"We have wronged each other,"
answered
he.
Hawthorne - Scarlett Letter
"
"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered the
townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage
companion, "else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester
Prynne, and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, I
promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church. "
"You say truly," replied the other. "I am a stranger, and have been a
wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with grievous mishaps by
sea and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk,
to the southward; and am now brought hither by this Indian, to be
redeemed out of my captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tell
me of Hester Prynne's,--have I her name rightly? --of this woman's
offences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold? "
"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your
troubles and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman, "to find
yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and
punished in the sight of rulers and people; as here in our godly New
England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the wife of a certain
learned man, English by birth, but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam,
whence, some good time agone, he was minded to cross over and cast in
his lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this purpose, he sent his
wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary
affairs. Marry, good Sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman
has been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this
learned gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being
left to her own misguidance--"
"Ah! --aha! --I conceive you," said the stranger, with a bitter smile.
"So learned a man as you speak of should have learned this too in his
books. And who, by your favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder
babe--it is some three or four months old, I should judge--which
Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms? "
"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the Daniel
who shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the townsman. "Madam
Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid
their heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one stands
looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that
God sees him. "
"The learned man," observed the stranger, with another smile, "should
come himself, to look into the mystery. "
"It behooves him well, if he be still in life," responded the
townsman. "Now, good Sir, our Massachusetts magistracy, bethinking
themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was
strongly tempted to her fall,--and that, moreover, as is most likely,
her husband may be at the bottom of the sea,--they have not been bold
to put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. The
penalty thereof is death. But in their great mercy and tenderness of
heart, they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three
hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the
remainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon her
bosom. "
"A wise sentence! " remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his head.
"Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious
letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that
the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the
scaffold by her side. But he will be known! --he will be known! --he
will be known! "
He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and, whispering a
few words to his Indian attendant, they both made their way through
the crowd.
While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal,
still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger; so fixed a gaze, that,
at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible
world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an interview,
perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as she
now did, with the hot, mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and
lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast;
with the sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth
as to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen
only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a
home, or beneath a matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it was, she
was conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand
witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him and
her, than to greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled for
refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment
when its protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in these
thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her, until it had repeated
her name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible to the
whole multitude.
"Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne! " said the voice.
It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform on which
Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended
to the meeting-house. It was the place whence proclamations were wont
to be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all the
ceremonial that attended such public observances in those days. Here,
to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Governor Bellingham
himself, with four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a
guard of honor. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of
embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a
gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his
wrinkles. He was not ill fitted to be the head and representative of a
community, which owed its origin and progress, and its present state
of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and
tempered energies of manhood, and the sombre sagacity of age;
accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so
little. The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler was
surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a
period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness
of Divine institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage.
But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to
select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be
less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and
disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid
aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face. She seemed
conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay in the
larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes
towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale and trembled.
The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and
famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a great scholar,
like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of
kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, had been less
carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth,
rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him. There he
stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while
his gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were
winking, like those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated
sunshine. He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see
prefixed to old volumes of sermons; and had no more right than one of
those portraits would have, to step forth, as he now did, and meddle
with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish.
"Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, "I have striven with my young
brother here, under whose preaching of the word you have been
privileged to sit,"--here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of
a pale young man beside him,--"I have sought, I say, to persuade this
godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in the face of Heaven,
and before these wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of all the
people, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowing
your natural temper better than I, he could the better judge what
arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as might
prevail over your hardness and obstinacy; insomuch that you should no
longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. But
he opposes to me (with a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond
his years), that it were wronging the very nature of woman to force
her to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and in
presence of so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to convince him,
the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of
it forth. What say you to it, once again, Brother Dimmesdale? Must it
be thou, or I, that shall deal with this poor sinner's soul? "
There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of the
balcony; and Governor Bellingham gave expression to its purport,
speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered with respect
towards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed.
"Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of this woman's
soul lies greatly with you. It behooves you, therefore, to exhort her
to repentance, and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof. "
The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale; a young clergyman, who had come from one
of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the
age into our wild forest-land. His eloquence and religious fervor had
already given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. He was a
person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending
brow, large brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he
forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both
nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint.
Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments,
there was an air about this young minister,--an apprehensive, a
startled, a half-frightened look,--as of a being who felt himself
quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and
could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far
as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus
kept himself simple and childlike; coming forth, when occasion was,
with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as
many people said, affected them like the speech of an angel.
Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor
had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in
the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred
even in its pollution. The trying nature of his position drove the
blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous.
"Speak to the woman, my brother," said Mr. Wilson. "It is of moment to
her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful Governor says, momentous to
thine own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the truth! "
The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, in silent prayer, as it
seemed, and then came forward.
"Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down
steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good man says, and
seest the accountability under which I labor. If thou feelest it to be
for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be
made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name
of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any
mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though
he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee,
on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty
heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt
him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath
granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an
open triumph over the evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Take
heed how thou deniest to him--who, perchance, hath not the courage to
grasp it for himself--the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now
presented to thy lips! "
The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and
broken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than the
direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts,
and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even the poor
baby, at Hester's bosom, was affected by the same influence; for it
directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up
its little arms, with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So
powerful seemed the minister's appeal, that the people could not
believe but that Hester Prynne would speak out the guilty name; or
else that the guilty one himself, in whatever high or lowly place he
stood, would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, and
compelled to ascend to the scaffold.
Hester shook her head.
"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy! " cried the
Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before. "That little babe hath
been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou
hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to
take the scarlet letter off thy breast. "
"Never! " replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but into
the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is too deeply
branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his
agony, as well as mine! "
"Speak, woman! " said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding
from the crowd about the scaffold. "Speak; and give your child a
father! "
"I will not speak! " answered Hester, turning pale as death, but
responding to this voice, which she too surely recognized. "And my
child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly
one! "
"She will not speak! " murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over the
balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his
appeal. He now drew back, with a long respiration. "Wondrous strength
and generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak! "
[Illustration: "She was led back to Prison"]
Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, the
elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion,
addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches,
but with continual reference to the ignominious letter. So forcibly
did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his
periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new
terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue
from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept
her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of
weary indifference. She had borne, that morning, all that nature could
endure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from
too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself
beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of animal
life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher
thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant,
during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its
wailings and screams; she strove to hush it, mechanically, but seemed
scarcely to sympathize with its trouble. With the same hard demeanor,
she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within
its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered, by those who peered after
her, that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark
passage-way of the interior.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IV.
THE INTERVIEW.
After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in a
state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness, lest
she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied
mischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossible
to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment,
Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. He
described him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical
science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could
teach, in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the
forest. To say the truth, there was much need of professional
assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for
the child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed
to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair,
which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of
pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony
which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.
Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment appeared that
individual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowd had been
of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was
lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most
convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the
magistrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting
his ransom. His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer,
after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the
comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had
immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to
moan.
"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the
practitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in
your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter be
more amenable to just authority than you may have found her
heretofore. "
"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master Brackett,
"I shall own you for a man of skill indeed! Verily, the woman hath
been like a possessed one; and there lacks little, that I should take
in hand to drive Satan out of her with stripes. "
The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of
the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. Nor did his
demeanor change, when the withdrawal of the prison-keeper left him
face to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in the
crowd, had intimated so close a relation between himself and her. His
first care was given to the child; whose cries, indeed, as she lay
writhing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to
postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He examined
the infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case,
which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical
preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water.
"My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a
year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of
simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the
medical degree. Here, woman! The child is yours,--she is none of
mine,--neither will she recognize my voice or aspect as a father's.
Administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand. "
Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with
strongly marked apprehension into his face.
"Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe? " whispered she.
"Foolish woman! " responded the physician, half coldly, half
soothingly. "What should ail me, to harm this misbegotten and
miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were it my
child,--yea, mine own, as well as thine! --I could do no better for
it. "
As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of
mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered the
draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge.
The moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings
gradually ceased; and, in a few moments, as is the custom of young
children after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy
slumber. The physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, next
bestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny he
felt her pulse, looked into her eyes,--a gaze that made her heart
shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and
cold,--and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to
mingle another draught.
"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I have learned many
new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them,--a recipe that
an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were
as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless
conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and
heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous
sea. "
He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow, earnest
look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt
and questioning, as to what his purposes might be. She looked also at
her slumbering child.
"I have thought of death," said she,--"have wished for it,--would even
have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for
anything. Yet if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere
thou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is even now at my lips. "
"Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure. "Dost
thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be so
shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I do
better for my object than to let thee live,--than to give thee
medicines against all harm and peril of life,--so that this burning
shame may still blaze upon thy bosom? " As he spoke, he laid his long
forefinger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch
into Hester's breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed her
involuntary gesture, and smiled. "Live, therefore, and bear about thy
doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women,--in the eyes of him whom
thou didst call thy husband,--in the eyes of yonder child! And, that
thou mayest live, take off this draught. "
Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained the
cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bed
where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the
room afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could not but
tremble at these preparations; for she felt that--having now done all
that humanity or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty,
impelled him to do, for the relief of physical suffering--he was next
to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably
injured.
"Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast fallen
into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal of
infamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was
my folly, and thy weakness. I,--a man of thought,--the bookworm of
great libraries,--a man already in decay, having given my best years
to feed the hungry dream of knowledge,--what had I to do with youth
and beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I
delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil
physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy! Men call me wise. If
sages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen all
this. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and dismal
forest, and entered this settlement of Christian men, the very first
object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester Prynne, standing up, a
statue of ignominy, before the people. Nay, from the moment when we
came down the old church steps together, a married pair, I might have
beheld the bale-fire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our
path! "
"Thou knowest," said Hester,--for, depressed as she was, she could not
endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame,--"thou knowest
that I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any. "
"True," replied he. "It was my folly! I have said it. But, up to that
epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had been so
cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but
lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle
one! It seemed not so wild a dream,--old as I was, and sombre as I
was, and misshapen as I was,--that the simple bliss, which is
scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be
mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost
chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made
there! "
"I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.
"We have wronged each other," answered he. "Mine was the first wrong,
when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation
with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and
philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee.
Between thee and me the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the
man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he? "
"Ask me not! " replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his face.
"That thou shalt never know! "
"Never, sayest thou? " rejoined he, with a smile of dark and
self-relying intelligence. "Never know him! Believe me, Hester, there
are few things,--whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth,
in the invisible sphere of thought,--few things hidden from the man
who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a
mystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude.
Thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even
as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy
heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come
to the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek this
man, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in
alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I
shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and
unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine! "
The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, that
Hester Prynne clasped her hands over her heart, dreading lest he
should read the secret there at once.
"Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine," resumed he,
with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one with him. "He
bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost; but
I shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him! Think not that I
shall interfere with Heaven's own method of retribution, or, to my own
loss, betray him to the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine
that I shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his
fame, if, as I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let
him hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he shall be
mine! "
"Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled. "But
thy words interpret thee as a terror! "
"One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon thee,"
continued the scholar. "Thou hast kept the secret of thy paramour.
Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land that know me.
Breathe not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me husband!
Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall pitch my tent; for,
elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, I find here a
woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest
ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate; no matter whether of
right or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home
is where thou art, and where he is. But betray me not! "
[Illustration: "The Eyes of the wrinkled Scholar glowed"]
"Wherefore dost thou desire it? " inquired Hester, shrinking, she
hardly knew why, from this secret bond. "Why not announce thyself
openly, and cast me off at once? "
"It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the dishonor
that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may be for other
reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let,
therefore, thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and of
whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize me not, by word, by sign,
by look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottest
of. Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his
life, will be in my hands. Beware! "
"I will keep thy secret, as I have his," said Hester.
"Swear it! " rejoined he.
And she took the oath.
"And now, Mistress Prynne," said old Roger Chillingworth, as he was
hereafter to be named, "I leave thee alone; alone with thy infant, and
the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to
wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares and
hideous dreams? "
"Why dost thou smile so at me? " inquired Hester, troubled at the
expression of his eyes. "Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the
forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will
prove the ruin of my soul? "
"Not thy soul," he answered, with another smile. "No, not thine! "
[Illustration]
V.
HESTER AT HER NEEDLE.
Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door
was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling
on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no
other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps
there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from
the threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle
that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at
which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was
supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the
combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the
scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and
insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which,
therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength
that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that
condemned her--a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support,
as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm--had held her up, through
the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended
walk from her prison-door, began the daily custom; and she must either
sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature,
or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help
her through the present grief. To-morrow would bring its own trial
with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own
trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to
be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with
the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never
to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile
up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up
her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the
preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and
embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the
young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter
flaming on her breast,--at her, the child of honorable parents,--at
her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman,--at her,
who had once been innocent,--as the figure, the body, the reality of
sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would
be her only monument.
It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her,--kept by no
restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the
Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure,--free to return to her
birthplace, or to any other European land, and there hide her
character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if
emerging into another state of being,--and having also the passes of
the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her
nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life
were alien from the law that had condemned her,--it may seem
marvellous, that this woman should still call that place her home,
where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there
is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has
the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to
linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and
marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more
irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her
ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as
if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had
converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim
and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long
home. All other scenes of earth--even that village of rural England,
where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her
mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago--were foreign to her,
in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and
galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.
It might be, too,--doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret
from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart,
like a serpent from its hole,--it might be that another feeling kept
her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt,
there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in
a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before
the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a
joint futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again, the
tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation, and
laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized,
and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the
face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled
herself to believe--what, finally, she reasoned upon, as her motive
for continuing a resident of New England--was half a truth, and half a
self-delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her
guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so,
perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her
soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more
saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.
[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 any
other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been
built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the soil about it
was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put
it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the
habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin
of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of
scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much
conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some
object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed.
