methinks thou art too late," answered the min-
ister, encountering his eye fearfully but firmly.
ister, encountering his eye fearfully but firmly.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v12 - Gre to Hen
"
answered the mother. "I remember it; and so shall little Pearl.
Fear nothing! She may be strange and shy at first, but will
soon learn to love thee. "
By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and
stood on the farther side, gazing silently at Hester and the
clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree trunk waiting
to receive her. Just where she had paused the brook chanced to
form a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image
of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her
beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but
more refined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so
nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to communicate
somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child
herself.
range, the way in which Pearl stood looking
so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest
gloom; herself meanwhile all glorified with a ray of sunshine.
that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the
brook beneath stood another child,- another and the same,-
with likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself in some
indistinct and tantalizing manner estranged from Pearl; as if the
child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out
of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and
was now vainly seeking to return to it.
There was both truth and error in the impression: the child
and mother were estranged, but through Hester's fault, not
Pearl's. Since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate
had been admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, and
so modified the aspect of them all that Pearl, the returning
## p. 7070 (#468) ###########################################
7070
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew
where she was.
"I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister,
"that this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that
thou canst never meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish
spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbid-
den to cross a running stream? Pray hasten her; for this delay
has already imparted a tremor to my nerves. "
"Come, dearest child! " said Hester encouragingly, and stretch-
ing out both her arms. How slow thou art! When hast thou
been so sluggish before now? Here is a friend of mine, who
must be thy friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much love,
henceforward, as thy mother alone could give thee! Leap across
the brook, and come to us. Thou canst leap like a young deer! "
Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet
expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she
fixed her bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister,
and now included them both in the same glance, as if to detect
and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one
another. For some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale
felt the child's eyes upon himself, his hand-with that gesture
so habitual as to have become involuntary-stole over his heart.
At length, assuming a singular air of authority, Pearl stretched
out her hand, with the small forefinger extended and pointing
evidently towards her mother's breast. And beneath, in the mir-
ror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image.
of little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too.
"Thou strange child, why dost thou not come to me? " ex-
claimed Hester.
Pearl still pointed with her forefinger; and a frown gathered
on her brow, the more impressive from the childish, the almost
baby-like, aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother
still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday
suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a
yet more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was
the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its
pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the
aspect of little Pearl.
"Hasten, Pearl, or I shall be angry with thee! " cried Hester
Prynne, who, however inured to such behavior on the elf-child's
part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly
## p. 7071 (#469) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7071
deportment now. "Leap across the brook, naughty child, and
run hither; else I must come to thee! "
But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats any
more than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a
fit of passion, gesticulating violently and throwing her small
figure into the most extravagant contortions. She accompanied
this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverber-
ated on all sides; so that, alone as she was in her childish and
unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden multitude were
lending her their sympathy and encouragement. Seen in the
brook once more was the shadowy wraith of Pearl's image,
crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly
gesticulating, and in the midst of all, still pointing its small fore-
finger at Hester's bosom!
"I see what ails the child," whispered Hester to the clergy-
man, and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her
trouble and annoyance. "Children will not abide any, the slight-
est, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are daily
before their eyes. Pearl misses something which she has always
seen me wear! "
"I pray you," answered the minister, "if thou hast any means
of pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the can-
kered wrath of an old witch like Mistress Hibbins," added he,
attempting to smile, "I know nothing that I would not sooner
encounter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's young beauty,
as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify
her, if thou lovest me! "
Hester turned again towards Pearl, with a crimson blush upon
her cheek, a conscious glance aside at the clergyman, and then
a heavy sigh; while even before she had time to speak the blush
yielded to a deadly pallor.
"Pearl," said she sadly, "look down at thy feet! There! —
before thee! -on the hither side of the brook! "
The child turned her eyes to the point indicated; and there
lay the scarlet letter, so close upon the margin of the stream.
that the gold embroidery was reflected in it.
"Bring it hither! " said Hester.
"Come thou and take it up! " answered Pearl.
"Was ever such a child! " observed Hester, aside to the min-
ister. "Oh, I have much to tell thee about her! But in very
truth, she is right as regards this hateful token. I must bear its
## p. 7072 (#470) ###########################################
7072
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
torture yet a little longer,-only a few days longer,— until we
shall have left this region and look back hither as to a land
which we have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! The
mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up for-
ever! "
With these words she advanced to the margin of the brook,
took up the scarlet letter and fastened it again into her bosom.
Hopefully but a moment ago as Hester had spoken of drowning
it in the deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon
her as she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand
of fate. She had flung it into infinite space! she had drawn an
hour's free breath! - and here again was the scarlet misery, glit-
tering on the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus typified or
no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom.
Hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair, and con-
fined them beneath her cap. As if there was a withering spell
in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her
womanhood, departed like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow
seemed to fall across her.
When the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand
to Pearl.
"Dost thou know thy mother now, child? " asked she re-
proachfully, but with a subdued tone. "Wilt thou come across
the brook and own thy mother, now that she has her shame
upon her, now that she is sad? "
―
bounding across the
"Now thou art my
"Yes; now I will! " answered the child,
brook and clasping Hester in her arms.
mother indeed! and I am thy little Pearl! "
In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she
drew down her mother's head, and kissed her brow and both her
cheeks. But then-by a kind of necessity that always impelled
this child to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give
with a throb of anguish - Pearl put up her mouth and kissed the
scarlet letter too!
«< That was not kind! said Hester. "When thou hast shown
me a little love, thou mockest me! "
"Why doth the minister sit yonder? " asked Pearl.
"He waits to welcome thee," replied her mother. "Come thou,
and entreat his blessing! He loves thee, my little Pearl, and
Wilt thou not love him? Come! he longs
loves thy mother too.
to greet thee! "
## p. 7073 (#471) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7073
"Doth he love us? " said Pearl, looking up with acute intelli-
gence into her mother's face. "Will he go back with us, hand
in hand, we three together into the town? "
"Not now, my dear child," answered Hester.
"But in days
to come, he will walk hand in hand with us. We will have a
home and fireside of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee;
and he will teach thee many things, and love thee dearly. Thou
wilt love him; wilt thou not? "
"And will he always keep his hand over his heart? " inquired
Pearl.
"Foolish child, what a question is that! " exclaimed her mother.
"Come and ask his blessing! >>>
-
But whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive
with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from
whatever caprice of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no
favor to the clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force that
her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifest-
ing her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her
babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could trans-
form her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects,
with a new mischief in them, each and all. The minister — pain-
fully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman
to admit him into the child's kindlier regards—bent forward and
impressed one on her brow. Hereupon Pearl broke away from
her mother, and running to the brook, stooped over it and bathed
her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off and
diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then
remained apart, silently watching Hester and the clergyman;
while they talked together, and made such arrangements as were
suggested by their new position and the purposes soon to be
fulfilled.
And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The
dell was to be left a solitude among its dark old trees, which
with their multitudinous tongues would whisper long of what had
passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy
brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its
little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept
up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of
tone than for ages heretofore.
