THE SCARLET LETTER. 

 BY

 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

 Illustrated. 

 [Illustration]

 BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 1878. 

 COPYRIGHT, 1850 AND 1877. BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. 

 _All rights reserved. _ October 22, 1874. 

 [Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

Much to the author's surprise, and (if he may say so withoutadditional offence) considerably to his amusement, he finds that hissketch of official life, introductory to THE SCARLET LETTER, hascreated an unprecedented excitement in the respectable communityimmediately around him. It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had he burned down the Custom-House, and quenched its lastsmoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable personage, againstwhom he is supposed to cherish a peculiar malevolence. As the publicdisapprobation would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious ofdeserving it, the author begs leave to say, that he has carefully readover the introductory pages, with a purpose to alter or expungewhatever might be found amiss, and to make the best reparation in hispower for the atrocities of which he has been adjudged guilty. But itappears to him, that the only remarkable features of the sketch areits frank and genuine good-humor, and the general accuracy with whichhe has conveyed his sincere impressions of the characters thereindescribed. As to enmity, or ill-feeling of any kind, personal orpolitical, he utterly disclaims such motives. The sketch might, perhaps, have been wholly omitted, without loss to the public, ordetriment to the book; but, having undertaken to write it, heconceives that it could not have been done in a better or a kindlierspirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, with a livelier effectof truth. 

The author is constrained, therefore, to republish his introductorysketch without the change of a word. 

 SALEM, March 30, 1850. 

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 CONTENTS. 

 PAGE

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. —INTRODUCTORY 1

 THE SCARLET LETTER. 

I. THE PRISON-DOOR 51

II. THE MARKET-PLACE 54

III. THE RECOGNITION 68

IV. THE INTERVIEW 80

V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 90

VI. PEARL 104

VII. THE GOVERNOR'S HALL 118

VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 129

IX. THE LEECH 142

X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 155

XI. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 168

XII. THE MINISTER'S VIGIL 177

XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 193

XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 204

XV. HESTER AND PEARL 212

XVI. A FOREST WALK 223

XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 231

XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 245

XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 253

XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 264

XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 277

XXII. THE PROCESSION 288

XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER 302

XXIV. CONCLUSION 315

[Illustration]

 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

_Drawn by_ MARY HALLOCK FOOTE _and Engraved by_ A. V. S. ANTHONY. _The ornamental head-pieces are by_ L. S. IPSEN. 

 PAGE

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 1

THE PRISON DOOR 49

VIGNETTE, —WILD ROSE 51

THE GOSSIPS 57

“STANDING ON THE MISERABLE EMINENCE” 65

“SHE WAS LED BACK TO PRISON” 78

“THE EYES OF THE WRINKLED SCHOLAR GLOWED” 87

THE LONESOME DWELLING 93

LONELY FOOTSTEPS 99

VIGNETTE 104

A TOUCH OF PEARL'S BABY-HAND 113

VIGNETTE 118

THE GOVERNOR'S BREASTPLATE 125

“LOOK THOU TO IT! I WILL NOT LOSE THE CHILD!” 135

THE MINISTER AND LEECH 148

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 165

THE VIRGINS OF THE CHURCH 172

“THEY STOOD IN THE NOON OF THAT STRANGE SPLENDOR” 185

HESTER IN THE HOUSE OF MOURNING 195

MANDRAKE 211

“HE GATHERED HERBS HERE AND THERE” 213

PEARL ON THE SEA-SHORE 217

“WILT THOU YET FORGIVE ME?” 237

A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE 249

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 257

CHILLINGWORTH, —“SMILE WITH A SINISTER MEANING” 287

NEW ENGLAND WORTHIES 289

“SHALL WE NOT MEET AGAIN?” 311

HESTER'S RETURN 320

 THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 

[Illustration: The Custom-House]

 THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 

 INTRODUCTORY TO “THE SCARLET LETTER. ”

It is a little remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuchof myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personalfriends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life havetaken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time wasthree or four years since, when I favored the reader—inexcusably, andfor no earthly reason, that either the indulgent reader or theintrusive author could imagine—with a description of my way of lifein the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And now—because, beyond mydeserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on the formeroccasion—I again seize the public by the button, and talk of my threeyears' experience in a Custom-House. The example of the famous“P. P. , Clerk of this Parish, ” was never more faithfully followed. Thetruth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth uponthe wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside hisvolume, 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 suchconfidential 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, werecertain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communionwith it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where wespeak impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterancebenumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with hisaudience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind andapprehensive, 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 ofourself, 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 certainpropriety, of a kind always recognized in literature, as explaininghow a large portion of the following pages came into my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative thereincontained. This, in fact, —a desire to put myself in my true positionas editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the talesthat make up my volume, —this, and no other, is my true reason forassuming a personal relation with the public. In accomplishing themain purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, togive a faint representation of a mode of life not heretoforedescribed, together with some of the characters that move in it, amongwhom 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 nowburdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or nosymptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-waydown its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, aNova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood, —at thehead, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide oftenoverflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row ofbuildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border ofunthrifty grass, —here, with a view from its front windows adown thisnot very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbor, stands aspacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, duringprecisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteenstripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thusindicating that a civil, and not a military post of Uncle Sam'sgovernment is here established. Its front is ornamented with a porticoof half a dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which aflight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over theentrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, withoutspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollectaright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in eachclaw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes thisunhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, andthe general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to theinoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful oftheir safety, against intruding on the premises which she overshadowswith her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people areseeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing ofthe federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all thesoftness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no greattenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later, —oftenersoon than late, —is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch ofher claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbedarrows. 

The pavement round about the above-described edifice—which we may aswell name at once as the Custom-House of the port—has grass enoughgrowing in its chinks to show that it has not, of late days, been wornby any multitudinous resort of business. In some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon when affairs move onward witha livelier tread. Such occasions might remind the elderly citizen ofthat period before the last war with England, when Salem was a port byitself; not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants andship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin, while theirventures go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty floodof commerce at New York or Boston. On some such morning, when three orfour vessels happen to have arrived at once, —usually from Africa orSouth America, —or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet, passing briskly up and down thegranite steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted him, you maygreet the sea-flushed shipmaster, just in port, with his vessel'spapers under his arm, in a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes hisowner, cheerful or sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly ashis scheme of the now accomplished voyage has been realized inmerchandise that will readily be turned to gold, or has buried himunder a bulk of incommodities, such as nobody will care to rid him of. Here, likewise, —the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded, care-worn merchant, —we have the smart young clerk, who gets the tasteof traffic as a wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends adventuresin his master's ships, when he had better be sailing mimic-boats upona mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is the outward-bound sailorin quest of a protection; or the recently arrived one, pale andfeeble, seeking a passport to the hospital. Nor must we forget thecaptains of the rusty little schooners that bring firewood from theBritish provinces; a rough-looking set of tarpaulins, without thealertness of the Yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no slightimportance to our decaying trade. 

Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were, withother miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for the timebeing, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern—in the entry, ifit were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms, if wintry orinclement weather—a row of venerable figures, sitting inold-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs backagainst the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally mightbe heard talking together, in voices between speech and a snore, andwith that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants ofalmshouses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence oncharity, on monopolized labor, or anything else, but their ownindependent exertions. These old gentlemen—seated, like Matthew, atthe receipt of customs, but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic errands—were Custom-House officers. 

Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is acertain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a loftyheight; with two of its arched windows commanding a view of theaforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a narrowlane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three give glimpses ofthe shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers;around the doors of which are generally to be seen, laughing andgossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as hauntthe Wapping of a seaport. The room itself is cobwebbed, and dingy withold paint; its floor is strewn with gray sand, in a fashion that haselsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, fromthe general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary intowhich womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has veryinfrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with avoluminous funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged stool besideit; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit andinfirm; and—not to forget the library—on some shelves, a score ortwo of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of theRevenue Laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms amedium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. Andhere, some six months ago, —pacing from corner to corner, or loungingon the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyeswandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper, —you mighthave recognized, honored reader, the same individual who welcomed youinto his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered sopleasantly through the willow branches, on the western side of the OldManse. But now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquirein vain for the Locofoco Surveyor. The besom of reform has swept himout of office; and a worthier successor wears his dignity, and pocketshis emoluments. 

This old town of Salem—my native place, though I have dwelt much awayfrom it, both in boyhood and maturer years—possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affections, the force of which I have never realizedduring my seasons of actual residence here. Indeed, so far as itsphysical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried surface, coveredchiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend toarchitectural beauty, —its irregularity, which is neither picturesquenor quaint, but only tame, —its long and lazy street, loungingwearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with GallowsHill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the almshouse at theother, —such being the features of my native town, it would be quiteas reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarrangedchecker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there iswithin me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is probablyassignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has struck intothe soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since theoriginal Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearancein the wild and forest-bordered settlement, which has since become acity. And here his descendants have been born and died, and havemingled their earthy substance with the soil; until no small portionof it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for alittle while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the attachmentwhich I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust. Fewof my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as frequent transplantationis perhaps better for the stock, need they consider it desirable toknow. 

But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of thatfirst ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and duskygrandeur, was present to my boyish imagination, as far back as I canremember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling withthe past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase ofthe town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here onaccount of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crownedprogenitor, —who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, andtrode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large afigure, 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 thePuritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitterpersecutor, as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in theirhistories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a womanof their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than anyrecord of his better deeds, although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous inthe martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said tohave left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his old drybones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain it, ifthey have not crumbled utterly to dust! I know not whether theseancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon ofHeaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under theheavy consequences of them, in another state of being. At all events, I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame uponmyself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them—as Ihave heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist—may be now andhenceforth removed. 

Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritanswould have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins, that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the familytree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as itstopmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim, that I have evercherished, would they recognize as laudable; no success of mine—if mylife, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened bysuccess—would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positivelydisgraceful. “What is he?” murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathersto the other. “A writer of story-books! What kind of a business inlife—what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind inhis day and generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow mightas well have been a fiddler!” Such are the compliments bandied betweenmy great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, letthem scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature haveintertwined themselves with mine. 

Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by thesetwo 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 theother hand, after the first two generations, performing any memorabledeed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here andthere about the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by theaccumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundredyears, they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in eachgeneration, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while aboy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confrontingthe salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire andgrandsire. The boy, also, in due time, passed from the forecastle tothe cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from hisworld-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with thenatal earth. This long connection of a family with one spot, as itsplace of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the human beingand the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery ormoral circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but instinct. The new inhabitant—who came himself from a foreign land, or whosefather or grandfather came—has little claim to be called a Salemite;he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an oldsettler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spotwhere his successive generations have been imbedded. It is no matterthat the place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old woodenhouses, the mud and dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, thechill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres;—all these, and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to thepurpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natalspot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case. I felt italmost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the mould offeatures and cast of character which had all along been familiarhere, —ever, as one representative of the race lay down in his grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the mainstreet, —might still in my little day be seen and recognized in theold town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is an evidence that theconnection, which has become an unhealthy one, should at last besevered. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if itbe planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in thesame worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, sofar as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike theirroots 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 aplace 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 firsttime, nor the second, that I had gone away, —as it seemed, permanently, —but yet returned, like the bad half-penny; or as ifSalem were for me the inevitable centre of the universe. So, one finemorning, I ascended the flight of granite steps, with the President'scommission in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemenwho were to aid me in my weighty responsibility, as chief executiveofficer of the Custom-House. 

I doubt greatly—or, rather, I do not doubt at all—whether any publicfunctionary of the United States, either in the civil or militaryline, has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans under hisorders as myself. The whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at oncesettled, when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty years beforethis epoch, the independent position of the Collector had kept theSalem Custom-House out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldier, —NewEngland's most distinguished soldier, —he stood firmly on the pedestalof his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality ofthe successive administrations through which he had held office, hehad been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger andheart-quake. General Miller was radically conservative; a man overwhose kindly nature habit had no slight influence; attaching himselfstrongly to familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to change, evenwhen change might have brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, ontaking charge of my department, I found few but aged men. They wereancient sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tost onevery sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous blasts, had finally drifted into this quiet nook; where, with little todisturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidentialelection, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence. Thoughby no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay. Twoor three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bedridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at theCustom-House, during a large part of the year; but, after a torpidwinter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, golazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure andconvenience, betake themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty tothe charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one ofthese venerable servants of the republic. They were allowed, on myrepresentation, to rest from their arduous labors, and soonafterwards—as if their sole principle of life had been zeal for theircountry's service, as I verily believe it was—withdrew to a betterworld. It is a pious consolation to me, that, through my interference, a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil andcorrupt practices into which, as a matter of course, everyCustom-House officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the front northe back entrance of the Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise. 

The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for theirvenerable brotherhood that the new Surveyor was not a politician, andthough a faithful Democrat in principle, neither received nor held hisoffice with any reference to political services. Had it beenotherwise, —had an active politician been put into this influentialpost, to assume the easy task of making head against a Whig Collector, whose infirmities withheld him from the personal administration of hisoffice, —hardly a man of the old corps would have drawn the breath ofofficial life, within a month after the exterminating angel had comeup the Custom-House steps. According to the received code in suchmatters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, tobring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine. It was plain enough to discern, that the old fellows dreaded some suchdiscourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same time amused me, tobehold the terrors that attended my advent; to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at theglance of so harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one oranother addressed me, the tremor of a voice, which, in long-past days, had been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough tofrighten Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excellent oldpersons, that, by all established rule, —and, as regarded some ofthem, weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business, —theyought to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common Uncle. Iknew it too, but could never quite find in my heart to act upon theknowledge. Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, andconsiderably to the detriment of my official conscience, theycontinued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, andloiter up and down the Custom-House steps. They spent a good deal oftime, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with their chairstilted back against the wall; awaking, however, once or twice in aforenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth repetitionof old sea-stories, and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be passwordsand countersigns among them. 

The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had nogreat harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts, and the happyconsciousness of being usefully employed, —in their own behalf, atleast, if not for our beloved country, —these good old gentlemen wentthrough the various formalities of office. Sagaciously, under theirspectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels! Mighty was theirfuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtusenessthat allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers! Whenever sucha mischance occurred, —when a wagon-load of valuable merchandise hadbeen smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath theirunsuspicious noses, —nothing could exceed the vigilance and alacritywith which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and secure withtape and sealing-wax, all the avenues of the delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence, the case seemedrather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution, after themischief had happened; a grateful recognition of the promptitude oftheir zeal, the moment that there was no longer any remedy. 

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

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to representall my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them intheir strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogethersuperior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which theirevil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age weresometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in goodrepair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, therewill be no wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set ofwearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation fromtheir varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away allthe golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so manyopportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored theirmemories with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unctionof their morning's breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or to-morrow'sdinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all theworld's wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes. 

The father of the Custom-House—the patriarch, not only of this littlesquad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body oftide-waiters all over the United States—was a certain permanentInspector. He might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenuesystem, dyed in the wool, or, rather, born in the purple; since hissire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, hadcreated an office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a periodof the early ages which few living men can now remember. ThisInspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, orthereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens ofwinter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime'ssearch. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed ina bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his haleand hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kindof new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age andinfirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, whichperpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of thetremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they camestrutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of aclarion. Looking at him merely as an animal, —and there was verylittle else to look at, —he was a most satisfactory object, from thethorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and hiscapacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, thedelights which he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The carelesssecurity of his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income, andwith but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubtcontributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original and morepotent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animalnature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very triflingadmixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman fromwalking on all-fours. He possessed no power of thought, no depth offeeling, no troublesome sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a fewcommonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper that grewinevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very respectably, and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husbandof three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children, most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewisereturned to dust. Here, one would suppose, might have been sorrowenough to imbue the sunniest disposition, through and through, with asable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector! One brief sigh sufficed tocarry off the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences. The nextmoment, he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant; farreadier than the Collector's junior clerk, who, at nineteen years, wasmuch 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 tomy notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in onepoint of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable, such anabsolute nonentity, in every other. My conclusion was that he had nosoul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, butinstincts: and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials of hischaracter been put together, that there was no painful perception ofdeficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I foundin him. It might be difficult—and it was so—to conceive how heshould exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; butsurely his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with hislast breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moralresponsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger scopeof enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity from thedreariness and duskiness of age. 

One point, in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footedbrethren, was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it hadmade no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat. Hisgourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk ofroast-meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. As hepossessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor vitiated anyspiritual endowment by devoting all his energies and ingenuities tosubserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always pleased andsatisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher'smeat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of theactual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one'svery nostrils. There were flavors on his palate that had lingeredthere not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparentlyas fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just devoured for hisbreakfast. I have heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guestat which, except himself, had long been food for worms. It wasmarvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continuallyrising up before him; not in anger or retribution, but as if gratefulfor his former appreciation and seeking to resuscitate an endlessseries of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual. A tender-loin ofbeef, a hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particularchicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhapsadorned his board in the days of the elder Adams, would be remembered;while all the subsequent experience of our race, and all the eventsthat brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over himwith as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chieftragic event of the old man's life, so far as I could judge, was hismishap with a certain goose which lived and died some twenty or fortyyears ago; a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough that the carving-knife would make noimpression on its carcass, and it could only be divided with an axeand handsaw. 

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

There is one likeness, without which my gallery of Custom-Houseportraits would be strangely incomplete; but which my comparativelyfew opportunities for observation enable me to sketch only in themerest outline. It is that of the Collector, our gallant old General, who, after his brilliant military service, subsequently to which hehad ruled over a wild Western territory, had come hither, twenty yearsbefore, to spend the decline of his varied and honorable life. Thebrave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his threescoreyears and ten, and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march, burdened with infirmities which even the martial music of his ownspirit-stirring recollections could do little towards lightening. Thestep was palsied now that had been foremost in the charge. It was onlywith the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily onthe iron balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend theCustom-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 cameand went; amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, thediscussion of business, and the casual talk of the office; all whichsounds and circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress hissenses, and hardly to make their way into his inner sphere ofcontemplation. His countenance, in this repose, was mild and kindly. If his notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interestgleamed out upon his features; proving that there was light withinhim, and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lampthat obstructed the rays in their passage. The closer you penetratedto the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. When no longercalled upon to speak, or listen, either of which operations cost himan evident effort, his face would briefly subside into its former notuncheerful quietude. It was not painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying age. The frameworkof his nature, originally strong and massive, was not yet crumbledinto ruin. 

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

Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection, —for, slightas was the communication between us, my feeling towards him, like thatof all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly betermed so, —I could discern the main points of his portrait. It wasmarked with the noble and heroic qualities which showed it to be notby a mere accident, but of good right, that he had won a distinguishedname. His spirit could never, I conceive, have been characterized byan uneasy activity; it must, at any period of his life, have requiredan impulse to set him in motion; but, once stirred up, with obstaclesto overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in theman to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded hisnature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind thatflashes and flickers in a blaze; but, rather, a deep, red glow, as ofiron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness; this was the expressionof his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him, atthe period of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then, that, undersome excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness, —rousedby a trumpet-peal, loud enough to awaken all his energies that werenot dead, but only slumbering, —he was yet capable of flinging off hisinfirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the staff of age to seizea battle-sword, and starting up once more a warrior. And, in sointense a moment, his demeanor would have still been calm. Such anexhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to beanticipated, nor desired. What I saw in him—as evidently as theindestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga already cited as the mostappropriate simile—were the features of stubborn and ponderousendurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlierdays; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in asomewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable and unmanageable as aton of iron ore; and of benevolence, which, fiercely as he led thebayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuinea stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists ofthe age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught Iknow, —certainly, they had fallen, like blades of grass at the sweepof the scythe, before the charge to which his spirit imparted itstriumphant energy;—but, be that as it might, there was never in hisheart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly'swing. I have not known the man to whose innate kindliness I would moreconfidently make an appeal. 

Many characteristics—and those, too, which contribute not the leastforcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch—must have vanished, orbeen obscured, before I met the General. All merely gracefulattributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does Nature adorn thehuman ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that have their roots andproper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sowswall-flowers over the ruined fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even inrespect of grace and beauty, there were points well worth noting. Aray of humor, now and then, would make its way through the veil of dimobstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of nativeelegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood orearly youth, was shown in the General's fondness for the sight andfragrance of flowers. An old soldier might be supposed to prize onlythe bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one who seemed to have ayoung girl's appreciation of the floral tribe. 

There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit; whilethe Surveyor—though seldom, when it could be avoided, taking uponhimself the difficult task of engaging him in conversation—was fondof standing at a distance, and watching his quiet and almostslumberous countenance. He seemed away from us, although we saw himbut a few yards off; remote, though we passed close beside his chair;unattainable, though we might have stretched forth our hands andtouched his own. It might be that he lived a more real life withinhis thoughts, than amid the unappropriate environment of theCollector's office. The evolutions of the parade; the tumult of thebattle; the flourish of old, heroic music, heard thirty yearsbefore;—such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before hisintellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants and shipmasters, thespruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle ofthis commercial and custom-house life kept up its little murmur roundabout him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the Generalappear to sustain the most distant relation. He was as much out ofplace as an old sword—now rusty, but which had flashed once in thebattle's front, and showed still a bright gleam along its blade—wouldhave been, among the inkstands, paper-folders, and mahogany rulers, onthe Deputy Collector's desk. 

There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and re-creating thestalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier, —the man of true and simpleenergy. It was the recollection of those memorable words ofhis, —“I'll try, Sir!”—spoken on the very verge of a desperate andheroic enterprise, and breathing the soul and spirit of New Englandhardihood, comprehending all perils, and encountering all. If, in ourcountry, valor were rewarded by heraldic honor, this phrase—which itseems so easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of dangerand glory before him, has ever spoken—would be the best and fittestof 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 unlikehimself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere andabilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. The accidents ofmy life have often afforded me this advantage, but never with morefulness and variety than during my continuance in office. There wasone man, especially, the observation of whose character gave me a newidea of talent. His gifts were emphatically those of a man ofbusiness; prompt, acute, clear-minded; with an eye that saw throughall perplexities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish, as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood in theCustom-House, it was his proper field of activity; and the manyintricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper, presentedthemselves before him with the regularity of a perfectly comprehendedsystem. In my contemplation, he stood as the ideal of his class. Hewas, indeed, the Custom-House in himself; or, at all events, themain-spring that kept its variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like this, where its officers are appointed tosubserve their own profit and convenience, and seldom with a leadingreference to their fitness for the duty to be performed, they mustperforce seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus, byan inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so didour man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybodymet with. With an easy condescension, and kind forbearance towards ourstupidity, —which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little shortof crime, —would he forthwith, by the merest touch of his finger, makethe incomprehensible as clear as daylight. The merchants valued himnot less than we, his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect: itwas a law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; norcan it be otherwise than the main condition of an intellect soremarkably clear and accurate as his, to be honest and regular in theadministration of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to anythingthat came within the range of his vocation, would trouble such a manvery much in the same way, though to a far greater degree, that anerror in the balance of an account or an ink-blot on the fair page ofa book of record. Here, in a word, —and it is a rare instance in mylife, —I had met with a person thoroughly adapted to the situationwhich he held. 

Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. Itook it in good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was throwninto a position so little akin to my past habits, and set myselfseriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After myfellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethrenof Brook Farm; after living for three years within the subtileinfluence of an intellect like Emerson's; after those wild, free dayson the Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire offallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau aboutpine-trees and Indian relics, in his hermitage at Walden; aftergrowing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement ofHillard's culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment atLongfellow's hearthstone;—it was time, at length, that I shouldexercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with foodfor which I had hitherto had little appetite. Even the old Inspectorwas desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott. Ilook upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturallywell balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thoroughorganization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingleat once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmurat the change. 

Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment inmy regard. I cared not, at this period, for books; they were apartfrom me. Nature, —except it were human nature, —the nature that isdeveloped in earth and sky, was, in one sense, hidden from me; and allthe imaginative delight, wherewith it had been spiritualized, passedaway out of my mind. A gift, a faculty if it had not departed, wassuspended and inanimate within me. There would have been somethingsad, unutterably dreary, in all this, had I not been conscious that itlay at my own option to recall whatever was valuable in the past. Itmight be true, indeed, that this was a life which could not withimpunity be lived too long; else, it might have made me permanentlyother than I had been without transforming me into any shape which itwould be worth my while to take. But I never considered it as otherthan a transitory life. There was always a prophetic instinct, a lowwhisper in my ear, that, within no long period, and whenever a newchange 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 Ihave been able to understand, as good a Surveyor as need be. A man ofthought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten times the Surveyor'sproportion 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 dutiesbrought 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 themore for me, if they had read them all; nor would it have mended thematter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been writtenwith a pen like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom was acustom-house officer in his day, as well as I. It is a goodlesson—though it may often be a hard one—for a man who has dreamed ofliterary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world'sdignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle inwhich his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid ofsignificance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all heaims at. I know not that I especially needed the lesson, either in theway 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 hometo my perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off ina sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer—anexcellent fellow, who came into office with me and went out only alittle later—would often engage me in a discussion about one or theother of his favorite topics, Napoleon or Shakespeare. The Collector'sjunior clerk, too—a young gentleman who, it was whispered, occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's letter-paper with what (atthe distance of a few yards) looked very much like poetry—used now andthen to speak to me of books, as matters with which I might possiblybe conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it wasquite sufficient for my necessities. 

No longer seeking nor caring that my name should be blazoned abroad ontitle-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 ofall kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commoditieshad paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne onsuch queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as aname conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and, Ihope, will never go again. 

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

In the second story of the Custom-House there is a large room, inwhich the brick-work and naked rafters have never been covered withpanelling and plaster. The edifice—originally projected on a scaleadapted to the old commercial enterprise of the port, and with an ideaof subsequent prosperity destined never to be realized—contains farmore space than its occupants know what to do with. This airy hall, therefore, over the Collector's apartments, remains unfinished to thisday, and, in spite of the aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await the labor of the carpenter and mason. At oneend of the room, in a recess, were a number of barrels, piled one uponanother, containing bundles of official documents. Large quantities ofsimilar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think howmany days and weeks and months and years of toil had been wasted onthese musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance on earth, andwere hidden away in this forgotten corner, never more to be glanced atby human eyes. But, then, what reams of other manuscripts—filled notwith the dulness of official formalities, but with the thought ofinventive brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts—had goneequally to oblivion; and that, moreover, without serving a purpose intheir day, as these heaped-up papers had, and—saddest ofall—without purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihoodwhich the clerks of the Custom-House had gained by these worthlessscratchings of the pen! Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps, asmaterials of local history. Here, no doubt, statistics of the formercommerce of Salem might be discovered, and memorials of her princelymerchants, —old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon Forrester, andmany another magnate in his day; whose powdered head, however, wasscarcely in the tomb, before his mountain pile of wealth began todwindle. The founders of the greater part of the families which nowcompose the aristocracy of Salem might here be traced, from the pettyand obscure beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally muchposterior to the Revolution, upward to what their children look uponas long-established rank. 

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

But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery ofsome little interest. Poking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbishin the corner; unfolding one and another document, and reading thenames of vessels that had long ago foundered at sea or rotted at thewharves, and those of merchants, never heard of now on 'Change, norvery readily decipherable on their mossy tombstones; glancing at suchmatters with the saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which webestow on the corpse of dead activity, —and exerting my fancy, sluggish with little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image ofthe old town's brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and onlySalem knew the way thither, —I chanced to lay my hand on a smallpackage, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment. This envelope had the air of an official record of some period longpast, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on moresubstantial materials than at present. There was something about itthat quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the fadedred tape, that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasurewould here be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of theparchment cover, I found it to be a commission, under the hand andseal of Governor Shirley, in favor of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor ofhis Majesty's Customs for the port of Salem, in the Province ofMassachusetts Bay. I remember to have read (probably in Felt's Annals)a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about fourscore yearsago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent times, an account of thedigging up of his remains in the little graveyard of St. Peter'sChurch, during the renewal of that edifice. Nothing, if I rightly callto mind, was left of my respected predecessor, save an imperfectskeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of majesticfrizzle; which, unlike the head that it once adorned, was in verysatisfactory preservation. But, on examining the papers which theparchment commission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue's mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than thefrizzled 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 hisown hand. I could account for their being included in the heap ofCustom-House lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pue's death had happenedsuddenly; and that these papers, which he probably kept in hisofficial desk, had never come to the knowledge of his heirs, or weresupposed to relate to the business of the revenue. On the transfer ofthe archives to Halifax, this package, proving to be of no publicconcern, was left behind, and had remained ever since unopened. 

The ancient Surveyor—being little molested, I suppose, at that earlyday, with business pertaining to his office—seems to have devotedsome of his many leisure hours to researches as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature. These supplied materialfor petty activity to a mind that would otherwise have been eaten upwith rust. A portion of his facts, by the by, did me good service inthe preparation of the article entitled “MAIN STREET, ” included in thepresent volume. The remainder may perhaps be applied to purposesequally valuable, hereafter; or not impossibly may be worked up, sofar as they go, into a regular history of Salem, should my venerationfor the natal soil ever impel me to so pious a task. Meanwhile, theyshall be at the command of any gentleman, inclined, and competent, totake the unprofitable labor off my hands. As a final disposition, Icontemplate 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. Therewere traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatlyfrayed and defaced; so that none, or very little, of the glitter wasleft. It had been wrought, as was easy to perceive, with wonderfulskill of needlework; and the stitch (as I am assured by ladiesconversant 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 mothhad reduced it to little other than a rag, —on careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By anaccurate measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three inchesand a quarter in length. It had been intended, there could be nodoubt, 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 byit, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world inthese particulars) I saw little hope of solving. And yet it strangelyinterested me. My eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarletletter, and would not be turned aside. Certainly, there was some deepmeaning in it, most worthy of interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself tomy sensibilities, but evading the analysis of my mind. 

While thus perplexed, —and cogitating, among other hypotheses, whetherthe letter might not have been one of those decorations which thewhite men used to contrive, in order to take the eyes of Indians, —Ihappened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me, —the reader maysmile, but must not doubt my word, —it seemed to me, then, that Iexperienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, ofburning heat; and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hotiron. I shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor. 

In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had hithertoneglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around which it hadbeen twisted. This I now opened, and had the satisfaction to find, recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanationof the whole affair. There were several foolscap sheets containingmany particulars respecting the life and conversation of one HesterPrynne, who appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage in theview of our ancestors. She had flourished during the period betweenthe early days of Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenthcentury. Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and fromwhose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered her, intheir youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately andsolemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse, and doingwhatever miscellaneous good she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters, especially those of the heart; by whichmeans, as a person of such propensities inevitably must, she gainedfrom many people the reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine, was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Pryingfurther into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings andsufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the reader isreferred to the story entitled “THE SCARLET LETTER”; and it should beborne carefully in mind, that the main facts of that story areauthorized and authenticated by the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue. Theoriginal papers, together with the scarlet letter itself, —a mostcurious relic, —are still in my possession, and shall be freelyexhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest of thenarrative, may desire a sight of them. I must not be understood asaffirming, that, in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining themotives and modes of passion that influenced the characters who figurein it, I have invariably confined myself within the limits of the oldSurveyor's half a dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I haveallowed myself, as to such points, nearly or altogether as muchlicense as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention. What Icontend 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 asif the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, andwearing his immortal wig, —which was buried with him, but did notperish in the grave, —had met me in the deserted chamber of theCustom-House. In his port was the dignity of one who had borne hisMajesty's commission, and who was therefore illuminated by a ray ofthe splendor that shone so dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike, alas! the hang-dog look of a republican official, who, as the servantof the people, feels himself less than the least, and below thelowest, of his masters. With his own ghostly hand, the obscurely seenbut majestic figure had imparted to me the scarlet symbol, and thelittle roll of explanatory manuscript. With his own ghostly voice, hehad exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty andreverence towards him, —who might reasonably regard himself as myofficial ancestor, —to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrationsbefore the public. “Do this, ” said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head that looked so imposing within itsmemorable wig, —“do this, and the profit shall be all your own! Youwill 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 yourpredecessor's memory the credit which will be rightfully due!” And Isaid to the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, “I will!”

On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much thought. It wasthe subject of my meditations for many an hour, while pacing to andfro across my room, or traversing, with a hundred-fold repetition, thelong extent from the front-door of the Custom-House to theside-entrance, and back again. Great were the weariness and annoyanceof the old Inspector and the Weighers and Gaugers, whose slumbers weredisturbed by the unmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing andreturning footsteps. Remembering their own former habits, they used tosay that the Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck. They probablyfancied that my sole object—and, indeed, the sole object for which asane man could ever put himself into voluntary motion—was, to get anappetite for dinner. And to say the truth, an appetite, sharpened bythe east wind that generally blew along the passage, was the onlyvaluable result of so much indefatigable exercise. So little adaptedis the atmosphere of a custom-house to the delicate harvest of fancyand sensibility, that, had I remained there through ten Presidenciesyet to come, I doubt whether the tale of “The Scarlet Letter” wouldever have been brought before the public eye. My imagination was atarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or only with miserabledimness, the figures with which I did my best to people it. Thecharacters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered malleableby any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge. They wouldtake neither the glow of passion nor the tenderness of sentiment, butretained all the rigidity of dead corpses, and stared me in the facewith a fixed and ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. “What have youto do with us?” that expression seemed to say. “The little power youmight once have possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! Youhave bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go, then, and earnyour wages!” In short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancytwitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion. 

It was not merely during the three hours and a half which Uncle Samclaimed as his share of my daily life, that this wretched numbnessheld possession of me. It went with me on my sea-shore walks, andrambles into the country, whenever—which was seldom andreluctantly—I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm ofNature, which used to give me such freshness and activity of thoughtthe moment that I stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. Thesame torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which I mostabsurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me, when, late at night, Isat in the deserted parlor, lighted only by the glimmering coal-fireand the moon, striving to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, thenext day, might flow out on the brightening page in many-hueddescription. 

If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it mightwell be deemed a hopeless case. Moonlight, in a familiar room, fallingso white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures sodistinctly, —making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike amorning or noontide visibility, —is a medium the most suitable for aromance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. There isthe little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining awork-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; thebookcase; the picture on the wall;—all these details, so completelyseen, are so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem tolose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothingis too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquiredignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wickercarriage; the hobby-horse;—whatever, in a word, has been used orplayed with, during the day, is now invested with a quality ofstrangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present asby daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room hasbecome a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world andfairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and eachimbue itself with the nature of the other. Ghosts might enter here, without affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping with the sceneto excite surprise, were we to look about us and discover a formbeloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magicmoonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it hadreturned from afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside. 

The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence in producing theeffect which I would describe. It throws its unobtrusive tingethroughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon the walls andceiling, and a reflected gleam from the polish of the furniture. Thiswarmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of themoonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities ofhuman tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up. It converts themfrom snow-images into men and women. Glancing at the looking-glass, webehold—deep within its haunted verge—the smouldering glow of thehalf-extinguished anthracite, the white moonbeams on the floor, and arepetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one removefurther from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. Then, at suchan hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he neednever try to write romances. 

But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of firelight, were just alike inmy regard; and neither of them was of one whit more avail than thetwinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire class of susceptibilities, and agift connected with them, —of no great richness or value, but the bestI had, —was gone from me. 

It is my belief, however, that, had I attempted a different order ofcomposition, my faculties would not have been found so pointless andinefficacious. I might, for instance, have contented myself withwriting out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of theInspectors, whom I should be most ungrateful not to mention, sincescarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laughter andadmiration by his marvellous gifts as a story-teller. Could I havepreserved the picturesque force of his style, and the humorouscoloring which nature taught him how to throw over his descriptions, the result, I honestly believe, would have been something new inliterature. Or I might readily have found a more serious task. It wasa folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing sointrusively 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 wasbroken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wisereffort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination throughthe opaque substance of to-day, and thus to make it a brighttransparency; to spiritualize the burden that began to weigh soheavily; to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value thatlay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinarycharacters, with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. Thepage of life that was spread out before me seemed dull andcommonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. Abetter book than I shall ever write was there; leaf after leafpresenting itself to me, just as it was written out by the reality ofthe flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because mybrain wanted the insight and my hand the cunning to transcribe it. Atsome future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragmentsand broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turnto gold upon the page. 

These perceptions have come too late. At the instant, I was onlyconscious that what would have been a pleasure once was now a hopelesstoil. There was no occasion to make much moan about this state ofaffairs. I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales andessays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. Thatwas all. But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be hauntedby a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, atevery glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of thefact there could be no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I wasled to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on thecharacter, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In someother form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice ithere to say, that a Custom-House officer, of long continuance, canhardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for manyreasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, andanother, the very nature of his business, which—though, I trust, anhonest one—is of such a sort that he does not share in the unitedeffort of mankind. 

An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in everyindividual who has occupied the position—is, that, while he leans onthe mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs fromhim. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force ofhis original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess anunusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place donot operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends himforth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world—may return tohimself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldomhappens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his ownruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totteralong the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of hisown infirmity, —that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost, —heforever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of supportexternal to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a hallucinationwhich, in the face of all discouragement, and making light ofimpossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like theconvulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space afterdeath—is, that finally, and in no long time, by some happycoincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. Thisfaith, more than anything else, steals the pith and availability outof whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toiland moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of themud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle willraise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or goto dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, atmonthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of hisUncle's pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste ofoffice suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam's gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy oldgentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that ofthe Devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, orhe may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not hissoul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courageand constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives theemphasis to manly character. 

Here was a fine prospect in the distance! Not that the Surveyorbrought the lesson home to himself, or admitted that he could be soutterly undone, either by continuance in office, or ejectment. Yet myreflections were not the most comfortable. I began to grow melancholyand restless; continually prying into my mind, to discover which ofits poor properties were gone, and what degree of detriment hadalready accrued to the remainder. I endeavored to calculate how muchlonger I could stay in the Custom-House, and yet go forth a man. Toconfess the truth, it was my greatest apprehension, —as it would neverbe 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, —itwas my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to grow gray anddecrepit in the Surveyorship, and become much such another animal asthe old Inspector. Might it not, in the tedious lapse of officiallife that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with thisvenerable friend, —to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the day, andto spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep in thesunshine or in the shade? A dreary look-forward this, for a man whofelt it to be the best definition of happiness to live throughout thewhole range of his faculties and sensibilities! But, all this while, Iwas giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had meditatedbetter things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself. 

A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorship—to adopt thetone of “P. P. ”—was the election of General Taylor to the Presidency. It is essential, in order to a complete estimate of the advantages ofofficial life, to view the incumbent at the incoming of a hostileadministration. His position is then one of the most singularlyirksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretchedmortal can possibly occupy; with seldom an alternative of good, oneither hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst eventmay very probably be the best. But it is a strange experience, to aman of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are withinthe control of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and bywhom, since one or the other must needs happen, he would rather beinjured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who has kept his calmnessthroughout the contest, to observe the blood-thirstiness that isdeveloped in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he ishimself among its objects! There are few uglier traits of human naturethan this tendency—which I now witnessed in men no worse than theirneighbors—to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power ofinflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to office-holders, were a literal fact instead of one of the most apt of metaphors, it ismy sincere belief that the active members of the victorious party weresufficiently excited to have chopped off all our heads, and havethanked Heaven for the opportunity! It appears to me—who have been acalm and curious observer, as well in victory as defeat—that thisfierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguishedthe many triumphs of my own party as it now did that of the Whigs. TheDemocrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they need them, and because the practice of many years has made it the law ofpolitical warfare, which, unless a different system be proclaimed, itwere weakness and cowardice to murmur at. But the long habit ofvictory has made them generous. They know how to spare, when they seeoccasion; and when they strike, the axe may be sharp, indeed, but itsedge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their customignominiously to kick the head which they have just struck off. 

In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, I saw much reasonto congratulate myself that I was on the losing side, rather than thetriumphant one. If, heretofore, I had been none of the warmest ofpartisans, I began now, at this season of peril and adversity, to bepretty acutely sensible with which party my predilections lay; nor wasit without something like regret and shame, that, according to areasonable calculation of chances, I saw my own prospect of retainingoffice to be better than those of my Democratic brethren. But who cansee an inch into futurity, beyond his nose? My own head was the firstthat fell!

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I aminclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even soserious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, ifthe sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of theaccident which has befallen him. In my particular case, theconsolatory topics were close at hand, and, indeed, had suggestedthemselves to my meditations a considerable time before it wasrequisite to use them. In view of my previous weariness of office, andvague thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that of aperson who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, although beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. Inthe 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 oldintellectual habits, and make room for new ones; long enough, and toolong, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was really of noadvantage nor delight to any human being, and withholding myself fromtoil that would, at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then, moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the lateSurveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be recognized by the Whigsas an enemy; since his inactivity in political affairs—his tendencyto roam, at will, in that broad and quiet field where all mankind maymeet, rather than confine himself to those narrow paths where brethrenof the same household must diverge from one another—had sometimesmade it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he was afriend. Now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though with nolonger a head to wear it on), the point might be looked upon assettled. Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous tobe overthrown in the downfall of the party with which he had beencontent to stand, than to remain a forlorn survivor, when so manyworthier men were falling; and, at last, after subsisting for fouryears on the mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled thento define his position anew, and claim the yet more humiliating mercyof a friendly one. 

Meanwhile the press had taken up my affair, and kept me, for a week ortwo, careering through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman; ghastly and grim, and longing to beburied, as a politically dead man ought. So much for my figurativeself. The real human being, all this time, with his head safely on hisshoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion thateverything was for the best; and, making an investment in ink, paper, and steel-pens, had opened his long-disused writing-desk, and wasagain a literary man. 

Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor, Mr. Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty through long idleness, some littlespace was requisite before my intellectual machinery could be broughtto work upon the tale, with an effect in any degree satisfactory. Evenyet, though my thoughts were ultimately much absorbed in the task, itwears, to my eye, a stern and sombre aspect; too much ungladdened bygenial sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiarinfluences which soften almost every scene of nature and real life, and, undoubtedly, should soften every picture of them. Thisuncaptivating effect is perhaps due to the period of hardlyaccomplished revolution, and still seething turmoil, in which thestory shaped itself. It is no indication, however, of a lack ofcheerfulness in the writer's mind; for he was happier, while strayingthrough the gloom of these sunless fantasies, than at any time sincehe had quitted the Old Manse. Some of the briefer articles, whichcontribute to make up the volume, have likewise been written since myinvoluntary withdrawal from the toils and honors of public life, andthe remainder are gleaned from annuals and magazines of such antiquedate that they have gone round the circle, and come back to noveltyagain. [1] Keeping up the metaphor of the political guillotine, thewhole may be considered as the POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATEDSURVEYOR; and the sketch which I am now bringing to a close, if tooautobiographical for a modest person to publish in his lifetime, willreadily be excused in a gentleman who writes from beyond the grave. Peace be with all the world! My blessing on my friends! My forgivenessto my enemies! For I am in the realm of quiet!

 [Footnote 1: At the time of writing this article the author intended to publish, along with “The Scarlet Letter, ” several shorter tales and sketches. These it has been thought advisable to defer. ]

The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind me. The oldInspector, —who, by the by, I regret to say, was overthrown and killedby a horse, some time ago; else he would certainly have livedforever, —he, and all those other venerable personages who sat withhim at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view; white-headedand wrinkled images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has nowflung aside forever. The merchants, —Pingree, Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt, —these, and many other names, which hadsuch a classic familiarity for my ear six months ago, —these men oftraffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position in theworld, —how little time has it required to disconnect me from themall, not merely in act, but recollection! It is with an effort that Irecall the figures and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise, myold native town will loom upon me through the haze of memory, a mistbrooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the realearth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginaryinhabitants to people its wooden houses, and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth itceases to be a reality of my life. I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good towns-people will not much regret me; for—though it has beenas dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of someimportance in their eyes, and to win myself a pleasant memory in thisabode and burial-place of so many of my forefathers—_there_ has neverbeen, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man requires, inorder to ripen the best harvest of his mind. I shall do better amongstother faces; and these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will dojust as well without me. 

It may be, however, —O, transporting and triumphant thought!—that thegreat-grandchildren of the present race may sometimes think kindly ofthe scribbler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days to come, among the sites memorable in the town's history, shall point out thelocality of THE TOWN PUMP!

[Illustration]

[Illustration: The Prison Door]

[Illustration: Vignette, —Wild Rose]

 THE SCARLET LETTER. 

 I. 

 THE PRISON-DOOR. 

[Illustration]

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

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue andhappiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized itamong their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of thevirgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of aprison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed thatthe forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewherein the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked outthe first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about hisgrave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregatedsepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and otherindications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to itsbeetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work ofits oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the NewWorld. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have knowna youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and thewheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown withburdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, whichevidently found something congenial in the soil that had so earlyborne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But on one sideof the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wildrose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty tothe prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he cameforth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pityand 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, solong after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originallyovershadowed it, —or whether, as there is fair authority forbelieving, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted AnnHutchinson, as she entered the prison-door, —we shall not take upon usto determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of ournarrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, andpresent it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize somesweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve thedarkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 II. 

 THE MARKET-PLACE. 

The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summermorning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a prettylarge number of the inhabitants of Boston; all with their eyesintently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any otherpopulation, or at a later period in the history of New England, thegrim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these goodpeople would have augured some awful business in hand. It could havebetokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some notedculprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmedthe verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of thePuritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitablybe drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutifulchild, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was tobe corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Antinomian, aQuaker, or other heterodox religionist was to be scourged out of thetown, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire-waterhad made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes intothe shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like oldMistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was todie upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the samesolemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted apeople amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and inwhose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildestand the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerableand awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold was the sympathy that atransgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. Onthe other hand, a penalty, which, in our days, would infer a degree ofmocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost asstern a dignity as the punishment of death itself. 

It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morning when ourstory begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several inthe crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penalinfliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so muchrefinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers ofpetticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, intothe throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as wellas materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens ofold 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 hastransmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and brieferbeauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of lessforce and solidity, than her own. The women who were now standingabout the prison-door stood within less than half a century of theperiod when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogetherunsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen; andthe beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whitmore refined, entered largely into their composition. The brightmorning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developedbusts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-offisland, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere ofNew England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speechamong these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startleus at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volumeof tone. 

“Goodwives, ” said a hard-featured dame of fifty, “I'll tell ye a pieceof 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 thehandling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that arenow here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentenceas the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not!”

“People say, ” said another, “that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, hergodly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandalshould have come upon his congregation. ”

“The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but mercifulovermuch, —that is a truth, ” added a third autumnal matron. “At thevery least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on HesterPrynne's forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrantme. But she, —the naughty baggage, —little will she care what theyput upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it witha brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streetsas brave as ever!”

“Ah, but, ” interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child bythe hand, “let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will bealways in her heart. ”

[Illustration: The Gossips]

“What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of hergown, or the flesh of her forehead?” cried another female, the ugliestas well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. “Thiswoman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there notlaw for it? Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and thestatute-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 novirtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of thegallows? That is the hardest word yet! Hush, now, gossips! for thelock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress Prynneherself. ”

The door of the jail being flung open from within, there appeared, inthe first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grimand grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, andhis staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured andrepresented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritaniccode of law, which it was his business to administer in its final andclosest application to the offender. Stretching forth the officialstaff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a youngwoman, whom he thus drew forward; until, on the threshold of theprison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with naturaldignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as ifby her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of somethree months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from thetoo vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had broughtit acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or otherdarksome apartment of the prison. 

When the young woman—the mother of this child—stood fully revealedbefore the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp theinfant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherlyaffection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, whichwas wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wiselyjudging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hideanother, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, andyet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, lookedaround at her towns-people and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery andfantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was soartistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxurianceof fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decorationto the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor inaccordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what wasallowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. 

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a largescale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off thesunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful fromregularity of feature and richness of complexion, had theimpressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She waslady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of thosedays; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by thedelicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognizedas its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared morelady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as sheissued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and hadexpected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, wereastonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she wasenveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there wassomething exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, shehad wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled much afterher own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, thedesperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesquepeculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer, —so that both men and women, who had beenfamiliarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as ifthey beheld her for the first time, —was that SCARLET LETTER, sofantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had theeffect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations withhumanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself. 