In this little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she
possessed, and by the license of the magistrates, who still kept an
inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with her
infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself
to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman
should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep
nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or
standing in the doorway, or laboring in her little garden, or coming
forth along the pathway that led townward; and, discerning the scarlet
letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagious
fear.
Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who
dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She
possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded
comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her
thriving infant and herself. It was the art--then, as now, almost the
only one within a woman's grasp--of needlework. She bore on her
breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her
delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court might
gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual
adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here,
indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterized the
Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for the
finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age,
demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not
fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast
behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense
with. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of
magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which a
new government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of
policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and a
sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought
bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to
the official state of men assuming the reins of power; and were
readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while
sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian
order. In the array of funerals, too,--whether for the apparel of the
dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth
and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors,--there was a frequent and
characteristic demand for such labor as Hester Prynne could supply.
Baby-linen--for babies then wore robes of state--afforded still
another possibility of toil and emolument.
By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be
termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so
miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a
fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever
other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow,
on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hester
really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is
certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many
hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be,
chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and
state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her
needlework was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it
on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby's
little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the
coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single
instance, her skill was called in aid to embroider the white veil
which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception
indicated the ever-relentless rigor with which society frowned upon
her sin.
Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the
plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simple
abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials
and the most sombre hue; with only that one ornament,--the scarlet
letter,--which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the
other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say,
a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy
charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which
appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it
hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her
infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on
wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently
insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she might
readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in
making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an
idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a
real sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many hours to such rude
handiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental
characteristic,--a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in
the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all
the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon. Women derive
a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil
of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of
expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all
other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience
with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine
and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might
be deeply wrong, beneath.
In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in the
world. With her native energy of character, and rare capacity, it
could not entirely cast her off, although it had set a mark upon her,
more intolerable to a woman's heart than that which branded the brow
of Cain. In all her intercourse with society, however, there was
nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture,
every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in
contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as
much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with
the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human
kind. She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them,
like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer
make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor
mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifesting
its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance.
These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be
the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart. It was not
an age of delicacy; and her position, although she understood it well,
and was in little danger of forgetting it, was often brought before
her vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch
upon the tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom she
sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand
that was stretched forth to succor them. Dames of elevated rank,
likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were
accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes
through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a
subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser
expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a
rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Hester had schooled herself long
and well; she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of
crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again
subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patient,--a martyr,
indeed,--but she forbore to pray for her enemies; lest, in spite of
her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly
twist themselves into a curse.
Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the
innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for
her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal.
Clergymen paused in the street to address words of exhortation, that
brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor,
sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath
smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself
the text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; for
they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible
in this dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with never
any companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to
pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the
utterance of a word that had no distinct purport to their own
minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips
that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion
of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no
deeper pang, had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story
among themselves,--had the summer breeze murmured about it,--had the
wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt in
the gaze of a new eye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet
letter,--and none ever failed to do so,--they branded it afresh into
Hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet
always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. But then,
again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its
cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in
short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human
eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the
contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture.
[Illustration: Lonely Footsteps]
But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she
felt an eye--a human eye--upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to
give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. The next
instant, back it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain;
for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. Had Hester sinned
alone?
Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer
moral and intellectual fibre, would have been still more so, by the
strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with
those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was
outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester,--if
altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted,--she
felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a
new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing,
that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other
hearts. She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus
made. What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers
of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman,
as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but
a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet
letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or,
must she receive those intimations--so obscure, yet so distinct--as
truth? In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so
awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked
her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought
it into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would
give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or
magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of
antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with
angels. "What evil thing is at hand? " would Hester say to herself.
Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the
scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint! Again, a mystic
sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the
sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of all
tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. That
unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on Hester
Prynne's,--what had the two in common? Or, once more, the electric
thrill would give her warning,--"Behold, Hester, here is a
companion! "--and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young
maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly
averted with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks; as if her purity
were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, whose
talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in
youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere? --such loss of faith is
ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that
all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's
hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no
fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.
The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a
grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story
about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a
terrific legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet
cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal
fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne
walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared
Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the
rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.
[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 of
Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance
of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she
watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more
brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over
the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl! --For so had Hester called
her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the
calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the
comparison. But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great
price,--purchased with all she had,--her mother's only treasure! How
strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter,
which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy
could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct
consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely
child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally
a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne
less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been
evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be
good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding
nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that
should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.
Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its
vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs,
the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to
have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the
world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace
which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire,
however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very
garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in
rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better
understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the
arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before
the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus
arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty,
shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a
paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around
her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and
soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as
perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety;
in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full
scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the
pomp, in little, of an infant princess.