XII-443
## p. 7074 (#472) ###########################################
7074
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER
From The Scarlet Letter>
HE eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audi-
THE ence had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the
sea, at length came to a pause. There was a momentary
silence, profound as what should follow the utterance of oracles.
Then ensued a murmur and half-hushed tumult; as if the audi-
tors, released from the high spell that had transported them into
the region of another's mind, were returning into themselves with
all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment
more, the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the
church. Now that there was an end, they needed other breath,
more fit to support the gross and earthly life into which they
relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had converted
into words of flame, and had burdened with the rich fragrance
of his thought.
In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street
and the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with
applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they
had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell
or hear. According to their united testimony, never had man
spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake
this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips.
more evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be
seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and
continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay before
him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvel-
ous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it appeared, had
been the relation between the Deity and the communities of man-
kind, with a special reference to the New England which they
were here planting in the wilderness. And as he drew towards
the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constrain-
ing him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel
were constrained; only with this difference, that whereas the Jew-
ish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it
was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the
newly gathered people of the Lord. But throughout it all, and
through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep sad
undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise
## p. 7075 (#473) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7075
than as the natural regret of one soon to pass away. Yes, their
minister whom they so loved - and who so loved them all that
he could not depart heavenward without a sigh-had the fore-
boding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them.
in their tears! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the
last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced: it
was as if an angel in his passage to the skies had shaken his
bright wings over the people for an instant,—at once a shadow
and a splendor,—and had shed down a shower of golden truths
upon them.
Thus there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale — as
to most men in their various spheres, though seldom recognized
until they see it far behind them -an epoch of life more brill-
iant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any
which could hereafter be. He stood at this moment on the very
proudest eminence of superiority to which the gifts of intellect,
rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanc-
tity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days,
when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal.
Such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed
his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit at the close of
his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing
beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still
burning on her breast!
Now was heard again the clangor of the music, and the meas-
ured tramp of the military escort, issuing from the church door.
The procession was to be marshaled thence to the town hall,
where a solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the
day.
Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic
fathers was seen moving through a broad pathway of the people,
who drew back reverently on either side, as the governor and
magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all
that were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of
them. When they were fairly in the market-place, their pres-
ence was greeted by a shout. This though doubtless it might
acquire additional force and volume from the childlike loyalty
which the age awarded to its rulers-was felt to be an irre-
pressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that
high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their
Each felt the impulse in himself and in the same breath
ears.
## p. 7076 (#474) ###########################################
7076
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
caught it from his neighbor. Within the church it had hardly
been kept down; beneath the sky it pealed upward to the zenith.
There were human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought
and symphonious feeling, to produce that more impressive sound
than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of
the sea: even that mighty swell of many voices, blended into one
great voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise one.
vast heart out of the many. Never from the soil of New Eng-
land had gone up such a shout! Never on New England soil
had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren as the
preacher!
How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant
particles of a halo in the air about his head? So etherealized by
spirit as he was, and so apotheosized by worshiping admirers,
did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust of
earth?
As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward,
all eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was
seen to approach among them. The shout died into a murmur,
as one portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of
him. How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph!
The energy or say rather the inspiration-which had held him
up until he should have delivered the sacred message that brought
its own strength along with it from heaven, was withdrawn now.
that it had so faithfully performed its office. The glow which
they had just before beheld burning on his cheek was extinguished,
like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late decaying
embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a
deathlike hue; it was hardly a man with life in him that tottered
on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fall!
One of his clerical brethren,-it was the venerable John Wil-
son,- observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by
the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward
hastily to offer his support. The minister tremulously but decid-
edly repelled the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if
that movement could be so described which rather resembled the
wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's arms in view out-
stretched to tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible
as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite
the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold where long
since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne
-
## p. 7077 (#475) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7077
had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood Hes-
ter, holding little Pearl by the hand! and there was the scarlet
letter on her breast! The minister there made a pause, although
the music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which
the procession moved. It summoned him onward, onward to the
festival! -but here he made a pause.
Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious
eye upon him.
He now left his own place in the procession and
advanced to give assistance, judging from Mr. Dimmesdale's
aspect that he must otherwise inevitably fall. But there was
something in the latter's expression that warned back the magis-
trate, although a man not readily obeying the vague intimations
that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd meanwhile
looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness was in
their view only another phase of the minister's celestial strength;
nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for
one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer
and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven.
He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.
"Hester," said he, "come hither! Come, my little Pearl! »
It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there
was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it.
The child, with the birdlike motion which was one of her char-
acteristics, flew to him and clasped her arms about his knees.
Hester Prynne - slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and
against her strongest will-likewise drew near, but paused be-
fore she reached him. At this instant old Roger Chillingworth
thrust himself through the crowd,- or perhaps, so dark, dis-
turbed, and evil was his look, he rose up out of some nether
region, to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do!
Be that as it might, the old man rushed forward and caught the
minister by the arm.
―
"Madman, hold! what is your purpose? " whispered he. "Wave
back that woman! cast off this child! All shall be well! Do
not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save
you. Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?
>>>
"Ha, tempter!
methinks thou art too late," answered the min-
ister, encountering his eye fearfully but firmly. "Thy power is
not what it was. With God's help, I shall escape thee now! "
He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet
letter.
## p. 7078 (#476) ###########################################
7078
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
"Hester Prynne," cried he with a piercing earnestness, "in
the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me
grace at this last moment to do what- for my own heavy sin
and miserable agony - I withheld myself from doing seven years
ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy
strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God.
hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man is oppos-
ing it with all his might; with all his own might, and the fiend's!
Come, Hester, come! Support me up yonder scaffold! "
The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity
who stood more immediately around the clergyman were so tak
by surprise and so perplexed as to the purport of what they saw,
-unable to receive the explanation which most readily presented
itself, or to imagine any other, that they remained silent and in-
active spectators of the judgment which Providence seemed about
to work. They beheld the minister, leaning on Hester's shoulder,
and supported by her arm around him, approach the scaffold and
ascend its steps; while still the little hand of the sin-born child
was clasped in his. Old Roger Chillingworth followed, as one
intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which
they had all been actors, and well entitled therefore to be pres-
ent at its closing scene.
"Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he, looking
darkly at the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret, no
high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,
save on this very scaffold! "
"Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither! " answered the
minister.
Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester with an expression of
doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed
that there was a feeble smile upon his lips.
"Is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed
of in the forest? "
"I know not! I know not! " she hurriedly replied.
Yea; so we may both die, and little Pearl die with us! "
"For thee and Pearl be it as God shall order," said the min-
ister; "and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which he
hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying
So let me make haste to take my shame upon me! "
Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand
of little Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the
man.
-
-
"Better?
## p. 7079 (#477) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7079
dignified and venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were
his brethren; to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly
appalled, yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing
that some deep life matter - which if full of sin was full of
anguish and repentance likewise- was now to be laid open to
The sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon
the clergyman and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood.
out from all the earth to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of
Eternal justice.
them.
