r %

^

'THOU SHALT FORGIVE ME."

THE

Scarlet Letter

A ROMANCE

BY

Nathaniel Hawthorne

VIGNETTE EDITION. WITH ONE HUNDRED NEW
ILL US TRA TIONS

BY

Frederick C. Gordon

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

IT-

COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PS

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION

MUCH to the author's surprise, and (if he may say so
without additional offence) considerably to his
amusement, he finds that his sketch of official life, intro
ductory to THE SCARLET LETTER, has created an unprece
dented excitement in the respectable community immedi
ately around him. It could hardly have been more violent,
indeed, had he burned down the Custom- House, and
quenched its last smoking ember in the blood of a certain
venerable personage, against whom he is supposed to cher
ish a peculiar malevolence. As the public disapprobation
would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious of
deserving it, the author begs leave to say, that he has care
fully read over the introductory pages, with a purpose to
alter or expunge whatever might be found amiss, and to
make the best reparation in his power for the atrocities of
which he has been adjudged guilty. But it appears to
him, that the only remarkable features of the sketch are its
frank and genuine good-humor, and the general accuracy
with which he has conveyed his sincere impressions of the
characters therein described. As to enmity, or ill-feeling
of any kind, personal or political, he utterly disclaims such

vi Preface.

motives. The sketch might, perhaps, have been wholly
omitted, without loss to the public, or detriment to the
book ; but, having undertaken to write it, he conceives
that it could not have been done in a better or kindlier
spirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, with a livelier
effect of truth.

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

SALEM, March 30, 1850.

CONTENTS

THE CUSTOM- HOUSE. — INTRODUCTORY,

I. THE PRISON-DOOR,

II. THE MARKET-PLACE,

III. THE RECOGNITION,

IV. THE INTERVIEW, ....
V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE, .

VI. PEARL,

VII. THE GOVERNOR'S HALL,

VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER,

IX. THE LEECH, ....

X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT,

XL THE INTERIOR OF A HEART,

XII. THE MINISTER'S VIGIL, .

XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER,

XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN,
XV. HESTER AND PEARL, .

XVI. A FOREST WALK, ....

Vlll

Contents.

XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER, . 253

XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE, . . . 266

XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE, . 275

XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE, . . . 286

XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY, . . 303

XXII. THE PROCESSION, . . . . 316

XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER, 332

XXIV. CONCLUSION, . . . . . . 344

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.

INTRODUCTORY TO " THE SCARLET LETTER.

'T is a little remarkable,
that — though disinclined
to talk overmuch of my
self and my affairs at
the fireside, and to my
personal friends— £an au-^
tobiographical impulse]]
should twice in my life have taken
possession of me, in addressing the
public. The first time was three
or four years since, when I favored
the reader — inexcusably, and for no
earthly reason, that either the indul-
gent reader or the intrusive author
could imagine — with a description

of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse.
And now — because, beyond my deserts, I was happy
enough to find a listener or two on the former occasion —
I again seize the public by the button, and talk of my
*fthree years' experience in a Custom-HouseT) The example
of the famous " P. P., Clerk of this Parish," was never
more faithfully followed. The truth seems to be, how-

2 The Scarlet Letter.

ever, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind,
the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside
his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will
understand him, better than most of his schoolmates and
lifemates. [Some authors, indeed, do far more than this
and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of
revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and ex
clusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy ;
as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world,
were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's
own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bring
ing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous,
however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally.
But — as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed,
unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his
audience — it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend,
a kfnd and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is
listening to our talk ; and then, a native reserve being
thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the
/ circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but
stilljveerjjhe inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent
and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be auto
biographical, without violating either the reader's rights or
his own^y

It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch
has a certain propriety, of a kind always recognized in
literature, as explaining how a large portion of the follow
ing pages came into my possession, and as offering proofs
of the authenticity of a narrative therein contained. This,
in fact, — a desire to put myself in my true position as
editor, or very little more, of the most prolix amor ^
tales that make up my volume, — this, and no other, y

The Custom-House. 3

true reason for assumin£_a_^^ the

public. In accomplishing the main purpose, it has ap-
"peared allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint
representation of a mode of life not heretofore described,
together with some of the characters that move in it,
among whom the author happened to make one0

In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a
century ago, in the days olf old King Derby, was a bus
tling wharf, — but which is now burdened with decayed
wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of
commercial life ; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way
down its melancholy length, discharging hides ; or, nearer
at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo
of firewood, — at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf,
which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the
base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of
many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass,
— here, with a view from its front windows adown this
not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the har
bor, stands a spacious edifice of brick. YFrom the loftiest
point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours
of each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the
banner of the republic; but with the thirteen stripes
turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicat
ing that a civil, and not a military post of Uncle Sam's
government, is here established. Its front is ornamented
with a portico of a half a dozen wooden pillars, supporting
a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps
descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an
enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread
wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright,

4 The Scarlet Letter.

a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows
in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper
that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the
fierceness of her beak and eye and the general truculency
of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive
community ; and especially to warn all citizens, careful
of their safety, against intruding on the premises which
she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as
she looks, many people are seeking, at this very moment,
to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle ;
imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness
and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no
great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner
or later, — oftener soon than late, — is apt to fling off her
nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or
a rankling wound from her barbed arrows??
\ The pavement round about the above-described edifice
— which we may as well name at once as the Custom-
House of the port — has grass enough growing in its chinks
to show that it has not, of late days, been worn by any
multitudinous resort of business. In some months of the
year, however, there often chances a forenoon when
affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions
might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before the
last war with England, when Salem was a port by itself ;
not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and
ship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin,
while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and impercep
tibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or
Boston. On some such morning, when three or four
vessels happen to have arrived at once, — usually from
Africa or South America, — or to be on the verge of their

The Custom-House. 5

departure thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet,
passing briskly up and down the granite steps. Here,
before his own wife has greeted him, you may greet the
sea-flushed ship-master, just in port, with his vessel's
papers under his arm in a tarnished tin box. Here, too,
comes his owner, cheerful or sombre, gracious or in the
sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now accomplished
voyage has been realized in merchandise that will readily
be turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of in-
commoclities, such as nobody will care to rid him of.

"THE RUSTY LITTLE SCHOONERS."

Here, likewise, — the germ of the wrinkled-browed, grizzly-
bearded, careworn merchant, — we have the smart young
clerk, who gets the taste of traffic as a wolf-cub does of
blood, and already sends adventures in his master's ships,
when he had better be sailing mimic boats upon a mill-
pond. Another figure in the scene is the outward-bound
sailor, in quest of a protection ; or the recently arrived
one, pale and. feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital.

6 The Scarlet Letter.

Nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little
schooners that bring firewood* from the British provinces ;
a rough-looking set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of
the Yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no slight
importance to our decaying trade.

Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes
were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group,
and, for the time being, it made the Custom-House a stir
ring scene. More frequently, however, on ascending the
steps, you would discern — in the entry, if it were summer
time, or in their appropriate rooms, if wintry or inclement
weather — a row of venerable figures, sitting in old-fash
ioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs back
against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but occa
sionally might be heard talking together, in voices be
tween speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy
that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses, and all
other human beings who depend for subsistence on
charity, on monopolized labor, or anything else but their
own independent exertions. These old gentlemen —
seated, like Matthew, at the receipt of custom, but not
very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic
errands — were Custom-House officers.

Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front
door is a certain room or office, about fifteen feet square,
and of a lofty height : with two of its arched windows
commanding a view of the aforesaid dilapidated wharf,
and the third looking across a narrow lane, and along a
portion of Derby Street. All three give glimpses of the
shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and ship-
chandlers; around the doors of which are generally to be
seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and

The Custom-House. 7

such other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport.
The room ilself is cobwebbed, and clingy with old paint ;
its floor is strewn with grey sand, in a fashion that has
elsewhere fallen into long disuse ; andQt is easy to con
clude, from the general slovenliness of the place, that this
is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of
magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access^
In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous
funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged stool be
side it ; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly
decrepit and infirm ; and, — not to forget the library, —
on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of
Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue Laws. A
tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium
of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice.
And here, some six months ago, — pacing from corner to
corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his
elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down
the columns of the morning newspaper, — you might have
recognized, honored reader, the same individual who wel
comed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine
glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches, on
the western side of the Old Manse. But now, should you
go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the
Loco-foco Surveyor. The besom of reform has swept him
out of office ; and a worthier successor wears his dignity
and pockets his emoluments? — ^

This old town of Salem — my native place, though I
have dwelt much away from it, both in boyhood and
maturer 'years — possesses, or did possess, a hold on my
affections, the force of which I have never realized during
my seasons of actual residence here, Indeed, so far as

8 The Scarlet Letter.

its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried
surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none
of which pretend to architectural beauty, — its irregularity,
which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tame, —
its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the
whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New
Guinea at one end, and a view of the alms-house at the
other, — such being the features of my native town, it
would be quite as reasonable to form a sentimental attach
ment to a disarranged checkerboard. And yet, though
invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling
for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be
content to call affection. The sentiment is probably
assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family
has struck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries
and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emi
grant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and
forest-bordered settlement, which has since become a city.
And here his descendants have been born and died, and
have mingled their earthy substance with the soil ; until
no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the
mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I walk the
streets. In part, therefore, the attachment which I speak
of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust. Few
of my countrymen can know what it is ; nor, as frequent
transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need they
consider it desirable to know.

' iBut the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The
figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition
with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish
imagination, as far back as I can remember. It still
haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the.

The Custom- House*

io The Scarlet Letter.

past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present
phase of the town^T I seem to have a stronger claim to a
residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-
cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor, — who came so
early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn
street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure,
as a man of war and peace, — a stronger claim than for
myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly
known. He was a soldier, legislator, judge ; he was a
ruler in the Church ; he had all the Puritanic traits, both
good and evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor; as
witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their
histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity
towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is
to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although
these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting
spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom
of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have
left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his
old dry bones, in the Charter-Street burial-ground, must
still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust !
I know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought
themselves to repent, and ask pardon of Heaven for their
cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the
heavy consequences of them, in another state of being.
At all events, I, the present writer, as their representative,
hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray
that any curse incurred by them — as I have heard, and as
the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for
many a long year back, would argue to exist — may be now
and henceforth removed.

Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-

The Custom-House. 1 1

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

Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and child
hood by these two earnest and energetic men, the race
has ever since subsisted here, always, too, in respectabil
ity ; never, so far as I have known, disgraced by a single
unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the other
hand, after the first two generations, performing any mem
orable deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to
public notice. Gradually, they have sunk almost out of
sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets,
get covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation of
new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred years,
they followed the sea ; agrey-heacled ship-master, in each
generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the home-

12 The Scarlet Letter.

stead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place
before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale,
which had blustered against his sire and grandsire. The
boy, also, in due time, passed from the forecastle to the
cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from
his world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his
dust with the natal earth. ^J'his long connection of a
family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, cre
ates a kindred between the human being and the locality,
quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral
circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but in
stinct. The new inhabitant — who came himself from a
foreign land, or whose father or grandfather came — has
little claim to be called a Salemite ; he has no conception
of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old settler, over
whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot
where his successive generations have been imbeddedj
It is no matter that the place is joyless for him ; that he
is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and dust, the
dead level of site and sentjment, the chill east wind, and
the chillest of social atmospheres; — all these, and what
ever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to
the purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as
if the natal spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been
in my case. (/I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem
my home^ so that the mould of features and cast of char
acter which had all along been familiar here — ever, as one
representative of the race lay down in his grave, another
assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the Main
Street — might still in my little day be seen and recog
nizecl in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment
is an evidence that the connection, which has become an

The Custom-House. 13

unhealthy one, should at last be severed. Human nature
will not flourish, any more than a. potato, if it be planted
and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the
same worn-out soil. My children have had other birth
places, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my
control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

" THE OLD MANSK."

On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this
strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native
town, that brought me to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick
edifice, when I might as well, or better, have gone some
where else. My doom was on me. It was not the first
time, nor the second, that I had gone away, — as it seemed,
permanently, — but yet returned, like the bad half-penny;

14 The Scarlet Letter.

or as if Salem were for me the inevitable centre of the
universe. So, one fine morning, I ascended the flight of
granite steps, with the President's commission in my
pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen
who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility, as chief
executive officer of the Custom-House.

I doubt greatly — or rather, I do not doubt at all —
whether any public functionary of the United States,
either in the civil or military line, has ever had such a
patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as myself.
The whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at once
settled, when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty
years before this epoch, the independent position of the
Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House out of the
whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure
of office generally so fragile. A soldier, — New England's
most distinguished soldier, — he stood firmly on the pedes
tal of his gallant services ; and, himself secure in the
wise liberality of the successive administrations through
which he had held office, he had been the safety of his
subordinates in many an hour of danger and heart-quake.
General Miller was radically conservative ; a man over
whose kindly nature habit had no slight influence; at
taching himself strongly to familiar faces, and with diffi
culty moved to change, even when change might have
brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking
charge of my department, I found few but aged men.
They were ancient sea-captains, for the most part, who
after being tossed on every sea, and standing up sturdily
against life's tempestuous blast, had finally drifted into
this quiet nook ; where, with little to disturb them, except
the periodical terrors of a Presidential election, they one

The Custom- House. 15

and all acquired a new lease of existence. Though by no
means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity,
they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death
at bay. Two or three of their number, as I was assured,
being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bed-ridden, never
dreamed of making their appearance at the Custom-
House, during a large part of the year ; but, after a tor
pid winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of
May or June, go lazily about what they termed duty, and,
at their own leisure and convenience, betake themselves
to bed again. I must plead guilty to the charge of ab
breviating the official breath of more than one of these
venerable servants of the republicrf They were allowed,
on my representation, to rest from their arduous labors,
and soon afterwards — as if their sole principle of life
had been zeal for their country's service, as I verily be
lieve it was — withdrew to a better world. It is a pious
consolation to me, that, through my interference, a suffi
cient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil
and corrupt practices, into which, as a matter of course,
every Custom-House officer must be supposed to fall.
Neither the front nor the back entrance of the Custom-
House opens on the road to Paradise/

•$

''[The greater part of my officers were Whigs/ It was
well for their venerable brotherhood, that the new Sur
veyor was not a politician, and, though a faithful Demo
crat in principle, neither received nor held his office with
any reference to political services. Had it been otherwise,
— had an active politician been put into this influential
post, to assume the easy task of making head against a
Whig Collector, whose infirmities withheld him from the
personal administration of his office, — hardly a man of

1 6 The Scarlet Letter.

the old corps would have drawn the breath of official life,
within a month after the exterminating angel had come up
the Custom-House steps. According to the received code
in such matters, it would have been nothing short of duty,
in a politician, to bring every one of those white heads
under the axe of the guillotine. It was plain enough to
discern, that the old fellows dreaded some such discour
tesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same time
amused me, to behold the terrors that attended my
advent ; to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half
a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so
harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or
another addressed me, the tremor of a voice, which, in
long-past days, had been wont to bellow through a speak
ing-trumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas himself
to silence. They knew, these excellent old persons, that,
by an established rule, — and, as regarded some of them,
weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business, —
they ought to have given place to younger men, more
orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter than themselves
to serve our common Uncle. I knew it too, but could
never quite find in my heart to act upon the knowledge.
Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and
considerably to the detriment of my official conscience,
they continued, during my incumbency, to creep about
the wharves, and loiter up and down the Custom-House
steps. They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in
their accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back
against the wall ; awaking, however, once or twice in a
forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth
repetition of old sea-stories, an'd mouldy jokes, that had
grown to be pass-words and countersigns among them.

The Custom-House. 17

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

Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it
is my foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. The
better part of my companion's character, if it have a
better part, is that which usually comes uppermost in my
regard, and forms the type whereby I recognize the man.
As most of these old Custom-House officers had good
traits, and as my position in reference to them, being
paternal and protective, was favorable to the growth of
friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like them all. It was
pleasant in the summer forenoons, — when the fervent
heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family,

1 8 The Scarlet Letter.

merely communicated a genial warmth to their half-torpid
systems, — it was pleasant to hear them chatting in the
back entry, a row of them all tipped against the wall, as
usual ; while the frozen witticisms of past generations
were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from
their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much
in common with the mirth of children ; the intellect, any
more than a deep sense of humor, has little to do with the
matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the sur
face, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the
green branch, and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case,
however, it is real sunshine ; in the other, it more resem
bles the phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand,
to represent all my excellent old friends as in their
dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were not in
variably old ; there were men among them in their
strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and
altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode
of. life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then,
moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found
to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good re
pair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of vet
erans, there will be no wrong done, if I characterize them
generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gath
ered nothing worth preservation from their varied expe
rience of life. They seemed to have flung away all the
golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enj'oyed
so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully
to have stored their memories with the husks. They
spoke with far more interest and unction of their morn
ing's breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's or to-morrow's

The Custom-House. 19

dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago,
and all the world's wonders which they had witnessed
with their youthful eyes.

The father of the Custom-House — the patriarch, not
only of this little squad of officials, but, I am bold to say,
of the respectable body of tide-waiters all over the
United States — was a certain permanent Inspector. He
might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue
system, dyed in the wool, or rather, born in the purple ;
since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly col
lector of the port, had created an office for him, and
appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages
which few living men can now remember. This Inspec
tor, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years,
or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful
specimens of winter- green that you would be likely to
discover in a lifetime's search. With his florid cheek,
his compact figure, smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned
blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and
hearty aspect, altogether, he seemed — not young, indeed
— but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in
the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no busi
ness to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually
reechoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of

o o

the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utter
ance ; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow
of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at him
merely as an animal, — and there was very little else to
look at, — he was a most satisfactory object, from the
thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system,
and his capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or
nearly all, the delights which he had ever aimed at, or

20 The Scarlet Letter.

conceived of. The careless security of his life in the
Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but slight
and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt
contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The
original and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare
perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion
of intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and
spiritual ingredients ; these latter qualities, indeed, being
in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman
from walking on all-fours. He possessed no power of
thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibili
ties ; nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts,
which, aided by the cheerful temper that grew inevitably
out of his physical well-being, did duty very respectably,
and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had
been the husband of three wives, all long since dead ;
the father of twenty children, most of whom, at every age
of chilclhpod or maturity, had likewise returned to dust.
Here, one would suppose, might have been sorrow
enough to imbue the sunniest disposition, through and
through, with a sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspec
tor ! One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire bur
den of these dismal reminiscences. The next moment,
he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant ; far
readier than the Collector's junior clerk, who, at nine
teen years, was much the elder and graver man of the
two.

I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage
with, I think, livelier curiosity than any other form of
humanity there presented to my notice. He was, in
truth, a rare phenomenon ; so perfect in one point of
view ; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable, such an

The Custom- House. 21

absolute nonentity, in every other. My conclusion was
that he had no soul, no heart, no mind ; nothing, as I
have already said, but instincts ; and yet, withal, so
cunningly had the few materials of his character been put
together, that there was no painful perception of de
ficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with
what I found in him. It might be difficult — and it was
so — to conceive how he should exist hereafter, so earthy
and sensuous did he seem ; but surely his existence here,
admitting that it was to terminate with his last breath,
had been not unkindly given ; with no higher moral
responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a
larger scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their
blessed immunity from the dreariness and duskiness of
age.

One point, in which he had vastly the advantage over
his four-footed brethren, was his ability to recollect the
good dinners which it had made no small portion of the
happiness of his life to eat. His gourmandism was a
highly agreeable trait ; and to hear him talk of roast-meat
was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. As he pos
sessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor
vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all his
energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and
profit of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me
to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's
meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them
for the table. His reminiscences of good cheer, how
ever ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed
to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one's very
nostrils. There were flavors on his palate, that had
lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and

22

The Scarlet Letter.

were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton-chop
which he had just devoured for his breakfast. I have
heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guest at
which, except himself, had long been food for worms.
It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone
meals were continually rising up before him ; not in
anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former
appreciation, and seeking to repudiate an endless series
of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual. A tender
loin of beef, a hind-quarter of veal, a sparerib of pork, a
particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey,
which had perhaps adorned his board in the days of the
elder Adams, would be remembered ; while all the subse
quent experience of our race, and all the events that
brightened or darkened his
individual career, had gone
over him with as little per
manent effect as the passing
breeze. The chief tragic
event of the old man's life, so
far as I could judge, was his
mishap with a certain goose,
which lived and died some
twenty or forty years ago : a
goose of most promising
figure, but which, at table,
proved so inveterately tough
that the carving-knife would
make no impression on its
carcass ; and it could only be
divided with an axe and

" A GOOSE OF MOST PROMISING
handsaw. FIGTRE/'

The Custom- House. 23

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

There is one likeness, without which my gallery of
Custom-House portraits would be strangely incomplete ;
but which my comparatively few opportunities for obser
vation enable me to sketch only in the merest outline.
It is that of the Collector, our gallant old General, who,
after his brilliant military service, subsequently to which
he had ruled over a wild Western territory, had come
hither, twenty years before, to spend the decline of his
varied and honorable life. The brave soldier had already
numbered, nearly or quite, his threescore years and ten,
and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march,
burdened with infirmities which eyen the martial music of
his own spirit-stirring recollections could do little towards
lightening. The step was palsied now, that had been
foremost in the charge. It was only with the assistance
of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron
balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the
Custom-House steps, and, with a toilsome progress across
the floor, attain his customary chair beside the fireplace.
There he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim serenity
of aspect at the figures that came and went ; amid the
rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, the discus-

24 The Scarlet Letter.

sion of business, and the casual talk of the office ; all
which sounds and circumstances seemed but indistinctly
to impress his senses, and hardly to make their way into
his inner sphere of contemplation. His countenance, in
this repose, was mild and kindly. If his notice was
sought, an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed
out upon his features ; proving that there was light within
him, and that it was only the outward medium of the
intellectual lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage.
The closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind,
the sounder it appeared. When no longer called upon
to speak, or listen, either of which operations cost him
an evident effort, his face would briefly subside into its
former not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to
behold this look ; for, though dim, it had not the imbe
cility of decaying age. The framework of his nature, orig
inally strong and massive, was not yet crumbled into
ruin.