"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered the
townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage
companion, "else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester
Prynne, and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, I
promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church. "
"You say truly," replied the other. "I am a stranger, and have been a
wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with grievous mishaps by
sea and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk,
to the southward; and am now brought hither by this Indian, to be
redeemed out of my captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tell
me of Hester Prynne's,--have I her name rightly? --of this woman's
offences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold? "
"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your
troubles and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman, "to find
yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and
punished in the sight of rulers and people; as here in our godly New
England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the wife of a certain
learned man, English by birth, but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam,
whence, some good time agone, he was minded to cross over and cast in
his lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this purpose, he sent his
wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary
affairs. Marry, good Sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman
has been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this
learned gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being
left to her own misguidance--"
"Ah! --aha! --I conceive you," said the stranger, with a bitter smile.
"So learned a man as you speak of should have learned this too in his
books. And who, by your favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder
babe--it is some three or four months old, I should judge--which
Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms? "
"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the Daniel
who shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the townsman. "Madam
Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid
their heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one stands
looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that
God sees him. "
"The learned man," observed the stranger, with another smile, "should
come himself, to look into the mystery. "
"It behooves him well, if he be still in life," responded the
townsman. "Now, good Sir, our Massachusetts magistracy, bethinking
themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was
strongly tempted to her fall,--and that, moreover, as is most likely,
her husband may be at the bottom of the sea,--they have not been bold
to put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. The
penalty thereof is death. But in their great mercy and tenderness of
heart, they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three
hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the
remainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon her
bosom. "
"A wise sentence! " remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his head.
"Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious
letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that
the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the
scaffold by her side. But he will be known! --he will be known! --he
will be known! "
He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and, whispering a
few words to his Indian attendant, they both made their way through
the crowd.
While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal,
still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger; so fixed a gaze, that,
at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible
world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an interview,
perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as she
now did, with the hot, mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and
lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast;
with the sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth
as to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen
only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a
home, or beneath a matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it was, she
was conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand
witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him and
her, than to greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled for
refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment
when its protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in these
thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her, until it had repeated
her name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible to the
whole multitude.
"Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne! " said the voice.
It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform on which
Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended
to the meeting-house. It was the place whence proclamations were wont
to be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all the
ceremonial that attended such public observances in those days. Here,
to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Governor Bellingham
himself, with four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a
guard of honor. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of
embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a
gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his
wrinkles. He was not ill fitted to be the head and representative of a
community, which owed its origin and progress, and its present state
of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and
tempered energies of manhood, and the sombre sagacity of age;
accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so
little. The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler was
surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a
period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness
of Divine institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage.
But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to
select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be
less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and
disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid
aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face. She seemed
conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay in the
larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes
towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale and trembled.
The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and
famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a great scholar,
like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of
kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, had been less
carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth,
rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him. There he
stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while
his gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were
winking, like those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated
sunshine. He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see
prefixed to old volumes of sermons; and had no more right than one of
those portraits would have, to step forth, as he now did, and meddle
with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish.
"Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, "I have striven with my young
brother here, under whose preaching of the word you have been
privileged to sit,"--here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of
a pale young man beside him,--"I have sought, I say, to persuade this
godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in the face of Heaven,
and before these wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of all the
people, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowing
your natural temper better than I, he could the better judge what
arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as might
prevail over your hardness and obstinacy; insomuch that you should no
longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. But
he opposes to me (with a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond
his years), that it were wronging the very nature of woman to force
her to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and in
presence of so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to convince him,
the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of
it forth. What say you to it, once again, Brother Dimmesdale? Must it
be thou, or I, that shall deal with this poor sinner's soul? "
There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of the
balcony; and Governor Bellingham gave expression to its purport,
speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered with respect
towards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed.
"Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of this woman's
soul lies greatly with you. It behooves you, therefore, to exhort her
to repentance, and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof. "
The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale; a young clergyman, who had come from one
of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the
age into our wild forest-land. His eloquence and religious fervor had
already given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. He was a
person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending
brow, large brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he
forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both
nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint.
Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments,
there was an air about this young minister,--an apprehensive, a
startled, a half-frightened look,--as of a being who felt himself
quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and
could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far
as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus
kept himself simple and childlike; coming forth, when occasion was,
with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as
many people said, affected them like the speech of an angel.
Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor
had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in
the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred
even in its pollution. The trying nature of his position drove the
blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous.
"Speak to the woman, my brother," said Mr. Wilson. "It is of moment to
her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful Governor says, momentous to
thine own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the truth! "
The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, in silent prayer, as it
seemed, and then came forward.
"Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down
steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good man says, and
seest the accountability under which I labor. If thou feelest it to be
for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be
made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name
of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any
mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though
he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee,
on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty
heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt
him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath
granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an
open triumph over the evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Take
heed how thou deniest to him--who, perchance, hath not the courage to
grasp it for himself--the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now
presented to thy lips! "
The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and
broken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than the
direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts,
and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even the poor
baby, at Hester's bosom, was affected by the same influence; for it
directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up
its little arms, with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So
powerful seemed the minister's appeal, that the people could not
believe but that Hester Prynne would speak out the guilty name; or
else that the guilty one himself, in whatever high or lowly place he
stood, would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, and
compelled to ascend to the scaffold.
Hester shook her head.
"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy! " cried the
Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before. "That little babe hath
been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou
hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to
take the scarlet letter off thy breast. "
"Never! " replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but into
the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is too deeply
branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his
agony, as well as mine! "
"Speak, woman! " said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding
from the crowd about the scaffold. "Speak; and give your child a
father! "
"I will not speak! " answered Hester, turning pale as death, but
responding to this voice, which she too surely recognized. "And my
child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly
one! "
"She will not speak! " murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over the
balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his
appeal. He now drew back, with a long respiration. "Wondrous strength
and generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak! "
[Illustration: "She was led back to Prison"]
Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, the
elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion,
addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches,
but with continual reference to the ignominious letter. So forcibly
did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his
periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new
terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue
from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept
her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of
weary indifference. She had borne, that morning, all that nature could
endure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from
too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself
beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of animal
life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher
thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant,
during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its
wailings and screams; she strove to hush it, mechanically, but seemed
scarcely to sympathize with its trouble. With the same hard demeanor,
she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within
its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered, by those who peered after
her, that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark
passage-way of the interior.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IV.
THE INTERVIEW.
After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in a
state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness, lest
she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied
mischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossible
to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment,
Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. He
described him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical
science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could
teach, in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the
forest. To say the truth, there was much need of professional
assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for
the child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed
to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair,
which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of
pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony
which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.
Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment appeared that
individual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowd had been
of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was
lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most
convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the
magistrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting
his ransom. His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer,
after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the
comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had
immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to
moan.
"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the
practitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in
your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter be
more amenable to just authority than you may have found her
heretofore. "
"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master Brackett,
"I shall own you for a man of skill indeed! Verily, the woman hath
been like a possessed one; and there lacks little, that I should take
in hand to drive Satan out of her with stripes. "
The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of
the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. Nor did his
demeanor change, when the withdrawal of the prison-keeper left him
face to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in the
crowd, had intimated so close a relation between himself and her. His
first care was given to the child; whose cries, indeed, as she lay
writhing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to
postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He examined
the infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case,
which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical
preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water.
"My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a
year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of
simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the
medical degree. Here, woman! The child is yours,--she is none of
mine,--neither will she recognize my voice or aspect as a father's.
Administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand. "
Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with
strongly marked apprehension into his face.
"Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe? " whispered she.
"Foolish woman! " responded the physician, half coldly, half
soothingly. "What should ail me, to harm this misbegotten and
miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were it my
child,--yea, mine own, as well as thine! --I could do no better for
it. "
As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of
mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered the
draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge.
The moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings
gradually ceased; and, in a few moments, as is the custom of young
children after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy
slumber. The physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, next
bestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny he
felt her pulse, looked into her eyes,--a gaze that made her heart
shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and
cold,--and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to
mingle another draught.
"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I have learned many
new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them,--a recipe that
an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were
as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless
conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and
heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous
sea. "
He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow, earnest
look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt
and questioning, as to what his purposes might be. She looked also at
her slumbering child.
"I have thought of death," said she,--"have wished for it,--would even
have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for
anything. Yet if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere
thou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is even now at my lips. "
"Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure. "Dost
thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be so
shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I do
better for my object than to let thee live,--than to give thee
medicines against all harm and peril of life,--so that this burning
shame may still blaze upon thy bosom? " As he spoke, he laid his long
forefinger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch
into Hester's breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed her
involuntary gesture, and smiled. "Live, therefore, and bear about thy
doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women,--in the eyes of him whom
thou didst call thy husband,--in the eyes of yonder child! And, that
thou mayest live, take off this draught. "
Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained the
cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bed
where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the
room afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could not but
tremble at these preparations; for she felt that--having now done all
that humanity or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty,
impelled him to do, for the relief of physical suffering--he was next
to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably
injured.
"Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast fallen
into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal of
infamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was
my folly, and thy weakness. I,--a man of thought,--the bookworm of
great libraries,--a man already in decay, having given my best years
to feed the hungry dream of knowledge,--what had I to do with youth
and beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I
delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil
physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy! Men call me wise. If
sages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen all
this. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and dismal
forest, and entered this settlement of Christian men, the very first
object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester Prynne, standing up, a
statue of ignominy, before the people. Nay, from the moment when we
came down the old church steps together, a married pair, I might have
beheld the bale-fire of that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our
path! "
"Thou knowest," said Hester,--for, depressed as she was, she could not
endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame,--"thou knowest
that I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any. "
"True," replied he. "It was my folly! I have said it. But, up to that
epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had been so
cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but
lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle
one! It seemed not so wild a dream,--old as I was, and sombre as I
was, and misshapen as I was,--that the simple bliss, which is
scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be
mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost
chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made
there! "
"I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.
"We have wronged each other," answered he. "Mine was the first wrong,
when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation
with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and
philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee.
Between thee and me the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the
man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he? "
"Ask me not! " replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his face.
"That thou shalt never know! "
"Never, sayest thou? " rejoined he, with a smile of dark and
self-relying intelligence. "Never know him! Believe me, Hester, there
are few things,--whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth,
in the invisible sphere of thought,--few things hidden from the man
who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a
mystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude.
Thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even
as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy
heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come
to the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek this
man, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in
alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I
shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and
unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine! "
The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, that
Hester Prynne clasped her hands over her heart, dreading lest he
should read the secret there at once.
"Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine," resumed he,
with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one with him. "He
bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost; but
I shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him! Think not that I
shall interfere with Heaven's own method of retribution, or, to my own
loss, betray him to the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine
that I shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his
fame, if, as I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let
him hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he shall be
mine! "
"Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled. "But
thy words interpret thee as a terror! "
"One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon thee,"
continued the scholar. "Thou hast kept the secret of thy paramour.
Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land that know me.
Breathe not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me husband!
Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall pitch my tent; for,
elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, I find here a
woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest
ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate; no matter whether of
right or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home
is where thou art, and where he is. But betray me not! "
[Illustration: "The Eyes of the wrinkled Scholar glowed"]
"Wherefore dost thou desire it? " inquired Hester, shrinking, she
hardly knew why, from this secret bond. "Why not announce thyself
openly, and cast me off at once? "
"It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the dishonor
that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may be for other
reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let,
therefore, thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and of
whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize me not, by word, by sign,
by look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottest
of. Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his
life, will be in my hands. Beware! "
"I will keep thy secret, as I have his," said Hester.
"Swear it! " rejoined he.
And she took the oath.
"And now, Mistress Prynne," said old Roger Chillingworth, as he was
hereafter to be named, "I leave thee alone; alone with thy infant, and
the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to
wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares and
hideous dreams? "
"Why dost thou smile so at me? " inquired Hester, troubled at the
expression of his eyes. "Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the
forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will
prove the ruin of my soul? "
"Not thy soul," he answered, with another smile. "No, not thine! "
[Illustration]
V.
HESTER AT HER NEEDLE.
Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door
was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling
on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no
other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps
there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from
the threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle
that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at
which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was
supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the
combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the
scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and
insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which,
therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength
that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that
condemned her--a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support,
as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm--had held her up, through
the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended
walk from her prison-door, began the daily custom; and she must either
sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature,
or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help
her through the present grief. To-morrow would bring its own trial
with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own
trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to
be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with
the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never
to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile
up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up
her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the
preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and
embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the
young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter
flaming on her breast,--at her, the child of honorable parents,--at
her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman,--at her,
who had once been innocent,--as the figure, the body, the reality of
sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would
be her only monument.
It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her,--kept by no
restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the
Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure,--free to return to her
birthplace, or to any other European land, and there hide her
character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if
emerging into another state of being,--and having also the passes of
the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her
nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life
were alien from the law that had condemned her,--it may seem
marvellous, that this woman should still call that place her home,
where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there
is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has
the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to
linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and
marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more
irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her
ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as
if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had
converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim
and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long
home. All other scenes of earth--even that village of rural England,
where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her
mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago--were foreign to her,
in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and
galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.
It might be, too,--doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret
from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart,
like a serpent from its hole,--it might be that another feeling kept
her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt,
there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in
a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before
the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a
joint futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again, the
tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation, and
laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized,
and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the
face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled
herself to believe--what, finally, she reasoned upon, as her motive
for continuing a resident of New England--was half a truth, and half a
self-delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her
guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so,
perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her
soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more
saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.
[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 any
other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been
built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the soil about it
was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put
it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the
habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin
of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of
scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much
conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some
object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed.