―
"People of New England! " cried he, with a voice that rose
over them high, solemn, and majestic,—yet had always a tremor
through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a
fathomless depth of remorse and woe,-"ye that have loved me!
ye that have deemed me holy! -behold me here, the one sinner
of the world! At last! at last! I stand upon the spot where
seven years since I should have stood; here with this woman,
whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept
hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment from groveling
down upon my face. Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears!
Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk hath been,
wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find
repose, it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repug-
nance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you
at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered! "
It seemed at this point as if the minister must leave the
remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the
bodily weakness, and still more the faintness of heart, that was
striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance,
and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and
the child.
"It was on him! " he continued, with a kind of fierceness, so
determined was he to speak out the whole. "God's eye beheld
it! The angels were forever pointing at it! The Devil knew it
well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning
finger! But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among
you with the mien of a spirit mournful because so pure in a
sinful world! and sad, because he missed his heavenly kindred!
Now at the death hour he stands up before you! He bids you
look again at Hester's scarlet letter. He tells you that with all
its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on
his own breast; and that even this his own red stigma is no
## p. 7080 (#478) ###########################################
7080
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! Stand
any here that questioned God's judgment on a sinner? Behold!
behold a dreadful witness of it! "
With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band
from before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irrever-
ent to describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the
horror-stricken multitude was concentred on the ghastly miracle;
while the minister stood with a flush of triumph in his face, as
one who in the crisis of acutest pain had won a victory. Then
down he sank upon the scaffold. Hester partly raised him, and
supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger Chillingworth
knelt down beside him with a blank, dull countenance, out of
which the life seemed to have departed.
"Thou hast escaped me! " he repeated more than once. "Thou
hast escaped me! "
"May God forgive thee! " said the minister.
deeply sinned. "
"Thou too hast
He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them
on the woman and the child.
"My little Pearl," said he, feebly,- and there was a sweet and
gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose;
nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he
would be sportive with the child,-"dear little Pearl, wilt thou
kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder in the forest! But now
thou wilt? "
Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene
of grief in which the wild infant bore a part had developed all
her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek,
they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy
and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman
in it. Toward her mother too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of
anguish was all fulfilled.
"Hester," said the clergyman, "farewell! »
"Shall we not meet again? " whispered she, bending her face
down close to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life to-
gether? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all
this woe! Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying
eyes. Then tell me what thou seest? "
"Hush, Hester, hush! " said he, with tremulous solemnity.
"The law we broke! the sin here so awfully revealed! Let these
alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be that when
## p. 7081 (#479) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7081
we forgot our God, when we violated our reverence each for the
er's soul, it was thenceforth vai to hope that we could meet
hereafter in an everlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and
he is merciful! He hath proved his mercy most of all in my
afflictions: by giving me this burning torture to bear upon my
breast! by sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the
torture always at red heat! by bringing me hither, to die this
death of triumphant ignominy before the people! Had either of
these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever. Praised be
his name! His will be done! Farewell! "
That final word came forth with the minister's expiring
breath. The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange
deep voice of awe and wonder which could not as yet find
utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the
departed spirit.
HEPZIBAH PYNCHEON
From The House of the Seven Gables'
A
LL this time, however, we are loitering faint-heartedly on the
threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an invin-
cible reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon.
was about to do.
It has already been observed that in the basement story of
the gable fronting on the street, an unworthy ancestor nearly
century ago had fitted up a shop. Ever since the old gentle-
man retired from trade and fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not
only the shop door but the inner arrangements had been suffered
to remain unchanged; while the dust of ages gathered inch-deep
over the shelves and counter, and partly filled an old pair of
scales, as if it were of value enough to be weighed. It treasured
itself up too in the half-open till, where there still lingered a
base sixpence, worth neither more nor less than the hereditary
pride which had here been put to shame. Such had been the state
and condition of the little shop in old Hepzibah's childhood, when
she and her brother used to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken
precincts. So it had remained until within a few days past.
But now, though the shop window was still closely curtained
from the public gaze, a remarkable change had taken place in its
interior. The rich and heavy festoons of cobweb, which it had
## p. 7082 (#480) ###########################################
7082
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
cost a long ancestral succession of spiders their life's labor to
spin and weave, had been carefully brushed away from the ceil-
ing. The counter, shelves, and floor had all been scoured, and
the latter was overstrewn with fresh blue sand. The brown
scales too had evidently undergone rigid discipline, in an unavail-
ing effort to rub off the rust, which, alas! had eaten through and
through their substance. Neither was the little old shop any
longer empty of merchantable goods. A curious eye, privileged
to take an account and investigate behind the counter, would
have discovered a barrel,-yea, two or three barrels and half-
ditto, one containing flour, another apples, and a third, perhaps,
Indian meal. There was likewise a square box of pine-wood, full
of soap in bars; also another of the same size in which were
tallow candles, ten to the pound. A small stock of brown sugar,
some white beans and split peas, and a few other commodities of
low price and such as are constantly in demand, made up the
bulkier portion of the merchandise. It might have been taken
for a ghostly or phantasmagoric reflection of the old shopkeeper
Pyncheon's shabbily provided shelves, save that some of the
articles were of a description and outward form which could
hardly have been known in his day. For instance, there was
a glass pickle jar, filled with fragments of Gibraltar rock; not
indeed splinters of the veritable stone foundation of the famous
fortress, but bits of delectable candy, neatly done up in white
paper. Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-
renowned dance in gingerbread. A party of leaden dragoons
were galloping along one of the shelves, in equipments and uni-
form of modern cut; and there were some sugar figures, with no
strong resemblance to the humanity of any epoch, but less unsat-
isfactorily representing our own fashions than those of a hundred
years ago. Another phenomenon, still more strikingly modern,
was a package of lucifer matches, which in old times would have
been thought actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from
the nether fires of Tophet.
In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, it was incon-
trovertibly evident that somebody had taken the shop and fixtures
of the long-retired and forgotten Mr. Pyncheon, and was about
to renew the enterprise of that departed worthy, with a different
set of customers. Who could this bold adventurer be? and of all
places in the world, why had he chosen the House of the Seven
Gables as the scene of his commercial speculations ?
## p. 7083 (#481) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7083
We return to the elderly maiden. She at length withdrew
her eyes from the dark countenance of the colonel's portrait,
heaved a sigh,—indeed, her breast was a very cave of Æolus
that morning, and stepped across the room on tiptoe, as is the
customary gait of elderly women. Passing through an intervening
passage, she opened a door that communicated with the shop,
just now so elaborately described. Owing to the projection of the
upper story-and still more to the thick shadow of the Pyncheon
elm, which stood almost directly in front of the gable-the twi-
light here was still as much akin to night as morning. Another
heavy sigh from Miss Hepzibah! After a moment's pause on
the threshold, peering towards the window with her near-sighted
scowl as if frowning down some bitter enemy, she suddenly
projected herself into the shop. The haste, and as it were the
galvanic impulse, of the movement were really quite startling.
Nervously-in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say - she
began to busy herself in arranging some children's playthings
and other little wares, on the shelves and at the shop window.