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

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

“O, peace, neighbors, peace!” whispered their youngest companion; “donot let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter but shehas 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. “Opena 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 thistime till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous Colony ofthe Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine!Come along, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet letter in themarket-place!”

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Precededby the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession ofstern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forthtowards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager andcurious school-boys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face, and at thewinking 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 themarket-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it mightbe reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanorwas, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of thosethat thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into thestreet for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferershould never know the intensity of what he endures by its presenttorture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost aserene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through thisportion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the westernextremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves ofBoston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there. 

In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, whichnow, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical andtraditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be aseffectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever wasthe guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, theplatform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of thatinstrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head inits tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The veryideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivanceof wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against ourcommon nature, —whatever be the delinquencies of the individual, —nooutrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face forshame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In HesterPrynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, hersentence bore, that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement ofthe head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristicof this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight ofwooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, atabout the height of a man's shoulders above the street. 

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might haveseen 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 imageof Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied withone 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 ofdeepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working sucheffect, 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 investthe spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before societyshall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, atit. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passedbeyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon herdeath, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which wouldfind only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even hadthere been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it musthave been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men noless dignified than the Governor, and several of his counsellors, ajudge, a general, and the ministers of the town; all of whom sat orstood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon theplatform. When such personages could constitute a part of thespectacle, without risking the majesty or reverence of rank andoffice, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legalsentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, thecrowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself asbest a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelentingeyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It wasalmost intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabsof public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; butthere was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of thepopular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigidcountenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself theobject. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude, —each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing theirindividual parts, —Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with abitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which itwas her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needsshriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from thescaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once. 

Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was themost conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shapedand spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory, waspreternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than thisroughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the Westernwilderness; other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath thebrims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences the most triflingand immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childishquarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, cameswarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whateverwas gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid asanother; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit, to relieveitself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from thecruel weight and hardness of the reality. 

Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of viewthat revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she hadbeen treading, since her happy infancy. Standing on that miserableeminence, she saw again her native village, in Old England, and herpaternal home; a decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-strickenaspect, but retaining a half-obliterated shield of arms over theportal, in token of antique gentility. She saw her father's face, withits bald brow, and reverend white beard, that flowed over theold-fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look ofheedful and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, andwhich, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of agentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her ownface, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interiorof the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. Thereshe beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, apale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by thelamplight that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yetthose same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when itwas their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of thestudy and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not torecall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higherthan the right. Next rose before her, in memory's picture-gallery, theintricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, gray houses, the hugecathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint inarchitecture, of a Continental city; where a new life had awaited her, still in connection with the misshapen scholar; a new life, butfeeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on acrumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came backthe rude market-place of the Puritan settlement, with all thetowns-people assembled and levelling their stern regards at HesterPrynne, —yes, at herself, —who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantasticallyembroidered with gold-thread, upon her bosom!

[Illustration: “Standing on the Miserable Eminence”]

Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarletletter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself thatthe infant and the shame were real. Yes!—these were herrealities, —all else had vanished!

 [Illustration]

 III. 

 THE RECOGNITION. 

From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe anduniversal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at lengthrelieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure whichirresistibly took possession of her thoughts. An Indian, in his nativegarb, was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequentvisitors of the English settlements, that one of them would haveattracted any notice from Hester Prynne, at such a time; much lesswould he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. Bythe Indian's side, and evidently sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savagecostume. 

He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, couldhardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in hisfeatures, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that itcould not fail to mould the physical to itself, and become manifest byunmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless arrangement ofhis heterogeneous garb, he had endeavored to conceal or abate thepeculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne, that one ofthis man's shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at the firstinstant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity ofthe figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom with so convulsive aforce that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the motherdid 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, atfirst, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whomexternal matters are of little value and import, unless they bearrelation to something within his mind. Very soon, however, his lookbecame keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself acrosshis features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making onelittle pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. Hisface darkened with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he soinstantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at asingle moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. After abrief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finallysubsided into the depths of his nature. When he found the eyes ofHester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared torecognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesturewith it in the air, and laid it on his lips. 

Then, touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood next to him, headdressed him, in a formal and courteous manner. 

“I pray you, good Sir, ” said he, “who is this woman?—and wherefore isshe here set up to public shame?”

“You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend, ” answered thetownsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savagecompanion, “else you would surely have heard of Mistress HesterPrynne, and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, Ipromise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church. ”

“You say truly, ” replied the other. “I am a stranger, and have been awanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with grievous mishaps bysea 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 beredeemed out of my captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tellme of Hester Prynne's, —have I her name rightly?—of this woman'soffences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?”

“Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after yourtroubles and sojourn in the wilderness, ” said the townsman, “to findyourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, andpunished in the sight of rulers and people; as here in our godly NewEngland. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the wife of a certainlearned man, English by birth, but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam, whence, some good time agone, he was minded to cross over and cast inhis lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this purpose, he sent hiswife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessaryaffairs. Marry, good Sir, in some two years, or less, that the womanhas been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of thislearned gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, look you, beingleft 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 hisbooks. And who, by your favor, Sir, may be the father of yonderbabe—it is some three or four months old, I should judge—whichMistress Prynne is holding in her arms?”

“Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the Danielwho shall expound it is yet a-wanting, ” answered the townsman. “MadamHester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laidtheir heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one standslooking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting thatGod sees him. ”

“The learned man, ” observed the stranger, with another smile, “shouldcome himself, to look into the mystery. ”

“It behooves him well, if he be still in life, ” responded thetownsman. “Now, good Sir, our Massachusetts magistracy, bethinkingthemselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless wasstrongly 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 boldto put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. Thepenalty thereof is death. But in their great mercy and tenderness ofheart, they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of threehours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for theremainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon herbosom. ”

“A wise sentence!” remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his head. “Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominiousletter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, thatthe partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on thescaffold by her side. But he will be known!—he will be known!—hewill be known!”

He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and, whispering afew words to his Indian attendant, they both made their way throughthe 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 visibleworld seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as shenow did, with the hot, mid-day sun burning down upon her face, andlighting 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 forthas to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seenonly in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of ahome, or beneath a matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it was, shewas conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousandwitnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him andher, than to greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled forrefuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the momentwhen its protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in thesethoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her, until it had repeatedher name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible to thewhole multitude. 

“Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!” said the voice. 

It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform on whichHester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appendedto the meeting-house. It was the place whence proclamations were wontto be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all theceremonial that attended such public observances in those days. Here, to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Governor Bellinghamhimself, with four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as aguard of honor. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border ofembroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; agentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in hiswrinkles. He was not ill fitted to be the head and representative of acommunity, which owed its origin and progress, and its present stateof development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern andtempered energies of manhood, and the sombre sagacity of age;accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped solittle. The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler wassurrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to aperiod when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacrednessof Divine institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy toselect the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should beless capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, anddisentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigidaspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face. She seemedconscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay in thelarger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyestowards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale and trembled. 

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

“Hester Prynne, ” said the clergyman, “I have striven with my youngbrother here, under whose preaching of the word you have beenprivileged to sit, ”—here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder ofa pale young man beside him, —“I have sought, I say, to persuade thisgodly 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 thepeople, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowingyour natural temper better than I, he could the better judge whatarguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as mightprevail over your hardness and obstinacy; insomuch that you should nolonger hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. Buthe opposes to me (with a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyondhis years), that it were wronging the very nature of woman to forceher to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and inpresence 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 ofit forth. What say you to it, once again, Brother Dimmesdale? Must itbe thou, or I, that shall deal with this poor sinner's soul?”

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

“Good Master Dimmesdale, ” said he, “the responsibility of this woman'ssoul lies greatly with you. It behooves you, therefore, to exhort herto repentance, and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof. ”

The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd uponthe Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale; a young clergyman, who had come from oneof the great English universities, bringing all the learning of theage into our wild forest-land. His eloquence and religious fervor hadalready given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. He was aperson of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impendingbrow, large brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when heforcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing bothnervous 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, astartled, a half-frightened look, —as of a being who felt himselfquite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, andcould only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so faras his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thuskept himself simple and childlike; coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, asmany people said, affected them like the speech of an angel. 

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

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

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

“Hester Prynne, ” said he, leaning over the balcony and looking downsteadfastly into her eyes, “thou hearest what this good man says, andseest the accountability under which I labor. If thou feelest it to befor thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby bemade more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the nameof thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from anymistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, thoughhe 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 guiltyheart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempthim—yea, compel him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hathgranted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out anopen triumph over the evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Takeheed how thou deniest to him—who, perchance, hath not the courage tograsp it for himself—the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is nowpresented to thy lips!”

The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, andbroken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than thedirect purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even the poorbaby, at Hester's bosom, was affected by the same influence; for itdirected its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held upits little arms, with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. Sopowerful seemed the minister's appeal, that the people could notbelieve but that Hester Prynne would speak out the guilty name; orelse that the guilty one himself, in whatever high or lowly place hestood, would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, andcompelled to ascend to the scaffold. 

Hester shook her head. 

“Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!” cried theReverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before. “That little babe hathbeen gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thouhast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail totake the scarlet letter off thy breast. ”

“Never!” replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but intothe deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. “It is too deeplybranded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure hisagony, as well as mine!”

“Speak, woman!” said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceedingfrom the crowd about the scaffold. “Speak; and give your child afather!”

“I will not speak!” answered Hester, turning pale as death, butresponding to this voice, which she too surely recognized. “And mychild must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthlyone!”

“She will not speak!” murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over thebalcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of hisappeal. He now drew back, with a long respiration. “Wondrous strengthand generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak!”

[Illustration: “She was led back to Prison”]

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, theelder 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 forciblydid he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which hisperiods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed newterrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet huefrom the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kepther place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air ofweary indifference. She had borne, that morning, all that nature couldendure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes fromtoo intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itselfbeneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of animallife remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacherthundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant, during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with itswailings and screams; she strove to hush it, mechanically, but seemedscarcely to sympathize with its trouble. With the same hard demeanor, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze withinits iron-clamped portal. It was whispered, by those who peered afterher, that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the darkpassage-way of the interior. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 IV. 

 THE INTERVIEW. 

After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in astate of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness, lestshe should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenziedmischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossibleto quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. Hedescribed him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physicalscience, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people couldteach, in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in theforest. To say the truth, there was much need of professionalassistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently forthe child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemedto have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions ofpain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agonywhich Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day. 

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

“Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient, ” said thepractitioner. “Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace inyour house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter bemore amenable to just authority than you may have found herheretofore. ”

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

The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude ofthe profession to which he announced himself as belonging. Nor did hisdemeanor change, when the withdrawal of the prison-keeper left himface to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in thecrowd, had intimated so close a relation between himself and her. Hisfirst care was given to the child; whose cries, indeed, as she laywrithing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity topostpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He examinedthe infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medicalpreparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water. 

“My old studies in alchemy, ” observed he, “and my sojourn, for above ayear past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties ofsimples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim themedical degree. Here, woman! The child is yours, —she is none ofmine, —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 withstrongly marked apprehension into his face. 

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

“Foolish woman!” responded the physician, half coldly, halfsoothingly. “What should ail me, to harm this misbegotten andmiserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were it mychild, —yea, mine own, as well as thine!—I could do no better forit. ”

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state ofmind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered thedraught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge. The moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossingsgradually ceased; and, in a few moments, as is the custom of youngchildren after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewyslumber. The physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, nextbestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny hefelt her pulse, looked into her eyes, —a gaze that made her heartshrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange andcold, —and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded tomingle another draught. 

“I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe, ” remarked he; “but I have learned manynew secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them, —a recipe thatan Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that wereas old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinlessconscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell andheaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuoussea. ”

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

“I have thought of death, ” said she, —“have wished for it, —would evenhave prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray foranything. Yet if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, erethou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is even now at my lips. ”

“Drink, then, ” replied he, still with the same cold composure. “Dostthou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be soshallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I dobetter for my object than to let thee live, —than to give theemedicines against all harm and peril of life, —so that this burningshame may still blaze upon thy bosom?” As he spoke, he laid his longforefinger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorchinto Hester's breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed herinvoluntary gesture, and smiled. “Live, therefore, and bear about thydoom with thee, in the eyes of men and women, —in the eyes of him whomthou didst call thy husband, —in the eyes of yonder child! And, thatthou mayest live, take off this draught. ”

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained thecup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bedwhere the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which theroom afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could not buttremble at these preparations; for she felt that—having now done allthat humanity or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for the relief of physical suffering—he was nextto treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparablyinjured. 

“Hester, ” said he, “I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast falleninto the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal ofinfamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It wasmy folly, and thy weakness. I, —a man of thought, —the bookworm ofgreat libraries, —a man already in decay, having given my best yearsto feed the hungry dream of knowledge, —what had I to do with youthand beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could Idelude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veilphysical deformity in a young girl's fantasy! Men call me wise. Ifsages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen allthis. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and dismalforest, and entered this settlement of Christian men, the very firstobject to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester Prynne, standing up, astatue of ignominy, before the people. Nay, from the moment when wecame down the old church steps together, a married pair, I might havebeheld the bale-fire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end of ourpath!”

“Thou knowest, ” said Hester, —for, depressed as she was, she could notendure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame, —“thou knowestthat 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 thatepoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had been socheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, butlonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindleone! It seemed not so wild a dream, —old as I was, and sombre as Iwas, and misshapen as I was, —that the simple bliss, which isscattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet bemine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermostchamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence madethere!”

“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 relationwith my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought andphilosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, theman 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 andself-relying intelligence. “Never know him! Believe me, Hester, thereare few things, —whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought, —few things hidden from the manwho devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of amystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, evenas thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thyheart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I cometo the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek thisman, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold inalchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. Ishall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly andunawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!”

The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, thatHester Prynne clasped her hands over her heart, dreading lest heshould 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. “Hebears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost; butI shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him! Think not that Ishall interfere with Heaven's own method of retribution, or, to my ownloss, betray him to the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imaginethat I shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against hisfame, if, as I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Lethim hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he shall bemine!”

“Thy acts are like mercy, ” said Hester, bewildered and appalled. “Butthy 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 awoman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closestligaments. No matter whether of love or hate; no matter whether ofright or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My homeis where thou art, and where he is. But betray me not!”

[Illustration: “The Eyes of the wrinkled Scholar glowed”]

“Wherefore dost thou desire it?” inquired Hester, shrinking, shehardly knew why, from this secret bond. “Why not announce thyselfopenly, and cast me off at once?”

“It may be, ” he replied, “because I will not encounter the dishonorthat besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may be for otherreasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and ofwhom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize me not, by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottestof. Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, hislife, 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 washereafter to be named, “I leave thee alone; alone with thy infant, andthe scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee towear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares andhideous dreams?”

“Why dost thou smile so at me?” inquired Hester, troubled at theexpression of his eyes. “Art thou like the Black Man that haunts theforest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that willprove the ruin of my soul?”

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

 [Illustration]

 V. 

 HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 

Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-doorwas thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, fallingon all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for noother purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhapsthere was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps fromthe threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectaclethat have been described, where she was made the common infamy, atwhich all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she wassupported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all thecombative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert thescene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate andinsulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strengththat would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law thatcondemned her—a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm—had held her up, throughthe terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattendedwalk from her prison-door, began the daily custom; and she must eithersustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to helpher through the present grief. To-morrow would bring its own trialwith it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its owntrial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous tobe borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still withthe same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but neverto fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pileup their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving upher individuality, she would become the general symbol at which thepreacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify andembody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus theyoung and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letterflaming on her breast, —at her, the child of honorable parents, —ather, 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 ofsin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither wouldbe her only monument. 

It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her, —kept by norestrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of thePuritan settlement, so remote and so obscure, —free to return to herbirthplace, or to any other European land, and there hide hercharacter and identity under a new exterior, as completely as ifemerging into another state of being, —and having also the passes ofthe dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of hernature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and lifewere alien from the law that had condemned her, —it may seemmarvellous, that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But thereis a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it hasthe force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings tolinger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great andmarked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the moreirresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, herignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was asif a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, hadconverted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrimand wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-longhome. All other scenes of earth—even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in hermother's keeping, like garments put off long ago—were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, andgalling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken. 

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

[Illustration: The Lonesome Dwelling]

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to anyother habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had beenbuilt by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the soil about itwas too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness putit out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked thehabits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basinof the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump ofscrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so muchconceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was someobject which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In this little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that shepossessed, and by the license of the magistrates, who still kept aninquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with herinfant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itselfto the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this womanshould be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creepnigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, orstanding in the doorway, or laboring in her little garden, or comingforth along the pathway that led townward; and, discerning the scarletletter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagiousfear. 

Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth whodared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. Shepossessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that affordedcomparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for herthriving infant and herself. It was the art—then, as now, almost theonly one within a woman's grasp—of needlework. She bore on herbreast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of herdelicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court mightgladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritualadornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterized thePuritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for thefiner productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did notfail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had castbehind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispensewith. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation ofmagistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which anew government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter ofpolicy, marked by a stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and asombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wroughtbands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary tothe official state of men assuming the reins of power; and werereadily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even whilesumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeianorder. In the array of funerals, too, —whether for the apparel of thedead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable clothand snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors, —there was a frequent andcharacteristic demand for such labor as Hester Prynne could supply. Baby-linen—for babies then wore robes of state—afforded stillanother possibility of toil and emolument. 

By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now betermed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of somiserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives afictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whateverother intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hesterreally filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it iscertain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as manyhours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp andstate, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Herneedlework was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore iton their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby'slittle cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in thecoffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a singleinstance, her skill was called in aid to embroider the white veilwhich was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exceptionindicated the ever-relentless rigor with which society frowned uponher sin. 

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of theplainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simpleabundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materialsand the most sombre hue; with only that one ornament, —the scarletletter, —which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on theother hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airycharm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but whichappeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of ithereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of herinfant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, onwretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequentlyinsulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she mightreadily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed inmaking coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was anidea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up areal sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many hours to such rudehandiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Orientalcharacteristic, —a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save inthe exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in allthe possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon. Women derivea pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toilof the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode ofexpressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like allother joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of consciencewith an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuineand steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that mightbe deeply wrong, beneath. 

In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in theworld. With her native energy of character, and rare capacity, itcould 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 browof Cain. In all her intercourse with society, however, there wasnothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came incontact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and asmuch alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated withthe common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of humankind. She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longermake itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, normourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifestingits forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to bethe sole portion that she retained in the universal heart. It was notan age of delicacy; and her position, although she understood it well, and was in little danger of forgetting it, was often brought beforeher vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touchupon the tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom shesought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the handthat was stretched forth to succor them. Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, wereaccustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimesthrough that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct asubtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarserexpression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like arough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Hester had schooled herself longand well; she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush ofcrimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and againsubsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patient, —a martyr, indeed, —but she forbore to pray for her enemies; lest, in spite ofher forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornlytwist themselves into a curse. 

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel theinnumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived forher by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the street to address words of exhortation, thatbrought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbathsmile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herselfthe text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; forthey had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horriblein this dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with neverany companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her topass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and theutterance of a word that had no distinct purport to their ownminds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lipsthat babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusionof her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her nodeeper pang, had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark storyamong themselves, —had the summer breeze murmured about it, —had thewintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt inthe gaze of a new eye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarletletter, —and none ever failed to do so, —they branded it afresh intoHester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yetalways did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Itscool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, inshort, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a humaneye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on thecontrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture. 

[Illustration: Lonely Footsteps]

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

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softermoral and intellectual fibre, would have been still more so, by thestrange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, withthose lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she wasoutwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester, —ifaltogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted, —shefelt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with anew sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in otherhearts. She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thusmade. What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispersof the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was buta lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarletletter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or, must she receive those intimations—so obscure, yet so distinct—astruth? In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else soawful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shockedher, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that broughtit into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast wouldgive a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister ormagistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age ofantique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship withangels. “What evil thing is at hand?” would Hester say to herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within thescope of view, save the form of this earthly saint! Again, a mysticsisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met thesanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of alltongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. Thatunsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on HesterPrynne's, —what had the two in common? Or, once more, the electricthrill would give her warning, —“Behold, Hester, here is acompanion!”—and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a youngmaiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quicklyaverted with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks; as if her puritywere somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, whosetalisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether inyouth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?—such loss of faith isever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof thatall was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man'shard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that nofellow-mortal was guilty like herself. 

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

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 VI. 

 PEARL. 

[Illustration]

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree ofProvidence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxurianceof a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as shewatched the growth, and the beauty that became every day morebrilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine overthe tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!—For so had Hester calledher; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of thecalm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by thecomparison. But she named the infant “Pearl, ” as being of greatprice, —purchased with all she had, —her mother's only treasure! Howstrange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathycould reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a directconsequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovelychild, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect herparent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finallya blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynneless with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had beenevil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would begood. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expandingnature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, thatshould correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being. 

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, itsvigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy tohave been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after theworld's first parents were driven out. The child had a native gracewhich does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the verygarb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad inrustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be betterunderstood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could beprocured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in thearrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, beforethe public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thusarrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished apaler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance aroundher, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn andsoiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just asperfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety;in this one child there were many children, comprehending the fullscope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and thepomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, therewas 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, shewould have ceased to be herself, —it would have been no longer Pearl!

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairlyexpress, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appearedto possess depth, too, as well as variety; but—or else Hester's fearsdeceived her—it lacked reference and adaptation to the world intowhich she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. Ingiving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result wasa being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but allin disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which thepoint of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to bediscovered. Hester could only account for the child's character—andeven then most vaguely and imperfectly—by recalling what she herselfhad been, during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing hersoul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its materialof earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the medium throughwhich were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its morallife; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deepstains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, andthe untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, thewarfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightinessof her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom anddespondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminatedby the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but later inthe day of earthly existence might be prolific of the storm andwhirlwind. 

The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more rigidkind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent applicationof the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were used, not merely inthe way of punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimenfor the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk oferring on the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her ownerrors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender, butstrict control over the infant immortality that was committed to hercharge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smilesand frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed anycalculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside, and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physicalcompulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. Asto any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind orheart, little Pearl might or might not be within its reach, inaccordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, whilePearl 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 awild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at suchmoments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airysprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little whileupon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Wheneverthat look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it investedher with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she werehovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering light, thatcomes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child, —to pursue thelittle elf in the flight which she invariably began, —to snatch her toher bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses, —not so much fromoverflowing 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 thanbefore. 

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so oftencame between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought sodear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst intopassionate tears. Then, perhaps, —for there was no foreseeing how itmight affect her, —Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, andharden her small features into a stern, unsympathizing look ofdiscontent. Not seldom, she would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or—but thismore rarely happened—she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, andsob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent onproving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardlysafe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness; it passed, assuddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters, the mother feltlike one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in theprocess of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that shouldcontrol this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only realcomfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she wassure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness;until—perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneathher opening lids—little Pearl awoke!

How soon—with what strange rapidity, indeed!—did Pearl arrive at anage that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother'sever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness wouldit have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-likevoice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and havedistinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all theentangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could neverbe. 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, withwhich the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that haddrawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, inshort, of her position in respect to other children. Never, since herrelease from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. Inall her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there; first as the babein arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of hermother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping alongat the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw thechildren of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or atthe domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashionas the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fightwith the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitativewitchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to makeacquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the childrengathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positivelyterrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, withshrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, becausethey had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknowntongue. 

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerantbrood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother andchild; and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and notunfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt thesentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can besupposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These outbreaks of a fiercetemper had a kind of value, and even comfort, for her mother; becausethere was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead ofthe fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child'smanifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. All thisenmity and passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out ofHester's heart. Mother and daughter stood together in the same circleof seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the child seemedto be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted HesterPrynne before Pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away bythe softening influences of maternity. 