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

Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection,
— for, slight as was the communication between us, my
feeling towards him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds
who knew him, might not improperly be termed so, — I
could discern the main points of his portrait.. It \va§

The Custom-House. 25

marked with the noble and heroic qualities which showed
it to be not by a mere accident, but of good right, that he
had won a distinguished name. His spirit could never, I
conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity ;
it must, at any period of his life, have required an impulse
to set him in motion ; but, once stirred up, with obstacles
to overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it
was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had
formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet ex
tinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a
blaze, but, rather, a deep, red glow, as of iron in a furnace.
Weight, solidity, firmness; this was the expression of his
repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him,
at the period of which I speak. But I could imagine,
even then, that, under some excitement which should go
deeply into his consciousness, — roused by a trumpet-peal,
loud enough to awaken all of his energies that were not
dead, but only slumbering, — he was yet capable of flinging
off his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the
staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once
more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment, his de
meanor would have still been calm. Such an exhibition,
however, was but to be pictured in fancy ; not to be an
ticipated, nor desired. What I saw in him — as evidently
as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga, already
cited as the most appropriate simile — were the features
of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well
have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of in
tegrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a
somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable and
unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence,
which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa, or

26 The Scarlet Letter.

Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as
what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists ot
the age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught
I know; — certainly, they had fallen, like blades of grass
at the sweep of the scythe, before the charge to which his
spirit imparted its triumphant energy; — but, be that as it
might, there was never in his heart so much cruelty as
would have brushed the down off a butterflv's wing. I

./ o

have not known the man, to whose innate kindliness I
would more confidently make an appeal.

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

There, beside fhe fireplace, the brave old General used
to sit ; while the Surveyor — though seldom, when it could
be avoided, taking upon himself the difficult task of en
gaging him in conversation — was fond of standing at a

The Custom-House.

27

distance and watching his quiet and almost slumberous
countenance. He seemed away from us, although we saw
him but a few yards off ; remote, though we passed close
beside his chair ; unattainable, though we might have
stretched forth our hands and touched his own. It might
be, that he lived a more real life within his thoughts, than
amid the un appropri
ate environment of the
Collector's office. The
evolutions of the pa
rade; the tumult of the
battle ; the flourish of
old, heroic music, heard
thirty years before ;—
such scenes and sounds,
perhaps, were all alive
before his intellectual

sense. Meanwhile, the -THE TUMULT OF THE BATTLE/'

merchants and ship
masters, the spruce clerks, and uncouth sailors, entered and
departed ; the bustle of this commercial and Custom-House
life kept up its little murmur round about him ; and neither
with the men nor their affairs did the General appear to
sustain the most distant relation. He was as much out of
place as an old sword — now rusty, but which had flashed
once in the battle's front, and showed still a bright gleam
along its blade — would have been, among the inkstands,
paper-folders, and mahogany rulers, on the Deputy
Collector's desk.

There was one thing that much aided me in renewing
and re-creating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier,
— the man of true and simple energy. It was the recollec-

28 The Scarlet Letter.

tion of those memorable words of his, — " I'll try, Sir ! " —
spoken on the very verge of a desperate and heroic enter
prise, and breathing the soul and spirit of New England
hardihood, comprehending all perils, and encountering
all. If, in our country, valor were rewarded by heraldic
honor, this phrase — which it seems so easy to speak, but
which only he, with such a task of danger and glory be
fore him, has ever spoken — would be the best and fittest
of all mottoes for the General's shield of arms.

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and in
tellectual health, to be brought into habits Tot^crmYpl^TorT^
ship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his
pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out
of himself to appreciate. The accidents of my life have
often afforded me this advantage, but never with more
fulness and variety than during my continuance in office.
There was one man, especially, the observation of whose
character gave me a new idea of talent. His gifts were
emphatically those of a man of business ; prompt, acute,
clear-minded; with an eye that saw through all perplexi
ties, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish,
as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from
boyhood in the Custom-House, it was his proper field of
activity ; and the many intricacies of business, so harass
ing to the interloper, presented themselves before him
with the regularity of a perfectly comprehended system.
In my contemplation, he stood as the ideal of his class.
He was, indeed, the Custom-House in himself; or, at all
events, the main-spring that kept its variously revolving
wheels in motion; for, in an institution like this, where
its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit and
convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to their

The Custom-House. 29

fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce
seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus,
by an inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-
filings, so did our man of business draw to himself the
difficulties which everybody met with. With an easy
condescension, and kind forbearance towards our stupid
ity, — which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little
short of crime, — would he forthwith, by the merest touch
of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as day
light. The merchants valued him not less than we, his
esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect ; it was a law
of nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle;
nor can it be otherwise than the main condition of an in
tellect so remarkably clear and accurate as his, to be
honest and regular in the administration of affairs. A
stain on his conscience, as to any thing that came within
the range of his vocation, would trouble such a man very
much in the same way, though to a far greater degree,
than an error in the balance of an account, or an ink-blot
on the fair page of a book of record. Here, in a word, —
and it is a rare instance in my life, — I had met with a
person thoroughly adapted to the situation which he held.
Such were some of the people with whom I now found
myself connected. I took it in good part at the hands of
Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little
akin to my past habits ; and set myself seriously to gather
from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellow
ship of toil and impracticable schemes, with the dreamy
brethren of Brook Farm ; after living for three years
within the subtile influence of an intellect like Emerson's ;
after those wild, free days on the Assabeth, indulging fan
tastic speculations beside our fire of fallen boughs, with

3° The Scarlet Letter.

Ellery Charming ; after talking with Thoreau about pine-
trees and Indian relics, in his hermitage at Walden ; after
growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refine
ment of Hillard's culture ; after becoming imbued with
poetic sentiment at Longfellow's hearth-stone ;— it was
time, at length, that I should exercise other faculties of my
jiature, and nourish myself with food for which I had
'hitherto had little appetite. Even the old Inspector was
desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known
Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some meas
ure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no
essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such
associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men
of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the
change.

Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little
moment in my regard I cared not, at this period, for
books ; they were apart from me. Nature, — except it
were human nature, — the nature that is developed in
earth and sky, was, in one sense, hidden from me ; and
all the imaginative delight, wherewith it had been spirit
ualized, passed away out of my mind. A gift, a faculty,
if it had not departed, was suspended and inanimate within
me. There would have been something sad, unutterably
dreary, in all this, had I not been conscious that it lay at
my own option to recall whatever was valuable in the
past. It might be true, indeed, that this was a life which
could not, with impunity, be lived too long; else it might
make me permanently other than I had been, without
transforming me into any shape which it would be worth
my while to take. But I never considered it as other than
a transitory life. There was always a prophetic instinct,

The Custom-House. 31

a low whisper in my ear, that, within no long period and
whenever a new change of custom should be essential to
my good, a change would come.

Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue,
and, so far as I have been able to understand, as good a
Surveyor as need be. A man of thought, fancy, and sen
sibility, (had he ten times the Surveyor's proportion of
those qualities,) may, at any time, be a man of affairs, if
he will only choose to give himself the trouble. My fel
low-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains with
whom my official duties brought me into any manner of
connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably
knew me in no other character. None of them, I pre
sume, had ever read a page of my inditing, or would have
cared a fig the more for me, if they had read them all ;
nor would it have mended the matter, in the least, had
those same unprofitable pages been written with a pen
like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom was a
Custom-House officer in his day, as well as I. It is a
good lesson — though it may often be a hard one — for a
man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for
himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such
means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his
claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of
significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves^
and all he aims at. I know not that I especially needed
the lesson, either in the way of warning or rebuke; but,
at any rate, I learned it thoroughly ; nor, it gives me
pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my
perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown
off in a sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is true, the
Naval Officer — an excellent fellow, who came into office

32 The Scarlet Letter.

with me, and went out only a little later — would often en
gage me, in a discussion about one or the other of his
favorite topics, Napoleon or Shakspeare. The Collector's
junior clerk, too, — a young gentleman who, it was whis
pered, occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's letter
paper with what, (at the distance of a few yards,) looked
very much like poetry, — used now and then to speak to

' WITH A STENCIL AND BLACK PAINT."

me of books, as matters with which I might possibly be
conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse ; and
it was quite sufficient for my necessities.

No longer seeking nor caring that my name should be
blazoned abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it
had now another kind of vogue. The Custom-House

The Custom-House.

33

marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on
pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and
bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony
that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone
regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle
of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name
conveys it, was carried where it had never been before,
and, I hope, will never go again.

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

In the second story of the Custom-House, there is a
large room, in which the brick-work and naked rafters
have never been covered with panelling and plaster.
The edifice — originally projected
on a scale adapted to the old
commercial enterprise of the port,
and with an idea of subsequent
prosperity destined never to be
realized — contains far more space
than its occupants know what to
do with. This airy hall, there
fore, over the Collector's apart
ments, remains unfinished to this
day, and, in spite of the aged
cobwebs that festoon its dusky
beams, appears Still to await the - A NUMBER OF BARRELS,

labor of the carpenter and mason. ILANOTHERUP°N

34 The Scarlet Letter.

At one end of the room, in a recess, were a number of
barrels, piled one upon another, containing bundles of
official documents. Large quantities of similar rubbish
lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think how
many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil,
had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now
only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in
this forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by
human eyes. But, then, what reams of other manuscripts
— filled, not with the clulness of official formalities, but
with the thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion
of deep hearts — had gone equally to oblivion ; and that,
moreover, without serving a purpose in their clay, as these
heaped-up papers had, and — saddest of all — without pur
chasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which
the clerks of the Custom-House had gained by these
worthless scratchings of the pen ! Yet not altogether
worthless, perhaps, as materials of local history. Here,
no doubt, statistics of the former commerce of Salem
might be discovered, and memorials of her princely mer
chants, — old King Derby, — old Billy Gray, — old Simon
Forrester, — and many another magnate in his clay;
whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb,
before his mountain-pile of wealth began to dwindle. The
founders of the greater part of the families which now
compose the aristocracy of Salem might here be traced,
from the petty and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at
periods generally much posterior to the Revolution, up
ward to what their children look upon as long-established
rank.

Prior to the Revolution, there is a dearth of records ;
the earlier documents and archives of the Custom-House

The Custom- House. 35

having, probably, been carried off to Halifax, when all
the King's officials accompanied the British army in its
flight from Boston. It has often been a matter of regret
with me ; for, going back, perhaps, to the clays of the Pro
tectorate, those papers must have contained many refer
ences to forgotten or remembered men, and to antique
customs, which would have affected me with the same
pleasure as when I used to pick up Indian arrow-heads in
the field near the Old Manse.

" VESSELS THAT HAD, LONG AGO FOUNDERED AT SEA."

But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make
a discovery of some little interest. Poking and burrow
ing into the heapecl-up rubbish in the corner; unfolding
one and another document, and reading the names of
vessels that had long ago foundered at sea or rotted at
the wharves, and those of merchants, never heard of now
on 'Change, nor very readily decipherable on their mossy
tombstones; glancing at such matters with the saddened,
weary, half-reluctant interest which w^e bestow on the
corpse of dead activity, — and exerting my fancy, sluggish
with little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image
of the old town's brighter aspect, when India was a new

36 The Scarlet Letter.

region, and only Salem knew the way thither, — I chanced
to lay my hand on a small package, carefully clone up in
a piece of ancient yellow parchment. This envelope had
the air of an official record of some period long past,
when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography
on more substantial materials than at present. There was
something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity,
and made me undo the faded red tape, that tied up the
package, with the sense that a treasure would here be
brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the
parchment cover, I found it to be a commission, under
the hand and seal of Governor Shirley, in favor of one
Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of his Majesty's Customs for
the port of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
I remembered to have read (probably in Felt's Annals) a
notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about four
score years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent
times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the
little graveyard of St. Peter's Church, during the renewal
of that edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was
left of my respected predecessor, save an imperfect skel
eton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of ma
jestic frizzle; which, unlike the head, that it once adorned,
was in very satisfactory preservation. But, on examining
the papers which the parchment commission served to
envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue's mental part,
and the internal operations of his head, than the frizzled
wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.

They were documents, in short, not official, but of a
private nature, or, at least, written in his private capacity,
and apparently with his own hand. I could account for
their being included in the heap of Custom-House lumber

The Custom- House. 37

only by the fact, that Mr. Pue's death had happened sud
denly; and that these papers, which he probably kept in
his official desk, had never come to the knowledge of his
heirs, or were supposed to relate to the business of the
revenue. On the transfer of the archives to Halifax, this
package, proving to be of no public concern, was left be
hind, and had remained ever since unopened.

The ancient Surveyor — being little molested, I suppose,
at that early day, with business pertaining to his office —
seems to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to
researches as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions
of a similar nature. These supplied material for petty
activity to a mind that would otherwise have been eaten
up with rust. A portion of his facts, by the by, did me
good service in the preparation of the article entitled
" MAIN STREET," included in the present volume. The
remainder may perhaps be applied to purposes equally
valuable, hereafter ; or not impossibly may be worked up,
so far as they go, into a regular history of Salem, should
my veneration for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious
a task. Meanwhile, they shall be at the command of
any gentleman, inclined, and competent, to take the un
profitable labor off my hands. As a final disposition, I
contemplate depositing them with the Essex Historical
Society.

But the object that most drew my attention, in the
mysterious package, was a certain affair of fine red cloth,
much worn and faded. There were traces about it of
gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and
defaced; so that none, or very little of the glitter was
left. It had been wrought, as was easy to perceive, with
wonderful skill of needlework ; and the stitch (as I am

38 The Scarlet Letter.

assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives
evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be recovered even
by the process of picking out the threads. This rag of
scarlet cloth, — for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious
moth, had reduced it to little other than a rag, — on care
ful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. It was
the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each
limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in
length. It had been intended, there could be no doubt,
as an ornamental article of dress ; but how it was to be
worn, or what rank, honor, and dignity, in by-past times,
were signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are
the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little
^hope of solving. And yet it strangely interested me.
My eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter,
and would not be turned aside. Certainly, there was
some deep meaning in it, most worthy of interpretation,
and which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic
symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities,

/ but evading the analysis of my mind.

While thus perplexed, — and cogitating, among other
hypotheses, whether the letter might not have been one
of those decorations which the white men used to con
trive, in order to take the eyes of Indians, — I happened to

/ place it on my breast. It seemed to me, — the reader
may smile, but must not doubt my word, — it seemed to
me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether
! physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat : and as if the
letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shud
dered,, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.

In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I
had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy

The Custom-House.

39

paper, around which it had been twisted. This I now
opened, and had the satisfaction to find, recorded by the
old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation of
the whole affair. There were several foolscap sheets,
containing many particulars respecting the life and con
versation of one Hester Prynne, who appeared to have
been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our
ancestors. She had flourished dur
ing a period between the early
days of Massachusetts and the
close of the seventeenth century.
Aged persons, alive in the time of
Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from whose
oral testimony he had made up his
narrative, remembered her, in their
youth, as a very old, but not decre
pit woman, of a stately and solemn
aspect. It had been her habit,
from an almost immemorial date,
to go about the country as a kind
of voluntary nurse, and doing
whatever miscellaneous good she
might ; taking upon herself, like
wise, to give advice in all matters,
especially those of the heart ; by
which means, as a person of
such propensities inevitably must,

she gained from many people the reverence due to an
angel, but, I should imagine, was looked upon by others
as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying farther into the
manuscript, I found the record of other doings and suf
ferings of this singular woman, for most of which the

1 A VERY OLD, BUT NOT
DECREPIT WOMAN."

The Scarlet Letter.

reader is referred to the story entitled " THE SCARLET
LETTER"; and it should be borne carefully in mind, that
the main facts of that story are authorized and authenti
cated by the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue. The orig
inal papers, together with the scarlet letter itself, — a
most curious relic, — are still in my possession, and shall
be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great
interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of them. I

must not be understood as
affirming, that, in the dress
ing up of the tale, and
imagining the motives and
modes of passion that in
fluenced the characters
who figure in it, I have
invariably confined myself
within the limits of the old
Surveyor's half a dozen
sheets of foolscap. On
the contrary, I have al
lowed myself, as to such
points, nearly or altogether
as much license as if the
facts had been entirely of
my own invention. What
I contend for is the au
thenticity of the outline.

A^W I This incident ^called

my mind, in some degree,
to its old track. There

seemed to be here the
•' JN His QARBOF^HUNDRED YEARS ground work o{ a ta]e

The Custom- House. 41

It impressed me as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb
of a hundred years gone by, and wearing his immortal
wig, — which was buried with him, but did not perish
in the grave — had met me in the deserted chamber
of the Custom-House. In his port was the dignity of
one who had borne his Majesty's commission, and who
was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendor that
shone so dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike, alas !
the hang-dog look of a republican official, who, as the
servant of the people, feels himself less than the least,
and below the lowest of his masters. With his own
ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but majestic, figure had
imparted to me the scarlet symbol, and the little roll of
explanatory manuscript. With his own ghostly voice, he
had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial
duty and reverence towards him, — who might reasonably
regard himself as my official ancestor, — to bring his
mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public.
" Do this," said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphati
cally nodding the head that looked so imposing within
its memorable wig, "do this, and the profit shall be all
your own ! You will shortly need it ; for it is not in
your days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a
life-lease, and oftentimes an heirloom. But, I charge
you, in this matter of old Mistress Prynne, give to your
predecessor's memory the credit which will be rightfully
its due ! " And I said to the ghost of Mr. Surveyor
Pue,— " I will ! "

On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much
thought. It was the subject of my meditations for many
an hour, while pacing to and fro across my room, or trav
ersing, with a hundredfold repetition, the long extent

42 The Scarlet Letter.

from the front-door of the Custom-House to the side-
entrance, and back again. Great were the weariness and
annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers and
Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmerci
fully lengthened tramp of my passing and returning foot
steps. Remembering their own former habits, they used
to say that the Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck.
They probably fancied that my sole object — and, indeed,
the sole object for which a sane man could ever put him
self into voluntary motion — was, to get an appetite for
dinner. And to say the truth, an appetite, sharpened by
the east-wind that generally blew along the passage, was
the only valuable result of so much indefatigable exercise.
So little adapted is the atmosphere of a Custom-House
to the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility, that, had
I remained there through ten Presidencies yet to come,

b ON MY SEA SHORE WALKS."

The Custom- House. 43

I doubt whether the tale of " The Scarlet Letter " would
ever have been brought before the public eye. My imag
ination was a tarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or
only with miserable dimness, the figures with which I did
my best to people it. The characters of the narrative
would not be warmed and rendered malleable, by any
heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge. The'
would take neither the glow of passion nor the tenderness
of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead corpses,
and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin
of contemptuous defiance. " What have you to do with
us?" that expression seemed to say. "The little power
you might once have possessed over the tribe of unreali
ties is gone ! You have bartered it for a pittance of the
public gold. Go, then, and earn your wages ! " In short,
the almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me
with imbecility, and not without fair occasion.

It was not merely during the three hours and a half
which Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily life,
that this wretched numbness held possession of me. It
went with me on my sea-shore walks, and rambles into the
country, whenever — which was seldom and reluctantly—
1 bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of
Nature, which used to give me such freshness and activity
of thought, the moment that I stepped across the thresh
old of the Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded
the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home,
and weighed upon me in the chamber which I most
absurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me, when,
late at night, I sat in the deserted parlor, lighted only by
the glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving to pict
ure forth imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might

44 The Scarlet Letter.

flow out on the brightening page in many-hued descrip
tion.

If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an
hour, it might well be deemed a hopeless case. Moon
light, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet,
and showing all its figures so distinctly, — making every
object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or
noontide visibility, — is a medium the most suitable for
a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests.
There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known
apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individual
ity , the centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume
or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa ; the book
case ; the picture on the wall ; — all these details, so com
pletely seen, are so spiritualized by the unusual light,
that they seem to lose their actual substance, and become
things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to
undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A
child's shoe ; the doll, seated in her little wicker car
riage ; the hobby-horse ; — whatever, in a word, has been
used or played with, during the day, is now invested with
a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still
almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, there
fore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral
territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy
land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and
each imbue itself with the nature of the other. Ghosts
might enter here, without affrighting us. It would be too
much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were
we to look about us and discover a form, beloved, but
gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic
moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt

The Custom- House. 45

whether it had returned from afar, or had never once
stirred from our fireside.

The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence
in producing the effect which I would describe. It
throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a
faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected
gleam from the polish of the furniture. This warmer
light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moon
beams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensi
bilities of human tenderness to the forms which fancy sum
mons up. It converts them from snow-images into men
and women. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold —
deep within its haunted verge — the smouldering glow of
the half-extinguished anthracite, the white moonbeams on
the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of
the picture, with one remove farther from the actual, and
nearer to the imaginative. Then, at such an hour, and
with this scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone,
cannot dream strange things, and make them look like
truth, he need never try to write romances.

Bur, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House""
experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of fire
light, were just alike in my regard; and neither of them
was of one whit more avail than the twinkle of a tallow-
candle. An entire class of susceptibilities, and a gift
connected with them, — of no great richness or value, but
the best I had, — was gone from me.

It is my belief, however, that, had I attempted a dif
ferent order of composition, my faculties would not have
been found so pointless and inefficacious. I might, for
instance, have contented myself .with writing out the nar
ratives of a veteran ship-master, one of the Inspectors,

46 The Scarlet Letter,

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

2Yu Custom-House. 47

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

An effect — which I believe to be observable, more or
less, in every individual who has occupied the position —
is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic,
his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an
extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his origi
nal nature, the capability of self-support, [f he possess
an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating
magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his for
feited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer —
fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth be-

The Scarlet Letter.

times, to struggle amid a struggling world — may return to
himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this
seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long
enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews
all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as
he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity, — that his
tempered steel and elasticity are lost, — he for ever after
wards looks wistfully about him in quest of support exter
nal to himself. His pervading and continual hope — a
hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and
making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives,
and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, tor
ments him for a brief space after death — is, that finally,
and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of cir
cumstances, he shall be restored to office. This faith
more than any thing else, steals the pith and availability
out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking.
Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble
to pick himself up out of the mud,
when, in a little while hence, the
strong arm of his Uncle will raise

o

and support him ? Why should he
work for his living here, or go to
dig gold in California, when he is
so soon to be made happy, at
monthly intervals, with a little pile
of glittering coin out of his Uncle's
pocket ? It is sadly curious to ob
serve how slight a taste of office
suffices to infect a poor fellow with
this singular disease. Uncle Sam's
gold — meaning no disrespect to the

' DIG GOLD IN CALI
FORNIA.'1

The Custom- House. 49

worthy old gentleman — has, in this respect, a quality of
enchantment like that of the Devil's wages. Whoever
touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the
bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul,

O O c> O '

yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its
courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all
that gives the emphasis to manly character.