In the aspect of this dark-arrayed, pale-faced, ladylike old figure,
there was a deeply tragic character that contrasted irreconcilably
with the ludicrous pettiness of her employment. It seemed a
queer anomaly that so gaunt and dismal a personage should take
a toy in hand; a miracle that the toy did not vanish in her grasp;
a miserably absurd idea that she should go on perplexing her
stiff and sombre intellect with the question how to tempt little
boys into her premises. Yet such is undoubtedly her object.
Now she places a gingerbread elephant against the window, but
with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon the floor, with
the dismemberment of three legs and its trunk; it has ceased to
be an elephant, and has become a few bits of musty ginger-
bread. There again she has upset a tumbler of marbles, all of
which roll different ways, and each individual marble, devil-
directed, into the most difficult obscurity that it can find. Heaven
help our poor old Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous.
view of her position! As her rigid and rusty frame goes down
upon its hands and knees in quest of the absconding marbles, we
positively feel so much the more inclined to shed tears of sym-
pathy, from the very fact that we must needs turn aside and
laugh at her. For here and if we fail to impress it suitably
upon the reader, it is our own fault, not that of the theme-
here is one of the truest points of melancholy interest that occur
-
## p. 7084 (#482) ###########################################
7084
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
in ordinary life. It was the final throe of what called itself old
gentility. A lady who had fed herself from childhood with the
shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose religion it
was that a lady's hand soils itself irremediably by doing aught
for bread,— this born lady, after sixty years of narrowing means,
is fain to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank. Pov-
erty, treading closely at her heels for a lifetime, has come up
with her at last. She must earn her own food, or starve! And
we have stolen upon Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irreverently,
at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be trans-
formed into the plebeian woman.
In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of
our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point. The
tragedy is enacted with as continual a repetition as that of a
popular drama on a holiday; and nevertheless is felt as deeply,
perhaps, as when a hereditary noble sinks below his order. More
deeply; since with us, rank is the grosser substance of wealth and
a splendid establishment, and has no spiritual existence after the
death of these, but dies hopelessly along with them. And there-
fore, since we have been unfortunate enough to introduce our
heroine at so inauspicious a juncture, we would entreat for a
mood of due solemnity in the spectators of her fate. Let us
behold in poor Hepzibah the immemorial lady,-two hundred
years old on this side of the water, and thrice as many on the
other, with her antique portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms,
records and traditions, and her claim as joint heiress to that
princely territory at the eastward, no longer a wilderness but a
populous fertility; born too in Pyncheon Street, under the
Pyncheon elm, and in the Pyncheon house, where she has spent
all her days,- reduced now in that very house to be the huck-
stress of a cent-shop!
--
This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the only
resource of women in circumstances at all similar to those of our
unfortunate recluse. With her near-sightedness and those tremu-
lous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not
be a seamstress; although her sampler of fifty years gone by
exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental
needlework. A school for little children had been often in her
thoughts; and at one time she had begun a review of her early
studies in the New England Primer, with a view to prepare her
self for the office of instructress. But the love of children had
## p. 7085 (#483) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7085
never been quickened in Hepzibah's heart, and was now torpid
if not extinct; she watched the little people of the neighborhood
from her chamber window, and doubted whether she could toler-
ate a more intimate acquaintance with them. Besides, in our
day the very A B C has become a science, greatly too abstruse
to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter.
A modern child could teach old Hepzibah more than old Hepzi-
bah could teach the child. So, with many a cold, deep heart-
quake at the idea of at last coming into sordid contact with the
world, from which she had so long kept aloof, while every added
day of seclusion had rolled another stone against the cavern door
of her hermitage, the poor thing bethought herself of the ancient
shop window, the rusty scales, and dusty till. She might have
held back a little longer; but another circumstance, not yet hinted
at, had somewhat hastened her decision. Her humble prepara-
tions therefore were duly made, and the enterprise was now to
be commenced. Nor was she entitled to complain of any remark-
able singularity in her fate; for in the town of her nativity we
might point to several little shops of a similar description: some
of them in houses as ancient as that of the seven gables; and
one or two, it may be, where a decayed gentlewoman stands
behind the counter, as grim an image of family pride as Miss
Hepzibah Pyncheon herself.
It was overpoweringly ridiculous, we must honestly confess
it, the deportment of the maiden lady while setting her shop
in order for the public eye. She stole on tiptoe to the win-
dow, as cautiously as if she conceived some bloody-minded villain
to be watching behind the elm-tree with intent to take her life.
Stretching out her long, lank arm, she put a paper of pearl but-
tons, a jew's-harp, or whatever the small article might be, in its
destined place, and straightway vanished back into the dusk as if
the world need never hope for another glimpse of her. It might
have been fancied indeed that she expected to minister to the
wants of the community unseen, like a disembodied divinity or
enchantress, holding forth her bargains to the reverential and
awe-stricken purchaser in an invisible hand. But Hepzibah had
no such flattering dream. She was well aware that she must
ultimately come forward and stand revealed in her proper indi-
viduality; but like other sensitive persons, she could not bear to
be observed in the gradual process, and chose rather to flash
forth on the world's astonished gaze at once.
―――――
―
## p. 7086 (#484) ###########################################
7086
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The inevitable moment was not much longer to be delayed.
The sunshine might now be seen stealing down the front of the
opposite house, from the windows of which came a reflected
gleam, struggling through the boughs of the elm-tree and enlight-
ening the interior of the shop more distinctly than heretofore.
The town appeared to be waking up. A baker's cart had already
rattled through the street, chasing away the latest vestige of
night's sanctity with the jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells. A
milkman was distributing the contents of his cans from door to
door, and the harsh peal of a fisherman's conch-shell was heard
far off, around the corner. None of these tokens escaped Hep-
zibah's notice. The moment had arrived. To delay longer
would be only to lengthen out her misery. Nothing remained
except to take down the bar from the shop door, leaving the
entrance free-more than free; welcome, as if all were house-
hold friends, to every passer-by whose eyes might be attracted
by the commodities of the window. This last act Hepzibah now
performed, letting the bar fall with what smote upon her excited
nerves as a most astounding clatter. Then, as if the only bar-
rier betwixt herself and the world had been thrown down, and a
flood of evil consequences would come tumbling through the gap,
she fled into the inner parlor, threw herself into the ancestral
elbow-chair, and wept.
Our miserable old Hepzibah! It is a heavy annoyance to a
writer who endeavors to represent nature, its various attitudes
and circumstances, in a reasonably correct outline and true color-
ing, that so much of the mean and ludicrous should be hopelessly
mixed up with the purest pathos which life anywhere supplies to
him. What tragic dignity, for example, can be wrought into a
scene like this? How can we elevate our history of retribution
for the sin of long ago, when, as one of our most prominent
figures, we are compelled to introduce - not a young and lovely
woman, nor even the stately remains of beauty, storm-shattered
by affliction, but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden, in a
long-waisted silk gown, and with the strange horror of a turban
on her head? Her visage is not even ugly. It is redeemed from
insignificance only by the contraction of her eyebrows into a
near-sighted scowl. And finally, her great life trial seems to be
that after sixty years of idleness, she finds it convenient to earn
comfortable bread by setting up a shop in a small way.
answered the mother. "I remember it; and so shall little Pearl.