At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not awide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forthfrom her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousandobjects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. Theunlikeliest materials—a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower—were thepuppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outwardchange, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied thestage of her inner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude ofimaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged, black and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholyutterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure asPuritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully. It waswonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw herintellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activity, —soon sinking down, as ifexhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life, —and succeeded byother shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much asthe phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exerciseof the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, theremight be little more than was observable in other children of brightfaculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, wasthrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. Thesingularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regardedall these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created afriend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed tobattle. It was inexpressibly sad—then what depth of sorrow to amother, who felt in her own heart the cause!—to observe, in one soyoung, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce atraining of the energies that were to make good her cause, in thecontest 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, butwhich made utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan, —“OFather in Heaven, —if Thou art still my Father, —what is this beingwhich I have brought into the world!” And Pearl, overhearing theejaculation, or aware, through some more subtile channel, of thosethrobs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face uponher mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play. 

[Illustration: A touch of Pearl's baby-hand]

One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. Thevery first thing which she had noticed in her life was—what?—not themother'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 nomeans! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become awarewas—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 beencaught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, notdoubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of amuch older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutchthe fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away; soinfinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl'sbaby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonized gesture were meant onlyto make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, andsmile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester hadnever felt a moment's safety; not a moment's calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's gazemight never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, itwould come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and alwayswith that peculiar smile, and odd expression of the eyes. 

Once, this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes, whileHester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond ofdoing; and, suddenly, —for women in solitude, and with troubledhearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions, —she fancied thatshe beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face, in thesmall black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full ofsmiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she hadknown full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice inthem. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had justthen peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester beentortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion. 

In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew bigenough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls ofwild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom;dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the scarletletter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with herclasped hands. But, whether from pride or resignation, or a feelingthat her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadlyinto little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breastwith hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knewhow to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, thechild stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughingimage of a fiend peeping out—or, whether it peeped or no, her motherso 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 freakmight 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 wonderfulintelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were notacquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not nowreveal 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 cameover her, in the midst of her deepest suffering. “Tell me, then, whatthou art, and who sent thee hither. ”

“Tell me, mother!” said the child, seriously, coming up to Hester, andpressing 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 ofthe child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, orbecause 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 HeavenlyFather!”

“Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!” answered the mother, suppressing a groan. “He sent us all into this world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more, thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfishchild, 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 dismallabyrinth of doubt. She remembered—betwixt a smile and a shudder—thetalk of the neighboring towns-people; who, seeking vainly elsewherefor the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring; such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul andwicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkishenemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the onlychild to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the NewEngland Puritans. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 VII. 

 THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 

[Illustration]

Hester Prynne went, one day, to the mansion of Governor Bellingham, with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to hisorder, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for, though the chances of a popular election had caused this former rulerto descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held anhonorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy. 

Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair ofembroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interviewwith a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of thesettlement. It had reached her ears, that there was a design on thepart of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigidorder of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of herchild. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demonorigin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christianinterest in the mother's soul required them to remove such astumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, werereally capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed theelements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all thefairer prospect of these advantages, by being transferred to wiser andbetter guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted thedesign, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. Itmay appear singular, and indeed, not a little ludicrous, that anaffair of this kind, which, in later days, would have been referred tono higher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, shouldthen have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmenof eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsicweight, than the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixedup with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. The periodwas hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a disputeconcerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce andbitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted inan important modification of the framework itself of the legislature. 

Full of concern, therefore, —but so conscious of her own right that itseemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on theother, —Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. LittlePearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to runlightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion, frommorn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey thanthat before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice thannecessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon asimperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester onthe grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We havespoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone withdeep and vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensityboth of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, andwhich, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was firein her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of apassionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, hadallowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play;arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantlyembroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So muchstrength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect tocheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever dancedupon the earth. 

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of thechild's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably remindedthe beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear uponher bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarletletter endowed with life! The mother herself—as if the red ignominywere so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptionsassumed its form—had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavishingmany hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between theobject 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 inconsequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly torepresent the scarlet letter in her appearance. 

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, thechildren of the Puritans looked up from their play, —or what passedfor play with those sombre little urchins, —and spake gravely one toanother:—

“Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and, of atruth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter runningalong by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!”

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping herfoot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threateninggestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and putthem all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, aninfant pestilence, —the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angelof judgment, —whose mission was to punish the sins of the risinggeneration. She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume ofsound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quakewithin them. The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to hermother, and looked up, smiling, into her face. 

Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of GovernorBellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of whichthere are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns;now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with themany sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, thathave 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 ahuman habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a very cheery aspect; the walls being overspread with a kind ofstucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifullyintermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the frontof the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had beenflung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might havebefitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave oldPuritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seeminglycabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of theage, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and hadnow grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times. 

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

“No, my little Pearl!” said her mother. “Thou must gather thine ownsunshine. I have none to give thee!”

They approached the door; which was of an arched form, and flanked oneach side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both ofwhich were lattice-windows, with wooden shutters to close over them atneed. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester Prynnegave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor'sbond-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 mucha commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serfwore the blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men ofthat 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 eyesat the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he hadnever before seen. “Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he hatha godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not seehis worship now. ”

“Nevertheless, I will enter, ” answered Hester Prynne, and thebond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and theglittering 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 ofentrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of hisbuilding-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode ofsocial life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation afterthe residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through thewhole depth of the house, and forming a medium of generalcommunication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of thetwo towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was morepowerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which weread of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushionedseat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of theChronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to beturned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consistedof some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carvedwith wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste;the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, andheirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor's paternal home. Onthe table—in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality hadnot been left behind—stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom ofwhich, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen thefrothy remnant of a recent draught of ale. 

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

[Illustration: The Governor's Breastplate]

At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall, wassuspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilfularmorer in London, the same year in which Governor Bellingham cameover to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, agorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hangingbeneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highlyburnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illuminationeverywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant formere idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemnmuster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head ofa regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, andaccustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as hisprofessional associates, the exigencies of this new country hadtransformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesmanand ruler. 

Little Pearl—who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor asshe had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house—spent sometime 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, owingto the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter wasrepresented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to begreatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, sheseemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upward, also, at asimilar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with theelfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her smallphysiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected inthe mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it madeHester 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 intothis fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautifulones than we find in the woods. ”

Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of thehall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted withclosely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attemptat shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to haverelinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side ofthe Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle forsubsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at somedistance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one ofits gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window; as if to warnthe Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich anornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a fewrose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably thedescendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the firstsettler of the peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who ridesthrough our early annals, seated on the back of a bull. 

Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and wouldnot be pacified. 

“Hush, child, hush!” said her mother, earnestly. “Do not cry, dearlittle Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, andgentlemen along with him!”

In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons wereseen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of hermother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and thenbecame silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quickand mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearanceof these new personages. 

 [Illustration]

 VIII. 

 THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 

Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap, —such as elderlygentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domesticprivacy, —walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumferenceof an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquatedfashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a littlelike that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by hisaspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnalage, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoymentwherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But itis an error to suppose that our grave forefathers—though accustomedto speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial andwarfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and lifeat the behest of duty—made it a matter of conscience to reject suchmeans 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 overGovernor Bellingham's shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pearsand peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, andthat purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against thesunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom ofthe English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste forall good and comfortable things; and however stern he might showhimself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressionsas that of Hester Prynne, still the genial benevolence of his privatelife had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of hisprofessional contemporaries. 

Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests: one theReverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as havingtaken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne'sdisgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old RogerChillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two orthree years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood thatthis learned man was the physician as well as friend of the youngminister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his toounreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoralrelation. 

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

“What have we here?” said Governor Bellingham, looking with surpriseat the scarlet little figure before him. “I profess, I have never seenthe like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when Iwas 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 aguest into my hall?”

“Ay, indeed!” cried good old Mr. Wilson. “What little bird of scarletplumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures, when thesun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing outthe golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in theold land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thymother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christianchild, —ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughtyelfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with otherrelics of Papistry, in merry old England?”

“I am mother's child, ” answered the scarlet vision, “and my name isPearl!”

“Pearl?—Ruby, rather!—or Coral!—or Red Rose, at the very least, judging from thy hue!” responded the old minister, putting forth hishand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. “But where isthis mother of thine? Ah! I see, ” he added; and, turning to GovernorBellingham, whispered, “This is the selfsame child of whom we haveheld speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, HesterPrynne, her mother!”

“Sayest thou so?” cried the Governor. “Nay, we might have judged thatsuch a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy typeof her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we will look intothis matter forthwith. ”

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

“Hester Prynne, ” said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on thewearer of the scarlet letter, “there hath been much questionconcerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge ourconsciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonderchild, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid thepitfalls of this world. Speak thou, the child's own mother! Were itnot, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfarethat she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplinedstrictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canstthou do for the child, in this kind?”

“I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!” answeredHester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token. 

“Woman, it is thy badge of shame!” replied the stern magistrate. “Itis because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we wouldtransfer 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 atthis 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 areabout to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine thisPearl, —since that is her name, —and see whether she hath had suchChristian nurture as befits a child of her age. ”

The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort todraw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touchor familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window, and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird, ofrich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, nota little astonished at this outbreak, —for he was a grandfatherly sortof 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 toinstruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom thepearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?”

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, thedaughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the childabout her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truthswhich the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes withsuch eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainmentsof her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination inthe New England Primer, or the first column of the WestminsterCatechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either ofthose celebrated works. But that perversity which all children havemore or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, andclosed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After puttingher finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer goodMr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had notbeen made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush ofwild roses that grew by the prison-door. 

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

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered somethingin the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man ofskill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, wasstartled to perceive what a change had come over his features, —howmuch uglier they were, —how his dark complexion seemed to have grownduskier, and his figure more misshapen, —since the days when she hadfamiliarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but wasimmediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene nowgoing forward. 

“This is awful!” cried the Governor, slowly recovering from theastonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. “Here is achild of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Withoutquestion, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its presentdepravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire nofurther. ”

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

“God gave me the child!” cried she. “He gave her in requital of allthings else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!—she ismy torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishesme too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of beingloved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution formy sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!”

[Illustration: “Look thou to it! I will not lose the child!”]

“My poor woman, ” said the not unkind old minister, “the child shall bewell cared for!—far better than thou canst do it!”

“God gave her into my keeping, ” repeated Hester Prynne, raising hervoice almost to a shriek. “I will not give her up!”—And here, by asudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, atwhom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once todirect her eyes. —“Speak thou for me!” cried she. “Thou wast mypastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than thesemen can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest, —forthou hast sympathies which these men lack!—thou knowest what is in myheart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger theyare, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Lookthou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!”

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne'ssituation had provoked her to little less than madness, the youngminister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over hisheart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperamentwas thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciatedthan as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; andwhether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled andmelancholy depth. 

“There is truth in what she says, ” began the minister, with a voicesweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, andthe hollow armor rang with it, —“truth in what Hester says, and in thefeeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements, —bothseemingly so peculiar, —which no other mortal being can possess. And, moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relationbetween 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 itotherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creatorof all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of noaccount the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? Thischild of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from thehand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads soearnestly, 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 wasmeant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for aretribution 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 troubledjoy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poorchild, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears herbosom?”

“Well said, again!” cried good Mr. Wilson. “I feared the woman had nobetter 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 theexistence of that child. And may she feel, too, —what, methinks, isthe very truth, —that this boon was meant, above all things else, tokeep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depthsof sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her!Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath aninfant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care, —to be trained up by her to righteousness, —toremind her, at every moment, of her fall, —but yet to teach her, as itwere by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child toheaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is thesinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne'ssake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave themas Providence hath seen fit to place them!”

“You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness, ” said old RogerChillingworth, smiling at him. 

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

“Indeed hath he, ” answered the magistrate, “and hath adduced sucharguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; solong, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman. Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and statedexamination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale's. Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that shego both to school and to meeting. ”

The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had withdrawn a few stepsfrom the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in theheavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with thevehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty little elf, stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both herown, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal sounobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself, —“Isthat 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 herlifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. Theminister, —for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing issweeter than these marks of childish preference, accordedspontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to implyin us something truly worthy to be loved, —the minister looked round, laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and thenkissed her brow. Little Pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted nolonger; she laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily, thatold Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched thefloor. 

“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 tosee the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher'sresearch, 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 ofprofane philosophy, ” said Mr. Wilson. “Better to fast and pray uponit; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby, every goodChristian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards thepoor, deserted babe. ”

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

“Hist, hist!” said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed tocast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. “Wilt thou gowith us to-night? There will be a merry company in the forest; and Iwellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should makeone. ”

“Make my excuse to him, so please you!” answered Hester, with atriumphant smile. “I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my littlePearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone withthee 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 shedrew back her head. 

But here—if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins andHester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable—was already anillustration of the young minister's argument against sundering therelation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thusearly had the child saved her from Satan's snare. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 IX. 

 THE LEECH. 

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader willremember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer hadresolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how, in thecrowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure, stood aman, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilouswilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied thewarmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before thepeople. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy wasbabbling around her in the public market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of herunspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of herdishonor; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordanceand proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previousrelationship. Then why—since the choice was with himself—should theindividual, whose connection with the fallen woman had been the mostintimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claimto an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloriedbeside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdrawhis name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former tiesand interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed layat 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 offorce enough to engage the full strength of his faculties. 

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritantown, as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction than thelearning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a commonmeasure. As his studies, at a previous period of his life, had madehim extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it wasas a physician that he presented himself, and as such was cordiallyreceived. Skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, wereof rare occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across theAtlantic. In their researches into the human frame, it may be that thehigher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized, andthat they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies ofthat wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough tocomprise all of life within itself. At all events, the health of thegood town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, hadhitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in hisfavor than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of thatnoble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such aprofessional body Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. Hesoon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposingmachinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained amultitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaboratelycompounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. Inhis Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of theproperties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from hispatients, that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutoredsavage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as theEuropean pharmacopœia, which so many learned doctors had spentcenturies in elaborating. 

This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded, at least, theoutward forms of a religious life, and, early after his arrival, hadchosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The youngdivine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, wasconsidered by his more fervent admirers as little less than aheaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for theordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now feeble NewEngland Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy ofthe Christian faith. About this period, however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted withhis habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accountedfor by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment ofparochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of whichhe made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of thisearthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Somedeclared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it wascause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer troddenby his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with characteristichumility, avowed his belief, that, if Providence should see fit toremove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform itshumblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion asto 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 acertain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, onany slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over hisheart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain. 

Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospectthat his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when RogerChillingworth made his advent to the town. His first entry on thescene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as it were, out ofthe sky, or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to bea man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and theblossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs fromthe forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what wasvalueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby, and other famous men, —whose scientific attainments were esteemedhardly less than supernatural, —as having been his correspondents orassociates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he comehither? What could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking inthe wilderness? In answer to this query, a rumor gained ground, —and, however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people, —thatHeaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminentDoctor 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 itspurposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is calledmiraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand inRoger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival. 

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physicianever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him asa parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence fromhis naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at hispastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, ifearly undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favorable result. Theelders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fairmaidens, of Mr. Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that heshould 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 successiveSabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulousthan before, —when it had now become a constant habit, rather than acasual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? Was he weary of hislabors? Did he wish to die? These questions were solemnly propoundedto Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston and the deacons ofhis church, who, to use their own phrase, “dealt with him” on the sinof rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. Helistened in silence, and finally promised to confer with thephysician. 

“Were it God's will, ” said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, infulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth'sprofessional advice, “I could be well content, that my labors, and mysorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, andwhat is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual gowith me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put yourskill to the proof in my behalf. ”

“Ah, ” replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness which, whetherimposed or natural, marked all his deportment, “it is thus that ayoung clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deeproot, give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walkwith God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the goldenpavements 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 walkthere, I could be better content to toil here. ”

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

[Illustration: The Minister and Leech]

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became themedical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only thedisease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to lookinto the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, sodifferent in age, came gradually to spend much time together. For thesake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gatherplants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on thesea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash andmurmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other, in his place ofstudy and retirement. There was a fascination for the minister in thecompany of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectualcultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range andfreedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among themembers of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if notshocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was atrue priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentimentlargely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itselfpowerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passagecontinually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of societywould he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it wouldalways be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith abouthim, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. Notthe less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel theoccasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium ofanother kind of intellect than those with which he habitually heldconverse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freeratmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life waswasting itself away, amid lamplight, or obstructed day-beams, and themusty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. Butthe air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. Sothe minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within thelimits of what their church defined as orthodox. 

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient carefully, both as hesaw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in therange of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrownamidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call outsomething 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 thephysical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In ArthurDimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility sointense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have itsgroundwork there. So Roger Chillingworth—the man of skill, the kindand friendly physician—strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, andprobing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in adark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who hasopportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to followit up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid theintimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, anda nameless something more, —let us call it intuition; if he show nointrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent characteristics of hisown; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring hismind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shallunawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; ifsuch revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not sooften by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here and there a word, to indicate that all is understood; if tothese qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages affordedby his recognized character as a physician;—then, at some inevitablemoment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth ina dark, but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into thedaylight. 

Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes aboveenumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we havesaid, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide afield as the whole sphere of human thought and study, to meet upon;they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairsand private character; they talked much, on both sides, of mattersthat seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as thephysician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister'sconsciousness into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions, indeed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bodily disease hadnever 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 thesame house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tidemight pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. Therewas much joy throughout the town, when this greatly desirable objectwas attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for theyoung clergyman's welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such asfelt authorized to do so, he had selected some one of the manyblooming damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devotedwife. This latter step, however, there was no present prospect thatArthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected allsuggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of hisarticles of church-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, therefore, asMr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always atanother's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lotwho seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it truly seemedthat this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with hisconcord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was thevery 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 goodsocial rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site onwhich the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since been built. It had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's home-field, on oneside, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suitedto their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. The motherly care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a frontapartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to createa noontide shadow, when desirable. The walls were hung round withtapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathanthe Prophet, in colors still unfaded, but which made the fair womanof the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer. Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich withparchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, andmonkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while theyvilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained oftento avail themselves. On the other side of the house old RogerChillingworth arranged his study and laboratory; not such as a modernman of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided witha distilling apparatus, and the means of compounding drugs andchemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn topurpose. With such commodiousness of situation, these two learnedpersons sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarlypassing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual andnot incurious inspection into one another's business. 

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as wehave intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of Providencehad done all this, for the purpose—besought in so many public, anddomestic, and secret prayers—of restoring the young minister tohealth. But—it must now be said—another portion of the community hadlatterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructedmultitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to bedeceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, onthe intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thusattained are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess thecharacter of truths supernaturally revealed. The people, in the caseof which we speak, could justify its prejudice against RogerChillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation. There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizenof London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now somethirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, undersome other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, incompany with Doctor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who wasimplicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted, that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged hismedical attainments by joining in the incantations of the savagepriests; who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in theblack art. A large number—and many of these were persons of suchsober sense and practical observation that their opinions would havebeen valuable, in other matters—affirmed that Roger Chillingworth'saspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with Mr. Dimmesdale. At first, hisexpression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there wassomething ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previouslynoticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftenerthey looked upon him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in hislaboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed withinfernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was gettingsooty with the smoke. 

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, thatthe Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especialsanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either bySatan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old RogerChillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for aseason, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against hissoul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side thevictory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to seethe minister come forth out of the conflict, transfigured with theglory which he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, itwas sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he muststruggle towards his triumph. 

Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of the poorminister's eyes, the battle was a sore one and the victory anythingbut secure. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 X. 

 THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 

Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm intemperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and inall his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begunan investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrityof a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involvedno more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as heproceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though stillcalm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and never sethim free again, until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into thepoor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel thathad been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothingsave mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these werewhat he sought!

Sometimes, a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blueand ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, likeone of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awfuldoorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. The soilwhere this dark miner was working had perchance shown indications thatencouraged him. 

“This man, ” said he, at one such moment, to himself, “pure as theydeem him, —all spiritual as he seems, —hath inherited a strong animalnature from his father or his mother. Let us dig a little further inthe direction of this vein!”

Then, after long search into the minister's dim interior, and turningover many precious materials, in the shape of high aspirations for thewelfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure sentiments, naturalpiety, strengthened by thought and study, and illuminated byrevelation, —all of which invaluable gold was perhaps no better thanrubbish to the seeker, —he would turn back, discouraged, and begin hisquest towards another point. He groped along as stealthily, with ascautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering achamber where a man lies only half asleep, —or, it may be, broadawake, —with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guardsas the apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, thefloor would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadowof his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across hisvictim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerveoften produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguelyaware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself intorelation with him. But old Roger Chillingworth, too, had perceptionsthat were almost intuitive; and when the minister threw his startledeyes towards him, there the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathizing, but never intrusive friend. 

Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's charactermore perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which, sick hearts areliable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind. Trusting noman as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latteractually appeared. He therefore still kept up a familiar intercoursewith him, daily receiving the old physician in his study; or visitingthe laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes bywhich weeds were converted into drugs of potency. 

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sillof the open window, that looked towards the graveyard, he talked withRoger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle ofunsightly plants. 

“Where, ” asked he, with a look askance at them, —for it was theclergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, nowadays, looked straightforthat any object, whether human or inanimate, —“where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?”

“Even in the graveyard here at hand, ” answered the physician, continuing his employment. “They are new to me. I found them growingon a grave, which bore no tombstone, nor other memorial of the deadman, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keephim 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 donebetter to confess during his lifetime. ”

“Perchance, ” said Mr. Dimmesdale, “he earnestly desired it, but couldnot. ”

“And wherefore?” rejoined the physician. “Wherefore not; since all thepowers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, thatthese black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to makemanifest an unspoken crime?”

“That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours, ” replied the minister. “There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divinemercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, makingitself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the daywhen all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read orinterpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of humanthoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of theretribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; theserevelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote theintellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will standwaiting, 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 solutionof that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holdingsuch miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at thatlast day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable. ”

“Then why not reveal them here?” asked Roger Chillingworth, glancingquietly aside at the minister. “Why should not the guilty ones sooneravail themselves of this unutterable solace?”

“They mostly do, ” said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast as ifafflicted with an importunate throb of pain. “Many, many a poor soulhath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but whilestrong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after such anoutpouring, O, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinfulbrethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after longstifling with his own polluted breath. How can it be otherwise? Whyshould a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer to keepthe dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth atonce, 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 tosuggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent bythe very constitution of their nature. Or, —can we not supposeit?—guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God'sglory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves blackand filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can beachieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among theirfellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow while their heartsare all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot ridthemselves. ”

“These men deceive themselves, ” said Roger Chillingworth, withsomewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture withhis forefinger. “They fear to take up the shame that rightfullybelongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for God'sservice, —these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their heartswith the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, andwhich must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if theyseek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands!If they would serve their fellow-men, let them do it by makingmanifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them topenitential self-abasement! Wouldst thou have me to believe, O wiseand pious friend, that a false show can be better—can be more forGod's glory, or man's welfare—than God's own truth? Trust me, suchmen deceive themselves!”

“It may be so, ” said the young clergyman, indifferently, as waiving adiscussion that he considered irrelevant or unseasonable. He had aready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated histoo sensitive and nervous temperament. —“But, now, I would ask of mywell-skilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to haveprofited by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine?”

Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear, wildlaughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the adjacentburial-ground. Looking instinctively from the open window, —for it wassummer-time, —the minister beheld Hester Prynne and little Pearlpassing along the footpath that traversed the enclosure. Pearl lookedas beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perversemerriment which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirelyout of the sphere of sympathy or human contact. She now skippedirreverently from one grave to another; until, coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy, —perhaps of IsaacJohnson himself, —she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother'scommand and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, littlePearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock whichgrew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged themalong the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternalbosom, 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 smiledgrimly down. 

“There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for humanordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that child'scomposition, ” remarked he, as much to himself as to his companion. “Isaw her, the other day, bespatter the Governor himself with water, atthe cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in Heaven's name, is she? Isthe imp altogether evil? Hath she affections? Hath she anydiscoverable principle of being?”

“None, save the freedom of a broken law, ” answered Mr. Dimmesdale, ina 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 thewindow, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. Thesensitive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the lightmissile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little hands, in themost extravagant ecstasy. Hester Prynne, likewise, had involuntarilylooked up; and all these four persons, old and young, regarded oneanother in silence, till the child laughed aloud, and shouted, —“Comeaway, mother! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you! Hehath got hold of the minister already. Come away, mother, or he willcatch you! But he cannot catch little Pearl!”