Here was a fine prospect in the distance ! Not that the
Surveyor brought the lesson home to himself, or admitted
that he could be so utterly undone, either by continuance
in office, or ejectment. Yet my reflections were not the
most comfortable. I began to grow melancholy and rest
less ; continually prying into my mind, to discover which
of its poor properties were gone, and what degree of det
riment had already accrued to the remainder. I endeav
ored to calculate how much longer I could stay in the \/
Custom-House, and yet go forth a man. To confess the
truth, it was my greatest apprehension, — as it would never
be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an individual
as myself, and it being hardly in the nature of a public
officer to resign, — it was my chief trouble, therefore, that
I was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the Surveyor-
ship, and become much such another animal as the old
Inspector. Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official
life that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with
this venerable friend, — to make the dinner-hour the nu
cleus of the day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog
spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade ? A dreary
look-forward this, for a man who felt it to be the best defi
nition of happiness to live throughout the whole range of
his faculties and sensibilities ! But, all this while, I was
giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had

50 The Scarlet Letter.

meditated be:ter things for me than I could possibly im
agine for myself.

A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyor-
ship — to adopt the tone of " P. P.v — was the election of
General Taylor to the Presidency. It is essential, in
order to a complete estimate of the advantages of official
life, to view the incumbent at the in-coming of a hostile
administration. His position is then one of the most
singularly irksome, and, in every contingency, disagree
able, that a wretched mortal can possibly occupy ; with
seldom an alternative of good, on either hand, although
what presents itself to him as the worst event may very
probably be the best. But it is a strange experience, to
a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests
are within the control of individuals who neither love nor
understand him, and by whom, since one or the other
must needs happen, he would rather be injured than
obliged. Strange, too, for one who has kept his calmness

O O - ' I

throughout the contest, to observe the bloodthirstiness
that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to be con
scious that he is himself among its objects ! There are
few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency —
which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neigh
bors — to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the
power of inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to
office-holders, were a literal fact, instead of one of the
most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief, that the ac
tive members of the victorious party were sufficiently ex
cited to have chopped off all our heads, and have thanked
Heaven for the opportunity ! It appears to me — who
have been a calm and curious observer, as well in vic
tory as defeat — that this fierce and bitter spirit of malice

The Custom-House. 51

and revenge has never distinguished the many triumphs
of my own party as it now did that of the Whigs. The
Democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because
they need them, and because the practice of many years
has made it the law. of political warfare, which, unless a
different system be proclaimed, it were weakness and
cowardice to murmur at. But the long habit of victory
has made them generous. They know how to spare, when

they see occasion : and when they strike, the axe may be

j • j j

sharp, indeed, but its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-
will ; nor is it their custom ignominiously to kick the
head which they have just struck off.

In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best,
I saw much reason to congratulate myself that I was on
the losing side, rather than the triumphant one. If,
heretofore, I had been none of the warmest of partisans,
I began now, at this season of peril and adversity, to be
pretty acutely sensible with which party my predilections
lay ; nor was it without something like regret and shame,
that, according to a reasonable calculation of chances, I
saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better than
those of my Democratic brethren. But who can see an
inch into futurity, beyond his nose ? My own head was
the first that fell !

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or
never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agree
able of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of
our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its
remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but
make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident
which has befallen him. In my particular case, the con
solatory topics were close at hand, and, indeed, had sug-

52 The Scarlet Letter.

gested themselves to my meditations a considerable time
before it was requisite to use them. In view of my pre
vious weariness of office, and vague thoughts of resigna
tion, my fortune somewhat resembled that of a person
who should entertain an idea of committing suicide,, and,
although beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to
be murdered. In the Custom-House, as before in the
Old Manse, I had spent three years ; a term long enough
to rest a weary brain ; long enough to break off old intel
lectual habits, and make room for new ones ; long enough
and too long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing
what was really of no advantage nor delight to any human
being, and withholding myself from toil that would, at
least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then, more
over, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the late
Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be recognized
by the Whigs as an enemy ; since his inactivity in politi
cal affairs, — his tendency to roam, at will, in that broad
and quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather than
confine himself to those narrow paths where brethren of
the same household must diverge from one another, —
had sometimes made it questionable with his brother
Democrats whether he was a friend. Now, after he had
\won the crown of martyrdom, (though with no longer a
head to wear it on,) the point might be looked upon as
settled. Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more
decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party
with which he had been content to stand, than to remain
a forlorn survivor, when so many worthier men were fall
ing; and, at last, after subsisting for four years on the
mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled then
to define his position anew, and claim the yet more humil-
ating mercy of a friendly one.

The Custom-House. 53

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

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

54 77uf Scarlet Letter.

gleaned from annuals and magazines, of such antique
date that they have gone round the circle, and come back
to novelty again.* Keeping up the metaphor of the po
litical guillotine, the whole may be considered as the
POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR; and
the sketch which I am now bringing 10 a close, if too auto
biographical for a modest person to publish in his life
time, will readily be excused in a gentleman who writes
from beyond the grave. Peace be with all the world !
My blessing on my friends ! My forgiveness to my ene
mies ! For I am in the realm of quiet !

The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind
me. The old Inspector, — who, by the by, I regret to say,
Was overthrown and killed by a horse, some time ago ;
else he would certainly have lived for ever. — he, and all
those other venerable personages who sat with him at the
receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view ; white-
headed and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to
sport with, and has now flung aside for ever. The mer
chants, — Pingree, Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Ber
tram, Hunt, — these, and many other names, which had
such a classic familiarity for my ear six months ago, —
these men of traffic, who seemed to occupy so important
a position in the world, — how little time has it required
to disconnect me from them all, not merely in act, but rec
ollection ! It is with an effort that I recall the figures
and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise, my old
native town will loom upon me through the haze of mem-

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

The Custom-House. 55

ory, a mist brooding over and around it ; as if it were no
portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in
cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its
wooden houses, and walk its homely lanes, and the un-
picturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth, it

" WAS OVERTHROWN AND KILLED BY A HORSE. "

ceases to be a reality of my life. I am a citizen of some
where else. My good townspeople will not much regret
me ; for — though it has been as dear an object as any, in
my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes,
and to win myself a pleasant memory in this abode and
burial-place of so many of my forefathers — there has
never been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary
man requires, in order to ripen the best harvest of his

56 The Scarlet Letter.

mind. I shall do better amongst other faces ; and these
familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will do just as well
without me.

It may be, however, — O transporting and triumphant
thought ! — that the great-grandchildren of the present race
may sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone
days, when the antiquary of days to come, among the sites
memorable in the town's history, shall point out the lo
cality of THE TOWN-PUMP 1

THE SCARLET LETTER.

I.

THE PRISON-DOOR.

THRONG of bearded men,
in sad-colored garments,
and grey, steeple-crowned
hats, intermixed with wo
men, some wearing hoods
and others bareheaded, was assem
bled in front of a wooden edifice, the
door of which was heavily timbered
with oak, and studded with iron
spikes.

The founders of a new colony,
whatever Utopia of human virtue and
happiness they might originally pro
ject, have invariably recognized it
among their earliest practical necessi
ties to allot a portion of the virgin
soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a
prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be
assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first

58 The Scarlet Letter.

prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost
as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground,
on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which
subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated
sepulchres in the old church-yard of King's Chapel. Cer
tain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settle
ment of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with
weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a
yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front.
The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door
looked more antique than anything else in the New World.
Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have
known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and be
tween it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-
plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru,
and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found
something congenial in the soil that had so early borne
the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But, on
one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold,
was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with
its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their
fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in,
and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his •
doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity
and be kind to him.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept
alive in history ; but whether it had merely survived out
of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the
gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it
— or whether, as there is. fair authority for believing, it
had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann
Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door, — we shall

The Prison-Door. 59

not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on
the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to
issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do
otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to
the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some
sweet blossom, that may be found alonp: the track, or
relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frajltv
and sorrow.

II.

$

A

THE MARKET-PLACE.

HE grass-plot, before the jail,
in Prison Lane, on a cer
tain summer morning, not
less than two centuries
ago, was occupied by a
pretty large number of the inhabi-
. tants of Boston ; all with their
eyes intently fastened on the iron-
clamped oaken door. Amongst any other
population, or at a later period in the history
of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified
the bearded physiognomies of these good
people would have argued some awful busi
ness in hand. It could have betokened noth
ing short of the anticipated execution of some
noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had
but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that
early s.eY.erity of the Puritan character, an inference of
this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might
be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child,
whom his parents had given over to the civil authority,
was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be,
that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox relig-

The Market- Place. 61

ionist ''\?li£i£;(l out of tlie town> or an

vagrain .ai^ri. whom the white man's fire-water had
made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with
stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too,
that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tem
pered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gal
lows. In either case, there was very much the same so
lemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators ; as
befitted a people amongst whom religion and law wereS
almost identical, and in whose character both were sc
thoroughly intertused, lluil the mildi^l dud the seveieslN

acts of public discipline were alike made venerable
awfuh. Meagre, indeed, and colcPwas the sympathy that
a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at
the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty, which, in our
days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule,
might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as
the punishment of death itself.

It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer
morning when our story begins its course, that the women,
of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to
take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might
be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refine
ment, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wear
ers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into
the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial per
sons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaf
fold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially,
there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of
old English birth and breeding, than in their fair descend
ants, separated from them by a series of six or seven gen
erations ; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every

62 The Scarlet Letter.

successive mother has transmitted to her child a fainter
bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter
physical frame, if not a character of less force and solid
ity, than her own. The women who were now standing
about the prison-door stood within less than half a cen-
ury of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been
the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex.
They were her countrywomen ; and (lie beef and ale of
their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more
refined, entered largely into their composition; The
bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders
and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks,
that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet
grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New Eng
land. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of
speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to
be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in
respect to its purport or its volume of tone.

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

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

" The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but mer-

The Market-Place.

kI'LL TELL YE A PIECE OF MY MIND. '

64 The Scarlet Letter.

ciful overmuch, — that is a truth," added a third autumnal
matron. "At the very least, they should have put the
brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madam
Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But
she, — the naughty baggage, — little will she care what they
put upon the bodice of her gown ! Why, look you, she
may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adorn
ment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever ! "

"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, hold
ing a child by the hand, " let her cover the mark as she
will, the pang of it will be always in her heart."

"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the
bodice of her gown, or the flesh of her forehead?" cried*
another female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of
these self-constituted judges. " This woman has brought
shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there no law for
it ? Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-
book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no
effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters
go astray ! "

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

The door of the jail being flung open from within, there

; appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging

/ into sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town-

\ beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in

A his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in

\his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code

A ~

The Market-Place.

of law, which it was his business to administer in its final
and closest application to the offender. Stretching forth
the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the

shoulder of a young wo
man, whom he thus drew
forward; until, on the
threshold of the prison-
door, sjie repelled Jhim,
by an action marked with
dignity and force of
character, and stepped
into the open air, as if
by her own free will.
She bore in her arms a
child, a baby of some
three months old, \vho
winked and turned aside
its little face from the
too vivid light of day
because its existence
heretofore, had b rough
it acquainted only witl
the grey twilight of a^
dungeon, or other dark- ,
some apartment of the
prison. rr;*":

When the young wo
man—the mother of this
child — stood fully re
vealed before the crowd,
it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely
to her bosom ; not so .much by an impulse of motherly af-

"THE TOWN-BEADLE, WITH A SWORD BY

His SIDE, AND His STAFF OF OFFICE

IN His HAND."

66 The Scarlet Letter.

fection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token,
which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a mo
ment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame
• would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby
on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty
smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked
around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast
of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elabo
rate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, ap
peared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with
so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it
had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the
apparel which she wore ; and which was of a splendor in
accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond
what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the
colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect
elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant
hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam,
and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity
of feature and richness of complexion, had the impres-
siveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes.
She was lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine
gentility of those days ; characterized by a certain state
and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and
indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indi
cation. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more
lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than
as she issued from the prison. Those who had before
known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and
obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and
even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and

The Market-Place. 67

made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she
was enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive
observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it.
Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occa
sion, in prison, and had modelled much after her own
fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the
desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and pict
uresque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes,
and, as it were, transfigured the wearer, — so that both
men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with
Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her
for the first time, — was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantasti
cally embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It
had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary
relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere
by herself.

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

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

" O, peace, neighbors, peace!" whispered their young
est companion. "Do not let her hear you! Not a
stitch in that embroidered letter, but she has felt it in her
heart."

The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff.

68 The Scarlet Letter.

"Make way, good people, make way, in the King's
name ! " cried he. " Open a passage ; and, I promise ye,
Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and
child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel, from
this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the
righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is
dragged out into the sunshine ! Come along, Madam
Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market
place ! "

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of
spectators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an
irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly-
visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the
place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager
and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter
in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran be
fore her progress, turning their heads continually to stare
into her face, and at the winking baby in her arms, and
at the ignominious letter on her breast. . It was no great
distance, in those days, from the prison-door to the
market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience,
however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length ;
for, haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance under
went an agony from every footstep of those that thronged
to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street
for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature,
however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merci
ful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of
what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the
pang that rankles after-it. With almost a serene deport
ment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this por
tion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the

The Market-Place. 69

western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly
beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and ap
peared to be a fixture there.

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

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans,
he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so pictur
esque in her attire a-ft^UwvieH-,- and with the infant at her
bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine

The Scarlet Letter.

WITH THE INFANT AT HER BOSOM."

The Market- Place. 71

Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied
with one another to represent ; something which should
remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred
image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem
the. world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in
the most sacred quality of human life, working such
effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's
beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had
borne.

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as
must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a
fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt
enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it. The wit
nesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed
beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look
upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a
murmur at Us severity, but had none of the heartlessness
of another social state, which would find only a theme for
jest in an exhibition like the present.. Even had there
been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must
have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn
presence of men no less dignified than the Governor, and
several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the
ministers of the town ; all of whom sat or stood in a bal
cony of the meeting-house, looking down upon the plat
form. When such personages could constitute a part of
the spectacle, without risking the majesty or reverence of
rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the in
fliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and ef
fectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre
and grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best
a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand

72 The Scarlet Letter.

unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated
at her bosom. It was almost too intolerable to be borne.
Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified
herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of pub
lic contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult ; but
there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn
mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to be
hold all those rigid^countenances contorted with scornful
merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter
burst from the multitude, — each man, each woman, each
little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts,
— Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter
and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction
which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as
if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her
lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the
ground, or else go mad at once.

Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which
she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish
from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before
them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral
images. Her mind, and especially her memory, was pre-
ternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes
than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge
of the Western wilderness ; other faces than were lower
ing upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-
crowned hats. Reminiscences, the most trifling and im
material, passages of infancy and school-days, sports,
childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her
maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled
with recollections of whatever was gravest in her subse
quent life ; one picture precisely as vivid as another; as

T/ie Market- Place.

73

if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. Pos
sibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit, to relieve
itself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms,
from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.

M ,

r-

F™ w

"A DECAYED HOUSE OF GREY STONE.''

Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a
point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire
track along which she had been treading, since her happy
infancy. Standing on that miserable .eminence, she saw

74 The Scarlet Letter.

again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal
home ; a decayed house of grey stone, with a poverty-
stricken aspect, but retaining a half-obliterated shield of
arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility. She
saw her father's face, with its bald brow, and reverend
white beard, that flowed over the old-fashioned Eliza
bethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful
and arixious love which it always wore in her remem
brance, and which, ever since her death, had so often
laid the impediment of a gentle remonstrance in her
daughter's pathway. She saw her own face, glowing with
girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the
dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it.
There she beheld another countenance, of a man well
stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with
eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served
them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those
same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power,
when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul.
This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester
Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly
deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the
right. Next rose before her, in memory's picture-gallery,
the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey
houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, an
cient in date and quaint in architecture, of a Continental
city; where a new life had awaited her, still in connection
with the misshapen scholar ; a new life, but feeding itself
on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a
crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes,
came back the rude market-place of the Puritan settle
ment, with all the towns-people assembled and levelling

The Market- Place. 75

their stern regards at Hester Prynne, — yes, at herself, —
who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her
arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered
with gold thread, upon her bosom !

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

III.

THE RECOGNITION.

ROM this intense con
sciousness of being
the object of severe
and universal obser
vation, the wearer of
the scarlet letter was
at length relieved by
discerning, on the
outskirts of the
crowd, a figure which irresistibly took
possession of her thoughts. An In
dian, in his native garb, was standing
there ; but the red men were not so
infrequent visitors of the English
settlements, that one of them would
have attracted any notice from Hester Prynne, at such
a time ; much less would he have excluded all other
objects and ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side,
and evidently sustaining a companionship with him, stood
a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and
savage costume.

He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which
as yet, could hardly be termed aged. There was a re-

The Recognition. 77

markable intelligence in his features, as of a person who
had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to
mould the physical to itself, and become manifest by un
mistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless
arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeav
ored to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently
evident to Hester Prynne, that one of this man's shoul
ders rose higher than the other. Again, at the first instant
of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity
of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom, with so
convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another
cry of pain. But the mother did not seem to hear it.

At his arrival in the market-place, and some time be
fore she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on
Hester Prynne. It was carelessly, at first, like a man
chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external
matters are of little value and import, 'unless they bear re
lation to something within his mind. Very soon, how
ever, his look became keen and penetrative. A writhing
horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake
gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause,
with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His
face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, never
theless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of
his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression
might have passed for calmness. After a brief space,
the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finally
subsided into the depths of his nature. When he found
the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw
that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly
raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and
laid it on his lips.

78 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend,"
answered the townsman, looking curiously at the ques
tioner and his savage companion ; " else you would surely
have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne, and her evil do
ings. 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 In
dian, 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 be
fore him, remaining himself to look after some necessary
affairs. Marry, good Sir, in some two years, or less, that

The Recognition. 79

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 mis
guidance "

" Ah ! — aha ! — I conceive yon," 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 re-
fuseth 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 hus
band 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 there
after, for the remainder of her natural life, to wear a
mark of shame upon her bosom."

8o

The Scarlet Letter.

" 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 ! "

'SAT GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM."

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

The Recognition. 81

on her pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the
stranger; so fixed a gaze, that, at moments of intense
absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed
to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an interview,
perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to
meet him as she now did, with the hot, midday sun burn
ing 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 with
drawn 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

82 The Scarlet Letter.

of honor. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border
of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic
beneath ; a gentleman advanced in years, and with a
hard experience written in his wrinkles. He was not ill
fitted to be the head and representative of a community,
which owed its origin and progress, and its present state
of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the
stern and tempered energies of manhood, and the sombre
sagacity of age ; accomplishing so much, precisely be
cause it imagined and hoped so little. The other emi
nent 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, doubt
less, 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 clergy
man of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his contem
poraries 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-congratula-

The Recognition.

tion with him. There he stood, with a border of grizzled
locks beneath his skull-cap ; while his grey eyes, accus
tomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking,
like those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated sun
shine. 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 goodly 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 nat
ural 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 ; inso
much 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 be-

'THE ELDEST CLERGYMAN OF BOSTON."

84 The Scarlet Letter.

yond 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 mul
titude. 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 Dim-
mesdale ? 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 responsi
bility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you. It be
hooves 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 profes
sion. He was a person of very striking aspect, with a
white, lofty, and impending brow, large, brown, melan
choly 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

The Recognition. 85

in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at
ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as
his duties would permit, he trode in the shadowy bypaths,
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, af
fected them like the speech of an angel.

Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wil
son 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 wor
shipful 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 near
est 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-suf
ferer ! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tender
ness for him ; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to
step clown 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

86

The Scarlet

— 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 cour
age 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 feel
ing that it so evidently man
ifested, 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 Hes
ter's bosom, was affected by
the same influence ; for it
directed its hitherto vacant
gaze towards Mr. Dimmes-
dale, and held up its little
arms, with a half pleased,
half plaintive murmur. So
powerful seemed the minis
ter'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

' LEANING OVER THE BALCONY. "

The Recogni 87

and inevitable necessity, and c jlled to ascend the
scaffold.

Hester shook her head.

" Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's

mercy!" cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly

xEu-O
than before. " That little babe hath been gifted with a

voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast
heard. Speak out the name ! That, and thy repentance,
may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast."

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

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

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

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

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's
mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared
himself for the occasion, addressed to the multitude a dis
course on sin, in all its branches, but with continual refer- ,
ence, to the ignominious letter. So forcibly did he dwell
upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his

88 The Scarlet Letter.

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 na
ture 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 sympa
thize 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,

IV.

THE INTERVIEW.

FTER her return
to the prison,
Hester Prynne
was found to be
in a state of
nervous excitement
that demanded con
stant watchfulness, lest
she should perpetrate
violence on herself, or
do some half-frenzied
mischief to the poor
babe. As night ap
proached, it proving
impossible to quell her

insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment,
Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a phy
sician. 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 as
sistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more

90 The Scarlet Letter.

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
clay.

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment,
appeared that individual, of singular aspect, whose pres
ence 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 conven
ient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the mag
istrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores
respecting his ransom. His name was announced as Ro
ger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into
the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the compara
tive quiet that followed his entrance ; for Hester Prvnne
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
Prvnne shall hereafter be more amenable to just author
ity 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 in
deed ! 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 character
istic quietude of the profession to which he announced

The Interview. 91

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 him
self 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

" WHICH HE MINGLED WITH A CUP OP WATER."

to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant care
fully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case,
which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to
contain certain medical preparations, one of which he
mingled with a cup of water.