Fear nothing! She may be strange and shy at first, but will
soon learn to love thee. "
By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and
stood on the farther side, gazing silently at Hester and the
clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree trunk waiting
to receive her. Just where she had paused the brook chanced to
form a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image
of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her
beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but
more refined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so
nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to communicate
somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child
herself.
range, the way in which Pearl stood looking
so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest
gloom; herself meanwhile all glorified with a ray of sunshine.
that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the
brook beneath stood another child,- another and the same,-
with likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself in some
indistinct and tantalizing manner estranged from Pearl; as if the
child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out
of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and
was now vainly seeking to return to it.
There was both truth and error in the impression: the child
and mother were estranged, but through Hester's fault, not
Pearl's. Since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate
had been admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, and
so modified the aspect of them all that Pearl, the returning
## p. 7070 (#468) ###########################################
7070
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew
where she was.
"I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister,
"that this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that
thou canst never meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish
spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbid-
den to cross a running stream? Pray hasten her; for this delay
has already imparted a tremor to my nerves. "
"Come, dearest child! " said Hester encouragingly, and stretch-
ing out both her arms. How slow thou art! When hast thou
been so sluggish before now? Here is a friend of mine, who
must be thy friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much love,
henceforward, as thy mother alone could give thee! Leap across
the brook, and come to us. Thou canst leap like a young deer! "
Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet
expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she
fixed her bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister,
and now included them both in the same glance, as if to detect
and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one
another. For some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale
felt the child's eyes upon himself, his hand-with that gesture
so habitual as to have become involuntary-stole over his heart.
At length, assuming a singular air of authority, Pearl stretched
out her hand, with the small forefinger extended and pointing
evidently towards her mother's breast. And beneath, in the mir-
ror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image.
of little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too.
"Thou strange child, why dost thou not come to me? " ex-
claimed Hester.
Pearl still pointed with her forefinger; and a frown gathered
on her brow, the more impressive from the childish, the almost
baby-like, aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother
still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday
suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a
yet more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was
the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its
pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the
aspect of little Pearl.
"Hasten, Pearl, or I shall be angry with thee! " cried Hester
Prynne, who, however inured to such behavior on the elf-child's
part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly
## p. 7071 (#469) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7071
deportment now. "Leap across the brook, naughty child, and
run hither; else I must come to thee! "
But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats any
more than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a
fit of passion, gesticulating violently and throwing her small
figure into the most extravagant contortions. She accompanied
this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverber-
ated on all sides; so that, alone as she was in her childish and
unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden multitude were
lending her their sympathy and encouragement. Seen in the
brook once more was the shadowy wraith of Pearl's image,
crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly
gesticulating, and in the midst of all, still pointing its small fore-
finger at Hester's bosom!
"I see what ails the child," whispered Hester to the clergy-
man, and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her
trouble and annoyance. "Children will not abide any, the slight-
est, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are daily
before their eyes. Pearl misses something which she has always
seen me wear! "
"I pray you," answered the minister, "if thou hast any means
of pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the can-
kered wrath of an old witch like Mistress Hibbins," added he,
attempting to smile, "I know nothing that I would not sooner
encounter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's young beauty,
as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify
her, if thou lovest me! "
Hester turned again towards Pearl, with a crimson blush upon
her cheek, a conscious glance aside at the clergyman, and then
a heavy sigh; while even before she had time to speak the blush
yielded to a deadly pallor.
"Pearl," said she sadly, "look down at thy feet! There! —
before thee! -on the hither side of the brook! "
The child turned her eyes to the point indicated; and there
lay the scarlet letter, so close upon the margin of the stream.
that the gold embroidery was reflected in it.
"Bring it hither! " said Hester.
"Come thou and take it up! " answered Pearl.
"Was ever such a child! " observed Hester, aside to the min-
ister. "Oh, I have much to tell thee about her! But in very
truth, she is right as regards this hateful token. I must bear its
## p. 7072 (#470) ###########################################
7072
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
torture yet a little longer,-only a few days longer,— until we
shall have left this region and look back hither as to a land
which we have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! The
mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up for-
ever! "
With these words she advanced to the margin of the brook,
took up the scarlet letter and fastened it again into her bosom.
Hopefully but a moment ago as Hester had spoken of drowning
it in the deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon
her as she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand
of fate. She had flung it into infinite space! she had drawn an
hour's free breath! - and here again was the scarlet misery, glit-
tering on the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus typified or
no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom.
Hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair, and con-
fined them beneath her cap. As if there was a withering spell
in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her
womanhood, departed like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow
seemed to fall across her.
When the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand
to Pearl.
"Dost thou know thy mother now, child? " asked she re-
proachfully, but with a subdued tone. "Wilt thou come across
the brook and own thy mother, now that she has her shame
upon her, now that she is sad? "
―
bounding across the
"Now thou art my
"Yes; now I will! " answered the child,
brook and clasping Hester in her arms.
mother indeed! and I am thy little Pearl! "
In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she
drew down her mother's head, and kissed her brow and both her
cheeks. But then-by a kind of necessity that always impelled
this child to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give
with a throb of anguish - Pearl put up her mouth and kissed the
scarlet letter too!
«< That was not kind! said Hester. "When thou hast shown
me a little love, thou mockest me! "
"Why doth the minister sit yonder? " asked Pearl.
"He waits to welcome thee," replied her mother. "Come thou,
and entreat his blessing! He loves thee, my little Pearl, and
Wilt thou not love him? Come! he longs
loves thy mother too.
to greet thee! "
## p. 7073 (#471) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7073
"Doth he love us? " said Pearl, looking up with acute intelli-
gence into her mother's face. "Will he go back with us, hand
in hand, we three together into the town? "
"Not now, my dear child," answered Hester.
"But in days
to come, he will walk hand in hand with us. We will have a
home and fireside of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee;
and he will teach thee many things, and love thee dearly. Thou
wilt love him; wilt thou not? "
"And will he always keep his hand over his heart? " inquired
Pearl.
"Foolish child, what a question is that! " exclaimed her mother.
"Come and ask his blessing! >>>
-
But whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive
with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from
whatever caprice of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no
favor to the clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force that
her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifest-
ing her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her
babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could trans-
form her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects,
with a new mischief in them, each and all. The minister — pain-
fully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman
to admit him into the child's kindlier regards—bent forward and
impressed one on her brow. Hereupon Pearl broke away from
her mother, and running to the brook, stooped over it and bathed
her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off and
diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then
remained apart, silently watching Hester and the clergyman;
while they talked together, and made such arrangements as were
suggested by their new position and the purposes soon to be
fulfilled.
And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The
dell was to be left a solitude among its dark old trees, which
with their multitudinous tongues would whisper long of what had
passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy
brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its
little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept
up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of
tone than for ages heretofore.
XII-443
## p. 7074 (#472) ###########################################
7074
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER
From The Scarlet Letter>
HE eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audi-
THE ence had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the
sea, at length came to a pause. There was a momentary
silence, profound as what should follow the utterance of oracles.