So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and friskingfantastically, among the hillocks of the dead people, like a creaturethat had nothing in common with a bygone and buried generation, norowned herself akin to it. It was as if she had been made afresh, outof new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself, without her eccentricities being reckonedto 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 ofhidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is HesterPrynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on herbreast?”

“I do verily believe it, ” answered the clergyman. “Nevertheless, Icannot answer for her. There was a look of pain in her face, which Iwould gladly have been spared the sight of. But still, methinks, itmust needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, asthis poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his heart. ”

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

“You inquired of me, a little time agone, ” said he, at length, “myjudgment as touching your health. ”

“I did, ” answered the clergyman, “and would gladly learn it. Speakfrankly, I pray you, be it for life or death. ”

“Freely, then, and plainly, ” said the physician, still busy with hisplants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr. Dimmesdale, “the disorder is astrange one; not so much in itself, nor as outwardly manifested, —inso far, at least, as the symptoms have been laid open to myobservation. Looking daily at you, my good Sir, and watching thetokens of your aspect, now for months gone by, I should deem you a mansore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but that an instructed andwatchful physician might well hope to cure you. But—I know not whatto say—the disease is what I seem to know, yet know it not. ”

“You speak in riddles, learned Sir, ” said the pale minister, glancingaside out of the window. 

“Then, to speak more plainly, ” continued the physician, “and I cravepardon, Sir, —should it seem to require pardon, —for this needfulplainness of my speech. Let me ask, —as your friend, —as one havingcharge, under Providence, of your life and physical well-being, —hathall the operation of this disorder been fairly laid open and recountedto me?”

“How can you question it?” asked the minister. “Surely, it werechild'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 concentratedintelligence, on the minister's face. “Be it so! But, again! He towhom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. Abodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritualpart. Your pardon, once again, good Sir, if my speech give the shadowof offence. You, Sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose bodyis 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 hastilyrising from his chair. “You deal not, I take it, in medicine for thesoul!”

“Thus, a sickness, ” continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in anunaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, —but standing up, and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with hislow, dark, and misshapen figure, —“a sickness, a sore place, if we mayso call it, in your spirit, hath immediately its appropriatemanifestation in your bodily frame. Would you, therefore, that yourphysician heal the bodily evil? How may this be, unless you first layopen 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, andwith 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 onePhysician of the soul! He, if it stand with his good pleasure, cancure; or he can kill! Let him do with me as, in his justice andwisdom, he shall see good. But who art thou, that meddlest in thismatter?—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 tohimself, looking after the minister with a grave smile. “There isnothing lost. We shall be friends again anon. But see, now, howpassion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! Aswith one passion, so with another! He hath done a wild thing erenow, this pious Master Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart!”

[Illustration: The Leech and his Patient]

It proved not difficult to re-establish the intimacy of the twocompanions, on the same footing and in the same degree as heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy, was sensible thatthe disorder of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly outbreakof temper, which there had been nothing in the physician's words toexcuse or palliate. He marvelled, indeed, at the violence with whichhe had thrust back the kind old man, when merely proffering the advicewhich it was his duty to bestow, and which the minister himself hadexpressly sought. With these remorseful feelings, he lost no time inmaking the amplest apologies, and besought his friend still tocontinue the care, which, if not successful in restoring him tohealth, had, in all probability, been the means of prolonging hisfeeble existence to that hour. Roger Chillingworth readily assented, and went on with his medical supervision of the minister; doing hisbest for him, in all good faith, but always quitting the patient'sapartment, at the close of a professional interview, with a mysteriousand puzzled smile upon his lips. This expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but grew strongly evident as the physiciancrossed the threshold. 

“A rare case!” he muttered. “I must needs look deeper into it. Astrange sympathy betwixt soul and body! Were it only for the art'ssake, I must search this matter to the bottom!”

It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that theReverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noonday, and entirely unawares, fell intoa deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a large black-lettervolume open before him on the table. It must have been a work of vastability in the somniferous school of literature. The profound depth ofthe minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was oneof those persons whose sleep, ordinarily, is as light, as fitful, andas easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such anunwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn intoitself, that he stirred not in his chair, when old RogerChillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into theroom. The physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laidhis 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 aghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by theeye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the wholeugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously manifest bythe extravagant gestures with which he threw up his arms towards theceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor! Had a man seen oldRoger Chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would have hadno need to ask how Satan comports himself, when a precious human soulis lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom. 

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

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XI. 

 THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 

After the incident last described, the intercourse between theclergyman and the physician, though externally the same, was really ofanother character than it had previously been. The intellect of RogerChillingworth 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, aquiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in thisunfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revengethan any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself theone trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, theremorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush ofsinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden fromthe world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to berevealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving! All that darktreasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could soadequately 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 theavenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoningwhere it seemed most to punish—had substituted for his black devices. A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. Itmattered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from what otherregion. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him andMr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmostsoul, of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so thathe could see and comprehend its every movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poorminister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Wouldhe arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was forever on therack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled theengine;—and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him withsudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grislyphantom, —uprose a thousand phantoms, —in many shapes, of death, ormore awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and pointingwith their fingers at his breast!

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that theminister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evilinfluence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of itsactual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully, —even, at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred, —at the deformed figure ofthe old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, hisslightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be reliedon, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he waswilling to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to assigna reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart'sentire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause. He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to RogerChillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn fromthem, and did his best to root them out. Unable to accomplish this, henevertheless, as a matter of principle, continued his habits of socialfamiliarity with the old man, and thus gave him constant opportunitiesfor perfecting the purpose to which—poor, forlorn creature that hewas, and more wretched than his victim—the avenger had devotedhimself. 

While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured bysome black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations ofhis deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved abrilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, indeed, in greatpart, by his sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in astate of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his dailylife. His fame, though still on its upward slope, already overshadowedthe soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several ofthem were. There were scholars among them, who had spent more years inacquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine profession, thanMr. Dimmesdale had lived; and who might well, therefore, be moreprofoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than theiryouthful brother. There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mindthan his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard, iron, or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportionof doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. There wereothers, again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had beenelaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealized, moreover, by spiritual communications with thebetter world, into which their purity of life had almost introducedthese holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clingingto them. All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon thechosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolizing, itwould seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart'snative language. These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lackedHeaven's last and rarest attestation of their office, the Tongue ofFlame. They would have vainly sought—had they ever dreamed ofseeking—to express the highest truths through the humblest medium offamiliar words and images. Their voices came down, afar andindistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt. 

[Illustration: The Virgins of the Church]

Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr. Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of character, naturally belonged. Tothe high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it mightbe, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. Itkept him down, on a level with the lowest; him, the man of etherealattributes, whose voice the angels might else have listened to andanswered! But this very burden it was, that gave him sympathies sointimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heartvibrated in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself, and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, ingushes of sad, persuasive eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, butsometimes terrible! The people knew not the power that moved themthus. They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. Theyfancied him the mouthpiece of Heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very ground on which he trod wassanctified. The virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims ofa passion so imbued with religious sentiment that they imagined it tobe all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, astheir most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. The aged members ofhis flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they werethemselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would goheavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children, thattheir old bones should be buried close to their young pastor's holygrave. And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale wasthinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grasswould ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!

It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public venerationtortured him! It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and toreckon 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 longedto 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 blackgarments of the priesthood, —I, who ascend the sacred desk, and turnmy pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion, in yourbehalf, with the Most High Omniscience, —I, in whose daily life youdiscern the sanctity of Enoch, —I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the pilgrims that shallcome after me may be guided to the regions of the blest, —I, who havelaid the hand of baptism upon your children, —I, who have breathed theparting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen soundedfaintly from a world which they had quitted, —I, your pastor, whom youso reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!”

More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with apurpose never to come down its steps, until he should have spokenwords like the above. More than once, he had cleared his throat, anddrawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forthagain, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul. Morethan 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, thatthey did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes, bythe burning wrath of the Almighty! Could there be plainer speech thanthis? Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneousimpulse, 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. Theylittle guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemningwords. “The godly youth!” said they among themselves. “The saint onearth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, whathorrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!” The minister wellknew—subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!—the light inwhich his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put acheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, buthad gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, withoutthe momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the verytruth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by theconstitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed hismiserable self!

His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with theold, corrupted faith of Rome, than with the better light of the churchin which he had been born and bred. In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, thisProtestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders;laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the morepitilessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as ithas been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast, —not, however, like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter mediumof celestial illumination, but rigorously, and until his kneestrembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with aglimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in alooking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw uponit. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify, himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brainoften reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seendoubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimnessof the chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him, within thelooking-glass. Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned andmocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now agroup of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, butgrew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of hisyouth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and hismother, turning her face away as she passed by. Ghost of amother, —thinnest fantasy of a mother, —methinks she might yet havethrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through the chamberwhich these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided HesterPrynne, leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointingher forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then atthe clergyman's own breast. 

None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by aneffort of his will, he could discern substances through their mistylack of substance, and convince himself that they were not solid intheir nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big, square, leathern-bound and brazen-clasped volume of divinity. But, for allthat, they were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial thingswhich the poor minister now dealt with. It is the unspeakable miseryof a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance outof whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant byHeaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, thewhole universe is false, —it is impalpable, —it shrinks to nothingwithin his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in afalse light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. The onlytruth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on thisearth, was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembledexpression of it in his aspect. Had he once found power to smile, andwear a face of gayety, there would have been no such man!

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

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XII. 

 THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 

Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actuallyunder the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdalereached the spot where, now so long since, Hester Prynne had livedthrough her first hours of public ignominy. The same platform orscaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine ofseven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culpritswho had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the balcony ofthe meeting-house. The minister went up the steps. 

It was an obscure night of early May. An unvaried pall of cloudmuffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon. If the samemultitude which had stood as eye-witnesses while Hester Prynnesustained her punishment could now have been summoned forth, theywould have discerned no face above the platform, nor hardly theoutline of a human shape, in the dark gray of the midnight. But thetown was all asleep. There was no peril of discovery. The ministermight stand there, if it so pleased him, until morning should reddenin the east, without other risk than that the dank and chill night-airwould creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding theexpectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No eye could seehim, save that ever-wakeful one which had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody scourge. Why, then, had he come hither? Was it butthe mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soultrifled with itself! A mockery at which angels blushed and wept, whilefiends rejoiced, with jeering laughter! He had been driven hither bythe impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose ownsister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice whichinvariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when theother impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden itself withcrime? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either toendure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert their fierce and savagestrength for a good purpose, and fling it off at once! This feeble andmost sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did onething 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 ofexpiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, asif the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth, there was, andthere had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, heshrieked aloud; an outcry that went pealing through the night, andwas beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from thehills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so muchmisery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and werebandying 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 greaterpower, to his own startled ears, than it actually possessed. The towndid not awake; or, if it did, the drowsy slumberers mistook the cryeither for something frightful in a dream, or for the noise ofwitches; whose voices, at that period, were often heard to pass overthe settlements or lonely cottages, as they rode with Satan throughthe air. The clergyman, therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes and looked about him. At one of the chamber-windowsof Governor Bellingham's mansion, which stood at some distance, on theline of another street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistratehimself, with a lamp in his hand, a white night-cap on his head, and along white gown enveloping his figure. He looked like a ghost, evokedunseasonably from the grave. The cry had evidently startled him. Atanother window of the same house, moreover, appeared old MistressHibbins, the Governor's sister, also with a lamp, which, even thus faroff, revealed the expression of her sour and discontented face. Shethrust 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 echoesand reverberations, as the clamor of the fiends and night-hags, withwhom she was well known to make excursions into the forest. 

Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp, the old ladyquickly extinguished her own, and vanished. Possibly, she went upamong the clouds. The minister saw nothing further of her motions. Themagistrate, after a wary observation of the darkness, —into which, nevertheless, he could see but little further than he might into amill-stone, —retired from the window. 

The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, however, were soongreeted by a little, glimmering light, which, at first a long way off, was approaching up the street. It threw a gleam of recognition on herea post, and there a garden-fence, and here a latticed window-pane, andthere a pump, with its full trough of water, and here, again, anarched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and a rough log for thedoorstep. The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale noted all these minuteparticulars, even while firmly convinced that the doom of hisexistence was stealing onward, in the footsteps which he now heard;and that the gleam of the lantern would fall upon him, in a fewmoments more, and reveal his long-hidden secret. As the light drewnearer, he beheld, within its illuminated circle, his brotherclergyman, —or, to speak more accurately, his professional father, aswell as highly valued friend, —the Reverend Mr. Wilson; who, as Mr. Dimmesdale now conjectured, had been praying at the bedside of somedying man. And so he had. The good old minister came freshly from thedeath-chamber of Governor Winthrop, who had passed from earth toheaven within that very hour. And now, surrounded, like the saint-likepersonages of olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified himamid this gloomy night of sin, —as if the departed Governor had lefthim an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had caught upon himselfthe distant shine of the celestial city, while looking thitherward tosee the triumphant pilgrim pass within its gates, —now, in short, goodFather Wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps with a lightedlantern! The glimmer of this luminary suggested the above conceits toMr. Dimmesdale, who smiled, —nay, almost laughed at them, —and thenwondered if he were going mad. 

As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed beside the scaffold, closelymuffling his Geneva cloak about him with one arm, and holding thelantern before his breast with the other, the minister could hardlyrestrain himself from speaking. 

“A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson! Come up hither, Ipray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me!”

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

Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again stolein among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his limbs growingstiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubtedwhether he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. Morning would break, and find him there. The neighborhood would beginto rouse itself. The earliest riser, coming forth in the dimtwilight, would perceive a vaguely defined figure aloft on the placeof shame; and, half crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go, knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold theghost—as he needs must think it—of some defunct transgressor. Adusky tumult would flap its wings from one house to another. Then—themorning light still waxing stronger—old patriarchs would rise up ingreat haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly dames, withoutpausing to put off their night-gear. The whole tribe of decorouspersonages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair oftheir heads awry, would start into public view, with the disorder of anightmare in their aspects. Old Governor Bellingham would come grimlyforth, with his King James's ruff fastened askew; and MistressHibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, andlooking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep afterher night ride; and good Father Wilson, too, after spending half thenight at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, outof his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, likewise, would comethe elders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's church, and the youngvirgins who so idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for himin their white bosoms; which now, by the by, in their hurry andconfusion, they would scantly have given themselves time to cover withtheir kerchiefs. All people, in a word, would come stumbling overtheir thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror-strickenvisages around the scaffold. Whom would they discern there, with thered eastern light upon his brow? Whom, but the Reverend ArthurDimmesdale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standingwhere 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 oflaughter. It was immediately responded to by a light, airy, childishlaugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart, —but he knew not whetherof exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute, —he recognized the tones oflittle 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; andthe minister heard her footsteps approaching from the sidewalk, alongwhich 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;—“atGovernor 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, holdinglittle Pearl by the hand. The minister felt for the child's otherhand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there came what seemed atumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like atorrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if themother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to hishalf-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 thenew energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that hadso long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and hewas 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 notto-morrow. ”

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

“A moment longer, my child!” said he. 

“But wilt thou promise, ” asked Pearl, “to take my hand, and mother'shand, 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, strangelyenough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of the truthimpelled him to answer the child so. “Then, and there, before thejudgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I must stand together. Butthe daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!”

Pearl laughed again. 

[Illustration: “They stood in the noon of that strange splendor”]

But, before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far andwide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of thosemeteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out towaste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was itsradiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloudbetwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the domeof an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street, withthe distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that isalways imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. Thewooden houses, with their jutting stories and quaint gable-peaks; thedoorsteps and thresholds, with the early grass springing up aboutthem; the garden-plots, black with freshly turned earth; thewheel-track, little worn, and, even in the market-place, margined withgreen on either side;—all were visible, but with a singularity ofaspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the thingsof this world than they had ever borne before. And there stood theminister, with his hand over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with theembroidered letter glimmering on her bosom; and little Pearl, herselfa symbol, and the connecting link between those two. They stood in thenoon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light thatis to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all whobelong to one another. 

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

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoricappearances, and other natural phenomena, that occurred with lessregularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so manyrevelations from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing spear, a swordof flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows, seen in the midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to have been forebodedby a shower of crimson light. We doubt whether any marked event, forgood or evil, ever befell New England, from its settlement down toRevolutionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been previouslywarned by some spectacle of this nature. Not seldom, it had been seenby multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested on the faithof some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder through the colored, magnifying, and distorting medium of his imagination, and shaped itmore distinctly in his after-thought. It was, indeed, a majestic idea, that the destiny of nations should be revealed, in these awfulhieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. A scroll so wide might not bedeemed too expansive for Providence to write a people's doom upon. Thebelief was a favorite one with our forefathers, as betokening thattheir infant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship ofpeculiar intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when anindividual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on thesame vast sheet of record! In such a case, it could only be thesymptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, renderedmorbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, hadextended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until thefirmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for hissoul's history and fate!

We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye andheart, that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld therethe appearance of an immense letter, —the letter A, —marked out inlines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself atthat point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud; but with no suchshape as his guilty imagination gave it; or, at least, with so littledefiniteness, that another's guilt might have seen another symbol init. 

There was a singular circumstance that characterized Mr. Dimmesdale'spsychological state, at this moment. All the time that he gazed upwardto the zenith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Pearlwas pointing her finger towards old Roger Chillingworth, who stood atno great distance from the scaffold. The minister appeared to see him, with the same glance that discerned the miraculous letter. To hisfeatures, as to all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a newexpression; or it might well be that the physician was not carefulthen, as at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which helooked upon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished HesterPrynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might RogerChillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing therewith 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 toremain painted on the darkness, after the meteor had vanished, with aneffect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated. 

“Who is that man, Hester?” gasped Mr. Dimmesdale, overcome withterror. “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 namelesshorror of the man!”

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

“Quickly, then, child!” said the minister, bending his ear close toher lips. “Quickly!—and as low as thou canst whisper. ”

Pearl mumbled something into his ear, that sounded, indeed, like humanlanguage, but was only such gibberish as children may be heard amusingthemselves with, by the hour together. At all events, if it involvedany secret information in regard to old Roger Chillingworth, it was ina tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase thebewilderment 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. “Thouwouldst not promise to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrownoontide!”

“Worthy Sir, ” answered the physician, who had now advanced to the footof the platform. “Pious Master Dimmesdale, can this be you? Well, well, indeed! We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have needto be straitly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walkin our sleep. Come, good Sir, and my dear friend, I pray you, let melead you home!”

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

“Verily, and in good faith, ” answered Roger Chillingworth, “I knewnothing of the matter. I had spent the better part of the night at thebedside of the worshipful Governor Winthrop, doing what my poor skillmight 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 withme, I beseech you, Reverend Sir; else you will be poorly able to doSabbath duty to-morrow. Aha! see now, how they trouble thebrain, —these books!—these books! You should study less, good Sir, and take a little pastime; or these night-whimseys will grow uponyou. ”

“I will go home with you, ” said Mr. Dimmesdale. 

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

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

“It was found, ” said the sexton, “this morning, on the scaffold whereevil-doers are set up to public shame. Satan dropped it there, I takeit, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence. But, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. A pure hand needsno glove to cover it!”

“Thank you, my good friend, ” said the minister, gravely, but startledat heart; for, so confused was his remembrance, that he had almostbrought 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 handlehim without gloves, henceforward, ” remarked the old sexton, grimlysmiling. “But did your reverence hear of the portent that was seenlast night?—a great red letter in the sky, —the letter A, which weinterpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor Winthrop wasmade an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that thereshould be some notice thereof!”

“No, ” answered the minister, “I had not heard of it. ”

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XIII. 

 ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 

In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne wasshocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. Hisnerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased intomore than childish weakness. It grovelled helpless on the ground, evenwhile his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, orhad perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could havegiven them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden fromall others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimateaction of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought tobear, and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale's well-being andrepose. Knowing what this poor, fallen man had once been, her wholesoul was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed toher, —the outcast woman, —for support against his instinctivelydiscovered enemy. She decided, moreover, that he had a right to herutmost aid. Little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, tomeasure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external toherself, Hester saw—or seemed to see—that there lay a responsibilityupon her, in reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the restof human kind—links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever thematerial—had all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it broughtalong with it its obligations. 

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in whichwe beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. Years hadcome and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, with thescarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the towns-people. As is apt to bethe case when a person stands out in any prominence before thecommunity, and, at the same time, interferes neither with public norindividual interests and convenience, a species of general regard hadultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the creditof human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought intoplay, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual andquiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change beimpeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling ofhostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne, there was neitherirritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the public, butsubmitted, uncomplainingly, to its worst usage; she made no claim uponit, in requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon itssympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity of her life during allthese years in which she had been set apart to infamy, was reckonedlargely in her favor. With nothing now to lose, in the sight ofmankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back thepoor wanderer to its paths. 

[Illustration: Hester in the House of Mourning]

It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put forward even thehumblest title to share in the world's privileges, —further than tobreathe the common air, and earn daily bread for little Pearl andherself by the faithful labor of her hands, —she was quick toacknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, whenever benefitswere to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her littlesubstance to every demand of poverty; even though the bitter-heartedpauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly tohis door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that couldhave 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 atonce found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightfulinmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble; as if itsgloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to holdintercourse with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered the embroideredletter, 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, inthe sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shownhim where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becomingdim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In suchemergencies, Hester's nature showed itself warm and rich; awell-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, andinexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, wasbut the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She wasself-ordained a Sister of Mercy; or, we may rather say, the world'sheavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she lookedforward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Suchhelpfulness was found in her, —so much power to do, and power tosympathize, —that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A byits original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strongwas Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength. 

It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When sunshinecame again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded across thethreshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without one backwardglance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the heartsof those whom she had served so zealously. Meeting them in thestreet, she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If theywere resolute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarletletter, and passed on. This might be pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality onthe public mind. The public is despotic in its temper; it is capableof denying common justice, when too strenuously demanded as a right;but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appealis 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 benigncountenance than she cared to be favored with, or, perchance, than shedeserved. 

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longerin acknowledging the influence of Hester's good qualities than thepeople. The prejudices which they shared in common with the latterwere fortified in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning, thatmade it a far tougher labor to expel them. Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something which, inthe due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almostbenevolence. Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminentposition imposed the guardianship of the public morals. Individuals inprivate life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for herfrailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter asthe token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long anddreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. “Do you see thatwoman with the embroidered badge?” they would say to strangers. “It isour Hester, —the town's own Hester, who is so kind to the poor, sohelpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!” Then, it istrue, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them towhisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was none the less afact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, thescarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. Itimparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walksecurely amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would havekept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indianhad drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, but fell harmless to the ground. 

The effect of the symbol—or, rather, of the position in respect tosociety that was indicated by it—on the mind of Hester Prynneherself, was powerful and peculiar. All the light and graceful foliageof her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and hadlong ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which mighthave been repulsive, had she possessed friends or companions to berepelled by it. Even the attractiveness of her person had undergone asimilar change. It might be partly owing to the studied austerity ofher dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. Itwas a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair hadeither been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not ashining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was due inpart to all these causes, but still more to something else, that thereseemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face for Love to dwellupon; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic and statue-like, thatPassion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing inHester's bosom, to make it ever again the pillow of Affection. Someattribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had beenessential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and suchthe stern development, of the feminine character and person, when thewoman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiarseverity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, thetenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outwardsemblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it cannever show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. Shewho has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any momentbecome a woman again if there were only the magic touch to effect thetransfiguration. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were everafterwards so touched, and so transfigured. 

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to beattributed to the circumstance, that her life had turned, in a greatmeasure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in theworld, —alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearlto be guided and protected, —alone, and hopeless of retrieving herposition, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable, —she castaway the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law forher mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newlyemancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for manycenturies before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged—not actually, butwithin the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode—thewhole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much ofancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed afreedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of theAtlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would haveheld to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarletletter. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visitedher, such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowyguests, that would have been as perilous as demons to theirentertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at herdoor. 

It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly oftenconform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations ofsociety. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in theflesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with Hester. Yet, hadlittle Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might havebeen far otherwise. Then, she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Ann Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religioussect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. Shemight, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the sterntribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundationsof the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, themother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned toHester's charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished anddeveloped amid a host of difficulties. Everything was against her. Theworld was hostile. The child's own nature had something wrong in it, which continually betokened that she had been born amiss, —theeffluence of her mother's lawless passion, —and often impelled Hesterto ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good thatthe poor little creature had been born at all. 