" My old studies in alchemy," observed he, " and my
sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well versed

92 The Scarlet Letter.

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 mis
begotten 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 tossjngs 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,

The Interview. 93

in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old
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 pur
poses might be. She looked also at her slumbering child.

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

" Drink then," replied he, still with the same cold com
posure. "Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne?
Are my purposes wont to be so shallow ? Even if I im
agine a scheme of vengeance, what could I do better for

O O '

my object than to let thee live, — than to give thee medi
cines against all harm and peril of life, — so that this burn
ing 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 gest
ure, 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 I 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 ;

94 The Scarlet Letter.

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, them hast
ascended to the pedestal of infamy, on which I found
thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was my folly,
and thy weakness. I, — a man of thought, — the book
worm of great libraries, — a man already in decay, having
given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowl
edge, — 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.

The lulerrirw. 95

But, up to that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain.
The world had been so cheerless ! My heart was a habi
tation 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. There
fore, 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,

g6 The Scarlet Letter.

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
Vvrought 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

The Interview.

97

' AND SHE TOOK THE OATH. "

98 Tht Scarlet Letter.

interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst
whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No
matter whether of love or hate ; no matter whether of
right or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong
to me. My home is where thou art, and where he is.
But betray me not ! ;>

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

" It may be,5J 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 Chilling-
worth, 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? '

The Interview. 99

/«

Hast them enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin
of my soul ? '?

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

V.

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE.

ESTER 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. Per
haps 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 char
acter, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of
lurid triumph. It wa*. 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

Hester at Her Needle. 101

years. The very^ law^ that conxlfrmnftcl her^-a giant of
fe a t uTe'sTb ut with vigor to support,, as well as to an

nihilate* in liis iron arm — had held her upTJjirough the
terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this un
attended walk from her prison-door, began the daily cus
tom, 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 bur
den 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 g7ave,"fh~e~TriTamy~
that she must carry thither would be her only monu
ment.

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 birth-place, or to any

102 The Scarlet Letter.

other European land, and there hide her character and
identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerg
ing 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 inevi
table that it has the force of doom, which almost invari
ably 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 as
similations than the first, had converted the forest-land,
x still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer,
unto Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home.
I All other scenes of earth — even that village of rural En£-

£? o

lland, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood
seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments
put off long ago — were foreign to her in comparison.
The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and
galling to her inmost soul, but never could be bro
ken.

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

Hester at Her Needle. 103

trocle the feet of one with whom she deemed herself con
nected 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 end
less 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 her
self, 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 martyr
dom.

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the out
skirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but
not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a

;' A SMALL THATCHED COTTAGE."

104 The Scarlet Letter.

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 al
ready 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 im
mediately attached itself to the spot. Children, too young
to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out
from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh
enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage
window, or standing in the door-way, or laboring in her
little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led
townward ; and, discerning the scarlet letter on her
breast, would scamper off, with a strange, contagious
fear.

Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend
on earth who dared to show himself, she, however, in
curred no risk of want. She possessed an art that sufficed,
even in a land that afforded comparatively little sco'pe for
its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and her
self. It was the art — then, as now, almost the only one
within a woman's grasp — of needle-work. She bore on
her breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen

Hester at Her Needle.

' LABORING IN HER LITTLE GARDEN.1

io6 The Scarlet Letter.

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 inge
nuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed, in
the sable simplicity that generally characterized the Puri
tanic 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 composi
tions 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 neces
sary 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

Hester at Her Needle. 107

from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even
to common or worthless things ; or by whatever other in
tangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to be
stow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain ;
or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise
have remained vacant ; it is certain that she had ready
and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she
saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be,
chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of
pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by
her sinful hands. Her needle-work was seen on the ruff
of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and
the minister on his band ; it decked the baby's little cap;
it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the
coffin of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single
instance, her skill was called in aid to embroider the white
veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The
exception indicated the ever relentless vigor with which
society frowned upon her sin.

Plester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsist
ence, 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

io8 The Scarlet Letter.

wretches less miserable than herself, and who not un fre
quently 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 produc
tions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibil
ities of her life, to exercise itself upon. Women derive a
pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the deli
cate 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 imma
terial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine
and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, some
thing 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 char
acter, 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 ex
pressed, 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

Hester at Her Needle. 109

of human kind. She stood apart from mortal interests,
yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the famil
iar 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 del
icacy; 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 occu
pation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into
her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet mal
ice, by which women can concoct a subtile poison from
ordinary trifles ; and sometimes, also, by a coarser ex
pression, 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 irre-
pressibly 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 bless
ing 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

no The Scarlet Letter.

cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-ac
tive 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_.en tered_a_cjnurh ,

to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it
was often her mishap to find herself the text of the dis-
' course. 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
hando 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.

Hester at Her Needle. in

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 con
nected, it now and then appeared to Hester, — if alto
gether 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

insidious whispers of tjhje. Kajj anffiL \iLbix^^uld~foire- have
persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his vic
tim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and
that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet let
ter 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 loath
some 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

ii2 The Scarlet Letter.

passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model
of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique rever
ence 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 compan
ion ! " — 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 Hes
ter 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

I averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth,
tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infer-

Hester at Her Needle.

' HER PURITY WERE SOMEWHAT SULLIED BY THAT MOMENTARY GLANCE." *

H4 The Scar Jet Letter.

nal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever
Hester Pryrme 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.

VI.

PEARL.

E 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, un-
impassioned lustre that would be indicated by the com
parison. But she named the infant " Pearl," as being of
gre at pn£eJ-=Lpj]jicjTasecI _yt\ th, all .she, had ,— her, mothe r!s
only treasure ! _How_ strange, indeed ! _Man had marked
this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such po
tent and disastrous efficj.cj^^rmt_jno_Jiuji^n s}iiipathy

could reach Jier+_§ave it were sinful Jike herself^ God, as

r

n 6 The Scarlet Letter.

a direct consequence_of Jhe sin. which man thus punished,
had given 'hei^ajoyely child, whjQs^j)lace was on that
same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent for ever
with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a
blessecT soul "in heaven | Yet these thoughts affected
Hester Pryjme 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 under
stood 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 magnifi
cent 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 ra
diance around her, on the darksome cottage floor. And

PearL 1 1 7

yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude
play, made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl's as
pect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety ; in this
one child there were many children, comprehending the
full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-
baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess.
Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a
certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any
of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would
have ceased to be herself ; — it would have been no longer
Pearl !

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more
than fairly express, the various properties of her inner
life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well
as variety ; but — or else Hester's fears deceived her —
it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into
which she was born. The child could not be made amen
able to rules. In giving her existence, a great law had
been broken ; and the result was a being whose elements
were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder;
or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the^
point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impos
sible to be discovered. Hester could only account for
the child's character — and even then most vaguely and
imperfectly — by recalling what she herself had been, dur
ing that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her
soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from
its material of earth. The mother's impassioned state
had been the medium through which were transmitted
to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life ; and, how
ever white and clear originally, they had taken the deep
stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black

n8 The Scarlet Letter.

shadow, and the untempered light, of the intervening
substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit, at
that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recog
nize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of
her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of
gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart.
They were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a
young child's disposition, but, later in the day of earthly
existence, might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind.

The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far
more rigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke,
the frequent application of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural
authority, were used, not merely in the way of punishment
for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen for the
growth and promotion of all childish virtues. Hester
Pry line, nevertheless, the lonely mother of this one child,
ran little risk of erring on the side of undue severity.
Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes, she
early sought to impose a tender, but strict control over the
infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But
the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles
and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment
possessed any calculable influence, Hester was ultimately
compelled to stand aside, and permit the child to be
swayed by her own impulses. Physical compulsion or re
straint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. As to any
other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind
or heart, little Pearl might or might not be within its
reach, in accordance with the caprice that ruled the mo
ment. Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew
acquainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her
when it would be labor thrown away to insist, persuade,

Pearl.

119

or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable,
so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally ac
companied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not
help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl was a
human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which,
after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon
the cottage-floor, would flit away with a mocking smile.

u To SNATCH HER TO HER BOSOM."

Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply
black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and
intangibility ; it was as if she were hovering in the air and
might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know
not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding
it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child-, — to

120 The Scarlet Letter.

pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably be
gan, — to snatch her to her bosom, with a close pressure
and earnest kisses, — not so much from overflowing love,
as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and
not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was
caught, though full of merriment and music, made her
mother more doubtful than before.

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

H<5w soon — with what strange rapidity, indeed ! — did

PearL 121

Pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social inter
course, beyond the mother's ever-ready smile and non
sense-words ! And then what a happiness would it have
been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like
voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices,
and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's
tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sport
ive children ! But this could never be. Pearl was a born
\outcast of the infantile- world. An imp of evil, emblem
land product of sin, she had no right among christened in
fants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct,
as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her
loneliness ; the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle
round about her ; the whole peculiarity, in short, of her
position in respect to other children. Never, since her
release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze with
out her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was
there ; first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the
little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a fore
finger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate
of three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw
the children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the
street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves"
in such g^rim fashion as the Puritanic nurture w^nld p^r-,j
mit ; playing at going to church, perchance ; or at scourg- «
ing Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight with the
Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative
witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never
sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would
not speak again. If the children gathered about her, as
they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible
in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them,

122 The Scarlet Letter.

with shrill, incoherent exclamations that made her mother
tremble, because they had so much the sound of a witch's
anathemas in some unknown tongue.

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

At home, within and around her mother's cottage,
Pearl wanted not a wide and various circle of acquaint
ance. The spell of life went forth from her ever creative
spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects, as
a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied.
The unlikeliest materials, a stick, a bunch of rags, a
flower, were the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, .with
out undergoing any outward change, became spiritually

Pearl.

123

adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her
inner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of
imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal.
The pine-trees, aged, black, and solemn, and flinging
groans and other melancholy utterances on the breeze,

' SMOTE DOWN AND UPROOTED."

needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders ;
the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children,
whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmerci-

124 The Scarlet Letter*

fully. It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into
which she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed,
but darting up and dancing, always in a state of preter
natural activity, — soon sinking down, as if exhausted by
so rapid and feverish a tide of life, — and succeeded by
other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like noth
ing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern
lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and
the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be little
more than was observable in other children of bright
faculties ; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human play
mates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which
she created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with
which the child regarded all these offspring of her own
heart and mind. She never created a friend, but seemed
always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence
sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she
rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad — then what
depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the
cause! — to observe, in one so young, this constant recog
nition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of the
energies that were to make good her cause, in the contest
that must ensue.

Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her
work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony
which she would fain have hidden, but which made
utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan, — " O
Father in Heaven, — if Thou art still my FathSr, — what
is this being which I have brought into the world !" And
Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware, through
some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish,
would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her

Pearl. 125

mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume
her play.

One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet
to be told. The very first thing which she had noticed, <
in her life, was — what ? — not the mother's smile, respond- '
ing to it, as other babies do, by that faint embryo smile
of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards,
and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a
smile. By no means ! But that first object of which
Pearl seemed to become aware was — shall we say it ? —
the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom ! One day, as her
mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had
been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery
about the letter ; and, putting up her little hand, she
grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided
gleam that gave her face the look of a much older child. ,
Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the
fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away ; so
infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch
of Pearl's baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonized
gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little
Pearl look into her eyes, and smile ! From that epoch,
except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt
a moment's safety; not a moment's calm enjoyment of
her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during
which Pearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the
scarlet letter ; but then, again, it would come at un
awares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with
that peculiar smile, and an odd expression of the eyes.

Once, this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes,
while Hester was looking at her own image in them, as
mothers are fond of doing : and, suddenly, — for women

126 The Scarlet Letter.

in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered with un
accountable delusions, — she fancied that she beheld, not
her own miniature portrait, but another face in the small
black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiend-like,
full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of fea
tures that she hafl known full well, though seldom with a
smile, and never with malice in them. It was as if an
evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped
forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester
been tortured, though less vividly, by the same allusion.

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

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

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

But, while she said it, Pearl laughed and began to

Pearl.

127

dance up and down with the humor-
some gesticulation of a little imp,
whose next freak might be to fly up
the chimney.

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

Nor did she put the ques
tion altogether idly, but, for

"STILL CAME THE BATTERY OF FLOWERS."

the moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness ; for,
such was Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother
half doubted whether she were not acquainted with the
secret spell of her existence, and might not now reveal
herself.

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

128 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

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

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

" Hush, Pearl, hush ! Thou must not talk so ! " an
swered the mother, suppressing a groan. " He sent us
all into this world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then,
much more, thee ! Or, if not. thou strange and elfish
child, whence didst thou come ? "

" Tell me ! Tell me ! " repeated Pearl, no longer seri
ously, but laughing, and capering about the floor. " It is
thou that must tell me ! "

But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself
in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered — be
twixt a smile and a shudder — the talk of the neighboring
townspeople ; who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's
paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had
given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring ;
such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally

Pearl. 129

been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother's
sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose. Lu
ther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was
a brat of that hellish breed ; nor was Pearl the only child
to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the
New England Puritans.

VII.

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL.

ESTER PRYNNEwent,
one clay, to the mansion
of Governor Belling-
ham, with a pair of
gloves, which she had
fringed and embroidered to
his order, and which were to
be worn on some great occa
sion of state ; for, though the
chances of a popular election
had caused this former ruler
to descend a step or two
from the highest rank, he still
held an honorable and in
fluential place among the
colonial magistracy.

Another and far more im
portant reason than the delivery of a pair of embroidered
gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview
with a personage of so much power and activity in the
affairs <i£ the settlement. It had reached her ears, that
there was a design on the part of some of the leading
inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid order of principles

The Governor's Hall. 131

in religion and government, to deprive her of her child.
On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was
of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably
argued that a Christian interest in the mother's soul

o

required them to remove such a stumbling-block from
her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really
capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed
the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would
enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by
being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than
Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted the de
sign, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most
busy. It may appear singular, and, indeed, not a little
ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which, in later clays,
would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than
that of the selectmen of the town, should then have been
question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of\
eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine !
however, matters of even slighter public interest,
far less intrinsic weight than the_welfare of He^r-amPX

tesmen or\
dmpdkjty.rK
>st, and ot

her child, wej^ strangely mixed up with the_jdeHberations
of je^islators__and a£is_jiL^Laie. The period was hardly,*^
if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute
concerning the right of property in a pig, not only caused
a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the
colony, but resulted in an important modification of the
framework itself of the legislature.

Full of concern, therefore, — but so conscious of her
own right, that it seemed scarcely an unequal match
between the public, on the one side, and a lonely woman,
backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other, — Hes
ter Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. Little

132 The Scarlet Letter.

Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of an
age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and, con
stantly in motion from morn till sunset, could have accom
plished a much longer journey than that before her.
Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity,
she demanded to be taken up in arms, but was soon as
imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward
before Hester on the grassy pathway, with many a harm
less trip and tumble. We have spoken of Pearl's rich
and luxuriant beauty ; a beauty that shone with deep and
vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing inten
sity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep,
glossy brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly
akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout her ;
she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate
moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had
allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their
full play ; arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a
peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies and
flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of coloring,
which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks
of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's
beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame
that ever danced upon the earth.

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and,
indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresisti
bly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token
which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her
bosom. It was the g^arl^fWipr in arj^thpr form; the_
scarlet letter endowed with life ! The mother herself —
as7F~TnirTed ignominy were so deeply scorched into her
brain, that all her conceptions assumed its form — had care-

The Governor's Hall. 133

fully wrought out the similitude ; lavishing many hours of
morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between the object
of her affection, and the emblem of her guilt and torture.
But, in truth, Pearl was the one, as well as the other ^
and only in consequence of that identity had Hester con
trived so perfectly to represent the scarlet letter in her
appearance.

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

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

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

Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling
of Governor Bellingham. This was a large wooden
house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens
still extant in the streets of our elder towns ; now moss-
grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with

134 The Scarlet Letter.

the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or
forgotten, that have happened, and passed away, within
their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the
freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the
cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of
a human habitation, into which death had never entered.
It had indeed a very cheery aspect ; the walls being over
spread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of bro
ken glass were plentifully intermixed ; so that, when the
sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it
glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung
against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might
have befitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion
of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated '
with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and dia
grams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age, which had
been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and had
now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after
times.

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

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

They approached the door ; which was of an arched
form, and flanked on each side by a narrow tower or pro
jection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice-win
dows, with wooden shutters to close over them at need.
Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester
Prynne gave a summons, which was answered by one of
the Governor's bond-servants ; a free-born Englishman,

The Governor s Hall.

135

i,

but now a seven years' slave. During that term he was;
to be the property of his master, and as jmichja _comrnod- j
ity oT bargain andsale amTox, or a joint-stool. The
serf wore thFblueTcoat, which was the customary garb of
serving-men at that period, and long
before, in the old hereditary halls of
England.

" Is the worshipful Gov
ernor Bellingham within?''
inquired Hester.

" Yea, forsooth," replied
the bond-servant, staring
with wide-open eyes at the
scarlet letter, which, being
a new-comer in the coun-
J try, he had never before

iw jK* seen. " Yea, his honorable

Mfr worship is within. But he

^^^riflfttfll hath a godly minister or

^§& : two with him, and like-
»*, wise a leech. Ye may

,.,-~-*r*^*w not see his worship

„
- v now.

u Nevertheless, I will

"• FLANKED ON EACH SIDE BY A

NARROW TOWER." enter, answered Hes

ter Prynne ; and the

bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air
and the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a
great lady in the land, offered no opposition.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the
hall of entrance. With many variations, suggested by
the nature of his building-materials, diversity of climate,

136

The Scarlet Letter.

and a different mode of social life, Governor Bellingham
had planned his new habitation after the residences of
gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then,
was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through
the whole' depth of the house, and forming a medium of
general communication, more or less directly, with all the
other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room
was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which
formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At
the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was
more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed
hall-windows which we read of in old books, and which
was provided with a keep and cushioned seat. Here, on
the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles
of England, or other such substantial literature ; even as,
in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-
table, to be turned over by the casual guest. The furni
ture of the hall consisted of
some ponderous chairs, the
backs of which were elabor
ately carved with wreaths of
oaken flowers ; and likewise
a table in the same taste ;
the whole being of the Eliz
abethan age, or perhaps
earlier, and heirlooms, trans
ferred hither from the Gov
ernor's paternal home. On
the table — in token that the
sentiment of old English hos
pitality had not been left
behind — stood a large pewter "A LARGE PEWTER TANKARD."

The Governor's Hall. 137

tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl
peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant
of a recent draught of ale.

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

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

Little Pearl — who was as greatly pleased with the
gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering

138 The Scarlet Letter.

frontispiece of the house — spent some time looking into
the polished mirror of the breastplate.

" Mother," cried she, " I see you here. Look ! Look ! "

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

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

Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the far
ther end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a
garden-walk, carpeted with closely shaven grass, and bor
dered with some rude and immature attempt at shrub
bery. But the proprietor appeared already to have relin
quished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this
side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close
struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for orna
mental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a
pumpkin-vine, rooted at some distance, had run across
the intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic

The Governor's Hall.

139

products directly beneath the hall-window ; as if to warn
the Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was
as rich an ornament as New England earth would offer
him. There were a few rose-bushes, however, and a
number of apple-trees, probably the descendants of those
planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler
of the peninsula ; that half mythological personage who
rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a
bull.

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

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

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

' CABBAGES GREW IN PLAIN

SIGHT.11

VIII.

to
in

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.

OVERNOR BELL-
INGHAM, in a
loose gown and
easy cap, — such as
elderly gentlemen
indue themselves
their domestic pri
vacy,' — walked foremost, and
appeared to be showing off
his estate, and expatiating
on his projected improve
ments. The wide circumfer
ence of an elaborate ruff,
beneath his grey beard, in the antiquated fashion of
King James's reign, caused his- head to look not a
little like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The
impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and
frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly
in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment
wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround
himself. But it is an error to suppose that our grave
forefathers — though accustomed to speak and think of

The Elf-Child and the Minister. 141

and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and
life at the behest of duty — made it a matter of conscience
to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay
fairly within their grasp. This creed was never taught,
for instance, by the venerable pastor, John Wilson, whose
beard, white as a snowdrift, was seen over Governor
Bellingham's shoulder ; while its wearer suggested that
pears and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New
England climate, and that purple grapes might possibly
be compelled to flourish, against the sunny garden-wall.
The old clergyman,, nurtured at the rich bosom of the
English Church, had a long established and legitimate
taste for all good and comfortable things ; and however
stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his
public reproof of such transgressions as that of Hester
Prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his private life
had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any
of his professional contemporaries.

Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other
guests ; one, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom
the reader may remember, as having taken a brief and
reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's disgrace ;
and, in close companionship with him, old Roger Chill-
ingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two
or three years past, had been settled in the town. It was
understood that this learned man was the physician as
well as friend of the young minister, whose health had /--
severely suffered, of late, by his too unreserved self-
sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral relation.

The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one
or two steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the great
hall window, found himself close to little Pearl. The

142 The Scarlet Letter.

shadow of the curtain fell on Hester Prynne, and par
tially concealed her.

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

" Ay, indeed ! " cried good old Mr. Wilson. " What
little bird of s.carlet_j3Jumage may this be? Methinks I
have seen just such figures when the sun has been shin
ing through a richly painted window, and tracing out the
golden and crimson images across the floor. But that
was in the old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou,
and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this
strange fashion ? Art thou a Christian child, — ha ? Dost
know thy catechism ? Or art thou one of those naughty
elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us,
with other relics of Papistry, in merry old England ? "

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

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

The I. if -Child and the Minister. 143

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

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

"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern
regard on the wearer of the scarlet letter, " there hath

o

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

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

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

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

"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, " and look

144 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her ; for Hes
ter Prynne, the daughter of a pious home, very soon after
her talk with the child about her Heavenly Father, had
begun to inform her of those truths which the human
spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with such
eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attain
ments of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a
fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first
column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unac
quainted with the outward form of either of those cele
brated works. But that perversity, which all children
have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a ten
fold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took
thorough possession of her and closed her lips, or im-

The Elf -Child and the Minister.