Then ensued a murmur and half-hushed tumult; as if the audi-
tors, released from the high spell that had transported them into
the region of another's mind, were returning into themselves with
all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment
more, the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the
church. Now that there was an end, they needed other breath,
more fit to support the gross and earthly life into which they
relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had converted
into words of flame, and had burdened with the rich fragrance
of his thought.
In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street
and the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with
applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they
had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell
or hear. According to their united testimony, never had man
spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake
this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips.
more evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be
seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and
continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay before
him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvel-
ous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it appeared, had
been the relation between the Deity and the communities of man-
kind, with a special reference to the New England which they
were here planting in the wilderness. And as he drew towards
the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constrain-
ing him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel
were constrained; only with this difference, that whereas the Jew-
ish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it
was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the
newly gathered people of the Lord. But throughout it all, and
through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep sad
undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise
## p. 7075 (#473) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7075
than as the natural regret of one soon to pass away. Yes, their
minister whom they so loved - and who so loved them all that
he could not depart heavenward without a sigh-had the fore-
boding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them.
in their tears! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the
last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced: it
was as if an angel in his passage to the skies had shaken his
bright wings over the people for an instant,—at once a shadow
and a splendor,—and had shed down a shower of golden truths
upon them.
Thus there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale — as
to most men in their various spheres, though seldom recognized
until they see it far behind them -an epoch of life more brill-
iant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any
which could hereafter be. He stood at this moment on the very
proudest eminence of superiority to which the gifts of intellect,
rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanc-
tity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days,
when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal.
Such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed
his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit at the close of
his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing
beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still
burning on her breast!
Now was heard again the clangor of the music, and the meas-
ured tramp of the military escort, issuing from the church door.
The procession was to be marshaled thence to the town hall,
where a solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the
day.
Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic
fathers was seen moving through a broad pathway of the people,
who drew back reverently on either side, as the governor and
magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all
that were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of
them. When they were fairly in the market-place, their pres-
ence was greeted by a shout. This though doubtless it might
acquire additional force and volume from the childlike loyalty
which the age awarded to its rulers-was felt to be an irre-
pressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that
high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their
Each felt the impulse in himself and in the same breath
ears.
## p. 7076 (#474) ###########################################
7076
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
caught it from his neighbor. Within the church it had hardly
been kept down; beneath the sky it pealed upward to the zenith.
There were human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought
and symphonious feeling, to produce that more impressive sound
than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of
the sea: even that mighty swell of many voices, blended into one
great voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise one.
vast heart out of the many. Never from the soil of New Eng-
land had gone up such a shout! Never on New England soil
had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren as the
preacher!
How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant
particles of a halo in the air about his head? So etherealized by
spirit as he was, and so apotheosized by worshiping admirers,
did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust of
earth?
As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward,
all eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was
seen to approach among them. The shout died into a murmur,
as one portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of
him. How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph!
The energy or say rather the inspiration-which had held him
up until he should have delivered the sacred message that brought
its own strength along with it from heaven, was withdrawn now.
that it had so faithfully performed its office. The glow which
they had just before beheld burning on his cheek was extinguished,
like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late decaying
embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a
deathlike hue; it was hardly a man with life in him that tottered
on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fall!
One of his clerical brethren,-it was the venerable John Wil-
son,- observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by
the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward
hastily to offer his support. The minister tremulously but decid-
edly repelled the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if
that movement could be so described which rather resembled the
wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's arms in view out-
stretched to tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible
as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite
the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold where long
since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne
-
## p. 7077 (#475) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7077
had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood Hes-
ter, holding little Pearl by the hand! and there was the scarlet
letter on her breast! The minister there made a pause, although
the music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which
the procession moved. It summoned him onward, onward to the
festival! -but here he made a pause.
Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious
eye upon him.
He now left his own place in the procession and
advanced to give assistance, judging from Mr. Dimmesdale's
aspect that he must otherwise inevitably fall. But there was
something in the latter's expression that warned back the magis-
trate, although a man not readily obeying the vague intimations
that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd meanwhile
looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness was in
their view only another phase of the minister's celestial strength;
nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for
one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer
and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven.
He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.
"Hester," said he, "come hither! Come, my little Pearl! »
It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there
was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it.
The child, with the birdlike motion which was one of her char-
acteristics, flew to him and clasped her arms about his knees.
Hester Prynne - slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and
against her strongest will-likewise drew near, but paused be-
fore she reached him. At this instant old Roger Chillingworth
thrust himself through the crowd,- or perhaps, so dark, dis-
turbed, and evil was his look, he rose up out of some nether
region, to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do!
Be that as it might, the old man rushed forward and caught the
minister by the arm.
―
"Madman, hold! what is your purpose? " whispered he. "Wave
back that woman! cast off this child! All shall be well! Do
not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save
you. Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?
>>>
"Ha, tempter!
methinks thou art too late," answered the min-
ister, encountering his eye fearfully but firmly. "Thy power is
not what it was. With God's help, I shall escape thee now! "
He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet
letter.
## p. 7078 (#476) ###########################################
7078
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
"Hester Prynne," cried he with a piercing earnestness, "in
the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me
grace at this last moment to do what- for my own heavy sin
and miserable agony - I withheld myself from doing seven years
ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy
strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God.
hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man is oppos-
ing it with all his might; with all his own might, and the fiend's!
Come, Hester, come! Support me up yonder scaffold! "
The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity
who stood more immediately around the clergyman were so tak
by surprise and so perplexed as to the purport of what they saw,
-unable to receive the explanation which most readily presented
itself, or to imagine any other, that they remained silent and in-
active spectators of the judgment which Providence seemed about
to work. They beheld the minister, leaning on Hester's shoulder,
and supported by her arm around him, approach the scaffold and
ascend its steps; while still the little hand of the sin-born child
was clasped in his. Old Roger Chillingworth followed, as one
intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which
they had all been actors, and well entitled therefore to be pres-
ent at its closing scene.
"Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he, looking
darkly at the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret, no
high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,
save on this very scaffold! "
"Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither! " answered the
minister.
Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester with an expression of
doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed
that there was a feeble smile upon his lips.
"Is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed
of in the forest? "
"I know not! I know not! " she hurriedly replied.
Yea; so we may both die, and little Pearl die with us! "
"For thee and Pearl be it as God shall order," said the min-
ister; "and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which he
hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying
So let me make haste to take my shame upon me! "
Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand
of little Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the
man.
-
-
"Better?
## p. 7079 (#477) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7079
dignified and venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were
his brethren; to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly
appalled, yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing
that some deep life matter - which if full of sin was full of
anguish and repentance likewise- was now to be laid open to
The sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon
the clergyman and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood.
out from all the earth to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of
Eternal justice.
them.