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, withreference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worthaccepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her ownindividual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, anddismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though itmay 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 wholesystem of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, thevery nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, whichhas become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before womancan be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot takeadvantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall haveundergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the etherealessence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to haveevaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise ofthought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heartchance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus, Hester Prynne, whoseheart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clewin the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountableprecipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild andghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. Attimes, a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were notbetter to send Pearl at once to heaven, and go herself to suchfuturity as Eternal Justice should provide. 

The scarlet letter had not done its office. 

Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on thenight of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and heldup to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrificefor its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneathwhich the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceasedto struggle. She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he hadnot already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt, that, whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting ofremorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand thatproffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself ofthe opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicatesprings of Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. Hester could not but ask herself, whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, andloyalty, on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into aposition where so much evil was to be foreboded, and nothingauspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact, thatshe had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blackerruin than had overwhelmed herself, except by acquiescing in RogerChillingworth's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse, she had madeher choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretchedalternative of the two. She determined to redeem her error, so far asit might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemntrial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with RogerChillingworth as on that night, abased by sin, and half maddened bythe ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in theprison-chamber. She had climbed her way, since then, to a higherpoint. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer toher level, or perhaps below it, by the revenge which he had stoopedfor. 

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and dowhat might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom hehad so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. Oneafternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, shebeheld the old physician, with a basket on one arm, and a staff in theother hand, stooping along the ground, in quest of roots and herbs toconcoct his medicines withal. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XIV. 

 HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 

Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the water, and playwith the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talkedawhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like abird, and, making bare her small white feet, went pattering along themoist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a full stop, andpeeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirrorfor 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 hereyes, the image of a little maid, whom Pearl, having no otherplaymate, invited to take her hand, and run a race with her. But thevisionary little maid, on her part, beckoned likewise, as if tosay, —“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 offragmentary 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 usmuch. ”

“Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word for old RogerChillingworth?” answered he, raising himself from his stoopingposture. “With all my heart! Why, Mistress, I hear good tidings of youon all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve, a magistrate, a wise andgodly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Mistress Hester, andwhispered me that there had been question concerning you in thecouncil. It was debated whether or no, with safety to the common weal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your bosom. On my life, Hester, I made my entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it mightbe done forthwith!”

“It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off thisbadge, ” calmly replied Hester. “Were I worthy to be quit of it, itwould fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into somethingthat should speak a different purport. ”

“Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better, ” rejoined he. “A womanmust needs follow her own fancy, touching the adornment of her person. The letter is gayly embroidered, and shows right bravely on yourbosom!”

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

In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man'sfaculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for areasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office. This unhappyperson had effected such a transformation, by devoting himself, forseven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, andderiving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortureswhich he analyzed and gloated over. 

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

“What see you in my face, ” asked the physician, “that you look at itso earnestly?”

“Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears bitterenough for it, ” answered she. “But let it pass! It is of yondermiserable man that I would speak. ”

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

“When we last spake together, ” said Hester, “now seven years ago, itwas your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy, as touching theformer relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and good fame ofyonder man were in your hands, there seemed no choice to me, save tobe silent, in accordance with your behest. Yet it was not withoutheavy misgivings that I thus bound myself; for, having cast off allduty towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards him;and something whispered me that I was betraying it, in pledging myselfto 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 andwaking. 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 livingdeath; and still he knows you not. In permitting this, I have surelyacted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to betrue!”

“What choice had you?” asked Roger Chillingworth. “My finger, pointedat this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into adungeon, —thence, peradventure, to the gallows!”

“It had been better so!” said Hester Prynne. 

“What evil have I done the man?” asked Roger Chillingworth again. “Itell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earnedfrom monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on thismiserable priest! But for my aid, his life would have burned away intorments, within the first two years after the perpetration of hiscrime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength thatcould have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarletletter. O, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough! What art cando, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes, and creeps about onearth, 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. “Betterhad he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man hassuffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has beenconscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon himlike a curse. He knew, by some spiritual sense, —for the Creator nevermade another being so sensitive as this, —he knew that no friendlyhand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye was lookingcuriously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knewnot that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common tohis brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to betortured with frightful dreams, and desperate thoughts, the sting ofremorse, and despair of pardon; as a foretaste of what awaits himbeyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence!—theclosest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged!—andwho had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direstrevenge! Yea, indeed!—he did not err!—there was a fiend at hiselbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend forhis especial torment!”

The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted hishands 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 ina glass. It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only atthe interval of years—when a man's moral aspect is faithfullyrevealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewedhimself as he did now. 

“Hast thou not tortured him enough?” said Hester, noticing the oldman's look. “Has he not paid thee all?”

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

“All this, and more, ” said Hester. 

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

“It was myself!” cried Hester, shuddering. “It was I, not less thanhe. 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 thouwith me touching this man?”

“I must reveal the secret, ” answered Hester, firmly. “He must discernthee in thy true character. What may be the result, I know not. Butthis long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruinI have been, shall at length be paid. So far as concerns the overthrowor preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and perchancehis life, he is in thy hands. Nor do I, —whom the scarlet letter hasdisciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron, enteringinto the soul, —nor do I perceive such advantage in his living anylonger a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thymercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him, —no goodfor me, —no good for thee! There is no good for little Pearl! There isno path to guide us out of this dismal maze!”

“Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!” said Roger Chillingworth, unableto restrain a thrill of admiration too; for there was a quality almostmajestic in the despair which she expressed. “Thou hadst greatelements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love thanmine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that has beenwasted in thy nature!”

“And I thee, ” answered Hester Prynne, “for the hatred that hastransformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it outof thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly forthine own! Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the Powerthat claims it! I said, but now, that there could be no good event forhim, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomymaze of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewithwe 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 atthy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thoureject 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 tellestme of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explainsall that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry thou didstplant the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a darknecessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind oftypical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend'soffice from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom asit may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man. ”

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

[Illustration: Mandrake]

 [Illustration]

 XV. 

 HESTER AND PEARL. 

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

[Illustration: “He gathered herbs here and there”]

“Be it sin or no, ” said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as she still gazedafter him, “I hate the man!”

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

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

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along withit the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserablefortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some mightier touchthan their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to bereproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. But Hesterought 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 thecrooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw a dark light onHester's state of mind, revealing much that she might not otherwisehave acknowledged to herself. 

He being gone, she summoned back her child. 

“Pearl! Little Pearl! Where are you?”

[Illustration: Pearl on the Sea-Shore]

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss foramusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs. Atfirst, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own imagein a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and—as it declinedto venture—seeking a passage for herself into its sphere ofimpalpable earth and unattainable sky. Soon finding, however, thateither she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for betterpastime. She made little boats out of birch-bark, and freighted themwith snail-shells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep thanany merchant in New England; but the larger part of them founderednear the shore. She seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and madeprize of several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt inthe warm sun. Then she took up the white foam, that streaked the lineof the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering afterit, with winged footsteps, to catch the great snow-flakes ere theyfell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds, that fed and fluttered alongthe shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after these small sea-fowl, displayedremarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little gray bird, with awhite breast, Pearl was almost sure, had been hit by a pebble, andfluttered away with a broken wing. But then the elf-child sighed, andgave up her sport; because it grieved her to have done harm to alittle being that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or as wild as Pearlherself. 

Her final employment was to gather sea-weed, of various kinds, andmake herself a scarf, or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume theaspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift fordevising 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 ownbosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letter, —the letter A, —but freshly green, instead of scarlet! Thechild bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device withstrange interest; even as if the one only thing for which she had beensent 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 lightlyas one of the little sea-birds, appeared before Hester Prynne, dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament upon herbosom. 

“My little Pearl, ” said Hester, after a moment's silence, “the greenletter, 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 hasttaught me in the horn-book. ”

Hester looked steadily into her little face; but, though there wasthat singular expression which she had so often remarked in her blackeyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Pearl really attached anymeaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to ascertain thepoint. 

“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 hisheart!”

“And what reason is that?” asked Hester, half smiling at the absurdincongruity 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 thanshe was wont to speak. “Ask yonder old man whom thou hast been talkingwith! 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 thybosom?—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 eyeswith an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capriciouscharacter. The thought occurred to Hester, that the child might reallybe seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing whatshe could, and as intelligently as she knew how, to establish ameeting-point of sympathy. It showed Pearl in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of asole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other returnthan the waywardness of an April breeze; which spends its time in airysport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant inits best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you takeit to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanors, it willsometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind ofdoubtful tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be goneabout its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at yourheart. And this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of the child'sdisposition. Any other observer might have seen few but unamiabletraits, and have given them a far darker coloring. But now the ideacame strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with her remarkableprecocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age whenshe could be made a friend, and intrusted with as much of her mother'ssorrows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to the parentor the child. In the little chaos of Pearl's character there might beseen emerging—and could have been, from the very first—the steadfastprinciples of an unflinching courage, —an uncontrollable will, —asturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect, —and abitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, might be found tohave the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavors ofunripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes, thought Hester, theevil which she inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if anoble woman do not grow out of this elfish child. 

Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the scarletletter seemed an innate quality of her being. From the earliest epochof her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointedmission. Hester had often fancied that Providence had a design ofjustice and retribution, in endowing the child with this markedpropensity; but never, until now, had she bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that design, there might not likewise be apurpose of mercy and beneficence. If little Pearl were entertainedwith faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an earthlychild, might it not be her errand to soothe away the sorrow that laycold in her mother's heart, and converted it into a tomb?—and to helpher to overcome the passion, once so wild, and even yet neither deadnor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart?

Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester's mind, withas much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whisperedinto her ear. And there was little Pearl, all this while, holding hermother's hand in both her own, and turning her face upward, while sheput these searching questions, once, and again, and still a thirdtime. 

“What does the letter mean, mother?—and why dost thou wear it?—andwhy does the minister keep his hand over his heart?”

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

Then she spoke aloud. 

“Silly Pearl, ” said she, “what questions are these? There are manythings in this world that a child must not ask about. What know I ofthe minister's heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for thesake of its gold-thread. ”

In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never before beenfalse to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was the talismanof 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, somenew 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 threetimes, as her mother and she went homeward, and as often atsupper-time, and while Hester was putting her to bed, and once aftershe seemed to be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up, with mischiefgleaming in her black eyes. 

“Mother, ” said she, “what does the scarlet letter mean?”

And the next morning, the first indication the child gave of beingawake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and making thatother inquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with herinvestigations about the scarlet letter:—

“Mother!—Mother!—Why does the minister keep his hand over hisheart?”

“Hold thy tongue, naughty child!” answered her mother, with anasperity that she had never permitted to herself before. “Do not teaseme; else I shall shut thee into the dark closet!”

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XVI. 

 A FOREST WALK. 

Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. Forseveral days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressinghim in some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be in thehabit of taking, along the shores of the peninsula, or on the woodedhills of the neighboring country. There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame, had she visited him in his own study; where many a penitent, ere now, had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened bythe scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the secret orundisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly thather conscious heart imputed suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wideworld to breathe in, while they talked together, —for all thesereasons, Hester never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacythan 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 hadgone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indianconverts. He would probably return, by a certain hour, in theafternoon of the morrow. Betimes, therefore, the next day, Hester tooklittle Pearl, —who was necessarily the companion of all her mother'sexpeditions, however inconvenient her presence, —and set forth. 

The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula tothe mainland, was no other than a footpath. It straggled onward intothe mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, andstood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfectglimpses of the sky above, that, to Hester's mind, it imaged not amissthe moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. The daywas chill and sombre. Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightlystirred, however, by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshinemight now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. Thisflitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of some longvista through the forest. The sportive sunlight—feebly sportive, atbest, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scene—withdrewitself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced thedrearier, because they had hoped to find them bright. 

“Mother, ” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runsaway and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on yourbosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand youhere, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not fleefrom 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 thebeginning of her race. “Will not it come of its own accord, when I ama woman grown?”

“Run away, child, ” answered her mother, “and catch the sunshine! Itwill 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 ofit, all brightened by its splendor, and scintillating with thevivacity excited by rapid motion. The light lingered about the lonelychild, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawnalmost 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, andgrasp some of it. ”

As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge fromthe bright expression that was dancing on Pearl's features, her mothercould have fancied that the child had absorbed it into herself, andwould give it forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they shouldplunge into some gloomier shade. There was no other attribute that somuch impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigor inPearl's nature, as this never-failing vivacity of spirits; she had notthe disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latterdays, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of theirancestors. Perhaps this too was a disease, and but the reflex of thewild energy with which Hester had fought against her sorrows, beforePearl's birth. It was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's character. She wanted—what some peoplewant throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thushumanize and make her capable of sympathy. But there was time enoughyet for little Pearl. 

“Come, my child!” said Hester, looking about her from the spot wherePearl had stood still in the sunshine. “We will sit down a little waywithin the wood, and rest ourselves. ”

“I am not aweary, mother, ” replied the little girl. “But you may sitdown, 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 hermother's gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into her face. “How he haunts this forest, and carries a book withhim, —a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Manoffers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here amongthe trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood. Andthen he sets his mark on their bosoms! Didst thou ever meet the BlackMan, mother?”

“And who told you this story, Pearl?” asked her mother, recognizing acommon superstition of the period. 

“It was the old dame in the chimney-corner, at the house where youwatched last night, ” said the child. “But she fancied me asleep whileshe was talking of it. She said that a thousand and a thousand peoplehad met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark onthem. And that ugly-tempered lady, old Mistress Hibbins, was one. And, mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man'smark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetesthim at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And dostthou 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 inour cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I would verygladly go! But, mother, tell me now! Is there such a Black Man? Anddidst 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 scarletletter is his mark!”

Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood tosecure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger alongthe forest track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss;which, at some epoch of the preceding century, had been a giganticpine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and its headaloft in the upper atmosphere. It was a little dell where they hadseated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising gently on eitherside, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed of fallen anddrowned leaves. The trees impending over it had flung down greatbranches, from time to time, which choked up the current and compelledit to form eddies and black depths at some points; while, in itsswifter and livelier passages, there appeared a channel-way ofpebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along thecourse of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from itswater, at some short distance within the forest, but soon lost alltraces of it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush, andhere and there a huge rock covered over with gray lichens. All thesegiant trees and bowlders of granite seemed intent on making a mysteryof the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with itsnever-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart ofthe old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on thesmooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, thestreamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy withoutplayfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance andevents of sombre hue. 

“O brook! O foolish and tiresome little brook!” cried Pearl, afterlistening 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 theforest-trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it couldnot help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushedfrom a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenesshadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, shedanced 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 ofit, ” 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 puttingaside the branches. I would have thee betake thyself to play, andleave 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 strayfar 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 thounot let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book under hisarm?”

“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 hisheart! 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 itoutside 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 hearthe 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 melancholyvoice. But the little stream would not be comforted, and still kepttelling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery thathad happened—or making a prophetic lamentation about something thatwas 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 offall acquaintance with this repining brook. She set herself, therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbinesthat she found growing in the crevices of a high rock. 

When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made a step or twotowards the track that led through the forest, but still remainedunder the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister advancingalong the path, entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he hadcut by the wayside. He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed anerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkablycharacterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any othersituation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it waswofully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest, which ofitself would have been a heavy trial to the spirits. There was alistlessness in his gait; as if he saw no reason for taking one stepfarther, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, couldhe be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of thenearest tree, and lie there passive, forevermore. The leaves mightbestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a littlehillock 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 ofpositive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little Pearl hadremarked, he kept his hand over his heart. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XVII. 

 THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 

Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by, before HesterPrynne could gather voice enough to attract his observation. Atlength, she succeeded. 

“Arthur Dimmesdale!” she said, faintly at first; then louder, buthoarsely. “Arthur Dimmesdale!”

“Who speaks?” answered the minister. 

Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man taken bysurprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, heindistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments sosombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which theclouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that heknew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be, that hispathway through life was haunted thus, by a spectre that had stolenout 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 sevenyears past! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou yet live?”

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

Without a word more spoken, —neither he nor she assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed consent, —they glided back into the shadow ofthe woods, whence Hester had emerged, and sat down on the heap of mosswhere she and Pearl had before been sitting. When they found voice tospeak, it was, at first, only to utter remarks and inquiries such asany two acquaintance might have made, about the gloomy sky, thethreatening storm, and, next, the health of each. Thus they wentonward, not boldly, but step by step, into the themes that werebrooding deepest in their hearts. So long estranged by fate andcircumstances, they needed something slight and casual to run before, and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughtsmight 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 lookfor, being what I am, and leading such a life as mine? Were I anatheist, —a man devoid of conscience, —a wretch with coarse and brutalinstincts, —I might have found peace, long ere now. Nay, I nevershould have lost it! But, as matters stand with my soul, whatever ofgood capacity there originally was in me, all of God's gifts that werethe choicest have become the ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, Iam most miserable!”

“The people reverence thee, ” said Hester. “And surely thou workestgood 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, Ihave no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruinedsoul, like mine, effect towards the redemption of other souls?—or apolluted soul towards their purification? And as for the people'sreverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thoudeem it, Hester, a consolation, that I must stand up in my pulpit, andmeet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of heavenwere beaming from it!—must see my flock hungry for the truth, andlistening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking!—andthen look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolize?I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrastbetween what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it!”

“You wrong yourself in this, ” said Hester, gently. “You have deeplyand sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you, in the days longpast. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seemsin people's eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed andwitnessed 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 hadenough! Of penitence, there has been none! Else, I should long agohave thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myselfto mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mineburns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after thetorment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognizesme for what I am! Had I one friend, —or were it my worst enemy!—towhom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could dailybetake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks mysoul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth wouldsave 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, hiswords here offered her the very point of circumstances in which tointerpose what she came to say. She conquered her fears, and spoke. 

“Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for, ” said she, “with whomto weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it!”—Again shehesitated, but brought out the words with an effort. —“Thou hast longhad such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under the same roof!”

The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and clutching athis 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 shewas responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for somany years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whosepurposes could not be other than malevolent. The very contiguity ofhis enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal himself, wasenough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive asArthur Dimmesdale. There had been a period when Hester was less aliveto this consideration; or, perhaps, in the misanthropy of her owntrouble, she left the minister to bear what she might picture toherself as a more tolerable doom. But of late, since the night of hisvigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both softened andinvigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted not, that the continual presence of Roger Chillingworth, —the secret poisonof his malignity, infecting all the air about him, —and his authorizedinterference, as a physician, with the minister's physical andspiritual infirmities, —that these bad opportunities had been turnedto a cruel purpose. By means of them, the sufferer's conscience hadbeen kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not tocure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritualbeing. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be insanity, andhereafter, that eternal alienation from the Good and True, of whichmadness is perhaps the earthly type. 

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

“O Arthur, ” cried she, “forgive me! In all things else, I have strivento be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast, anddid hold fast, through all extremity; save when thy good, —thylife, —thy fame, —were put in question! Then I consented to adeception. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on theother side! Dost thou not see what I would say? That old man!—thephysician!—he whom they call Roger Chillingworth!—he was myhusband!”

[Illustration: “Wilt thou yet forgive me?”]

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

“I might have known it, ” murmured he. “I did know it! Was not thesecret told me, in the natural recoil of my heart, at the first sightof him, and as often as I have seen him since? Why did I notunderstand? O Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all thehorror of this thing! And the shame!—the indelicacy!—the horribleugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eyethat 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 fallenleaves 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 cheekrested on the scarlet letter. He would have released himself, butstrove in vain to do so. Hester would not set him free, lest he shouldlook her sternly in the face. All the world had frowned on her, —forseven long years had it frowned upon this lonely woman, —and still shebore 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 ofthis pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what Hester couldnot bear and live!

“Wilt thou yet forgive me?” she repeated, over and over again. “Wiltthou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?”

“I do forgive you, Hester, ” replied the minister, at length, with adeep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. “I freelyforgive you now. May God forgive us both! We are not, Hester, theworst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the pollutedpriest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He hasviolated, 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 itsown. We felt it so! We said so to each other! Hast thou forgotten it?”

“Hush, Hester!” said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground. “No; Ihave not forgotten!”

They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on themossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them a gloomierhour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along;—and yet it enclosed a charmthat made them linger upon it, and claim another, and another, and, after all, another moment. The forest was obscure around them, andcreaked with a blast that was passing through it. The boughs weretossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaneddolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that satbeneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come. 

And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-track that ledbackward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up again theburden of her ignominy, and the minister the hollow mockery of hisgood name! So they lingered an instant longer. No golden light hadever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. Here, seenonly by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom ofthe 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 knowsyour purpose to reveal his true character. Will he continue, then, tokeep 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 ofhis revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. Hewill doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark passion. ”

“And I!—how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with thisdeadly enemy?” exclaimed Arthur Dimmesdale, shrinking within himself, and pressing his hand nervously against his heart, —a gesture that hadgrown involuntary with him. 

“Think for me, Hester! Thou art strong. Resolve for me!”

“Thou must dwell no longer with this man, ” said Hester, slowly andfirmly. “Thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!”

“It were far worse than death!” replied the minister. “But how toavoid it? What choice remains to me? Shall I lie down again on thesewithered leaves, where I cast myself when thou didst tell me what hewas? Must I sink down there, and die at once?”

“Alas, what a ruin has befallen thee!” said Hester, with the tearsgushing into her eyes. “Wilt thou die for very weakness? There is noother cause!”

“The judgment of God is on me, ” answered the conscience-strickenpriest. “It is too mighty for me to struggle with!”

“Heaven would show mercy, ” rejoined Hester, “hadst thou but thestrength 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 herdeep eyes on the minister's, and instinctively exercising a magneticpower over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it could hardly holditself erect. “Doth the universe lie within the compass of yondertown, which only a little time ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, aslonely as this around us? Whither leads yonder forest-track? Backwardto the settlement, thou sayest! Yes; but onward, too. Deeper it goes, and deeper, into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at everystep; until, some few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show novestige of the white man's tread. There thou art free! So brief ajourney would bring thee from a world where thou hast been mostwretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shadeenough in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze ofRoger 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. “Itbrought thee hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee back again. In our native land, whether in some remote rural village or in vastLondon, —or, surely, in Germany, in France, in pleasant Italy, —thouwouldst be beyond his power and knowledge! And what hast thou to dowith all these iron men, and their opinions? They have kept thy betterpart in bondage too long already!”

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

“Thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery, ” repliedHester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. “Butthou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, asthou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou freight theship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck andruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin allanew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this onetrial? Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. There ishappiness to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this falselife of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such amission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, —as is more thynature, —be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the mostrenowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, andmake thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear withoutfear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in thetorments that have so gnawed into thy life!—that have made theefeeble to will and to do!—that will leave thee powerless even torepent! 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 ofrunning a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I mustdie here! There is not the strength or courage left me to ventureinto the wide, strange, difficult world, alone!”

It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. Helacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within hisreach. 

He repeated the word. 

“Alone, Hester!”

“Thou shalt not go alone!” answered she, in a deep whisper. 

Then, all was spoken!

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XVIII. 

 A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 

Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in which hopeand joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind ofhorror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, butdared not speak. 

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and forso long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, hadhabituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogetherforeign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as theuntamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding acolloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart hadtheir home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freelyas the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked fromthis estranged point of view at human institutions, and whateverpriests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardlymore reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, thejudicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. Thescarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women darednot tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been herteachers, —stern and wild ones, —and they had made her strong, buttaught her much amiss. 

The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experiencecalculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws;although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed oneof the most sacred of them. But this had been a sin of passion, not ofprinciple, nor even purpose. Since that wretched epoch, he hadwatched, with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts, —for those itwas easy to arrange, —but each breath of emotion, and his everythought. At the head of the social system, as the clergymen of thatday stood, he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, itsprinciples, and even its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of hisorder inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but whokept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the frettingof an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer within theline of virtue than if he had never sinned at all. 

Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the whole sevenyears of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a preparationfor this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! Were such a man once moreto fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime? None;unless it avail him somewhat, that he was broken down by long andexquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by thevery remorse which harrowed it; that, between fleeing as an avowedcriminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find it hardto strike the balance; that it was human to avoid the peril of deathand 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 andsympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doomwhich he was now expiating. And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul isnever, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded;so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, andmight even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, inpreference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there is stillthe ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the foe thatwould win over again his unforgotten triumph. 