• WITH MANY UNGRACIOUS REFUSALS TO ANSWER.

146 The Scarlet Letter.

pelled her to s;:eak words amiss. After putting her finger
in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer
good Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced
that she had not.been made at all, but had been plucked
by her mother off the bush of wild roses, that grew by the
prison-door.

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

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

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

Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly
into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate with
almost a fierce expression. Alone in the world, cast off
by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive,

The Elf -Child and the Minister. 147

she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the
world, and was ready to defend them to the death.

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

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

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

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that
Hester Prynne's situation had provoked her to little less
than madness, the young minister at once came forward,
pale, and holding his hand over his heart, as was his cus
tom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament was

\:

148 The Scarlet Letter.

thrown into agitation. He looked now more careworn
and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of
Hester's public ignominy ; and whether it were his fail
ing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark
eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy
depth.

" There is truth in what she says," began the minister,
with a voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch
that the hall reechoed, and the hollow armor rang with
it, — "truth in what Hester says, and in the feeling which
inspires her ! God gave her the child, and gave her, too,
an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,
— both seemingly so peculiar, — which no other mortal
being can possess. And, moreover, is there not a quality
of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother
and this child ? "

" Ay ! — how is that, good Master Dimmesdale ? " in
terrupted the Governor. " Make that plain, I pray you !"

" It must be even so," resumed the minister. " For, if
we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that the
Heavenly Father, the Creator of all flesh, hath lightly rec
ognized a deed of sin, and made of no account the dis
tinction between unhallowed lust and holy love ? This
child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath
come from the hand of God, to work in many ways upon
her heart, who pleads so earnestly, and with such bitter
ness of spirit, the right to keep her. It was meant for a
blessing ; for the one blessing of her life ! It was meant,
doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a retri
bution too ; a torture, to be felt at many an unthought of
moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the
idst of a troubled joy ! Hath she not expressed this

The Elf-Child and the Minister. 149

1
thought in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly remind- 1

ing us of that red symbol which sears her bosom ? "

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

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

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

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

"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate, "and
hath adduced such arguments, that we will even leave the
matter as it now stands ; so long, at least, as there shall

150 The Scarlet Letter.

be no further scandal in the woman. Care must be had,
nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated examina
tion in the catechism at thy hands or Master Dimmes-
dale's. Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men
must take heed that she go both to school and to meet
ing."

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

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

The Elf -Child and the Minister. 151

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

"THE LATTICE OF A CHAMBER WINDOW WAS THROWN OPEN."

" Nay ; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow
the clew of profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. " Bet
ter to fast and pray upon it ; and still better, it may be,

152 The Scarlet Letter.

to leave the mystery as we find it, unless Providence re
veal it of its own accord. Thereby, every good Christian
man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the
poor, deserted babe."

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

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

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

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

But. here — if we suppose this interview betwixt Mis
tress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and
no|: a parable — was already an illustration of the young
minister's argument against sundering the relation of a
fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus
early had the child saved her from Satan's snare..

'NDER the appella
tion of Roger Chill-
ingworth,the reader
will remember, was
hidden another name,
which its former wearer
had resolved should
never more be spoken.
It has been related,
how, in the crowd that
witnessed Hester
Prynne's ignominious
exposure, stood a man,

elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the
perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he
hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of
home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her
matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy
was babbling around her in the public market-place.
For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and
for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained
nothing but the contagion of her dishonor ; which would
not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and propor-

154 The Scarlet Letter.

tion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous
relationship. Then why — since the choice was with him
self — should the individual, whose connection with the
fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of
them all, come forward to vindicate his claim to an inher
itance so little desirable ? He resolved not to be pilloried
beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all
but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of
her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll
of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and inter
ests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay
at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago
consigned him. This purpose once effected, new inter
ests would immediately spring up, and likewise a .new
purpose ; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough
to engage the full strength of his faculties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence
in the Puritan town, as Rpga^C hi 1 1 i ngwo rt h , without
other introduction than the learning and intelligence of
which he possessed more than a common measure. As
his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made him
extensively acquainted with the medical science of the
day, it was as a physician that he presented himself, and
as such was cordially received. Skilful men, of the medi
cal and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in
the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of
the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the
Atlantic. In their researches into the human frame, it
may be that the higher and more subtile faculties of such
men were materialized, and that they lost the spiritual
view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous
mechanism, which seemed to invglye art enough to corn-

The Leech. 155

prise all of life within itself. At all events the health of
the good town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to
do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an
aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly
deportment were stronger testimonials in his favor, than
any that he could have produced in the shape of a
diploma. The only surgeon was one who combined the
occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily and
habitual flourish of a razor. To such a professional body
Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He soon
manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and impos
ing machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy
contained a multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous
ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the pro
posed result had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian
captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of
the properties of native herbs and roots ; nor did he con
ceal from his patients, that these simple medicines,
Nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large
a share of his own confidence as the European pharmaco
poeia, which so many learned doctors had spent centuries
in elaborating.

This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded at
least the outward forms of a religious life, and, early
after his arrival, had chosen for his spiritual guide the
Reverend Mr. DjnTjpesrlnle. The young divine, whose
scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was considered
by his more fervent admirers as little less than a heaven-
ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for
the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now
feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had
achieved for the infancy of the Christian faith. About

156 The Scarlet Letter.

this period, however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had
evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with
his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was
accounted for by his too earnest devotion to study, his
scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and, more than
all, by the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent
practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly
state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp.
Some declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going
to die, it was cause enough that the world was not worthy
to be any longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the
other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his
belief, that, if Providence should see fit to remove him, it
would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its
humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference
of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be
no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated; his
voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melan
choly prophecy of decay in it ; he was often observed, on
any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his
hand over his heart, with first a flush and then a paleness,
indicative of pain.

Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so
imminent the prospect that his dawning light would be
extinguished, all untimely, when Roger Chillingworth
made his advent to the town. His first entry on the
scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as it
were, out of the sky, or starting from the nether earth,
had an aspect of mystery, which was easily heightened to
the miraculous. He was now known to be a man of
skill ; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and the
blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked

The Leech.

4 PLUCKED OFF TWIGS FROM THE FOREST-TREES."

158 The Scarlet Letter.

/off twigs from the forest-trees, like o"ne acquainted with
(hidden virtues in what was valueless to common eyes.
^He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby, and other
famous men, — whose scientific attainments were esteemed
hardly less than supernatural, — as having been his corre
spondents or associates. Why, with such rank in the
learned world, had he come hither ? What could he,
whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in the wil
derness ? In answer to this query, a rumor gained
ground, — and, however absurd, was entertained by some
very sensible people, — that Heaven had wrought an ab
solute miracle, by transporting an eminent Doctor of
Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air,
and setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's
study ! Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that
Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at ihe
stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition,
were inclined to see a providential hand in Roger Chill-
ingworth's so opportune arrival.

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

" I need no medicine/' said he.

The Leech. 159

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

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

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

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

160 The Scarlet Letter.

" Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly,'5
said the physician.

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chilling-
worth became the medical adviser of the Reverend Mr,
Dimmesdale. As not only the disease interested the
physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the
character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so
different in age, came gradually to spend much time
together. For the sake of the minister's health, and to
enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in
them, they took long walks on the seashore, or in the
forest ; mingling various talk with the plash and mur
mur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among
the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the guest of the
other, in his place of study and retirement. There was a
fascination for the minister in the company of the man of
science, in whom he recognized an intellectual cultivation
of no moderate depth or scope ; together with a range
and freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked
for among the members of his own profession. In truth,
he was startled, if not shocked, to find this attribute in
the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest, a
true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely
developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself
powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its
passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. In
no state of society would he have been what is called a
man of liberal views ; it would always be essential to his
peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, sup-
porting, while it confined him within its iron framework.
Not the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoy
ment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the

The Leech.

161

1 62 The Scarlet Letter.

universe through the medium of another kind of intellect
than those \vuh which he habitually held converse. It
was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer
atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his
life was wasting itself away, amid lamp-light, or ob
structed daybeams, and the musty fragrance, be it sen
sual or moral, that exhales from books. But the air was
too fresh and chill to be long breathed, with comfort.
So the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew
'in the limits of what their church defined as
ft hod ox.

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient care
fully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an
accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to
him and, as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral
scenery, the novelty of which might call out something new
to the surface of his character. He deemed it essential,
it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do
him good. (Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the
diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the pecul
iarities of theseA In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and
iniagm align were so active, and sensibility; so intense, that
the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its ground
work there. So Roger Chillingworth — the man of skill,
the kind and friendly physician — strove to go deep into
his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying
into his recollections, and probing every thing with a cau
tious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few
secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity
and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow
it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially
avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess

The Leech.

163

native sagacity, and a nameless something more, — let us
call it intuition ; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor dis
agreeably prominent characteristics of his own ; if he have
the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind
into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall un
awares have spoken what he imagines himself only to

have thought; if such revela
tions be received without
tumult, and acknowledged
not so often by aii^tittered
sympathy, as by silence, an
inarticulate breath, and here
and there a word, to indicate
that all is understood ; if, to
these qualifications of a confi
dant be joined the advantages
afforded by his recognized
character as a physician ; —
then, at some inevitable
moment, will the soul of the
sufferer be dissolved, and
flow forth in a dark, but
transparent stream, bringing
all its mysteries into the day
light.

Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the
attributes above enumerated. Nevertheless, time went
on ; a kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up between
these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as
the whole sphere of human thought and study, to meet
upon ; they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of
public affairs, and private character; they talked much,

' LIKE A TREASURE SEEKER IN A
DARK CAVERN."

1 64 The Scarlet Letter.

on both sides, of matters that seemed personal to them
selves ; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied
must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's con
sciousness into his companion's ear. The latter had his
suspicions, indeed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmes-
clale's bodily disease had never fairly been revealed to
him. It was a strange reserve !

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

The new ^abode of the two friends was with a pious

The Leech. 165

widow, of good social rank, who dwelt in a house cover
ing pretty nearly the site on which the venerable struct
ure of King's Chapel has since been built. It had the
grave-yard, originally Isaac Johnson's home-field, on one
side, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections,
suited to their respective employments, in both minister
and man of physic. The motherly care of the good
widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment,
with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains to
create a noontide shadow, when desirable. The walls
were hung round with tapestry, said to be from the Gobe
lin looms, and, at
all events, repre
senting the Script
ural story of David <
and Bathsheba,
and Nathan the
Prophet, in colors
still unfaded, but
which made the
fair woman of the
scene almost as grimly
picturesque as the woe-
denouncing seer. Here,
the pale clergyman piled
up his library, rich with
parchment-bound folios of
the Fathers, and the lore of
Rabbis, and monkish erudition,
of which the Protestant di
vines, even while they vilified
and decried that class of

1 66 The Scarlet Letter.

writers, were yet constrained often to avail them
selves. On the other side of the house, old Roger Chil-
lingworth arranged his study and laboratory; not such
as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably
complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus, and
the means of compounding drugs and chemicals, which
the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to purpose.
With such commodiousness of situation, these two learned
persons sat themselves down, each in his own domain,
yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the other,
and bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into
one another's business.

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesclale's best discern
ing friends, as we have intimated, very reasonably imag
ined that the hand of Providence had done all this, for the
purpose — besought in so many public, and domestic, and
secret prayers — of restoring the young minister to health.
But — it must now be said — another portion of the com
munity had latterly begun to take its own view of the rela
tion betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old
physician. Cwhen an uninstructed multitude attempts to
see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.
When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does,
on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclu
sions thus attained are often so profound and so unerring,
as to possess the character of truths supernatural ly
revealed.) The people, in the case of which we speak,
could justify its prejudice against Roger Chillingworth by
no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation. There
was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a
citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's
murder, now some thirty years agone ; he testified to hav-

The Leech. 167

ing seen the physician, under some other name, which
the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company
with Doctor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was
implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three indi
viduals hinted, that the man of skill, during his Indian
captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining
in the incantations of the savage priests; who were uni
versally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often
performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in
the black art. A large number — and many of these were
persons of such sober sense and practical observation,
that their opinions would have been valuable, in other
matters — affirmed that Roger Chillingworth's aspect had
undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in
town, and especially since his abode with Mr. Dimmes-
dale. At first, his expression had been calm, meditative,
scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly and evil in
his face, which they had not previously noticed, and
which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener
they looked upon him. According to the vulgar idea, the
fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower
regions, and was fed .with infernal fuel ; and so, as might
be expected, his visage was getting sooty with smoke.

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused
opinion, that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many
other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the
Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself, or
Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth.
This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a
season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot
against his soul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could
doubt on which sicje the victory would turn. The people

1 68 vJx The Scarlet Letter.

looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come
forth out of the conflict, transfigured with the glory which
he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it
was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through
which he must struggle towards his triumph.

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

X.

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT.

LD Roger Chilling-
worth, throughout
life, had been calm^
i n temperament,
kindly, th^wgh not
warm abjections, but
ever, and in aff his relations
with the, world, a pure and
upright man. He had be
gun an investigation, as he
imagined, with the severe
and equal integrity of a
judge, desirous only of truth,

even as if the question involved no more than the air-
drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead
of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But,
as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce,
though still calm, necessity seized the old man within its
^gripe, and never set him free again, until he had done all
its bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart,
like a miner searching for gold ; or, rather, like a sexton
delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had
been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find

170 The Scarlet Letter.

nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own
soul, if these were what he sought !

Sometimes, a light glimmered out of the physician's
eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a
furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly
fire that darted from Bunyan's awful doorway in the hill
side, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. The soil where
this dark miner was working had perchance shown indi
cations that encouraged him.

"This man," said he, at one such moment, to himself,
"pure as they deem him, — all spiritual as he seems, — hath
inherited a strong animal nature from his father or his
mother. Let us dig a little farther in the direction of this
vein !'"

Then, after long search into the minister's dim interior,
and turning over many precious materials, in the shape of
high aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of
souls, pure sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by
thought and study, and illuminated by revelation, — all of
which invaluable gold was perhaps no better than rubbish
to the seeker, — he would turn back, discouraged, and be
gin his quest towards another point. He groped along as
stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary an out
look, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only
half asleep, — or, it may be, broad awake, — with purpose
to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the
apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness,
the floor would now and then creak ; his garments would
rustle ; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden prox
imity, would be thrown across his victim. In other words,
Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often pro
duced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become

The Leech and His Patient. 171

vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had
thrust itself into relation with him. But old Roger Chil-
lingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive ;
and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards
him, there the physician sat ; his kind, watchful sympa
thizing, but never intrusive friend.

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

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his el
bow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards
the grave-yard, he talked with Roger Chillingworth, while
the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants.

" Where," asked he, with a look askance at them, — for
it was the clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, nowa
days, looked straightforth at any object, whether human
or inanimate, — " where, my kind doctor, did you gather
those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf ? "

" Even in the grave-yard, here at hand," answered the
physician, continuing his employment. " They are new to
me. I found them growing on a grave, which bore no
tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead man, save
these ugly weeds that have taken upon themselves to keep
him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and
typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried

172

The Scarlet Letter.

with him, and which he had done better to confess during
his lifetime.'''

" Perchance," said Mr. Dimmesdale, " he earnestly de
sired it, but could not."

" And wherefore ? " re
joined the physician.
;< Wherefore not ; since
all the powers of na
ture call so earnestly
for the confession of
sin, that these
black weeds
have sprung up
out of a buried
heart, to make
manifest an unspoken
crime ? "

u That, good Sir, is but a fantasy
of yours," replied the minister.
" There can be, if I forebode
aright, no power, short of the Di
vine mercy, to disclose, whether by

uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may
be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself
guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them until the
clay when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have
I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that
the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be
made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That,
surely, were a shallow view of it. No ; these revelations,
unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the
intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will

ff

4 GROWING ON A GRAVE,"

The Leech and His Patient. 173

stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this
life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be
needful to the completes! solution of that problem. And
I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such miser
able secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last
day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable."

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

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

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

" True ; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmes-
dale. " But, not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may
be that they are kept silent by the very constitution of
their nature. Or, — can we not suppose it ? — guilty as
they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's
glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying them
selves black and filthy in the view of men ; because,
thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them ;«no

174 The Scarlet Letter.

evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to
their own unutterable torment, they go about among their
fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow ; while
their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of
which they cannot rid themselves."

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

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

Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard
the clear, wild laughter of a young child's voice, proceed-

The Leech and His Patient.

175

' SHE BEGAN TO DANCE UPON IT."

176 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

" None, — save the freedom of a broken law," answered
Mr. Dimmesclale, in a quiet way, as if he had been dis-

The Leech and His Patient. 177

cussing the point within himself. i; Whether capable of
good, I know not."

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

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

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

"I do verily believe it," answered the clergyman.
" Nevertheless, I cannot answer for her. There was a
look of pain in her face, which I would gladly have been

1 78 The Scarlet Letter.

spared the sight of. But still, melhinks, it must needs be
better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this
poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his
heart."

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

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

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

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

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

" Then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician,
" and I crave pardon, Sir, — should it seem to require par
don, — for this needful plainness of my speech. Let me
ask, — as your friend, — as one having charge, under Provi
dence, of your life and physical well-being, — hath all the
operation of this disorder been fairly laid open and re
counted to me ? >?

The Leech and His Patient. 179

"How can you question it ? " asked the minister.
" Surely, it were child's play to call in a physician, and
then hide the sore ! "

• " You would tell me, then, that I know all ? " said Roger
Chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright with
intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's
face. " Be it so ! But, again ! He to whom only the
outward and physical evil is laid open knoweth, often
times, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure.
A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire
within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some
ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon, once again,
good Sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence. You,
Sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose body
is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to
speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument."

c Then I need ask no further," said the clergyman^
somewhat hastily rising from his chair. "You deal not, I
take it, in medicine for the soul ! "

"Thus, a sickness," continued Roger Chillingworth, go
ing on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the inter
ruption, — but standing up, and confronting -the emaciated
and white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and mis
shapen figure, — " a sickness, a sore place, if we may so
call it, in your spirit, hath immediately its appropriate
.manifestation in your bodily frame. Would you, there
fore, that your physician heal the bodily evil ? Ho\v may
this be, unless you first lay open to him the wound or
trouble in your soul ? "

" No ! — not to thee ! — not to an earthly physician ! "
cried Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes,
•full and bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old

i So The Scarlet Letter.

Roger Chillingworth. " Not to thee ! But, if it be the
soul's disease, then do I commit myself to the one Physician
of the soul ! He, if it stand with his good pleasure, can
cure; or he can kill ! Let him do with me as, in his jus
tice and wisdom, he shall see good. But who art thou,
that meddleSt in this matter ?— that dares thrust himself
between the sufferer and his God ? "

With a frantic gesture, he rushed out of the room.

" It is as well to have made this step," said Roger Chil
lingworth to himself, looking after the minister with a
grave smile. " There is nothing lost. We shall be
friends again anon. But see, now, how passion takes
hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself ! As
with one passion, so with another ! He hath done a wild
thing ere now, this pious Master Dimmesclale, in the hot
passion of his heart ! "

It proved not difficult to reestablish the intimacy of the
two companions, on the same footing and in the same de
gree as heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few
.hours of privacy, was sensible that the disorder of his
nerves had hurried him into an unseemly outbreak of tem
per, which there had been nothing in the physician's words
to excuse or palliate. He marvelled, indeed, at the vio
lence with which he had thrust back the kind old man,
when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty
to bestow, and which the minister himself had expressly
sought. With these remorseful feelings, he lost no time in
making the amplest apologies, and besought his friend still
to continue the care, which, if not successful in restoring
him to health, had, in all probability, been the means of
prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. Roger Chil
lingworth readily assented, and went on with his medical

The Leech and His Patient. 181

supervision of the minister ; doing his best for him, in all
good faith, but always quitting the patient's apartment, at
the close of a professional interview, with a mysterious
and puzzled smile upon his lips. This expression was
invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but grew strongly
evident as the physician crossed the threshold.

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

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

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

After a brief pause, the physician turned away.
But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror !
With what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be

182

The Scarlet Letter.

expressed only by the eye and features, and therefore
bursting forth through the \vhole ugliness of his figure,

" FELL INTO A DEEP, DEEP SLUMBER."

and making itself even riotously manifest by the extrava
gant gestures with which he threw up his arms towards
the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor ! Had a

The Leech and His Patient. 183

man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his
ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan
comports himself, when a precious human soul is lost to
heaven, and won into his kingdom.

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

XL

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART.

FTER the incident last
described, the inter
course between the
clergyman and the
physician, though ex
ternally the same, was really
of another character than
it had previously been.

The intellect of Ro^er
&

Chillingworth had now a
sufficiently plain path be
fore it. It was not, indeed,
precisely that which he had
laid out for himself to
tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared,
there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto
latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which
led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any
mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make him
self the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided
all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repent
ance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts, expelled in
vain ! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from, the world.

The Interior of a H^art. 185

whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be
revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving!
All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to
whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of
vengeance \

The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked
this scheme. Roger Chillingworth, however, was inclined
to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with the aspect of
affairs, which Providence — using the avenger and his vie-

' O O

tiin for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning,
where it seemed most to punish — -had substituted for his
black devices. A revelation, he could almost say, had
been granted to him. It mattered little, for his object,
whether celestial, or from what other region. By its aid,
in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and Mr. Dim-
mesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very
inmost soul of the latter seemed to be brought out before
his eyes^ so that he could see and comprehend its every
movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator
only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior
A'orld. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he
irouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was for
ever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that
controlled the engine ; — and the physician knew it well !
Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at the \vav-
ng of a magician's wand, uprose a 'grisly phantom, — up
rose a thousand phantoms, — in many shapes, of death, or
nore awful shame, all flocking round about the clergy-
nan, and pointing with their fingers at his breast !