―
"People of New England! " cried he, with a voice that rose
over them high, solemn, and majestic,—yet had always a tremor
through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a
fathomless depth of remorse and woe,-"ye that have loved me!
ye that have deemed me holy! -behold me here, the one sinner
of the world! At last! at last! I stand upon the spot where
seven years since I should have stood; here with this woman,
whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept
hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment from groveling
down upon my face. Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears!
Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk hath been,
wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find
repose, it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repug-
nance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you
at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered! "
It seemed at this point as if the minister must leave the
remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the
bodily weakness, and still more the faintness of heart, that was
striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance,
and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and
the child.
"It was on him! " he continued, with a kind of fierceness, so
determined was he to speak out the whole. "God's eye beheld
it! The angels were forever pointing at it! The Devil knew it
well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning
finger! But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among
you with the mien of a spirit mournful because so pure in a
sinful world! and sad, because he missed his heavenly kindred!
Now at the death hour he stands up before you! He bids you
look again at Hester's scarlet letter. He tells you that with all
its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on
his own breast; and that even this his own red stigma is no
## p. 7080 (#478) ###########################################
7080
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! Stand
any here that questioned God's judgment on a sinner? Behold!
behold a dreadful witness of it! "
With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band
from before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irrever-
ent to describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the
horror-stricken multitude was concentred on the ghastly miracle;
while the minister stood with a flush of triumph in his face, as
one who in the crisis of acutest pain had won a victory. Then
down he sank upon the scaffold. Hester partly raised him, and
supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger Chillingworth
knelt down beside him with a blank, dull countenance, out of
which the life seemed to have departed.
"Thou hast escaped me! " he repeated more than once. "Thou
hast escaped me! "
"May God forgive thee! " said the minister.
deeply sinned. "
"Thou too hast
He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them
on the woman and the child.
"My little Pearl," said he, feebly,- and there was a sweet and
gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose;
nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he
would be sportive with the child,-"dear little Pearl, wilt thou
kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder in the forest! But now
thou wilt? "
Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene
of grief in which the wild infant bore a part had developed all
her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek,
they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy
and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman
in it. Toward her mother too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of
anguish was all fulfilled.
"Hester," said the clergyman, "farewell! »
"Shall we not meet again? " whispered she, bending her face
down close to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life to-
gether? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all
this woe! Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying
eyes. Then tell me what thou seest? "
"Hush, Hester, hush! " said he, with tremulous solemnity.
"The law we broke! the sin here so awfully revealed! Let these
alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be that when
## p. 7081 (#479) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7081
we forgot our God, when we violated our reverence each for the
er's soul, it was thenceforth vai to hope that we could meet
hereafter in an everlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and
he is merciful! He hath proved his mercy most of all in my
afflictions: by giving me this burning torture to bear upon my
breast! by sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the
torture always at red heat! by bringing me hither, to die this
death of triumphant ignominy before the people! Had either of
these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever. Praised be
his name! His will be done! Farewell! "
That final word came forth with the minister's expiring
breath. The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange
deep voice of awe and wonder which could not as yet find
utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the
departed spirit.
HEPZIBAH PYNCHEON
From The House of the Seven Gables'
A
LL this time, however, we are loitering faint-heartedly on the
threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an invin-
cible reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon.
was about to do.
It has already been observed that in the basement story of
the gable fronting on the street, an unworthy ancestor nearly
century ago had fitted up a shop. Ever since the old gentle-
man retired from trade and fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not
only the shop door but the inner arrangements had been suffered
to remain unchanged; while the dust of ages gathered inch-deep
over the shelves and counter, and partly filled an old pair of
scales, as if it were of value enough to be weighed. It treasured
itself up too in the half-open till, where there still lingered a
base sixpence, worth neither more nor less than the hereditary
pride which had here been put to shame. Such had been the state
and condition of the little shop in old Hepzibah's childhood, when
she and her brother used to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken
precincts. So it had remained until within a few days past.
But now, though the shop window was still closely curtained
from the public gaze, a remarkable change had taken place in its
interior. The rich and heavy festoons of cobweb, which it had
## p. 7082 (#480) ###########################################
7082
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
cost a long ancestral succession of spiders their life's labor to
spin and weave, had been carefully brushed away from the ceil-
ing. The counter, shelves, and floor had all been scoured, and
the latter was overstrewn with fresh blue sand. The brown
scales too had evidently undergone rigid discipline, in an unavail-
ing effort to rub off the rust, which, alas! had eaten through and
through their substance. Neither was the little old shop any
longer empty of merchantable goods. A curious eye, privileged
to take an account and investigate behind the counter, would
have discovered a barrel,-yea, two or three barrels and half-
ditto, one containing flour, another apples, and a third, perhaps,
Indian meal. There was likewise a square box of pine-wood, full
of soap in bars; also another of the same size in which were
tallow candles, ten to the pound. A small stock of brown sugar,
some white beans and split peas, and a few other commodities of
low price and such as are constantly in demand, made up the
bulkier portion of the merchandise. It might have been taken
for a ghostly or phantasmagoric reflection of the old shopkeeper
Pyncheon's shabbily provided shelves, save that some of the
articles were of a description and outward form which could
hardly have been known in his day. For instance, there was
a glass pickle jar, filled with fragments of Gibraltar rock; not
indeed splinters of the veritable stone foundation of the famous
fortress, but bits of delectable candy, neatly done up in white
paper. Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-
renowned dance in gingerbread. A party of leaden dragoons
were galloping along one of the shelves, in equipments and uni-
form of modern cut; and there were some sugar figures, with no
strong resemblance to the humanity of any epoch, but less unsat-
isfactorily representing our own fashions than those of a hundred
years ago. Another phenomenon, still more strikingly modern,
was a package of lucifer matches, which in old times would have
been thought actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from
the nether fires of Tophet.
In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, it was incon-
trovertibly evident that somebody had taken the shop and fixtures
of the long-retired and forgotten Mr. Pyncheon, and was about
to renew the enterprise of that departed worthy, with a different
set of customers. Who could this bold adventurer be? and of all
places in the world, why had he chosen the House of the Seven
Gables as the scene of his commercial speculations ?
## p. 7083 (#481) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7083
We return to the elderly maiden. She at length withdrew
her eyes from the dark countenance of the colonel's portrait,
heaved a sigh,—indeed, her breast was a very cave of Æolus
that morning, and stepped across the room on tiptoe, as is the
customary gait of elderly women. Passing through an intervening
passage, she opened a door that communicated with the shop,
just now so elaborately described. Owing to the projection of the
upper story-and still more to the thick shadow of the Pyncheon
elm, which stood almost directly in front of the gable-the twi-
light here was still as much akin to night as morning. Another
heavy sigh from Miss Hepzibah! After a moment's pause on
the threshold, peering towards the window with her near-sighted
scowl as if frowning down some bitter enemy, she suddenly
projected herself into the shop. The haste, and as it were the
galvanic impulse, of the movement were really quite startling.
Nervously-in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say - she
began to busy herself in arranging some children's playthings
and other little wares, on the shelves and at the shop window.