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

“If, in all these past seven years, ” thought he, “I could recall oneinstant of peace or hope, I would yet endure, for the sake of thatearnest of Heaven's mercy. But now, —since I am irrevocablydoomed, —wherefore should I not snatch the solace allowed to thecondemned culprit before his execution? Or, if this be the path to abetter life, as Hester would persuade me, I surely give up no fairerprospect by pursuing it! Neither can I any longer live without hercompanionship; so powerful is she to sustain, —so tender to soothe! OThou 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 itsflickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was theexhilarating effect—upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon ofhis own heart—of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of anunredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region. His spirit rose, as itwere, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, thanthroughout all the misery which had kept him grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of thedevotional in his mood. 

“Do I feel joy again?” cried he, wondering at himself. “Methought thegerm of it was dead in me! O Hester, thou art my better angel! I seemto have flung myself—sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened—downupon these forest-leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and withnew powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is already thebetter 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 undoit all, and make it as it had never been!”

So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among thewithered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of thestream. With a hand's breadth farther flight it would have fallen intothe water, and have given the little brook another woe to carryonward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuringabout. But there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lostjewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth behaunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, andunaccountable misfortune. 

[Illustration: A Gleam of Sunshine]

The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burdenof shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite relief! Shehad not known the weight, until she felt the freedom! By anotherimpulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and downit fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and alight in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to herfeatures. There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, aradiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart ofwomanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had beenlong so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of herbeauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, andclustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness beforeunknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom ofthe earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortalhearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a suddensmile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood intothe obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellowfallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemntrees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied thebrightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by itsmerry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become amystery of joy. 

Such was the sympathy of Nature—that wild, heathen Nature of theforest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by highertruth—with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon theoutward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have beenbright 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 seenher, —yes, I know it!—but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. Sheis a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love herdearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her. ”

“Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?” asked theminister, somewhat uneasily. “I have long shrunk from children, because they often show a distrust, —a backwardness to be familiarwith me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!”

“Ah, that was sad!” answered the mother. “But she will love theedearly, 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 ina 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 somedistance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelledvision, in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch ofboughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim ordistinct, —now like a real child, now like a child's spirit, —as thesplendor went and came again. She heard her mother's voice, andapproached slowly through the forest. 

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while her mother sattalking with the clergyman. The great black forest—stern as it showeditself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world intoits bosom—became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as itknew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods towelcome her. It offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of thepreceding autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red asdrops of blood upon the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and waspleased with their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wildernesshardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with abrood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repentedof her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. Apigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, anduttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from thelofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger ormerriment, —for a squirrel is such a choleric and humorous littlepersonage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods, —so hechattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was alast year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, lookedinquisitively at Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to stealoff, or renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said, —but herethe tale has surely lapsed into the improbable, —came up, and smelt ofPearl'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 wildthings which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in thehuman child. 

And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of thesettlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared to knowit; and one and another whispered as she passed, “Adorn thyself withme, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!”—and, to pleasethem, Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, andsome twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down beforeher eyes. With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, andbecame a nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was inclosest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearladorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowlyback. 

Slowly; for she saw the clergyman. 

 [Illustration]

 XIX. 

 THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 

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

“Dost thou know, Hester, ” said Arthur Dimmesdale, with an unquietsmile, “that this dear child, tripping about always at thy side, hathcaused me many an alarm? Methought—O Hester, what a thought is that, and how terrible to dread it!—that my own features were partlyrepeated 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. “Alittle longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose childshe is. But how strangely beautiful she looks, with thosewild-flowers in her hair! It is as if one of the fairies, whom we leftin our dear old England, had decked her out to meet us. ”

It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever beforeexperienced, that they sat and watched Pearl's slow advance. In herwas visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to theworld, these seven years past, as the living hieroglyphic, in whichwas revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide, —all written inthis symbol, —all plainly manifest, —had there been a prophet ormagician skilled to read the character of flame! And Pearl was theoneness of their being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how couldthey doubt that their earthly lives and future destinies wereconjoined, when they beheld at once the material union, and thespiritual idea, in whom they met, and were to dwell immortallytogether? Thoughts like these—and perhaps other thoughts, which theydid not acknowledge or define—threw an awe about the child, as shecame onward. 

“Let her see nothing strange—no passion nor eagerness—in thy way ofaccosting her, ” whispered Hester. “Our Pearl is a fitful and fantasticlittle elf, sometimes. Especially, she is seldom tolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But thechild hath strong affections! She loves me, and will love thee!”

“Thou canst not think, ” said the minister, glancing aside at HesterPrynne, “how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns for it! But, in truth, as I already told thee, children are not readily won to befamiliar 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. Evenlittle babes, when I take them in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl, twice in her little lifetime, hath been kind to me! The firsttime, —thou knowest it well! The last was when thou ledst her withthee to the house of yonder stern old Governor. ”

“And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!” answered themother. “I remember it; and so shall little Pearl. Fear nothing! Shemay 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 onthe farther side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman, whostill sat together on the mossy tree-trunk, waiting to receive her. Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool, so smoothand quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, withall the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment offlowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized thanthe reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangiblequality to the child herself. It was strange, the way in which Pearlstood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of theforest-gloom; herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray ofsunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. Inthe brook beneath stood another child, —another and the same, —withlikewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in someindistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl; as if thechild, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of thesphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainlyseeking to return to it. 

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

“I have a strange fancy, ” observed the sensitive minister, “that thisbrook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou canst nevermeet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legendsof our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream?Pray hasten her; for this delay has already imparted a tremor to mynerves. ”

“Come, dearest child!” said Hester, encouragingly, and stretching outboth her arms. “How slow thou art! When hast thou been so sluggishbefore now? Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much love, henceforward, as thy mother alonecould give thee! Leap across the brook, and come to us. Thou canstleap like a young deer!”

[Illustration: The Child at the Brook-Side]

Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweetexpressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she fixedher bright, wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and nowincluded them both in the same glance; as if to detect and explain toherself the relation which they bore to one another. For someunaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt the child's eyes uponhimself, his hand—with that gesture so habitual as to have becomeinvoluntary—stole over his heart. At length, assuming a singular airof authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefingerextended, and pointing evidently towards her mother's breast. Andbeneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled andsunny 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 herbrow; the more impressive from the childish, the almost baby-likeaspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother still keptbeckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit ofunaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a yet moreimperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was the fantasticbeauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its pointed finger, andimperious gesture, giving emphasis to the aspect of little Pearl. 

“Hasten, Pearl; or I shall be angry with thee!” cried Hester Prynne, who, however inured to such behavior on the elf-child's part at otherseasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly deportment now. “Leapacross the brook, naughty child, and run hither! Else I must come tothee!”

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

“I see what ails the child, ” whispered Hester to the clergyman, andturning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her trouble andannoyance. “Children will not abide any, the slightest, change in theaccustomed aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearlmisses something which she has always seen me wear!”

“I pray you, ” answered the minister, “if thou hast any means ofpacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered wrathof an old witch, like Mistress Hibbins, ” added he, attempting tosmile, “I know nothing that I would not sooner encounter than thispassion 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 hercheek, a conscious glance aside at the clergyman, and then a heavysigh; while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to adeadly pallor. 

“Pearl, ” said she, sadly, “look down at thy feet! There!—beforethee!—on the hither side of the brook!”

The child turned her eyes to the point indicated; and there lay thescarlet letter, so close upon the margin of the stream, that the goldembroidery 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, Ihave much to tell thee about her! But, in very truth, she is right asregards this hateful token. I must bear its torture yet a littlelonger, —only a few days longer, —until we shall have left thisregion, and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up forever!”

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

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

“Dost thou know thy mother now, child?” asked she, reproachfully, butwith a subdued tone. “Wilt thou come across the brook, and own thymother, now that she has her shame upon her, —now that she is sad?”

“Yes; now I will!” answered the child, bounding across the brook, andclasping Hester in her arms. “Now thou art my mother indeed! And I amthy little Pearl!”

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

“That was not kind!” said Hester. “When thou hast shown me a littlelove, thou mockest me!”

“Why doth the minister sit yonder?” asked Pearl. 

“He waits to welcome thee, ” replied her mother. “Come thou, andentreat his blessing! He loves thee, my little Pearl, and loves thymother 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, wethree together, into the town?”

“Not now, dear child, ” answered Hester. “But in days to come he willwalk hand in hand with us. We will have a home and fireside of ourown; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach thee manythings, 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. “Comeand ask his blessing!”

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

And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was to beleft a solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with theirmultitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add thisother tale to the mystery with which its little heart was alreadyoverburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, withnot a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XX. 

 THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 

As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and littlePearl, he threw a backward glance; half expecting that he shoulddiscover only some faintly traced features or outline of the motherand the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. So greata vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as real. Butthere was Hester, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside thetree-trunk, which some blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, andwhich time had ever since been covering with moss, so that these twofated ones, with earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit downtogether, and find a single hour's rest and solace. And there wasPearl, too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook, —now thatthe intrusive third person was gone, —and taking her old place by hermother's side. So the minister had not fallen asleep and dreamed!

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity ofimpression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled andmore thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and himself hadsketched for their departure. It had been determined between them, that the Old World, with its crowds and cities, offered them a moreeligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of New England, or allAmerica, with its alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the fewsettlements of Europeans, scattered thinly along the seaboard. Not tospeak of the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain thehardships of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and hisentire development, would secure him a home only in the midst ofcivilization and refinement; the higher the state, the more delicatelyadapted to it the man. In furtherance of this choice, it so happenedthat a ship lay in the harbor; one of those questionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of thedeep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibilityof character. This vessel had recently arrived from the Spanish Main, and, within three days' time, would sail for Bristol. HesterPrynne—whose vocation, as a self-enlisted Sister of Charity, hadbrought her acquainted with the captain and crew—could take uponherself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child, with allthe secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable. 

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, theprecise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It wouldprobably be on the fourth day from the present. “That is mostfortunate!” 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 ElectionSermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honorable epoch in the lifeof a New England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a moresuitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. “Atleast, they shall say of me, ” thought this exemplary man, “that Ileave no public duty unperformed, nor ill performed!” Sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister'sshould 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 hischaracter. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face tohimself, and another to the multitude, without finally gettingbewildered as to which may be the true. 

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale's feelings, as he returned from hisinterview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, andhurried him townward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woodsseemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and lesstrodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it on his outwardjourney. But he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himselfthrough the clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into thehollow, and overcame, in short, all the difficulties of the track, with an unweariable activity that astonished him. He could not butrecall how feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath, he hadtoiled over the same ground, only two days before. As he drew near thetown, he took an impression of change from the series of familiarobjects 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 rememberedit, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitudeof gable-peaks, and a weathercock at every point where his memorysuggested one. Not the less, however, came this importunatelyobtrusive sense of change. The same was true as regarded theacquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of humanlife, about the little town. They looked neither older nor youngernow; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creepingbabe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day; it was impossible todescribe in what respect they differed from the individuals on whom hehad so recently bestowed a parting glance; and yet the minister'sdeepest sense seemed to inform him of their mutability. A similarimpression struck him most remarkably, as he passed under the walls ofhis 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 wasmerely dreaming about it now. 

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated noexternal change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectatorof the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day hadoperated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister'sown will, and Hester's will, and the fate that grew between them, hadwrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore; butthe same minister returned not from the forest. He might have said tothe 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 amossy 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-offgarment!” His friends, no doubt, would still have insisted withhim, —“Thou art thyself the man!”—but the error would have been theirown, not his. 

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him otherevidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. Intruth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code, inthat interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the impulses nowcommunicated to the unfortunate and startled minister. At every stephe was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with asense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spiteof himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that whichopposed the impulse. For instance, he met one of his own deacons. Thegood old man addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchalprivilege, which his venerable age, his upright and holy character, and his station in the Church, entitled him to use; and, conjoinedwith this, the deep, almost worshipping respect, which the minister'sprofessional and private claims alike demanded. Never was there a morebeautiful example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comportwith the obeisance and respect enjoined upon it, as from a lowersocial rank, and inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. Now, during a conversation of some two or three moments between theReverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the most careful self-control that the former couldrefrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose intohis mind, respecting the communion supper. He absolutely trembled andturned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself, in utteranceof these horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. And, even with this terror in hisheart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctifiedold patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by his minister'simpiety!

Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest female member ofhis church; a most pious and exemplary old dame; poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her deadhusband and children, and her dead friends of long ago, as aburial-ground is full of storied gravestones. Yet all this, whichwould else have been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joyto her devout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths ofScripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually for more thanthirty years. And, since Mr. Dimmesdale had taken her in charge, thegood grandam's chief earthly comfort—which, unless it had beenlikewise a heavenly comfort, could have been none at all—was to meether pastor, whether casually, or of set purpose, and be refreshed witha word of warm, fragrant, heaven-breathing Gospel truth, from hisbeloved lips, into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But, onthis occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman'sear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, couldrecall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against theimmortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her mindwould probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, atonce, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. What hereally did whisper, the minister could never afterwards recollect. There was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in his utterance, whichfailed 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 divinegratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial cityon her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale. 

Again, a third instance. After parting from the old church-member, hemet the youngest sister of them all. It was a maiden newly won—andwon by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's own sermon, on the Sabbath afterhis vigil—to barter the transitory pleasures of the world for theheavenly hope, that was to assume brighter substance as life grew darkaround her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. Shewas fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in Paradise. The ministerknew well that he was himself enshrined within the stainless sanctityof her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about his image, impartingto religion the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away from hermother'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 drewnigh, the arch-fiend whispered him to condense into small compass anddrop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure toblossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. Such was his senseof power over this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that theminister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but onewicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word. So—with amightier struggle than he had yet sustained—he held his Geneva cloakbefore his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. Sheransacked her conscience, —which was full of harmless little matters, like her pocket or her work-bag, —and took herself to task, poorthing! for a thousand imaginary faults; and went about her householdduties with swollen eyelids the next morning. 

Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this lasttemptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, andalmost as horrible. It was, —we blush to tell it, —it was to stopshort in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot oflittle Puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begunto talk. Denying himself this freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he meta drunken seaman, one of the ship's crew from the Spanish Main. And, here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poorMr. Dimmesdale longed, at least, to shake hands with the tarryblackguard, and recreate himself with a few improper jests, such asdissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths! It was not so much a betterprinciple as partly his natural good taste, and still more hisbuckramed habit of clerical decorum, that carried him safely throughthe latter crisis. 

“What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?” cried the minister tohimself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his handagainst his forehead. “Am I mad? or am I given over utterly to thefiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it withmy blood? And does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggestingthe performance of every wickedness which his most foul imaginationcan conceive?”

At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale thus communed withhimself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old Mistress Hibbins, the reputed witch-lady, is said to have been passing by. She made avery grand appearance; having on a high head-dress, a rich gown ofvelvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow starch, of which AnnTurner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before thislast good lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. Whether the witch had read the minister's thoughts, or no, she came toa full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and—though little given to converse with clergymen—began aconversation. 

“So, reverend Sir, you have made a visit into the forest, ” observedthe witch-lady, nodding her high head-dress at him. “The next time, Ipray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bearyou company. Without taking overmuch upon myself, my good word will gofar towards gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonderpotentate 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 madeimperative, —“I profess, on my conscience and character, that I amutterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words! I went notinto 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 apersonage. My one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend ofmine, the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice with him over the many precioussouls he hath won from heathendom!”

“Ha, ha, ha!” cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her highhead-dress at the minister. “Well, well, we must needs talk thus inthe daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at midnight, andin the forest, we shall have other talk together!”

She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back herhead and smiling at him, like one willing to recognize a secretintimacy 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 chosenfor her prince and master!”

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted bya dream of happiness, he had yielded himself, with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And theinfectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffusedthroughout 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, ridiculeof whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while theyfrightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if itwere a real incident, did but show his sympathy and fellowship withwicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits. 

He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the edge of theburial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without firstbetraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wickedeccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passingthrough the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked aroundhim on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestriedcomfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that hadhaunted him throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town, and thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here, gone throughfast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here, striven to pray;here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in itsrich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, andGod's voice through all! There, on the table, with the inky pen besideit, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page, two daysbefore. He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheekedminister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus farinto the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye thisformer self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. Thatself was gone. Another man had returned out of the forest; a wiserone; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of theformer never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of thestudy, and the minister said, “Come in!”—not wholly devoid of an ideathat he might behold an evil spirit. And so he did! It was old RogerChillingworth that entered. The minister stood, white and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew Scriptures, and the other spread upon hisbreast. 

“Welcome home, reverend Sir, ” said the physician. “And how found youthat godly man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear Sir, you lookpale; as if the travel through the wilderness had been too sore foryou. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength topreach your Election Sermon?”

“Nay, I think not so, ” rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. “Myjourney, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the free airwhich I have breathed, have done me good, after so long confinement inmy 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 withthe grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the latter was almost convinced of theold man's knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, withrespect to his own interview with Hester Prynne. The physician knewthen, that, in the minister's regard, he was no longer a trustedfriend, but his bitterest enemy. So much being known, it would appearnatural that a part of it should be expressed. It is singular, however, how long a time often passes before words embody things; andwith 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 wouldtouch, in express words, upon the real position which they sustainedtowards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark way, creepfrightfully 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 vigorousfor this occasion of the Election discourse. The people look for greatthings from you; apprehending that another year may come about, andfind 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 thinkto tarry with my flock through the flitting seasons of another year!But, touching your medicine, kind Sir, in my present frame of body, Ineed it not. ”

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

“I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend, ” said the ReverendMr. Dimmesdale, with a solemn smile. “I thank you, and can but requiteyour good deeds with my prayers. ”

“A good man's prayers are golden recompense!” rejoined old RogerChillingworth, as he took his leave. “Yea, they are the current goldcoin of the New Jerusalem, with the King's own mint-mark on them!”

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, andrequested food, which, being set before him, he ate with ravenousappetite. Then, flinging the already written pages of the ElectionSermon into the fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote withsuch an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied himselfinspired; and only wondered that Heaven should see fit to transmit thegrand and solemn music of its oracles through so foul an organ-pipe ashe. However, leaving that mystery to solve itself, or go unsolvedforever, he drove his task onward, with earnest haste and ecstasy. Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and hecareering on it; morning came, and peeped, blushing, through thecurtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study andlaid it right across the minister's bedazzled eyes. There he was, withthe pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract ofwritten space behind him!

 [Illustration]

 XXI. 

 THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 

Betimes in the morning of the day on which the new Governor was toreceive his office at the hands of the people, Hester Prynne andlittle Pearl came into the market-place. It was already thronged withthe craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, inconsiderable numbers; among whom, likewise, were many rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked them as belonging to some of theforest settlements, which surrounded the little metropolis of thecolony. 

On this public holiday, as on all other occasions, for seven yearspast, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. Not more byits hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it hadthe effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline;while, again, the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilightindistinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of its ownillumination. Her face, so long familiar to the towns-people, showedthe marble quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. It waslike a mask; or, rather, like the frozen calmness of a dead woman'sfeatures; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that Hester wasactually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had departedout of the world with which she still seemed to mingle. 

It might be, on this one day, that there was an expression unseenbefore, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be detected now; unless somepreternaturally gifted observer should have first read the heart, andhave afterwards sought a corresponding development in the countenanceand mien. Such a spiritual seer might have conceived, that, aftersustaining the gaze of the multitude through seven miserable years asa necessity, a penance, and something which it was a stern religion toendure, she now, for one last time more, encountered it freely andvoluntarily, in order to convert what had so long been agony into akind of triumph. “Look your last on the scarlet letter and itswearer!”—the people's victim and life-long bond-slave, as theyfancied her, might say to them. “Yet a little while, and she will bebeyond your reach! A few hours longer, and the deep, mysterious oceanwill quench and hide forever the symbol which ye have caused to burnupon her bosom!” Nor were it an inconsistency too improbable to beassigned to human nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret inHester's mind, at the moment when she was about to win her freedomfrom 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 nearlyall her years of womanhood had been perpetually flavored? The wine oflife, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker; or elseleave an inevitable and weary languor, after the lees of bitternesswherewith she had been drugged, as with a cordial of intensestpotency. 

Pearl was decked out with airy gayety. It would have been impossibleto guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed its existence tothe shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and sodelicate as must have been requisite to contrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a task perhaps more difficult, inimparting so distinct a peculiarity to Hester's simple robe. Thedress, so proper was it to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, orinevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, nomore to be separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from abutterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a brightflower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one ideawith her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certainsingular inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing somuch as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with thevaried throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Childrenhave always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them;always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, ofwhatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who wasthe gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance ofher spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marblepassiveness of Hester's brow. 

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

“Why, what is this, mother?” cried she. “Wherefore have all the peopleleft 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 hisSabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would gladly be merry, if anykind body would only teach him how! And there is Master Brackett, theold 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; forthou art clad in gray, and wearest the scarlet letter. But see, mother, how many faces of strange people, and Indians among them, andsailors! What have they all come to do, here in the market-place?”

“They wait to see the procession pass, ” said Hester. “For the Governorand the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and all the greatpeople and good people, with the music and the soldiers marchingbefore them. ”

“And will the minister be there?” asked Pearl. “And will he hold outboth his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from thebrook-side?”

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

“What a strange, sad man is he!” said the child, as if speaking partlyto herself. “In the dark night-time he calls us to him, and holds thyhand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder. Andin the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the stripof sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And hekisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash itoff! But here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows usnot; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his handalways over his heart!”

“Be quiet, Pearl! Thou understandest not these things, ” said hermother. “Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and seehow cheery is everybody's face to-day. The children have come fromtheir schools, and the grown people from their workshops and theirfields, on purpose to be happy. For, to-day, a new man is beginning torule over them; and so—as has been the custom of mankind ever since anation was first gathered—they make merry and rejoice; as if a goodand golden year were at length to pass over the poor old world!”

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity thatbrightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season of theyear—as it already was, and continued to be during the greater partof two centuries—the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and publicjoy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so fardispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a singleholiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communitiesat a period of general affliction. 

But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedlycharacterized the mood and manners of the age. The persons now in themarket-place of Boston had not been born to an inheritance ofPuritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen, whose fathers had livedin the sunny richness of the Elizabethan epoch; a time when the lifeof England, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been asstately, magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Hadthey followed their hereditary taste, the New England settlers wouldhave illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have beenimpracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combinemirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesqueand brilliant embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an attempt ofthis kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the politicalyear of the colony commenced. The dim reflection of a rememberedsplendor, a colorless and manifold diluted repetition of what they hadbeheld 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 ourforefathers instituted, with reference to the annual installation ofmagistrates. The fathers and founders of the commonwealth—thestatesman, the priest, and the soldier—deemed it a duty then toassume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance withantique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of public or socialeminence. All came forth, to move in procession before the people'seye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of agovernment so newly constructed. 

Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, inrelaxing the severe and close application to their various modes ofrugged industry, which, at all other times, seemed of the same pieceand material with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of theapplicances which popular merriment would so readily have found in theEngland of Elizabeth's time, or that of James;—no rude shows of atheatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, norgleeman, with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricksof mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude withjests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but still effective, by theirappeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All suchprofessors of the several branches of jocularity would have beensternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by thegeneral sentiment which gives law its vitality. Not the less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled, grimly, perhaps, butwidely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists hadwitnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country fairs and on thevillage-greens of England; and which it was thought well to keep aliveon this new soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness that wereessential in them. Wrestling-matches, in the different fashions ofCornwall and Devonshire, were seen here and there about themarket-place; in one corner, there was a friendly bout atquarterstaff; and—what attracted most interest of all—on theplatform of the pillory, already so noted in our pages, two masters ofdefence were commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But, much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter business wasbroken off by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea ofpermitting the majesty of the law to be violated by such an abuse ofone of its consecrated places. 

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being thenin the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring of sireswho had known how to be merry, in their day, ) that they would comparefavorably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants, evenat so long an interval as ourselves. Their immediate posterity, thegeneration next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade ofPuritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all thesubsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet tolearn again the forgotten art of gayety. 