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect,
that the minister, though he had constantly a dim percep-
:ion of some evil influence watching over him, could never

1 86 The Scarlet Letter.

gain a knowledge of its actual nature. True, he looked
doubtfully, fearfully, — even, at times, with horror and the
bitterness of hatred, — at the deformed figure of the old
physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his
slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his
garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight ; a token
implicitly to be relied on, of a deeper antipathy in the
breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to
himself. For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for
such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, con
scious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting
his heart's entire substance, attributed all his presenti
ments to no other cause. He took himself to task for his
bad sympathies in reference to Roger Chill ingworth, dis
regarded the lesson that he should have drawn from them,
and did his best to root them out. Unable to accomplish
this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle, continued
his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and thus
gave him constant opportunities for perfecting the pur
pose to which — poor, forlorn creature that he was, and
more wretched than his victim — the avenger had devoted
himself.

While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed
and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given
over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Rev
erend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant popularity
in his sacred office. He won it, indeed, in great part, by his
"sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions, his
power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were
kept in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and
anguish of his daily life. His fame, though still on its
upward slope, already overshadowed the soberer reputa-

The Interior of a Heart. 187

tions of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them
were. There were scholars among them, who had spent
more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the
divine profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived ; and
who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in
such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful
brother. There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of
mind than his, and endowed with a far greater share of
shrewd, hard, iron or granite understanding ; which, duly
mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient,
constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and un amiable
variety of the clerical species. There were others, again,
true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated
by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought,
and etherealized, moreover, by spiritual communications
wuh the better world, into which their purity of life had
almost introduced these holy personages, with their gar
ments of mortality still clinging to them. All that they
lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disci
ples, at Pentecost, in tongues of flame ; symbolizing, it
would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and un
known languages, but that of addressing the whole human
brotherhood in the heart's native language. These
fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and
rarest attestation of their office, the Tongue of Flame.
They would have vainly sought — had they ever dreamed
of seeking — to express the highest truths through the
humblest medium of familiar words and images. Their

o

voices came down, afar and indistinctly, from the upper
heights where they habitually dwelt.

Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that
Mr. Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of character, natu-

i88 The Scarlet Letter.

rally belonged. To the high mountain-peaks of faith and
sanctity he would have climbed, had not the tendency
been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be, of
crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter.
It kept him down, on a level with the lowest; him, the
man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the angels might
else have listened to and answered! But this very burden
it was, that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sin
ful brotherhood of mankind ; so that his heart vibrated in
unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself, and
sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other
hearts, in gushes of sad, persuasive eloquence. Oftenest
persuasive, but sometimes terrible ! [The people knew
not the power that moved them thus. They deemed the
young clergyman a miracle of holiness. They fancied
him the mouth-piece of heaven's messages of wisdom, and
rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very ground on
which he trod was sanctified. The virgins of his church
grew pale around him, victims of a passion so imbued
with religious sentiment that they imagined it to be all
religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as
their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. The
aged members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's
frame so feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in
their infirmity, believed that he would go heavenward be
fore them, and enjoined it upon their children, that their
old bones should be buried close to their young pastor's
holy grave. And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr.
Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with
himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because
an accursed thing must there be buried !

It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public

The Interior of a Heart.

189

veneration tortured him ! It was his genuine impulse to
adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and
utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine
essence as the life within their life. Then, what was he ?

"TURN MY PALE FACE HEAVENWARD.'1

— a substance ? — or the dimmest of all shadows ? He
longed to speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full height

190 The Scarlet Letter.

of his voice, and tell the people what he was. " I, whom
you behold in these black garments of the priesthood, — I,
who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face
heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion, in
your behalf, with the Most High Omniscience, — I, in
whose daily life you discern the sanctity of Enoch, — I,
whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my
earthly track, whereby the pilgrims that shall come after
me may be guided to the regions of the blest, — I, who
have laid the hand of baptism upon your children, — I,
who have breathed the parting prayer over your dying
friends, to whom the Amen sounded faintly from a world
which they had quitted, — I, your pastor, whom you so rev
erence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie ! "

More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the
.pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps, until
he should have spoken words like the above. More than
once, he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long,
deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again
would come burdened with the black secret of his soul.
More than once — nay, more than a hundred times — he
had actually spoken ! Spoken ! But how? He had told
his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion
of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing
of unimaginable iniquity ; and that the only wonder was,
that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up be
fore their eyes, by the burning wrath of the Almighty !
Could there be plainer speech than this ? Would not the,
people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse,
and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled ?
Not so, indeed ! They heard it all, and did but reverence
him the more. They little guessed what deadly purport

The Interior of a Heart. 191

lurked in those self-condemning words. "The godly
youth ! " said they among themselves. " The saint on
earth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own
white soul what horrid spectacle would he behold in
thine or mine ! " The minister well knew — subtile, but
remorseful hypocrite that he was! — the light in which
his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven
to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of
a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin,
and a self-acknowledged shame without the momen
tary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the
very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood.
And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the
truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. There
fore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self !

His inward trouble drove him to practices, more in ac
cordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome, than
with the better light
of the church in
which he had been
born and bred. In
Mr. Dimmesd ale's
secret closet, under
lock and key, there
was a bloody
scourge. Oftentimes \

4.1 • -n i "THERE WAS A BLOODY SCOURGE.''

this Protestant and

Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders ; laugh
ing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much
the more pitilessly, because of that bitter laugh. It
was his custom, too, as it has been that of many
, other pious Puritans, to fast, — not, however, like them,

192

The Scarlet Letter.

in order to purify the body and ren
der it the fitter medium of celestial
illumination, but rigorously, and until
his knees trembled
beneath him, as an
act of penance.

He kept vigils, '
likewise, night after [
night, sometimes in
utter darkness;
sometimes with a
glimmering lamp;
and sometimes, view
ing his own face in a
looking-glass, by the
most powerful light
which he could throw
upon it. He thus typi
fied the constant intro- k
spection wherewith he tor-
_turedL but could not

Jiniisejf. In these length
ened vigils, his brain often reeled, and
visions seemed to flit before him ; per
haps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light
of their own, in the remote dimness of
the chamber, or more vividly, and close
beside him, within the looking-glass.
Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes;
that grinned and mocked at the pale
minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group
of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-

" A HERD OF DIA
BOLIC SHAPES."

The Interior of a Heart. 193

laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came
the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded
father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother turning
her face away as she passed by. Ghost of a mother, —
thinnest fantasy of a mother, — methinks she might yet
have thrown a pitying glance towards her son ! And now,
through the chamber which these spectral thoughts had
made so ghastly, glided Hester Prynne, leading along
little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointing her fore
finger, first, at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then
at the clergyman's own breast.

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

194 The Scarlet Letter.

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

XII.

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL,

ALKING in the shad-
o\v of a dream, as it
were, and perhaps
actually under the
influence of a spe
cies of somnambulism, Mr.
Dimmesclale reached the
spot, where, now so long
since, Hester Prynne had lived
l| ' through her first hour of public
ignominy. The same platform
Wp" or scaffold, black and weather-
•& stained with the storm or sun

shine of seven long years, and
footworn, too, with the tread of

many culprits who had since ascended it, remained stand
ing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The min
ister went up the steps.

It was an obscure night of early May. An unvaried
pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from
zenith to horizon. If the same multitude which had
stood as eyewitnesses while Hester Prynne sustained her
punishment could now have been summoned forth, they

196 The Scarlet Letter.

would have discerned no face above the platform, nor
hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark grey of
the midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was
no peril of discovery. The minister might stand there,
it it so pleased him, until morning should redden in the
east, without other risk than that the dank and chill night-
air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with
rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough ;
thereby defrauding the expectant audience of to-morrow's
prayer and sermon. No eye could see him, save that
ever-wakeful one which had seen him in his closet, wield
ing the bloody scourge. Why, then, had he come hither?
Was it but the mockery of penitence ? A mockery in
deed, but in which his soul trifled with itself ! A mockery
$t which angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced,

/with jeering laughter! He had been driven hither by
the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him every
where, and whose own sister and closely linked companion
was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with
her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had

..hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Poor, miserable
man ! what right had infirmity like his to burden itself
with crime ? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have
their choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to
exert their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose,
and fling it off at once ! This feeble and most sensitive
of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing
or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable
knot, the agony of ^heaven-defying guilt and vain repent
ance.

And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain
show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a

The Minister's Vigil.

197

great hqrror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a
scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart.
On that sppt, in very truth, there was, and there had long
been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain.
Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain him
self, he shrieked aloud ; an outcry that went pealing

" As THEY RODE WITH SATAN THROUGH THE AIR."

through the night, and was beaten back from one house
to another, and reverberated from the hills in the back
ground ; as if a company of devils, detecting so much
misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the
sound, and were bandying it to and fro.

198 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp,
the old lady quickly extinguished her own, and vanished.

77ie Minister's Vigil. 199

Possibly, she went up among the clouds. The minister
saw nothing further of her motions. The magistrate,

after a warv observation of the darkness — into which.

j . *

nevertheless, he could see but little farther than he might
into a mill-stone — retired from the window.

The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes,
however, were soon greeted by a little, glimmering light,
which, at first a long way off, was approaching up the
street. It threw a gleam of recognition on here a post,
and there a garden-fence, and here a lattice window-pane,
and there a pump, with its full trough of water, and here,
again, an arched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and
a rough log for the door-step. The Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale noted all these minute particulars, even
while firmly convinced that the doom of his existence
was stealing onward, in the footsteps which he now
heard ; and that the gleam of the lantern would fall upon
him, in a few moments more, and reveal his long-hidden
secret. As the light drew nearer, he beheld, within its
illuminated circle, his brother clergyman, — or, to speak
more accurately, his professional father, as well as highly
valued friend, — the Reverend Mr. Wilson ; who, as Mr.
Dimmesdale now conjectured, had been "praying at the
bedside of some dying man. And so he had. The good
old minister came freshly from the death-chamber of
Governor Winthrop, who had passed from earth to heaven
within that very hour. And now, surrounded, like the
saint-like personages of olden times, with a radiant halo,
that glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin, — as if
the departed Governor had left him an inheritance of his
glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the distant
shine of the celestial city, while looking thitherward to

20O

The Scarlet Letter.

see the triumphant pilgrim pass within its gates, — now, in
short, good Father Wilson was moving homeward, aiding
his footsteps with a lighted lantern ! The glimmer of
this luminary- suggested the above conceits to Mr.
Dimmesdale, who smiled, — nay, almost laughed at them, —
and then wondered if he were going mad.

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

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

Good heavens ! Had Mr.
Dimmesdale actually spoken ?
For one instant, he believed
that these words had passed
his lips. But they were
uttered only within his im
agination. The venerable Father Wilson continued to
step slowly onward, looking carefully at the muddy path
way before his feet, and never once turning his head
towards the guilty platform. When the light of the glim
mering lantern had faded quite away, the minister discov
ered, by the faintness which came over him, that the last

*' AIDING HIS FOOTSTEPS WITH A
LIGHTED LANTERN."

The Minister's VigiL 201

few moments had been a crisis of terrible anxiety ; al
though his mind had made an involuntary effort to relieve
itself by a kind of lurid playfulness.

Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humor
ous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his
thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the unac
customed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he
should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold.
Morning would break, and find him there. The neigh
borhood would begin to rouse itself. The earliest riser,
coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely
defined figure aloft on the place of shame ; and, half
crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go, knocking
from door to door, summoning all the people to behold
the ghost — as he needs must think it — of some defunct
transgressor. A dusky tumult would flap its wings from
one house to another. Then — the morning light still
waxing stronger — old patriarchs would rise up in great
haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly dames,
without pausing to put off their night-gear. The whole
tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore
been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would
start into public view, with the disorder of a nightmare in
their aspects. Old Governor Bellingham would come
grimly forth, with his King James's ruff fastened askew ;
and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest cling
ing to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having
hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride ; and good
Father Wilson, too, after spending half the night at a
death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of
his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, likewise,
would come the elders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's

202 27ic Scarlet Letter.

church, and the young virgins who so idolized their min
ister, and had made a shrine for him in their white
bosoms ; which now, by the by, in their hurry and confu
sion, they would scantly have given themselves time to
cover with their kerchiefs. All people, in a word, would
come stumbling over their thresholds, and turning up
their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the scaf
fold. Whom would they discern there, with the red
eastern light upon his brow? Whom, but the Reverend
Arthur Dimmesdale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed
with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had stood !

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

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

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

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

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

"Come up hither, Hester, them n^d little Pearl," said

The Minister's Vigil. 203

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

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

" Minister! " whispered little Pearl.

" What wouldst thou say, child ? " asked Mr. Dimmes-
dale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

204 The Scarlet Letter.

" And what other time ? " persisted the child.

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

Pearl laughed again.

But, before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light
gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was
doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the
night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste,
in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful
was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense
medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great
vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It
showed the familiar scene of the street, with the distinct
ness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always
imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light.
The wooden houses, with their jutting stories and quaint
gable-peaks; the door-steps and thresholds, with the early
grass springing up about them; the garden-plots, black
with freshly turned earth ; the wheel-track, little worn, and,
even in the market-place, margined with green on either
side; — all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect
that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the
V> things of this world than they had ever borne before.
/And there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart ;
and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered letter glimmer
ing on her bosom ; and little Pearl, herself a sjmboJ1_a_ncl
,the connecting link between those _two. They stood in
the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it

The Minister's Vigil. 205

were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the day
break that shall unite all who belong to one another.

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

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to in
terpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural phe
nomena, that occurred with, less regularity than the rise
and set of sun and moon,, as so many revelations from a
supernatural source. Thus, a blazing spear, a sword of
flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows, seen in the midnight
I sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to
j have been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. We
i doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever
i befell New England, from its settlement down to Revolu-
\tionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been pre-
jviously warned by some spectacle of this nature. Not
seldom, it had been seen by multitudes. Oftener, how
ever, its credibility rested on the faith of some lonely eye
witness, who beheld the wonder through the colored
magnifying, and distorting medium of his imagination,
and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought. It
was, indeed, a majestic idea, that the destiny of nations
should be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the
cope of heaven. A scroll so wide might not be deemed
too expansive for Providence to write a people's doom
upon. The belief was a favorite one with our forefathers,
as betokening that their infant commonwealth was under

206 The Scarlet Letter.

a celestial guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness.
But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a
revelation, addressed to himself alone, on the same vast
sheet of record ! In such a case, it could only be the
symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a
man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, in
tense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the
whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should
appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history
and fate.

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

There was a singular circumstance that characterized
Mr. Dimmesdale's psychological state, at this moment.
All the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was,
nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Pearl was pointing
her finger towards old Roger Chillingvvorth, who stood at
no great distance from the scaffold. The minister ap
peared to see him, with the same glance that discerned
the miraculous letter. To his features, as to all other
objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression : or
it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as
at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he
looked upon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled
up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness

The Minister's Vigil. 207

that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of

the clay of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth

have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there

with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid was

j the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of

I it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness,

after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the

street and all things else were at once annihilated.

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

She remembered her oath and was silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

20$

The Scarlet Letter.

"Worthy Sir," answered the physician, who had now
advanced to the foot of the platform. " Pious Master
Dimmesdale ! can this be you ? Well, well, indeed ! We
men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to
be straitly looked after ! We dream in our waking mo-

" DOING WHAT MY POOR SKILL MIGHT."

ments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good Sir, and my
dear friend, I pray you, let me lead you home ! "

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

" Verily, and in good faith," answered Roger Chilling-

The Ministers VigiL 209

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

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

With a chill despondency, like one awaking, all nerve
less, from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physi
cian, and was led away.

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

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

" Thank you, my good friend," said the minister,

210 The Scarlet Letter.

gravely, but startled at heart; for, so confused 'was his re
membrance, that he had almost brought himself to look
at the events of the past night as visionary. " Yes, it
seems to be my glove indeed ! "

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

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

XIII.

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER.

N her late singular inter- 1
view with Mr. Di mines-
dale, Hester Prynne was
shocked at the condi
tion to which she found

f^^^B^^-^^^S^ the clergyman reduced,

>^'jfeMv>\ ^IS nerve seemed ab-

EfHO solutely destroyed. His

moral force was abased
into more than childish
weakness. It grovelled
helpless on the ground,
even while his intellect
ual faculties retained their pristine strength, or had per
haps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could
have given them. With her knowledge of a train of
circumstances hidden from all others, she could readily
infer, that, besides the legitimate action of his own con
science, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear,
and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale's well-being
and repose. Knowing what this poor, fallen man had
once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering
terror with which he had appealed to her, — the outcast

.,

212 The Scarlet Letter.

woman, — for support against his instinctively discovered
enemy. She decided, moreover, that he had a right to
her utmost aid. Little accustomed,, in her long seclusion
from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrong by
any standard external to herself, Hester saw — or seemed
to see — that there lay a responsibility upon her, in reference
to the clergyman, which she owed to no other, nor to the
whole world besides. The links that united her to the
rest of human kind — links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or
whatever the material — had all been broken. Here was
the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she
could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it
its obligations.

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same
position in which we beheld her during the earlier periods
of her ignominy. Years had come and gone. Pearl was
now seven years old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter
on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had
long been a familiar object to the townspeople. As is
apt to be the case when a person stands out in any prom
inence before the community, and, at the same time,
interferes neither with public nor individual interests and
convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately
grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the
credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness
is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.
Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be
transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a
continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostil
ity. In this matter of Hester Prynne, there was neither
irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the
public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage;

Another View of Hester.

213

"READY TO GIVE TO EVERY DEMAND OF POVERTY."

The Scarlet Letter.

she made no claim upon it, in requital for what she suf
fered ; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. Then,
also, the blameless purity of her life, during all these
years in which she had been set apart to infamy, was
reckoned largely in her favor. With nothing now to lose,
in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly
no wish, of gaining any thing, it could only be a genuine
regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wan
derer to its paths.

It was perceived, too, that, while Hester never put for
ward even the humblest title to share in the world's
privileges, — farther than to breathe the common air, and
earn daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the faithful
labor of her hands, — she was quick to acknowledge her
sisterhood with the race of man, whenever benefits were
to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her
little substance to every demand of poverty ; even though
the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of
the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments
wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroid-

o y o

ered a monarch's robe. None so self-devoted as Hester,
when pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons
of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals,
the outcast of society at once found hex place. She came>
not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the house
hold that was darkened by trouble; as if its gloomy
twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold
intercourse with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered
the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray.
Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of__th£ sick-
chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's
hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown

Another View of Hester. 215

him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast
becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach
him. In such emergencies, Hester's nature showed itself
I warm and rich ; a well-spring of human tenderness, un
failing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the
largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but
the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was
self-ordained a Sister of Mercy ; or, we may rather say,
the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither
the world nor she looked forward to this result. The letter
was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found
in her, — so much power to do, and power to sympathize,
— that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by
its original signification. They said that it meant Able ;
so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.

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

216 The Scarlet Letter.

nature, society was inclined to show its former victim a
more benign countenance than she cared to be favored
with, or, perchance, than she deserved.

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the com
munity, were longer in acknowledging the influence of
Hester's good qualities than the people. The prejudices
which they shared in common with the latter were fortified
in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning, that
made it a far tougher labor to expel them. Day by clay,
nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing
into something which, in the due course of years, might
grow to be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus
it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent po
sition imposed the guardianship of the public morals.
Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven
Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun
to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that
one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a
penance, but of her many good deeds since. " Do you
see that woman with the embroidered badge ? " they
would say to strangers. " It is our Hester, — the town's
own Hester, — who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to
the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted ! " Then, it is
true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst
of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would
constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone
years. It was none the less a fact, however, that, in the
eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter
had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. It im
parted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled
her to walk securely amid all peril. Had she fallen among
thieves, it would have kept her safe. It was reported^

Another View of Hester.

and believed by man 3% that an Indian had drawn his/
arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, V \
but fell harmless to the ground.

The effect of the symbol — or rather, of the position in
respect to society that was indicated by it — on the mind
of Hester Prynne herself, was powerful and peculiar. £All
! the light and graceful foliage of her character had been
! withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen
away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have
been repulsive, had she possessed friends or companions .
, to be repelled by it. Even the attractiveness of her per- l/-t
! son had undergone a similar change. It might be partly
j owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to'./

the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad
i transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had
either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap,
| that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the
j sunshine. It was due in part to all these causes, but still
j more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer
anything in Hester's face for Love to dwell upon ; noth
ing in Hester's form, though majestic and statue-like, that
Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace ;
nothing in Hester's bosom, to make it ever again the pil
low of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her,
the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a
woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern
development, of the feminine character and person, when
the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experi
ence of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she
will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be
crushed out of her, or — and the- outward semblance is the
same — crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never

2l8

The Scarlet Letter.

* AN INDIAN HAD DRAWN HIS ARROW AGAINST THE BADGE."

Another View of Hester. 219

show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory.
She who has once been woman, and ceased to be so,
might at any moment become a woman again, if theYe
were only the magic touch to effect the transfiguration.
We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever afterwards
so touched, and so transfigured,

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression
was to be attributed to the circumstance, that her life had
turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to
thought. Standing alone in the world, — alone, as to any
dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided
and protected, — alone, and hopeless of retrieving her posi
tion, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable,—^
she cast away the fragments of a broken chain. • The
world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in
which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken
a more active and a wider range than for many centuries
before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and
kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and re
arranged — not actually, but within the sphere of theory,
which was their most real abode — the whole system of
ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient
principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She as
sumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on
the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers,
had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime
than that stigmatized by the scarlet lettec/In her lone
some cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her, such
as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England ;
shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as de
mons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so
much as knocking at her door.

220 The Scarlet Letter.

It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most
boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to
the external regulations of society. The thought suffices
them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of
action. So it seined to be with Hester. Yet, had little
Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it
might have been far otherwise. Then, she might have
come down to us in history, hand in hand with Ann
Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She
might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess.
She might, and not improbably would, have suffered death
from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to
undermine the foundations of the Puritan establishment.
But, in the education of her child, the mother's enthusi
asm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. Prov
idence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to
Hester's charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to
be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties.
Everything was against her. The world was hostile. The
child's own nature had something \vrong in it, which con
tinually betokened that she had been born amiss, — the
effluence of her mother's lawless passion, — and often im
pelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it
were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been
born at all.

