No More Learning

He
lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his
reach.

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 hope
and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of
horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but
dared not speak.

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for
so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had
habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether
foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance,
in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the
untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a
colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart had
their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely
as the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked from
this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever
priests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardly
more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the
judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church.
The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The
scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared
not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her
teachers,--stern and wild ones,--and they had made her strong, but
taught her much amiss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Let us not look back," answered Hester Prynne. "The past is gone!
Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With this symbol, I undo
it all, and make it as it had never been! "

So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter,
and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the
withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the
stream. With a hand's breadth farther flight it would have fallen into
the water, and have given the little brook another woe to carry
onward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring
about. But there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lost
jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be
haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and
unaccountable misfortune.

[Illustration: A Gleam of Sunshine]

The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden
of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite relief! She
had not known the weight, until she felt the freedom! By another
impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and down
it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a
light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her
features. There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a
radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of
womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been
long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her
beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and
clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before
unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of
the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal
hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden
smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into
the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow
fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn
trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the
brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its
merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a
mystery of joy.

Such was the sympathy of Nature--that wild, heathen Nature of the
forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher
truth--with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly born,
or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine,
filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the
outward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been
bright in Hester's eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimmesdale's!

Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slowly; for she saw the clergyman.




[Illustration]

XIX.

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: The Child at the Brook-Side]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Bring it hither! " said Hester.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was to be
left a solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their
multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there,
and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this
other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already
overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with
not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

XX.

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE.


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

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of
impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled and
more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and himself had
sketched for their departure. It had been determined between them,
that the Old World, with its crowds and cities, offered them a more
eligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of New England, or all
America, with its alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the few
settlements of Europeans, scattered thinly along the seaboard. Not to
speak of the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the
hardships of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his
entire development, would secure him a home only in the midst of
civilization and refinement; the higher the state, the more delicately
adapted to it the man. In furtherance of this choice, it so happened
that a ship lay in the harbor; one of those questionable cruisers,
frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of the
deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibility
of character. This vessel had recently arrived from the Spanish Main,
and, within three days' time, would sail for Bristol. Hester
Prynne--whose vocation, as a self-enlisted Sister of Charity, had
brought her acquainted with the captain and crew--could take upon
herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child, with all
the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable.

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the
precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It would
probably be on the fourth day from the present. "That is most
fortunate! " he had then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate, we hesitate to reveal.
Nevertheless,--to hold nothing back from the reader,--it was because,
on the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election
Sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honorable epoch in the life
of a New England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more
suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. "At
least, they shall say of me," thought this exemplary man, "that I
leave no public duty unperformed, nor ill performed! " Sad, indeed,
that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's
should be so miserably deceived! We have had, and may still have,
worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak;
no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease,
that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his
character. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to
himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting
bewildered as to which may be the true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So, reverend Sir, you have made a visit into the forest," observed
the witch-lady, nodding her high head-dress at him. "The next time, I
pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bear
you company. Without taking overmuch upon myself, my good word will go
far towards gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder
potentate you wot of! "

"I profess, madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance,
such as the lady's rank demanded, and his own good-breeding made
imperative,--"I profess, on my conscience and character, that I am
utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words! I went not
into the forest to seek a potentate; neither do I, at any future time,
design a visit thither, with a view to gaining the favor of such a
personage. My one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of
mine, the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice with him over the many precious
souls he hath won from heathendom! "

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

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

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

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by
a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself, with deliberate choice,
as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the
infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused
throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses,
and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn,
bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule
of whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while they
frightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it
were a real incident, did but show his sympathy and fellowship with
wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.

He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the edge of the
burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study.
The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first
betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked
eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing
through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around
him on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried
comfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had
haunted him throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town,
and thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here, gone through
fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here, striven to pray;
here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in its
rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and
God's voice through all! There, on the table, with the inky pen beside
it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst,
where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page, two days
before. He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked
minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far
into the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this
former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That
self was gone. Another man had returned out of the forest; a wiser
one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the
former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the
study, and the minister said, "Come in! "--not wholly devoid of an idea
that he might behold an evil spirit. And so he did! It was old Roger
Chillingworth that entered.