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tintwas the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yetenlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in theirsavage finery of curiously embroidered deer-skin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrowand stone-headed spear—stood apart, with countenances of inflexiblegravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wildas were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of thescene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by somemariners, —a part of the crew of the vessel from the SpanishMain, —who had come ashore to see the humors of Election Day. Theywere rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and animmensity of beard; their wide, short trousers were confined about thewaist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, andsustaining always a long knife, and, in some instances, a sword. Frombeneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf gleamed eyes which, evenin good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. Theytransgressed, without fear or scruple, the rules of behavior that werebinding on all others; smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; andquaffing, at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitæ frompocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd aroundthem. 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 deedson their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to bearraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, forinstance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavorable specimensof the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilledall their necks in a modern court of justice. 

But the sea, in those old times, heaved, swelled, and foamed, verymuch at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, withhardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on thewave might relinquish his calling, and become at once, if he chose, aman of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of hisreckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it wasdisreputable to traffic, or casually associate. Thus, the Puritanelders, in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crownedhats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamor and rude deportment ofthese jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise noranimadversion, when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place, in close andfamiliar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel. 

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far asapparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. He wore aprofusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold-lace on his hat, whichwas 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 displaythan hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown thisface, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, withoutundergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurringfine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. Asregarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as pertaining tothe character, as to a fish his glistening scales. 

After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristol shipstrolled idly through the market-place; until, happening to approachthe spot where Hester Prynne was standing, he appeared to recognize, and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually the case whereverHester stood, a small vacant area—a sort of magic circle—had formeditself about her, into which, though the people were elbowing oneanother at a little distance, none ventured, or felt disposed tointrude. It was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which thescarlet 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 answereda good purpose, by enabling Hester and the seaman to speak togetherwithout risk of being overheard; and so changed was Hester Prynne'srepute before the public, that the matron in town most eminent forrigid morality could not have held such intercourse with less resultof scandal than herself. 

“So, mistress, ” said the mariner, “I must bid the steward make readyone more berth than you bargained for! No fear of scurvy orship-fever, this voyage! What with the ship's surgeon and this otherdoctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more by token, asthere is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which I traded for with aSpanish vessel. ”

“What mean you?” inquired Hester, startled more than she permitted toappear. “Have you another passenger?”

“Why, know you not, ” cried the shipmaster, “that this physicianhere—Chillingworth, he calls himself—is minded to try my cabin-farewith you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is ofyour party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of, —he thatis in peril from these sour old Puritan rulers!”

[Illustration: Chillingworth, —“Smile with a sinister meaning”]

“They know each other well, indeed, ” replied Hester, with a mien ofcalmness, though in the utmost consternation. “They have long dwelttogether. ”

Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne. But, atthat instant, she beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself, standing inthe remotest corner of the market-place, and smiling on her; a smilewhich—across the wide and bustling square, and through all the talkand laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of thecrowd—conveyed secret and fearful meaning. 

 [Illustration]

 XXII. 

 THE PROCESSION. 

Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and considerwhat was practicable to be done in this new and startling aspect ofaffairs, the sound of military music was heard approaching along acontiguous street. It denoted the advance of the procession ofmagistrates and citizens, on its way towards the meeting-house; where, in compliance with a custom thus early established, and ever sinceobserved, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver an ElectionSermon. 

[Illustration: New England Worthies]

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and statelymarch, turning a corner, and making its way across the market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety of instruments, perhapsimperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill;but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of drum andclarion addresses itself to the multitude, —that of imparting a higherand more heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost, for aninstant, the restless agitation that had kept her in a continualeffervescence throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemedto be borne upward, like a floating sea-bird, on the long heaves andswells of sound. But she was brought back to her former mood by theshimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armor of themilitary company, which followed after the music, and formed thehonorary escort of the procession. This body of soldiery—which stillsustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages withan ancient and honorable fame—was composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled with gentlemen, who felt the stirrings ofmartial impulse, and sought to establish a kind of College of Arms, where, as in an association of Knights Templars, they might learn thescience, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, thepractices of war. The high estimation then placed upon the militarycharacter might be seen in the lofty port of each individual memberof the company. Some of them, indeed, by their services in the LowCountries and on other fields of European warfare, had fairly wontheir title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entirearray, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage noddingover their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no moderndisplay can aspire to equal. 

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind themilitary escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's eye. Evenin outward demeanor, they showed a stamp of majesty that made thewarrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an agewhen what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but themassive materials which produce stability and dignity of character agreat deal more. The people possessed, by hereditary right, thequality of reverence; which, in their descendants, if it survive atall, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force, in the selection and estimate of public men. The change may be forgood or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day, theEnglish settler on these rude shores—having left king, nobles, andall degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty andnecessity of reverence were strong in him—bestowed it on the whitehair and venerable brow of age; on long-tried integrity; on solidwisdom and sad-colored experience; on endowments of that grave andweighty order which gives the idea of permanence, and comes under thegeneral definition of respectability. These primitive statesmen, therefore, —Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and theircompeers, —who were elevated to power by the early choice of thepeople, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by aponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They hadfortitude and self-reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against atempestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated were wellrepresented in the square cast of countenance and large physicaldevelopment of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a demeanor ofnatural authority was concerned, the mother country need not have beenashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted intothe House of Peers, or made the Privy Council of the sovereign. 

Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminentlydistinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse of theanniversary was expected. His was the profession, at that era, inwhich intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in politicallife; for—leaving a higher motive out of the question—it offeredinducements powerful enough, in the almost worshipping respect of thecommunity, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service. Evenpolitical power—as in the case of Increase Mather—was within thegrasp of a successful priest. 

It was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never, sinceMr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England shore, had heexhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which hekept his pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step, asat other times; his frame was not bent; nor did his hand restominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the body. It might be spiritual, andimparted to him by angelic ministrations. It might be the exhilarationof that potent cordial, which is distilled only in the furnace-glow ofearnest and long-continued thought. Or, perchance, his sensitivetemperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music, thatswelled heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questionedwhether 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 preternaturalactivity, to marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soonto issue thence; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the feebleframe, and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and convertingit to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon intellect, who have grownmorbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into whichthey throw the life of many days, and then are lifeless for as manymore. 

Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a drearyinfluence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not; unlessthat he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond herreach. One glance of recognition, she had imagined, must needs passbetween them. She thought of the dim forest, with its little dell ofsolitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand in hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talkwith the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply had they knowneach other then! And was this the man? She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly past, enveloped, as it were, in the rich music, withthe procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainablein his worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of hisunsympathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld him! Her spiritsank 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 theclergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was there in Hester, that she could scarcely forgive him, —least of all now, when the heavyfootstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!—for being able so completely to withdraw himself from theirmutual world; while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her coldhands, and found him not. 

Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or herselffelt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen around theminister. 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 thebrook?”

“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!” whispered her mother. “We mustnot always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in theforest. ”

“I could not be sure that it was he; so strange he looked, ” continuedthe 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 hishand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me be gone?”

“What should he say, Pearl, ” answered Hester, “save that it was notime 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 weshould term it—led her to do what few of the towns-people would haveventured on; to begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarletletter, in public. It was Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed in greatmagnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown ofrich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see theprocession. As this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequentlycost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor inall the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, thecrowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of hergarment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen inconjunction with Hester Prynne, —kindly as so many now felt towardsthe latter, —the dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins was doubled, andcaused a general movement from that part of the market-place in whichthe two women stood. 

“Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it!” whispered the oldlady, confidentially, to Hester. “Yonder divine man! That saint onearth, as the people uphold him to be, and as—I must needs say—hereally looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, wouldthink how little while it is since he went forth out of hisstudy, —chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in his mouth, Iwarrant, —to take an airing in the forest! Aha! we know what thatmeans, Hester Prynne! But, truly, forsooth, I find it hard to believehim the same man. Many a church-member saw I, walking behind themusic, that has danced in the same measure with me, when Somebody wasfiddler, and, it might be, an Indian powwow or a Lapland wizardchanging hands with us! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows theworld. But this minister! Couldst thou surely tell, Hester, whether hewas the same man that encountered thee on the forest-path?”

“Madam, I know not of what you speak, ” answered Hester Prynne, feelingMistress Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely startled andawe-stricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personalconnection between so many persons (herself among them) and the EvilOne. “It is not for me to talk lightly of a learned and pious ministerof 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 yetno skill to judge who else has been there? Yea; though no leaf of thewild garlands, which they wore while they danced, be left in theirhair! I know thee, Hester; for I behold the token. We may all see itin the sunshine; and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thouwearest it openly; so there need be no question about that. But thisminister! Let me tell thee, in thine ear! When the Black Man sees oneof his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bondas is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering mattersso that the mark shall be disclosed in open daylight to the eyes ofall the world! What is it that the minister seeks to hide, with hishand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne!”

“What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?” eagerly asked little Pearl. “Hastthou seen it?”

“No matter, darling!” responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl aprofound 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 thoushalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart!”

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

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

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment; insomuch that alistener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacherspoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone andcadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, andemotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through thechurch-walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intentness, andsympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaningfor her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grossermedium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the lowundertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascendedwith it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness andpower, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere ofawe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimesbecame, there was forever in it an essential character ofplaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish, —the whisper, orthe shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, thattouched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain ofpathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid adesolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high andcommanding, —when it gushed irrepressibly upward, —when it assumed itsutmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst itsway through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in the openair, —still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, hecould detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of ahuman heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseechingits sympathy or forgiveness, —at every moment, —in each accent, —andnever in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gavethe clergyman his most appropriate power. 

During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of thescaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there, there wouldnevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whenceshe dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sensewithin her, —too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighingheavily on her mind, —that her whole orb of life, both before andafter, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gaveit unity. 

Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and wasplaying at her own will about the market-place. She made the sombrecrowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray; even as a bird ofbright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage, by dartingto and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of theclustering leaves. She had an undulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp andirregular movement. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because itwas played upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. WheneverPearl saw anything to excite her ever-active and wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward and, as we might say, seized upon that man orthing as her own property, so far as she desired it; but withoutyielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the lessinclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from theindescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through herlittle figure, and sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked thewild Indian in the face; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder thanhis own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve ascharacteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, theswarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of theland; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if aflake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and weregifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow inthe night-time. 

One of these seafaring men—the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken toHester Prynne—was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that he attemptedto lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it asimpossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he tookfrom his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it tothe 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 theblack-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bringhis friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thymother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt thou tell herthis, thou witch-baby?”

“Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!” criedPearl, with a naughty smile. “If thou callest me that ill name, Ishall tell him of thee; and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!”

Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returnedto her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester'sstrong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, onbeholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which—at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the ministerand herself out of their labyrinth of misery—showed itself, with anunrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path. 

With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which theshipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected toanother trial. There were many people present, from the country roundabout, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it hadbeen made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumors, but whohad never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, afterexhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynnewith rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. Atthat distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugalforce of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The wholegang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, andlearning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust theirsunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the Indianswere affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyeson Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of thisbrilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of highdignity among her people. Lastly the inhabitants of the town (theirown interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, bysympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the samequarter, and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hestersaw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, whohad awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years ago; allsave one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whoseburial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was sosoon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become thecentre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear herbreast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put iton. 

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunningcruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her forever, theadmirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon anaudience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. Thesainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in themarket-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough tosurmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XXIII. 

 THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 

The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience hadbeen borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length cameto a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as what shouldfollow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a murmur and half-hushedtumult; as if the auditors, released from the high spell that hadtransported them into the region of another's mind, were returninginto themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. Ina moment more, the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of thechurch. Now that there was an end, they needed other breath, more fitto support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, thanthat 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 themarket-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses ofthe minister. His hearers could not rest until they had told oneanother of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. Accordingto 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 inspirationever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did throughhis. Its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, andpossessing him, and continually lifting him out of the writtendiscourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that musthave been as marvellous to himself as to his audience. His subject, itappeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the communitiesof mankind, with a special reference to the New England which theywere here planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew towards theclose, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him toits purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel wereconstrained; only with this difference, that, whereas the Jewish seershad denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his missionto foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered peopleof the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which couldnot be interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon topass away. Yes; their minister whom they so loved—and who so lovedthem all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sigh—had theforeboding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them intheir tears! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the lastemphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as ifan angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wingsover the people for an instant, —at once a shadow and asplendor, —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 itfar behind them—an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumphthan any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to whichthe gifts of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and areputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in NewEngland's earliest days, when the professional character was of itselfa lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at theclose of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standingbeside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter stillburning on her breast!

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

Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers wasseen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew backreverently, on either side, as the Governor and magistrates, the oldand wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent andrenowned, advanced into the midst of them. When they were fairly inthe market-place, their presence was greeted by a shout. This—thoughdoubtless it might acquire additional force and volume from thechildlike loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers—was felt to bean irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors bythat high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in theirears. Each felt the impulse in himself, and, in the same breath, caught it from his neighbor. Within the church, it had hardly beenkept down; beneath the sky, it pealed upward to the zenith. There werehuman beings enough, and enough of highly wrought and symphoniousfeeling, to produce that more impressive sound than the organ tones ofthe blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mightyswell of many voices, blended into one great voice by the universalimpulse 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 NewEngland soil, had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren asthe preacher!

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

As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyeswere turned towards the point where the minister was seen to approachamong them. The shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowdafter another obtained a glimpse of him. How feeble and pale helooked, amid all his triumph! The energy—or say, rather, theinspiration which had held him up, until he should have delivered thesacred message that brought its own strength along with it fromheaven—was withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully performed itsoffice. The glow, which they had just before beheld burning on hischeek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hopelesslyamong the late-decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a manalive, with such a death-like hue; it was hardly a man with life inhim, that tottered on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and didnot fall!

One of his clerical brethren, —it was the venerable JohnWilson, —observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by theretiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily tooffer his support. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelledthe old man's arm. He still walked onward, if that movement could beso described, which rather resembled the wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. Andnow, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, hehad come opposite the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, HesterPrynne had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stoodHester, holding little Pearl by the hand! And there was the scarletletter on her breast! The minister here made a pause; although themusic still played the stately and rejoicing march to which theprocession moved. It summoned him onward, —onward to thefestival!—but here he made a pause. 

Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye uponhim. He now left his own place in the procession, and advanced to giveassistance; judging, from Mr. Dimmesdale's aspect, that he mustotherwise inevitably fall. But there was something in the latter'sexpression that warned back the magistrate, although a man not readilyobeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthlyfaintness was, in their view, only another phase of the minister'scelestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to bewrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxingdimmer 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 wassomething at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The child, with the bird-like motion which was one of her characteristics, flewto him, and clasped her arms about his knees. Hester Prynne—slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongestwill—likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. At thisinstant, old Roger Chillingworth thrust himself through thecrowd, —or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil, was his look, herose up out of some nether region, —to snatch back his victim fromwhat 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 thatwoman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken yourfame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save you! Would you bringinfamy 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 itwas! 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 nameof Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this lastmoment, to do what—for my own heavy sin and miserable agony—Iwithheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twinethy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided bythe will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old manis opposing it with all his might!—with all his own might, and thefiend's! Come, Hester, come! Support me up yonder scaffold!”

The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood moreimmediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and soperplexed as to the purport of what they saw, —unable to receive theexplanation which most readily presented itself, or to imagine anyother, —that they remained silent and inactive spectators of thejudgment which Providence seemed about to work. They beheld theminister, leaning on Hester's shoulder, and supported by her armaround him, approach the scaffold, and ascend its steps; while stillthe little hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his. Old RogerChillingworth followed, as one intimately connected with the drama ofguilt 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 atthe clergyman, “there was no one place so secret, —no high place norlowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me, —save on this veryscaffold!”

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

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

“Is not this better, ” murmured he, “than what we dreamed of in theforest?”

“I know not! I know not!” she hurriedly replied. “Better? Yea; so wemay 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 plainbefore my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying man. So let me make hasteto take my shame upon me!”

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

“People of New England!” cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn, and majestic, —yet had always a tremor through it, andsometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorseand woe, —“ye, that have loved me!—ye, that have deemed meholy!—behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last!—atlast!—I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should havestood; here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strengthwherewith I have crept hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadfulmoment, from grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letterwhich Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walkhath been, —wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped tofind repose, —it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horriblerepugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!”

It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainderof his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the bodilyweakness, —and, still more, the faintness of heart, —that was strivingfor the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and steppedpassionately forward a pace before the woman and the child. 

“It was on him!” he continued, with a kind of fierceness; sodetermined was he to speak out the whole. “God's eye beheld it! Theangels were forever pointing at it! The Devil knew it well, andfretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger! But hehid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of aspirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world!—and sad, becausehe missed his heavenly kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands upbefore you! He bids you look again at Hester's scarlet letter! Hetells you, that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadowof what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own redstigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart!Stand any here that question God's judgment on a sinner? Behold!Behold a dreadful witness of it!”

[Illustration: “Shall we not meet again?”]

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band frombefore his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to describethat revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the horror-strickenmultitude was concentred on the ghastly miracle; while the ministerstood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in thecrisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon thescaffold! Hester partly raised him, and supported his head against herbosom. Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed. 

“Thou hast escaped me!” he repeated more than once. “Thou hast escapedme!”

“May God forgive thee!” said the minister. “Thou, too, hast deeplysinned!”

He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on thewoman and the child. 

“My little Pearl, ” said he, feebly, —and there was a sweet and gentlesmile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, nowthat the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would besportive with the child, —“dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now?Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt?”

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all hersympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they werethe pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, norforever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards hermother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was allfulfilled. 

“Hester, ” said the clergyman, “farewell!”

“Shall we not meet again?” whispered she, bending her face down closeto his. “Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! Thou lookestfar into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! Then tell me whatthou seest?”

“Hush, Hester, hush!” said he, with tremulous solemnity. “The law webroke!—the sin here so awfully revealed!—let these alone be in thythoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot ourGod, —when we violated our reverence each for the other's soul, —itwas thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in aneverlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and He is merciful! He hathproved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me thisburning torture to bear upon my breast! By sending yonder dark andterrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat! By bringingme hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people!Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever!Praised be his name! His will be done! Farewell!”

That final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath. Themultitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of aweand wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmurthat rolled so heavily after the departed spirit. 

[Illustration]

 [Illustration]

 XXIV. 

 CONCLUSION. 

After many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange theirthoughts in reference to the foregoing scene, there was more than oneaccount of what had been witnessed on the scaffold. 

Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of theunhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of that worn byHester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin, therewere various explanations, all of which must necessarily have beenconjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on thevery day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, hadbegun a course of penance, —which he afterwards, in so many futilemethods, followed out, —by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the stigma had not been produced until a longtime subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potentnecromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic andpoisonous drugs. Others, again, —and those best able to appreciatethe minister's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation ofhis spirit upon the body, —whispered their belief, that the awfulsymbol was the effect of the ever-active tooth of remorse, gnawingfrom the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting Heaven'sdreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The readermay choose among these theories. We have thrown all the light we couldacquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done itsoffice, erase its deep print out of our own brain; where longmeditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness. 

It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who werespectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to haveremoved their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that therewas any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor evenremotely implied, any, the slightest connection, on his part, with theguilt for which Hester Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying, —conscious, also, that the reverence ofthe multitude placed him already among saints and angels, —haddesired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man'sown righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind'sspiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, inorder to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was toteach them, that the holiest among us has but attained so far abovehis fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which wouldlook aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so momentous, wemust be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale's story asonly an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man'sfriends—and especially a clergyman's—will sometimes uphold hischaracter, when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarletletter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust. 

The authority which we have chiefly followed, —a manuscript of olddate, drawn up from the verbal testimony of individuals, some of whomhad known Hester Prynne, while others had heard the tale fromcontemporary witnesses, —fully confirms the view taken in theforegoing pages. Among many morals which press upon us from the poorminister's miserable experience, we put only this into asentence:—“Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, ifnot your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almostimmediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the appearance anddemeanor of the old man known as Roger Chillingworth. All his strengthand energy—all his vital and intellectual force—seemed at once todesert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lieswilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle ofhis life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge;and when, by its completest triumph and consummation, that evilprinciple was left with no further material to support it, when, inshort, there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to do, it onlyremained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither hisMaster would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But, to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances, —as wellRoger Chillingworth as his companions, —we would fain be merciful. Itis a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred andlove be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each rendersone individual dependent for the food of his affections and spirituallife upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no lesspassionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of hissubject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seemessentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in acelestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In thespiritual world, the old physician and the minister—mutual victims asthey have been—may, unawares, have found their earthly stock ofhatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love. 

Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business tocommunicate to the reader. At old Roger Chillingworth's decease, (which took place within the year, ) and by his last will andtestament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilsonwere executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both here and in England, to little Pearl, the daughter of HesterPrynne. 

So Pearl—the elf-child, —the demon offspring, as some people, up tothat epoch, persisted in considering her, —became the richest heiressof her day, in the New World. Not improbably, this circumstancewrought a very material change in the public estimation; and, had themother and child remained here, little Pearl, at a marriageable periodof life, might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of thedevoutest Puritan among them all. But, in no long time after thephysician's death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, andPearl along with her. For many years, though a vague report would nowand then find its way across the sea, —like a shapeless piece ofdrift-wood tost ashore, with the initials of a name upon it, —yet notidings of them unquestionably authentic were received. The story ofthe scarlet letter grew into a legend. Its spell, however, was stillpotent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore, where Hester Prynne haddwelt. Near this latter spot, one afternoon, some children were atplay, when they beheld a tall woman, in a gray robe, approach thecottage-door. In all those years it had never once been opened; buteither she unlocked it, or the decaying wood and iron yielded to herhand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments, —and, atall events, went in. 

On the threshold she paused, —turned partly round, —for, perchance, the idea of entering all alone, and all so changed, the home of sointense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than even shecould bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant, though longenough to display a scarlet letter on her breast. 

[Illustration: Hester's Return]

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame!But where was little Pearl? If still alive, she must now have been inthe flush and bloom of early womanhood. None knew—nor ever learned, with the fulness of perfect certainty—whether the elf-child had gonethus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild, rich nature hadbeen softened and subdued, and made capable of a woman's gentlehappiness. But, through the remainder of Hester's life, there wereindications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object oflove and interest with some inhabitant of another land. Letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to Englishheraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxurysuch as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could havepurchased, and affection have imagined for her. There were trifles, too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate fingers, at the impulse of afond heart. And, once, Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment, with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised apublic tumult, had any infant, thus apparelled, been shown to oursober-hued community. 

In fine, the gossips of that day believed, —and Mr. Surveyor Pue, whomade investigations a century later, believed, —and one of his recentsuccessors in office, moreover, faithfully believes, —that Pearl wasnot only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother, andthat she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonelymother at her fireside. 

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here hadbeen her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed, —of her own free will, fornot the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposedit, —resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Neverafterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, thescarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scornand bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as HesterPrynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her ownprofit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows andperplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gonethrough a mighty trouble. Women, more especially, —in the continuallyrecurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring andsinful passion, —or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought, —came to Hester's cottage, demandingwhy they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted andcounselled them as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firmbelief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should havegrown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would berevealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man andwoman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hesterhad vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission ofdivine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained withsin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, notthrough dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing howsacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a lifesuccessful to such an end!

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at thescarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King'sChapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had noright to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, therewere monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slabof slate—as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplexhimself with the purport—there appeared the semblance of an engravedescutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might servefor a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; sosombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of lightgloomier than the shadow:—

 “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES. ”

 [Illustration]

 Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 

 TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Obvious printer's errors have been corrected; for the details, seebelow. Most illustrations have been linked to the larger versions; tosee the larger version, click on the illustration. 

 Typos fixed:

 page 072—spelling normalized: changed 'midday' to 'mid-day' page 132—inserted a missing closing quote after 'a child of her age' page 137—spelling normalized: changed 'careworn' to 'care-worn' page 147—typo fixed: changed 'physican' to 'physician' page 171—typo fixed: changed 'vocies' to 'voices' page 262—removed an extra closing quote after 'scarlet letter too!' page 291—spelling normalized: changed 'birdlike' to 'bird-like' page 300—typo fixed: changed 'intruments' to 'instruments' page 306—spelling normalized: changed 'deathlike' to 'death-like'