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her
mind, with reference to the whole race of womanhood.
Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest
among them ? As concerned her own individual ex-

o

istence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and
dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to specula
tion, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man,

Another View of Hester. 221

makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hope-
; task before her. As a first step, the whole system of
iety is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the
y nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary
it, which has become like nature, is to be essentially
lifted, before woman can be allowed to assume what
ns a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other
culties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage
liese preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have
ergone a still mightier change ; in which, perhaps,
etherea] essence, wherein she has her truest life, will
ound to have evaporated. A woman never overcomes
e problems by any exercise of thought. They are
to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance
3me uppermost, they vanish. Thus, Hester Prynne,
se heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wan-
el without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind; now
ed aside by an insurmountable precipice ; now start-
jack from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly]
ery all around her, and a home and comfort nowherej
times, a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul,
:her it were not better to send Pearl at once to
ven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Jus-
should provide.

he scarlet letter had not done its office.

o\v, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr.

rnesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her a

v theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that

, -eared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its at-

nent. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath

:h the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately,

ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the

222 The Scarlet Letter.

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

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former
husband, and do what might be in her power for the res
cue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his

Another View of Hester.

223

gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One after
noon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the penin
sula, she beheld the old physician, with a basket on one
arm, and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the
ground, in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his med
icines withal.

u STOOPING ALONG THE GROUND."

XIV.

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN.

ESTER bade little
Pearl run down to
the margin of the
water, and play
with the shells and
seaweed, until she
have talked awhile
with yonder gatherer of herbs.
So the child flew away like a
bird and, making bare her
small white feet, went patter
ing along the moist margin of
the sea. Here and there she
came to a full stop, and
peeped curiously into a pool,

left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her
face in. Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark,
glistening curls around her head, and an elf-smile in her
eyes, the image of a little maid, whom Pearl, having no
other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race
with her. But the visionary little maid, on her part, beck
oned likewise, as if to say, — "This is a better place!
Come thou into the pool ! ?> And Pearl, stepping in, mid-

Hester and the Physician. 225

leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom ; while,
out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind
of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated
water.

Meanwhile, her mother had accosted the physician.

" I would speak a word with you," said she, — " a word
that concerns us much."

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

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

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

All this while, Hester had been looking steadily at the
old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to
discern what a change had been wrought upon him within
the past seven years. It was not so much that he had

226 The Scarlet Letter.

grown older ; for though the traces of advancing life
were visible, he bore his age well, and seemed to retain a
wiry vigor and alertness. But the former aspect of an
intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was
what she best remembered in him, had altogether van
ished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost
fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his
wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile ;
but the latter played him false, and flickered over his vis
age so derisively, that tite spectator could see his black
ness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came
a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old man's
soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily within
his breast, until, by some casual puff of passion, it was
blown into a momentary flame. This, he repressed as
speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of
the kind had happened.

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

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

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

" Something that would make me weep, if there were

Hester and the Physician. 227

any tears bitter enough for it," answered she. " But let
it pass ! It is of yonder miserable man that I would
speak."

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

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

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

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

228 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

Hester and the Physician. 229

only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge !
Yea, indeed ! — he did not err ! — there was a fiend at his
elbow ! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has
become a fiend foi his especial torment ! "

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

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

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

" All this, and more," said Hester.

" And what am I now ? " demanded he, looking into her

230 The Scarlet Letter.

face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be writ
ten on his features. " I have already told thee what I
am ! A fiend ! Who made me so ? "

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

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

He laid his finger on it, with a smile.

" It has avenged thee ! " answered Hester Prynne.

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

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

"Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!" said Roger
Chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration
too ; for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair
which she expressed. " Thou hadst great elements.

Hester and the Physician. 231

Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love
than iiiine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the
good that has been wasted in thy nature !"

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

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

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

XV.

rtf

HESTER AND PEARL.

• O Roger Chillingworth
— a deformed old
figure, with a face
that haunted men's
memories longer
than they liked —
took leave of Hester Prynne,
and went stooping away along
the earth. He gathered here
and there an herb, or grubbed

' O

up a root, and put it into the
basket on his arm. His gray
beard almost touched the
ground, as he crept onward.
Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half-
fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early
spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the
wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its
cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they
were, which the old man was so sedulous to gather.
Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the
sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs, of
species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his

Hester and Pearl.

233

fingers? Or might it suffice him, that every wholesome
growth should be converted into something deleterious
and malignant at his touch ? Did the sun which shone
so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him ? Or
was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow
moving along with his deformity, whichever way he
turned himself? And whither was he now going?
Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a
barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time*
would be seen deadly night
shade, dogwood, henbane,
and whatever else of vegeta
ble wickedness the climate
could produce, all flourishing
with hideous luxuriance ? Or
would he spread bat's wings
and flee away, looking so
much the uglier, the higher
he rose towards heaven ?

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

She upbraided herself for
the sentiment, but could not
overcome or lessen it. At
tempting to do so, she thought
of those long-past days, in a
distant land, when he used to
emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study, and
sit down in the firelight of their home, and in the light of
her nuptial smile. He needed to bask himself in that

' THE SECLUSION OF His STUDY."

234

The Scarlet Letter.

smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely
hours among his books might be taken off the scholar's
heart. Such scenes had once appeared not otherwise
than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal
medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves
among: her ugliest remembrances. She marvelled how

o O

such scenes could have been ! She marvelled how she
coulcl ever have been wrought upon to marry him! She
deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had
ever endured, and reciprocated, the lukewarm grasp of
his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes
to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler

o

offence committed by Roger Chillingworth, than any
which had since been done him, that, in the time when
her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy
herself happy by his side.

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

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

The emotions of that brief space, while she stood gaz-

Hester and Pearl. 235

ing after the crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth,
threw a dark light on Hester's state of mind, revealing
much that she might not otherwise have acknowledged
to herself.

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

236

The Scarlet Letter.

Hester and Pearl. 237

have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the
sea-breeze, or as wild as Pearl herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

238 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

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

She took her mother's hand in both her own, and
gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom
seen in her wild and capricious character. The thought
occurred to Hester, that the child might really be seeking
to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing
what she could, and as intelligently a* she knew how, to
establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It showed Pearl
in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore, the mother, while
loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had
schooled herself to hope for little other return than the
waywardness of an April breeze ; which spends its time in
airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and
is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener
than caresses you, when you take it to your bosom : in
requital of which misdemeanors, it will sometimes, of its
own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of

Hester and Pearl. 239

doubtful tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and
then begone about its other idle business, leaving a
dreamy pleasure at your heart. And this, moreover, was
a mother's estimate of the child's disposition. Any
other observer might have seen few but un ami able traits,
and have given them a far darker coloring. But now the
idea came strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with
her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already
have approached the age when she could be made a
friend, and intrusted with as much of her mother's sor
rows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to
the parent or the child. In the little chaos of Pearl's
character, there might be seen emerging — and could
have been, from the very first — the steadfast principles
of an unflinching courage, — an uncontrollable will, — a
sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect,
— and a bitter scorn of many things, which, when ex
amined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in
them. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto
acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavors of un-

o

ripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes, thought
Hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother
must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out
of this elfish child.

Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma
of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her
being. From the earliest epoch of her conscious life,
she had entered upon this as her appointed mission.
Hester had often fancied that Providence had a design of
justice and retribution, in endowing the child with this
marked propensity ; but never, until now, had she be
thought herself to ask, whether, linked with that design,

240 The Scarlet Letter.

there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and
beneficence. If little Pearl were entertained with faith
and trust, as a spirit-messenger no less than an earthly
child, might it not be her errand to soothe away the
sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart, and convert
it into a tomb ? — and to help her to overcome the pas
sion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep,
but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart ?

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

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

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

Then she spoke aloud.

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

In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had
never before been false to the symbol on her bosom. It
may be that it was the talisman of a stern and severe,
but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her ; as
recognizing that, in spite of his strict watch over her

Hester and Pearl. 241

heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some old one
had never been expelled. As for little Pearl, the ear
nestness soon passed out of her face.

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

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

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

"Mother 1 — Mother! — Why does the minister keep his
hand over his heart ? "

"Hold thy tongue, naughty child!" answered her
mother, with an asperity that she had never permitted to
herself before. " Do not tease ; else I shall shut thee
into the dark closet 1 "

XVI.

A FOREST WALK.

ESTER PRYNNE re
mained constant in
her resolve to make
known to Mr. Dim-
mesdale, at whatever
risk of present pain or ulte
rior consequences, the true
character of the man who
had crept into his intimacy.
For several days, however,
she vainly sought an oppor
tunity of addressing him in

some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be
in the habit of taking, along the shores of the peninsula,
or on the wooded hills of the neighboring country. There
would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the
holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame, had she
visited him in his own study ; where many a penitent, ere
now, had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the
one betokened by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she
dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old
Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her conscious heart
imputed suspicion where none could have been felt, and

A Feres t Walk. 243

partly that both the minister and she would need the
whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked to
gether, — for all these reasons, Hester never thought of
meeting him- in any narrower privacy than beneath the
open sky.

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

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

244 The Scarlet Letter.

\
" Mother," said little Pearl, " the sunshine does not

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

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

" And why not, mother ? " asked Pearl, stopping short,
just at the beginning of her race. "Will not it come of

sJ DO

its own accord when I am a woman grown ? "

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

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

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

"See!" answered Hester, smiling. "Now I can

o

/stretch out my hand, and grasp some of it."

As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished ; or,
to judge from the bright expression that was dancing on
Pearl's features, her mother could have fancied that the
child had absorbed it into herself, and would give it forth
again, with a gleam about her path, as they should plunge
into some gloomier shade. There was no other attribute
that so much impressed her with a sense of new and un-
transmitted vigor in Pearl's nature, as this never-failing
vivacity of spirits ; she had not the disease of sadness,
which almost all children, in these latter days, inherit,

A Forest Walk. 245

with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors.
Perhaps this too was a disease, and but the reflex of the
wild energy with which Hester had fought against her
sorrows, before Pearl's birth. It was certainly a doubtful
charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's

" OFFERS HIS BOOK AND AN IRON PEN.'

character. She wanted — what some people want through
out life — a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus
humanize and make her capable of sympathy. But there
was time :_e.nough. • yet Joj_ little Pearl !

246 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Forest Walk.

247

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

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

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

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

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

Thus conversing, they
entered sufficiently deep
into the wood to secure
themselves from the
observation of any casual
passenger along the for
est-track. Here they sat
down on a luxuriant heap
of moss ; which, at some •
epoch of the preceding
century, had been a gi
gantic pine, with its roots
and trunk in the dark
some shade, and its head
aloft in the upper atmos
phere. It was a little
dell where they had < ^ BROOK FLO WING THROUGH ITS MIDST '

248 The Scarlet Letter.

seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising gently
on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst,
over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees
impending over it had flung down great branches, from
time to time, which choked up the current, and com
pelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points ;
while, in its swifter and livelier passages, there appeared
a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand.
Letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream,
they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some
short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces of
it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush,
and here and there a huge rock, covered over with grey
lichens. All these giant trees and boulders of granite

o o

seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this
small brook ; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceas
ing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of
the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations
on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as
it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind,
quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young
child that was spending its infancy without playfulness,
and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance
and events of sombre hue.

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

But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among
the forest-trees, had gone through so solemn an experi
ence that it could not help talking about it, and seemed
to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled the brook.

A Forest Walk. • 249

inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-
spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes
shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little
stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along
her course.

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

" If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might
tell thee of it," answered her mother, " even as it is telling
me of mine ! But now, Pearl, I hear a footstep along the
path, and the noise of one putting aside the branches.
I would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to
speak with him that comes yonder."
" Is it the Black Man ? " asked Pearl.
" Wilt thou go and play, child ? " repeated the mother.
" But do not stray far into the wood. And take heed
i that thou come at my first call."

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

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

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

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

250 The Scarlet Letter.

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

When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made
a step or two towards the track that led through the
forest, but still remained under the deep shadow of the
trees. She beheld the minister advancing along the path,
entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by
the wayside. He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed
a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so
remarkably characterized him in his walks about the
settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed
himself liable to notice. Here it was wofullv visible, in
this intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would
have been a heavy trial to the spirits. There was a list-
lessness in his gait ; as if he saw no reason for taking one
step farther, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have
been glad, could he be glad of any thing, to fling himself
down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive
for evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the
soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over
his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no.

A Forest Walk.

•' UNDER, THE DEEP SHADOW OF THE TREES."

252 The Scarlet Letter.

Death was too definite an object to be wished for, or
avoided.

To Hester's eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale exhib
ited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffering, except
that, as little Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over
his heart.

j

XVII.

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER.

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

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

" Who speaks ? " answered
the minister.

Gathering himself quickly
up, he stood more erect, like
a man taken by surprise in a

mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses.

Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice,

he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in gar-

Linents so sombre, and so little relieved from the grey

Uwilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage

had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it

were a woman or a shadow. It may be, that his pathway

254 The Scarlet Letter.

through life was haunted thus, by a spectre that had stolen
out from among his thoughts.

o o

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

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

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

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

Without a word more spoken, — neither he nor she
assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed consent,
— they glided back into the shadow of the woods, whence

The Pastor and His Parishioner. 255

Hester had emerged, arid sat down on the heap of moss
where she and Pearl had before been sitting. When they
found voice to speak, it was, at first, only to utter remarks
and inquiries such as any two acquaintance might have
made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and,
next, the health of each. Thus they went onward, not
boldly, but step by step, into the themes that were brood
ing deepest in their hearts. So long estranged by fate
and circumstances, they needed something slight and
casual to run before, and throw open the doors of inter
course, so that their real thoughts might be led across the
threshold.

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

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

She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.

" Hast thou ? " she asked.

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

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

" More misery, Hester ! — only the more misery ! "
answered the clergyman, with a bitter smile. "As con-

256 The Scarlet Letter,

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

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

" No, Hester, no ! " replied the clergyman. " There
is no substance in it ! It is cold and dead, and can do
nothing for me! Of penance I have had enough ! Of
penitence there has been none ! Else, I should long ago
have thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and
have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at
the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear
the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom ! Mine burns
in secret ! Thou little -knowest what a relief it is, after
the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye

The Pastor and His Parishioner. 257

that recognizes me for what I am ! Had I one friend, —
or were it my worst enemy ! — to whom, when sickened
with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake
myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, me-
thinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even
thus much of truth would save me ! But, now, it is all
falsehood ! — all emptiness ! — all death ! "

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

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

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

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

Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury
for which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in
permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a
single moment, at the mercy of one, whose purposes could
not be other than malevolent. The very contiguity of his
enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal
himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a
being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had
been a period when Hester was less alive to this consider
ation ; or, perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble,

258 The Scarlet Letter.

1

she left the minister to bear what she might picture to
herself as a more tolerable doom. But of late, since the
night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had
been both softened and invigorated. She now read his
heart more accurately. She doubted not, that the con
tinual presence of Roger Chillingworth, — the secret poison
of his malignity, infecting all the air about him, — andjiis
authorized interference, as a physician, with the minister's
physical and spiritual infirmities, — that these bad oppor
tunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of
them, the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irrita
ted state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by whole
some pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual
being. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be
insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the
Good and True, of which madness is perhaps the earthly
type.

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

" O Arthur," cried she, " forgive me ! In all things
else. I have striven to be true ! Truth was the one virtue
which I might have held fast, and did hold fast through
all extremity; save when thy good, — thy life, — thy fame,
— were put in question ! Then I consented to a decep-

The Pastor and His Parishioner. 259

tion. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten
on the other side ! Dost thou not see what I would say ?
That old man ! — the physician ! — he whom they call Roger
Chilli ngworth ! — he was my husband ! "

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

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

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

With sudden and desperate tenderness, she threw her
arms around him, and pressed his head against her
bosom ; little caring though his cheek rested on the scar
let letter. He would have released himself, but strove in

260 The Scarlet Letter.

•
vain to do so. Hester would not set him free, lest he

should look her sternly in the face. All the world had
frowned on her, — for seven long years had it frowned
upon STTTonely^woman, — and still she bore it all, nor
ever once turned away her firm, sad eyes. Heaven, like
wise, had frowned upon her, and she had not died. But
the frown of this pale, weak, sinful and sorrow-stricken
man was what Hester could not bear, and live !

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

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

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

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

They sat down again side by side, and hand clasped
in hand, on the mossy trunk of the1 fallen tree. Life had
never brought them a gloomier hour ; it was the point
whither their pathway had so long been tending, and
darkening ever, as it stole along ; — and yet it inclosed a
charm that made them linger upon it, and claim another,
and another, and, after all, another moment. The forest
was obscure around them, and creaked with a blast that
was passing through it. The boughs were tossing heavily

The Pastor and His Parishioner. 261

*

above their heads ; while one solemn old tree groaned
dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair
that sat beneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come.

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

He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.

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

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

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

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

262 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pastor and His Parishioner.

263

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

"Then there is the
broad pathway of the
sea ! " continued Hes
ter. " It brought thee
hither. If thou so
choose, it will bear thee
back again. In our
native land, whether in
some remote rural vil
lage or in vast London,
— or, surely, in Ger
many, in France, in
pleasant Italy, — thou
wouldst be beyond his
power and knowledge !

And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and
their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bond
age too long already ! "

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

' No VESTIGE OF THE WHITE MAN'S TREAD."

264 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

The Pastor and His Parishioner. 265

He repeated the word.
"Alone, Hester!"

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

Then, all was spoken.

XVIII.

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE.

RTHUR DIMMES-
DALE • gazed into
Hester's face with
a look in which
hope and joy shone
out, indeed, but with fear
betwixt them, and a kind of
horror at her boldness, who
had spoken what he vaguely
hinted at, but dared not
speak.

But Hester Prynne, with
a mind of native courage and

activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged,
but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such
latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the
clergymaji^JShe had wandered, without rule or guidance,
in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy,
as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were
now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate.
Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in
desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild In
dian in his woods. Eor years past she had looked from

A Flood of Sim shine. 267

this estranged point of view at human institutions, and
whatever priests or legislators had established ; criticis
ing all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would
feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the
gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of her
fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet
letter was her passport into regions where other women
dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had
been her teachers, — stern and wild ones, — and they had
made her strong, but taught her much aiui&S,;

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

Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne,
the whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been
little other than a preparation for this very hour. But
Arthur Dimmesdale ! Were such a man once more to
fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime ?

268 The Scarlet Letter.

None ; unless it avail him somewhat, that he was broken
clown by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was
darkened and confused by the very remorse which har
rowed it ; that, between fleeing as an avowed criminal,
and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find it
hard to strike the balance ; that it was human to avoid
the peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable machi
nations of an enemy; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on
his dreary and desert path, faint, sick, miserable, there
appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a
new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doom
which he was now expiating. And be the stern and sad
truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made
into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired.
It may be watched and guarded ; so that the enemy shall
not force his way again into the citadel, and might even,
in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in
preference to that where he had formerly succeeded,
But there is still the ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy
tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten
triumph.

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

" If, in all these past seven years," thought he, " I
could recall one instant of peace or hope, I would yet en
dure, for the sake of that earnest of heaven's mercy. But
now, — since I am irrevocably doomed, — wherefore should
I not snatch the solace allowed to the condemned culprit
before his execution ? Or, if this be the path to a better
life, as Hester would persuade me, I surely give up no
fairer prospect by pursuing it ! Neither can I any longer

A Flood of Sunshine. 269

live without her companionship; so powerful is she to
sustain, — so tender to soothe ! O Thou to whom I dare
not lift mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me ! "

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

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

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

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

So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the
scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a
distance among the withered leaves. The mystic token
alighted on the hither verge of the stream. With a hand's

27°

The Scarlet Letter,

breadth farther flight it would have fallen into the water,
and have given the little brook another woe to carry on
ward, beside the unintelligible tale which it still kept
murmuring about. But there lay the embroidered letter,
glittering like a lost jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer
might pick up, and thenceforth be haunted by strange
phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and unaccount
able misfortune.

'The stigma gone, Hester
heaved a long, deep sigh, in
which the burden of shame
and anguish departed from
her spirit. O exquisite relief!
She. had not known the
| weight, until she felt the free
dom ! By another impulse,
she took off the formal cap
that confined her hair; and
| down it fell upon her shoul-
, ders, dark and rich, with at
\once a shadow and a light in
Jits abundance, and impart
ing the charm of softness to
her features. There played

around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant
and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very
heart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on
her cheek, that had been long so pale. Her sex, her
youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back
from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered
themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before
unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if

' BUT THERE LAY THE EM
BROIDERED LETTER."

A Flood of Sunshine. 271

the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence

of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow.

& /fejs

All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst
the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest,
gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen
ones to gold, and gleaming adown the grey trunks of the
solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow
hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of
the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar
into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a
mystery- of -joy.

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

Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.

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

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

" Ah, that was sad ! " answered the mother. " But she

272 The Scarlet Letter.

will love thee dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I
will call her ! Pearl ! Pearl ! "

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

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

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while
her mother sat talking with the clergyman. The great
black forest — stern as it showed itself to those who
brought the guilt and troubles of the world into his bosom
— became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it
knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its
moods to welcome her. It offered her the partridge ber
ries, the growth of the preceding autumn, but ripening
only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon
the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was
pleased with their wild flavor. The small denizens of
the wilderness hardly took pains to move cut of her path.
A partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran
forward threateningly, but soon repented of her fierceness,
and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A
pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come be
neath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm.
A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree,

A Flood of Sunshine.

273

chattered either in anger or merriment, — for a squirrel is
such a choleric and humorous little personage that it is

'LIKE A BRIGHT- APPARELLED VISION."

hard to distinguish between his moods, — so he chattered
at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was
a last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth.

274 The Scarlet Letter.

A fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the
leaves, looked inquisitively at Pearl, as doubting whether
it were better to steal off, or renew his nap on the same
spot. A wolf it is said, — but here the tale has surely
lapsed into the improbable, — came up and smelt of Pearl's
robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her
hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-
•^ forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recog-
yiized.-a kindred wildness in the human child.

