Pearl.

"Then tell her," rejoined he, "that I spake again with the
black-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to
bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So
let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt
thou tell her this, thou witch-baby?"

"Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" cried
Pearl, with her naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill-name,
I shall tell him of thee; and he will chase thy ship with a
tempest!"

Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child
returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had
said. Hester's strong, calm 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
roundabout, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to
whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated
rumors, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes.
These, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged
about Hester Prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness.
Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer
than a circuit of several yards. At that distance they
accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the
repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of
sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and
learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their
sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the
Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's
curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their
snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps,
that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs
be a personage of high dignity among her people. Lastly, the
inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out
subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw
others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented
Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool,
well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and
recognized the self same faces of that group of matrons, who had
awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years ago;
all save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them,
whose burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she
was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely
become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus
made to sear her breast more painfully than at any 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 market-place! What imagination would have
been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma
was on them both!

Chapter 23

The Revelation

of the Scarlet Letter

The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience
had been borne aloft, as on the swelling waves of the sea, at
length came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound
as what should follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a
murmur and half-hushed tumult; as if the auditors, released from
the high spell that had transported them into the region of
another's mind, were returning into themselves, with all their
awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment more, the crowd
began to gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that there
was an end, they needed other breath, more fit to support the
gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than that
atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame,
and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought.

In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and
the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with
applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they
had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell
or hear. According to their united testimony, never had man
spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that
spake this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal
lips more evidently than it did through his. Its influence could
be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and
continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay
before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as
marvellous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it
appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the
communities of mankind, with a special reference to the New
England which they were here planting in the wilderness. And, as
he drew towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon
him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old
prophets of Israel were constrained; only with this difference,
that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin
on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and
glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. But,
throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had
been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be
interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to
pass away. Yes; their minister whom they so loved--and who so
loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a
sigh--had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would
soon leave them in their tears! This idea of his transitory stay
on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher
had produced; it was as if an angel, in his passage to the skies,
had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant,--at
once a shadow and a splendor,--and had shed down a shower of
golden truths upon them.

Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale--as to most
men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognized until
they see it far behind them--an epoch of life more brilliant and
full of triumph than any previous one, or than any which could
hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest
eminence of superiority, to which the gifts of intellect, rich
lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanctity,
could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days, when the
professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was
the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head
forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at the close of his
Election Sermon. Meanwhile, Hester Prynne was standing beside the
scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on
her breast!

Now was heard again the clangor of the music, and the measured
tramp of the military escort, issuing from the church-door. The
procession was to be marshalled thence to the town-hall, where a
solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the day.

Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers
was seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew
back reverently, on either side, as the Governor and magistrates,
the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were
eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When they
were fairly in the market-place, their presence was greeted by a
shout. This--though doubtless it might acquire additional force
and volume from the child-like loyalty which the age awarded to
its rulers--was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of the
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 honored by his mortal brethren as the preacher!

How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant
particles of a halo in the air about his head? So etherealized by
spirit as he was, and so apotheosized by worshipping admirers,
did his footsteps in the procession really tread upon the dust of
earth?

As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all
eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was seen to
approach among them. The shout died into a murmur, as one portion
of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of him. How feeble
and pale he looked amid all his triumph! The energy--or say,
rather, the inspiration which had held him up, until he should
have delivered the sacred message that brought its own strength
along with it from heaven--was withdrawn, now that it had so
faithfully performed its office. The glow, which they had just
before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished, like a
flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late-decaying embers.
It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a deathlike
hue; it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on his
path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fall!

One of his clerical brethren,--it was the venerable John
Wilson,--observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by
the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward
hastily to offer his support. The minister tremulously, but
decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if
that movement could be so described, which rather resembled the
wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's arms in view,
outstretched to tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible
as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite
the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long
since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne
had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood
Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand! And there was the
scarlet letter on her breast! The minister here made a pause;
although the music still played the stately and rejoicing march
to which the procession moved. It summoned him onward,--onward to
the festival!--but here he made a pause.

Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye
upon him. He now left his own place in the procession, and
advanced to give assistance; judging from Mr. Dimmesdale's aspect
that he must otherwise inevitably fall. But there was something
in the latter's expression that warned back the magistrate,
although a man not readily obeying the vague intimations that
pass from one spirit to another. The crowd, meanwhile, looked on
with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness was, in their view,
only another phase of the minister's celestial strength; nor
would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so
holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer and
brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven!

He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.

"Hester," said he, "come hither! Come, my little Pearl!"

It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was
something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The
child, with the bird-like motion which was one of her
characteristics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his
knees. Hester Prynne--slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate,
and against her strongest will--likewise drew near, but paused
before she reached him. At this instant old Roger Chillingworth
thrust himself through the crowd,--or, perhaps, so dark,
disturbed, and evil was his look, he rose up out of some nether
region,--to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do! Be
that as it might, the old man rushed forward and caught the
minister by the arm.

"Madman, hold! What is your purpose?" whispered he. "Wave back
that woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not
blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save you!
Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?"

"Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late!" answered the minister,
encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. "Thy power is not
what it was! With God's help, I shall escape thee now!"

He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter.

"Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, "in the
name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at
this last moment, to do what--for my own heavy sin and miserable
agony--I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither
now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but
let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me! This
wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his
might!--with all his own might and the fiend's! Come, Hester,
come! Support me up yonder scaffold!"

The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood
more immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise,
and so perplexed as to the purport of what they saw,--unable to
receive the explanation which most readily presented itself, or
to imagine any other,--that they remained silent and inactive
spectators of the judgment which Providence seemed about to work.
They beheld the minister, leaning on Hester's shoulder and
supported by her arm around him, approach the scaffold, and
ascend its steps; while still the little hand of the sin-born
child was clasped in his. Old Roger Chillingworth followed, as
one intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in
which they had all been actors, and well entitled, therefore, to
be present at its closing scene.

"Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he, looking darkly
at the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret,--no high
place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,--save
on this very scaffold!"

"Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither!" answered the minister.

Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester with an expression of doubt
and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that
there was a feeble smile upon his lips.

"Is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed of in
the forest?"

"I know not! I know not!" she hurriedly replied. "Better? Yea; so
we may both die, and little Pearl die with us!"

"For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order," said the
minister; "and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which he
hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying man.
So let me make haste to take my shame upon me."

Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of little
Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the dignified and
venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren;
to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled, yet
overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep
life-matter--which, if full of sin, was full of anguish and
repentance likewise--was now to be laid open to them. The sun,
but little past its meridian, shone down upon the clergyman, and
gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all the
earth to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eternal Justice.

"People of New England!" cried he, with