In the aspect of this dark-arrayed, pale-faced, ladylike old figure,
there was a deeply tragic character that contrasted irreconcilably
with the ludicrous pettiness of her employment. It seemed a
queer anomaly that so gaunt and dismal a personage should take
a toy in hand; a miracle that the toy did not vanish in her grasp;
a miserably absurd idea that she should go on perplexing her
stiff and sombre intellect with the question how to tempt little
boys into her premises. Yet such is undoubtedly her object.
Now she places a gingerbread elephant against the window, but
with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon the floor, with
the dismemberment of three legs and its trunk; it has ceased to
be an elephant, and has become a few bits of musty ginger-
bread. There again she has upset a tumbler of marbles, all of
which roll different ways, and each individual marble, devil-
directed, into the most difficult obscurity that it can find. Heaven
help our poor old Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous.
view of her position! As her rigid and rusty frame goes down
upon its hands and knees in quest of the absconding marbles, we
positively feel so much the more inclined to shed tears of sym-
pathy, from the very fact that we must needs turn aside and
laugh at her. For here and if we fail to impress it suitably
upon the reader, it is our own fault, not that of the theme-
here is one of the truest points of melancholy interest that occur
-
## p. 7084 (#482) ###########################################
7084
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
in ordinary life. It was the final throe of what called itself old
gentility. A lady who had fed herself from childhood with the
shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose religion it
was that a lady's hand soils itself irremediably by doing aught
for bread,— this born lady, after sixty years of narrowing means,
is fain to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank. Pov-
erty, treading closely at her heels for a lifetime, has come up
with her at last. She must earn her own food, or starve! And
we have stolen upon Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irreverently,
at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be trans-
formed into the plebeian woman.
In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of
our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point. The
tragedy is enacted with as continual a repetition as that of a
popular drama on a holiday; and nevertheless is felt as deeply,
perhaps, as when a hereditary noble sinks below his order. More
deeply; since with us, rank is the grosser substance of wealth and
a splendid establishment, and has no spiritual existence after the
death of these, but dies hopelessly along with them. And there-
fore, since we have been unfortunate enough to introduce our
heroine at so inauspicious a juncture, we would entreat for a
mood of due solemnity in the spectators of her fate. Let us
behold in poor Hepzibah the immemorial lady,-two hundred
years old on this side of the water, and thrice as many on the
other, with her antique portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms,
records and traditions, and her claim as joint heiress to that
princely territory at the eastward, no longer a wilderness but a
populous fertility; born too in Pyncheon Street, under the
Pyncheon elm, and in the Pyncheon house, where she has spent
all her days,- reduced now in that very house to be the huck-
stress of a cent-shop!
--
This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the only
resource of women in circumstances at all similar to those of our
unfortunate recluse. With her near-sightedness and those tremu-
lous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not
be a seamstress; although her sampler of fifty years gone by
exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental
needlework. A school for little children had been often in her
thoughts; and at one time she had begun a review of her early
studies in the New England Primer, with a view to prepare her
self for the office of instructress. But the love of children had
## p. 7085 (#483) ###########################################
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
7085
never been quickened in Hepzibah's heart, and was now torpid
if not extinct; she watched the little people of the neighborhood
from her chamber window, and doubted whether she could toler-
ate a more intimate acquaintance with them. Besides, in our
day the very A B C has become a science, greatly too abstruse
to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter.
A modern child could teach old Hepzibah more than old Hepzi-
bah could teach the child. So, with many a cold, deep heart-
quake at the idea of at last coming into sordid contact with the
world, from which she had so long kept aloof, while every added
day of seclusion had rolled another stone against the cavern door
of her hermitage, the poor thing bethought herself of the ancient
shop window, the rusty scales, and dusty till. She might have
held back a little longer; but another circumstance, not yet hinted
at, had somewhat hastened her decision. Her humble prepara-
tions therefore were duly made, and the enterprise was now to
be commenced. Nor was she entitled to complain of any remark-
able singularity in her fate; for in the town of her nativity we
might point to several little shops of a similar description: some
of them in houses as ancient as that of the seven gables; and
one or two, it may be, where a decayed gentlewoman stands
behind the counter, as grim an image of family pride as Miss
Hepzibah Pyncheon herself.
It was overpoweringly ridiculous, we must honestly confess
it, the deportment of the maiden lady while setting her shop
in order for the public eye. She stole on tiptoe to the win-
dow, as cautiously as if she conceived some bloody-minded villain
to be watching behind the elm-tree with intent to take her life.
Stretching out her long, lank arm, she put a paper of pearl but-
tons, a jew's-harp, or whatever the small article might be, in its
destined place, and straightway vanished back into the dusk as if
the world need never hope for another glimpse of her. It might
have been fancied indeed that she expected to minister to the
wants of the community unseen, like a disembodied divinity or
enchantress, holding forth her bargains to the reverential and
awe-stricken purchaser in an invisible hand. But Hepzibah had
no such flattering dream. She was well aware that she must
ultimately come forward and stand revealed in her proper indi-
viduality; but like other sensitive persons, she could not bear to
be observed in the gradual process, and chose rather to flash
forth on the world's astonished gaze at once.
―――――
―
## p. 7086 (#484) ###########################################
7086
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The inevitable moment was not much longer to be delayed.
The sunshine might now be seen stealing down the front of the
opposite house, from the windows of which came a reflected
gleam, struggling through the boughs of the elm-tree and enlight-
ening the interior of the shop more distinctly than heretofore.
The town appeared to be waking up. A baker's cart had already
rattled through the street, chasing away the latest vestige of
night's sanctity with the jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells. A
milkman was distributing the contents of his cans from door to
door, and the harsh peal of a fisherman's conch-shell was heard
far off, around the corner. None of these tokens escaped Hep-
zibah's notice. The moment had arrived. To delay longer
would be only to lengthen out her misery. Nothing remained
except to take down the bar from the shop door, leaving the
entrance free-more than free; welcome, as if all were house-
hold friends, to every passer-by whose eyes might be attracted
by the commodities of the window. This last act Hepzibah now
performed, letting the bar fall with what smote upon her excited
nerves as a most astounding clatter. Then, as if the only bar-
rier betwixt herself and the world had been thrown down, and a
flood of evil consequences would come tumbling through the gap,
she fled into the inner parlor, threw herself into the ancestral
elbow-chair, and wept.
Our miserable old Hepzibah! It is a heavy annoyance to a
writer who endeavors to represent nature, its various attitudes
and circumstances, in a reasonably correct outline and true color-
ing, that so much of the mean and ludicrous should be hopelessly
mixed up with the purest pathos which life anywhere supplies to
him. What tragic dignity, for example, can be wrought into a
scene like this? How can we elevate our history of retribution
for the sin of long ago, when, as one of our most prominent
figures, we are compelled to introduce - not a young and lovely
woman, nor even the stately remains of beauty, storm-shattered
by affliction, but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden, in a
long-waisted silk gown, and with the strange horror of a turban
on her head? Her visage is not even ugly. It is redeemed from
insignificance only by the contraction of her eyebrows into a
near-sighted scowl. And finally, her great life trial seems to be
that after sixty years of idleness, she finds it convenient to earn
comfortable bread by setting up a shop in a small way.