In this little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she
possessed, and by the license of the magistrates, who still kept an
inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with her
infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself
to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman
should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep
nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or
standing in the doorway, or laboring in her little garden, or coming
forth along the pathway that led townward; and, discerning the scarlet
letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagious
fear.
Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who
dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She
possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded
comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her
thriving infant and herself. It was the art--then, as now, almost the
only one within a woman's grasp--of needlework. She bore on her
breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her
delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court might
gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual
adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here,
indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterized the
Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for the
finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age,
demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not
fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast
behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense
with. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of
magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which a
new government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of
policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and a
sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought
bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to
the official state of men assuming the reins of power; and were
readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while
sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian
order. In the array of funerals, too,--whether for the apparel of the
dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth
and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors,--there was a frequent and
characteristic demand for such labor as Hester Prynne could supply.
Baby-linen--for babies then wore robes of state--afforded still
another possibility of toil and emolument.
By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be
termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so
miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a
fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever
other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow,
on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hester
really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is
certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many
hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be,
chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and
state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her
needlework was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it
on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby's
little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the
coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single
instance, her skill was called in aid to embroider the white veil
which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception
indicated the ever-relentless rigor with which society frowned upon
her sin.
Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the
plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simple
abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials
and the most sombre hue; with only that one ornament,--the scarlet
letter,--which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the
other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say,
a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy
charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which
appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it
hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her
infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on
wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently
insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she might
readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in
making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an
idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a
real sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many hours to such rude
handiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental
characteristic,--a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in
the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all
the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon. Women derive
a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil
of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of
expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all
other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience
with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine
and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might
be deeply wrong, beneath.
In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in the
world. With her native energy of character, and rare capacity, it
could not entirely cast her off, although it had set a mark upon her,
more intolerable to a woman's heart than that which branded the brow
of Cain. In all her intercourse with society, however, there was
nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture,
every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in
contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as
much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with
the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human
kind. She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them,
like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer
make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor
mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifesting
its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance.
These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be
the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart. It was not
an age of delicacy; and her position, although she understood it well,
and was in little danger of forgetting it, was often brought before
her vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch
upon the tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom she
sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand
that was stretched forth to succor them. Dames of elevated rank,
likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were
accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes
through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a
subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser
expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a
rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Hester had schooled herself long
and well; she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of
crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again
subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patient,--a martyr,
indeed,--but she forbore to pray for her enemies; lest, in spite of
her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly
twist themselves into a curse.
Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the
innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for
her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal.
Clergymen paused in the street to address words of exhortation, that
brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor,
sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath
smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself
the text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; for
they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible
in this dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with never
any companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to
pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the
utterance of a word that had no distinct purport to their own
minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips
that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion
of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no
deeper pang, had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story
among themselves,--had the summer breeze murmured about it,--had the
wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt in
the gaze of a new eye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet
letter,--and none ever failed to do so,--they branded it afresh into
Hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet
always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. But then,
again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its
cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in
short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human
eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the
contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture.
[Illustration: Lonely Footsteps]
But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she
felt an eye--a human eye--upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to
give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. The next
instant, back it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain;
for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. Had Hester sinned
alone?
Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer
moral and intellectual fibre, would have been still more so, by the
strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with
those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was
outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester,--if
altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted,--she
felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a
new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing,
that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other
hearts. She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus
made. What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers
of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman,
as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but
a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet
letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or,
must she receive those intimations--so obscure, yet so distinct--as
truth? In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so
awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked
her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought
it into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would
give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or
magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of
antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with
angels. "What evil thing is at hand? " would Hester say to herself.
Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the
scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint! Again, a mystic
sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the
sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of all
tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. That
unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on Hester
Prynne's,--what had the two in common? Or, once more, the electric
thrill would give her warning,--"Behold, Hester, here is a
companion! "--and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young
maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly
averted with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks; as if her purity
were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, whose
talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in
youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere? --such loss of faith is
ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that
all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's
hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no
fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.
The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a
grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story
about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a
terrific legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet
cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal
fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne
walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared
Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the
rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.
[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 of
Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance
of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she
watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more
brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over
the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl! --For so had Hester called
her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the
calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the
comparison. But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great
price,--purchased with all she had,--her mother's only treasure! How
strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter,
which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy
could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct
consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely
child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally
a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne
less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been
evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be
good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding
nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that
should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.
Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its
vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs,
the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to
have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the
world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace
which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire,
however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very
garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in
rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better
understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the
arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before
the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus
arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty,
shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a
paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around
her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and
soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as
perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety;
in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full
scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the
pomp, in little, of an infant princess.