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

Slowly ; for she saw the clergyman !

XIX.

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE.

HOU wilt love her
clearly, "repeated
Hester Prynne,
as she and the
minister sat
\va tc h ing little
Pearl. "Dost
thou not think her beautiful ?
And see with what natural skill
she has made those simple
; flowers adorn her ! Had she
gathered pearls, and dia
monds, and rubies, in the
wood, they could not have be
come her better. She is a
But I know whose brow she has ! "
enow, Hester," said Arthur Dimmesdale,
with an unquiet smile, " that this dear child, tripping
about always at thy side, hath caused me many an alarm ?
Methought — O Hester, what a thought is that, and how
terrible to dread it ! — that my own features were partly
repeated in her face, and so strikingly that the world
might see them ! But she is mostly thine ! "

splendid child !
" Dost thou ]

276 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

" Thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing
aside at Hester Prynne, " how my heart dreads this inter
view, and yearns for it ! But, in truth, as I already told

The Child at the Brook-side. 277

thee, children are not readily won to be familiar with me.
They will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear, nor
answer to my smile ; but stand apart, and eye me strangely.
Even little babes, when I take them in my arms, weep bit
terly. Yet Pearl, twice in her little lifetime, hath been
kind to me ! The first time, — thou knowest it well !
The last was when thou ledst her with thee to the house
of yonder stern old Governor."

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

By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook,
and stood on the farther side, gazing silently at Hester
and the clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy
tree-trunk, waiting to receive her. Just where she had
paused the brook chanced to form a pool, so smooth and
quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure,
with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its
adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more re
fined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so
nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to communi
cate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality
to the child herself. It was strange, the way in which
Pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the
dim medium of the forest-gloom ; herself, meanwhile, all
glorified with a ray of sunshine, that was attracted thither
ward as by a certain sympathy. In the brook beneatl
stood another child, — another and the same, — with like
wise 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,

278 The Scarlet Letter.

had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her
mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to re
turn to it.

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

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

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

Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-
sweet expressions, remained on the other side of the
brook. Now she fixed her bright,' wild eyes on her
mother, now on the minister, and now included them
both in the same glance ; as if to detect and explain to
herself the relation which they bore to one another. For
some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt
the child's eyes upon himself, his hand — with that gest-

The Child at the Brook-side, 279

ure so habitual as to have become involuntary — stole
over his heart. At length, assuming a singular air of
authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small
forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her
mother's breast. And beneath, in the mirror of the
brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image of
little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too.

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

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

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

But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats,
any more than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly
burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently, and
throwing her small figure into the most extravagant con
tortions. She accompanied this wild outbreak with pierc
ing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on alt sides ;
so that, alone as she was in her childish and unreasonable

280 77/6' Scarlet Letter.

wrath, it seemed as if a hidden multitude were lending her
their sympathy and encouragement. Seen in the brook,
once more, \vas the shadowy wrath of Pearl's image,
crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot,
wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing-
its small forefinger at Hester's bosom !

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

" I pray you," answered the minister, " if thou hast any
means of pacifying the child, do it forthwith ! Save it
were the cajikerecl wrath of an old witch, like Mistress
Hibbins," added he, attempting to smile, " I know noth
ing 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,

44 Bring it hither ! " said Hester.

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

The Child at the Brook-side.

281

" Was ever such a child ! " observed Hester aside to
the minister. "O, \ have much to tell thee about her.
But, in very truth, she is right as regards this hateful
token. I must bear its torture yet a little longer, — only
a few days longer, — until we shall have left this region,

" CONFINED THEM BENEATH HER CAP."

and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed
of. The forest j^nnot hide it ! The mid-ocean shall
take it rfgmlrry 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

282 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

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

In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her,
she drew down her mother's bead, 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.

The Child at the Brook-side. 283

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

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

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

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

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

But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems in
stinctive with every petted child towards a dangerous
rival, or from whatever caprice of her freakish nature,
Pearl would show no favor to the clergyman. It was
only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her
up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance
by odd grimaces ; of which, ever since her babyhood, she
had possessed a singular variety, and could transform her
mobile physiognomy into aperies of different aspects, with
a new mischief in them, each and all. The minister —
painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove
a talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier regards
— bent forward, and impressed one on her brow. Here
upon, Pearl broke away from her mother, and, running

284

The Scarlet Letter,

' STOOPED OVER IT, AND BATHED HER FOREHEAD.

The Child at the Brook-side. 285

to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead,
until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and dif
fused through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then
remained apart, silently watching Hester and the clergy
man ; while they talked together, and made such arrange
ments 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 al
ready overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a mur
muring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone
than for ages heretofore.

XX.

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE.

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

The Minister in a Maze. 287

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

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little
interest, the precise time at which the vessel might be
expected to depart. It would probably be on the fourth
day from the present. "That is most fortunate!" he
had then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate, we hesitate
to reveal. Nevertheless, — to hold nothing back from the

288 The Scarlet Letter.

reader, — it was because, on the third day from the present,
he was to preach the Election Sermon ; and, as such an
occasion formed an honorable epoch in the life of a New
England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a
more suitable mode and time of terminating his profes
sional career. " At least, they shall say of me," thought
this exemplary man, " that I leave no public duty unper
formed, nor ill performed ! '' Sad, indeed, that an intro
spection so profound and acute as this poor minister's
should be so miserably deceived ! We have had, and
may still have, worse things to tell of him ; but none, we
apprehend, so pitiably weak ; no evidence, at once so
slight and irrefragable, of a subtile disease, that had long
since begun to eat into the real substance of his character.
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face
to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally
getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale's feelings, as he

o "

returned from his interview with Hester, lent him unac
customed physical energy, and hurried him town ward at a
rapid pace. The pathway among the woods seemed
wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and
less trodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it
on his outward journey. But he leaped across the plashy
places, thrust himself through the clinging underbrush,
climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow, and over
came, in short, all the difficulties of the track, with an
unweariable activity that astonished him. He could not
but recall how feebly, and with what frequent pauses for
breath, he had toiled over the same ground only two days
before. As he drew near the town, he took an impres
sion of change from the series of familiar objects that

The Minister in a Maze.

289

' WITH THE DUE MULTITUDE OF GABLE-PEAKS/

presented themselves. It
seemed not yesterday, not
one, nor two, but many days,
or even years ago, since
he had quitted
Hk| them. There, in-
pfs deed, was each
former trace of
the street, as he
remembered it,
and all the pecu
liarities of the
houses, with the
due multitude of
gable-peaks, and

a weathercock at every point where his memory sug
gested one. Not the less, however, came this importu
nately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true as
regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the
well-known shapes of human life, about the little town.
They looked neither older nor younger, now ; the beards
of (he aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe
of yesterday walk on his feet to-day ; it was impossible
to describe in what respect they differed from the individ
uals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting
glance; and yet the minister's deepest sense seemed to
inform him of their mutability. A similar impression
struck him most remarkably, as he passed under the
walls of his own church. The edifice had so very strange,
and yet so familiar, an aspect, that Mr. Dimmesdale's
mind vibrated between two ideas : either that he had
seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely
dreaming about it now.

290

The Scarlet Letter.

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it as
sumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and
important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene,

" ONE OF HIS OWN DEACONS."

that the intervening space of a single day had operated
on his consciousness like the lapse of years. The minis
ter's own will, and Hester's will, and the fate that grew
between them, had wrought this transformation. It was
the same town as heretofore ; but the same minister re-

The Minister in a Maze. 291

turned not from the forest. He might have said to the
friends who greeted him, — " I am not the man for whom
you take me ! I left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn
into a secret dell, by a mossy tree-trunk, and near a mel
ancholy brook ! Go, seek your minister, and see if his
emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-
wrinkled brow, be not flung clown there like a cast-off
garment!" His friends, no doubt, would still have in
sisted with him, — u Thou art thyself the man ! " — but the
error would have been their own, not his.

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man
gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of
thought and feeling. In truth, nothing short of a total
change of dynasty and moral code, in that interior king
dom, was adequate to account for the impulses now com
municated to the unfortunate and startled minister. At
every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked
thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once in
voluntary and intentional ; in spite of himself, yet grow
ing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the
impulse. For instance, he met one of his own deacons.
The good old man addressed him with the paternal affec
tion and patriarchal privilege, which his venerable age,
his upright and holy character, and his station in the
Church, entitled him to use ; and, conjoined with this, the
deep, almost worshipping respect, which the minister's pro
fessional and private claims alike demanded. Never was
there a more beautiful example of how the majesty of age
and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and respect
enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank and infe
rior order of endowment, towards a higher. Now, during a
conversation of some two or three moments between the

292 The Scarlet Letter.

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-
bearded deacon, it was only by the most careful self-con
trol that the former could refrain from uttering certain
blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respect
ing the communion-supper. He absolutely trembled and
turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself,
in utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own
consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it.
And, even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly
avoid laughing to imagine how the sanctified old patriar
chal deacon would have been petrified by his minister's
impiety !

Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying
along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encoun
tered the eldest female member of his church ; a most
pious and exemplary old dame ; poor, widowed, lonely,
and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead
husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago,
as a burial-ground is full of storied gravestones. Yet all
this, which would else have been such heavy sorrow, was
made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul by re
ligious consolations and the truths of Scripture, where
with she had fed herself continually for more than thirty
years. And, since Mr. Dimmesdale had taken her in
charge, the good grandam's chief earthly comfort — which,
unless it had been likewise a heavenly comfort, could
have been none at all — was to meet her pastor, whether
casually, or of set purpose, and be refreshed with a word
of warm, fragrant, heaven-breathing Gospel truth from
his beloved lips into her dulled, but rapturously attentive
ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting
his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the

The Minister in a Maze.

293

great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text
of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it
then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the
immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof
into her mind would probably have caused this aged
sister to drop clown dead, at once, as by the effect of an
intensely poisonous infusion. What he really did whis
per, the minister could never afterwards recollect. There
was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in his utterance, which
failed to impart any distinct idea to the good widow's
comprehension, or which Providence interpreted after a
method of its own. Assuredly, as the minister looked
back, he beheld an expression of divine gratitude and
ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial city on
her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale.

Again, a third instance.
After parting from the old
church-member, he met the
youngest sister of them all.
It was a maiden newly won
— and won by the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale's own ser
mon, on the Sabbath after his
vigil — to barter the transitory
pleasures of the world for
the heavenly hope, that was
to assume brighter substance
as life grew dark around her,
and which would gild the utter
gloom with final glory. She
was fair and pure as a lily that
had bloomed in Paradise. ^ MOST PIOUS^ND EXEMPLARY

294

The Scarlet Letter

%< SHE WAS FAIR AND PURE AS A LILY."

The Minister in a Maze. 295

The minister knew well that he was himself enshrined
within the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its
snowy curtains about his image, imparting to religion
the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity.
Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl
away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the
pathway of this sorely tempted, or — shall we not rather
say ? — this lost and desperate man. As she drew nigh,
the arch-fiend whispered him to condense into small com
pass and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil
that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear
black fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power over
this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister
felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but
one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a
word. So — with a mightier struggle than he had yet sus
tained — he held his Geneva cloak before his face, and
hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leav
ing the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might.
She ransacked her conscience, — which was full of harm
less little matters, like her pocket or her work-bag, — and
took herself to task, poor thing, for a thousand imaginary
faults ; and went about her household duties with swollen
eyelids the next morning.

Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory
over this last temptation, he was conscious of another
impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It was
— we blush to tell it, — it was to stop short in the road,
and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little
Puritan children who were playing there, and had but
just begun to talk. Denying himself this freak, as un
worthy of his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of the

296 The Scarlet Letter.

ship's crew from the Spanish Main. And, here, since he
had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor Mr.
Dimmesdale longed, at least, to shake hands with the
tarry blackguard, and recreate himself with a few im
proper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and
a volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and heaven-
defying oaths ! It was not so much a better principle,
as partly his natural good taste, and still more his buck-
ramed habit of clerical decorum, that carried him safely
through the latter crisis.

" What is it that haunts and tempts me thus ? " cried
the minister to himself, at length, pausing in the street,
and striking his hand against his forehead. " Am I
mad ? or am I given over utterly to the fiend ? Did 1
make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with
my blood ? And does he now summon me to its fulfil
ment, by suggesting the performance of every wickedness
which his most foul imagination can conceive?"

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

" So, reverend Sir, you have made a visit into the

The Minister in a Maze. 297

forest," observed the witch-lady, nodding her high head
dress at him. " The next time, I pray you to allow me
only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bear you
company. Without taking overmuch upon myself, my
goodjfrord will go far towards gaining any strange gentle-
ma u/a fair reception from yonder potentate you wot of ! "

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

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

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

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

The wretched minister ! He had made a bargain very
like it ! Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had
yielded himself with deliberate choice, as he had never
done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the

298 The Scarlet Letter.

infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly dif
fused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all
blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole
brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked
malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever
was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while they
frightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress
Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show his sym
pathy and fellowship with wicked mortals and the world
of perverted spirits.

He had by this time reached his dwelling, on the edge
of the burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took
refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have
reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the
world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities-
to which he had been continually impelled while passing
through the streets. He entered the accustomed room,
and looked around him on its books, its windows, its fire
place, and the tapestried comfort of the walls, with the
Sc%me perception of strangeness that had haunted him
throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town,
and thitherward. Here he had studied and written ;
here, gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half
alive; here, striven to pray; here, borne a hundred
thousand agonies ! There was the Bible, in its rich old
Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him,
and God's voice through all ! There, on the table, with
the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a
sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had
ceased to gush out upon the page two days before. He
knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked
minister, who had clone and suffered these things, and !

The Minister in a Maze.

299

written thus far into the Election Sermon ! But he
seemed to stand apart^ and eye this former self with

" HASTENING UP THE STAIRS. "

scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self
was gone ! Another man had returned out of the

3oo The Scarlet Letter.

forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mys
teries which the simplicity of the former never could have
reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that \

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

u Welcome home, reverend Sir ! " said the physician.

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

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

All this time Roger Chillingvvorth was looking at the
minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician
towards his patient. But, in spite of this outward show,
the latter was almost convinced of the old man's
knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, with re
spect to his own interview with Hester Prynne. The
physician knew, then, that, in the minister's regard, he
was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest enemy.
So much being known, it would appear natural that a

The Minister in a Maze. 301

part of it should be expressed. It is singular, however,
how long a time often passes before words embody things ;
and with what security two persons, who choose to avoid
a certain subject, may approach its very verge, and retire
without disturbing it. Thus, the minister felt no appre
hension that Roger Chillingworth would touch, in express
words, upon the real position which they sustained tow
ards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark
way, creep frightfully near the secret.

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

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

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

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

" A good man's prayers are golden recompense ! " re
joined old Roger Chillingworth, as he took his leave

302 The Scarlet Letter.

" Yea, they are the current gold coin of the New Jerusa
lem, with the King's own mint-mark on them ! "

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the
house, and requested food, which, being set before him,
he ate with ravenous appetite. Then, flinging the already
written pages of the Election Sermon into the fire, he
forthwith began another, which he wrote with such an im
pulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied him
self inspired; and only wondered that Heaven should see
fit to transmit the grand and solemn music of its oracles
through so foul an organ-pipe as he. However, leaving
that mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved for ever, he
drove his task onward, with earnest haste and ecstasy.
Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and
he* careering on it; morning came, and peeped blushing-
through the curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden
beam into the study, and laid it right across the minister's
bedazzled eyes. There he was, with the pen still between
his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written
space behind him !

XXI.

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY.

ETIMES in the morning
of the day on which the
new Governor was to re
ceive his office at the hands
of the people, Hester
Prynne and little Pea/1
came into the market-place. It was
already thronged with the craftsmen
and other plebeian inhabitants of the
town, in considerable numbers ;
among whom, likewise, were many
rough figures, whose attire of deer
skins marked them as belonging to
some of the forest settlements, which
surrounded the little metropolis of the colony.

On this public holiday, as on all other occasions, for
seven years past, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse
grey cloth. Not more by its hue than by some indescrib
able peculiarity in its fashion, it had the effect of making
her fade personally out of sight and outline ; while, again
the scarlet letter brought, her back from this twilight in
distinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of
its own illumination. Her face, so long familiar to the

304 The Scarlet Letter.

townspeople, showed the marble quietude which they were
accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask : or
rather, like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's feat
ures ; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that
Hester was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sym
pathy, and had departed out of the world with which she
still seemed to mingle.

It might be, on this one day, that there was an expres
sion unseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be de
tected now ; unless some preternaturally gifted observer
should have first read the heart, and have afterwards
sought a corresponding development in the countenance
and mien. Such a spiritual seer might have conceived,
that, after sustaining the gaze of the multitude through
seven miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and
something which it was a stern religion to endure, she
now, for one last time more, encountered it freely and vol
untarily, in order to convert what had so long been agony
into a kind of triumph. " Look your last on the scarlet
letter and its wearer ! " — the people's victim and life-long
bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say to them. " Yet
a little while, and she will be beyond your reach ! A few
hours longer, and the deep, mysterious ocean will quench
and hide forever the symbol which ye have caused to burn
upon her bosom ! " Nor were it an inconsistency too im
probable to be assigned to human nature, should we sup
pose a feeling of regret in Hester's mind, at the moment
when she was about to win her freedom from the pain
which had been thus deeply incorporated with her being.
Might there not be an irresistible desire to quaff a last,
long, breathless draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes,
with which nearly all her years of womanhood had been

The New England Holiday. 305

perpetually flavored ? The wine of life, henceforth to be
presented to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and
exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker ; or else
leave an inevitable and weary languor, after the lees of
bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cor
dial of in tensest potency.

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

This effervescence made her flit with a bird-like move-

The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

" He should not nod and smile
at me, for all that, — the black,
grim, ugly-eyed old man ! " said
Pearl. "He may nod at thee if
he will ; for thou art clad in grey,
and wearest the scarlet letter. But

see, mother, how many faces of "THERE is THE BLACKSMITH."

strange people, and Indians among

them, and sailors ! What have they all come to do here

in the market-place ? "

The New England Holiday. 307

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

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

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

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

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

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity

308 The Scarlet Letter.

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

But we perhaps exaggerate the grey or sable tinge,
which undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners
of the age. The persons now in the market-place of
Boston had not been born to an inheritance of Puritanic
gloom. They were native Englishmen, whose fathers
had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan epoch;
a time when the life of England, viewed as one great
mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent,
and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had they
followed their hereditary taste, the New England settlers
would have illustrated all events of public importance by
bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and processions. Nor
would it have been impracticable, in the observance of
majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful recreation with
solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant
embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at
such festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an
attempt of this kind in the mode of celebrating the day on
which the political year of the colony commenced. The
dim reflection of a remembered splendor, a colorless and
manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in
proud old London, — we will not say at a royal coronation,
but at a Lord Mayor's show, — might be traced in the
customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to

The New England Holiday. 309

the annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and
founders of the commonwealth — the statesman, the priest,
and the soldier — deemed it a duty then to assume the
outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with
antique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of
public or social eminence. All came forth, to move in
procession before the people's eye, and thus impart a
needed dignity to the simple framework of a government
so newly constructed.

Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not
encouraged, in relaxing the severe and close application
to their various modes of rugged industry, which, at all
other times, seemed of the same piece and material with
their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the appli
ances which popular merriment would so readily have
found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of
James' ; — no rude shows of a theatrical kind ; no minstrel
with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman, with an
ape dancing to his music ; no juggler, with his tricks of
mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multi
tude with jests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but still
effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of
mirthful sympathy. All such professors of the several
branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed,
not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general
sentiment which gives law its vitality. Not the less, how
ever, the great, honest face of the people smiled, grimly,
perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such
as the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at
the country fairs and on the village-greens of England;
and which it was thought well to keep alive on this new
soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness that were

310 The Scarlet Letter.

essential in them. Wrestling-matches, in the differing
fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire, were seen here
and there about the market-place ; in one corner, there
was a friendly bout at quarterstaff ; and — what attracted
most interest of all — on the platform of the pillory, already
so noted in our pages, two masters of defence were com
mencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword.
But, much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter
business was broken off by the interposition of the town
beadle, who had no idea of permitting the majesty of the
law to be violated by such an abuse of one of its con
secrated places.

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

The picture of human life in the market-place, though
its general tint was the sad grey, brown, or black_pf the
Engl i shjs migra n ts, was yet enlivened by some diversity
of hue. A party of Indians — in their savage finery of
curiously embroidered deer-skin robes, wampum-belts, red
and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow
and arrow and stone-headed spear — stood apart, with coun
tenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puri
tan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted

The New England Holiday.

311

barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene.
This distinction could more justly be claimed by some
mariners, — a part of the crew of the vessel from the
Spanish Main, — who had come ashore to see the humors
of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes,
with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard ;
their wide, short
trousers were con
fined about the waist

by belts, often rv

clasped with a
rough plate of gold, r^

and sustaining al
ways a long knife,
and, in some in
stances, a sword.
From beneath their
broad-brimmed hats
of palm leaf, gleamed
eyes which, even in
good nature and
merriment, had a
kind of animal fe
rocity. They trans
gressed, without fear

or scruple, the rules , " THE VESSEL FROM THE SPANISH MA1N "
of behavior that were

binding on all others ; smoking tobacco under the beadle's
very nose, although each whiff would have cost a towns
man a shilling ; and quaffing, at their pleasure, draughts
of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket-flasks, which they freely
tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarka-

3i2 The Scarlet Letter.

bly characterized the incomplete morality of the age, rigid
as we call it, that a license was allowed the seafaring
class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far
more desperate deeds on their proper element. The
sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a
pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for in
stance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavorable
specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty,
as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish
commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a
modern court of justice.

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

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant
figure, so far as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among
the multitude. He wore a profusion of ribbons on his
garment, and gold lace on his hat, which was also encir
cled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a feather,

The New England Holiday.

3*3

There was a sword at his side, and a sword-cut on his
forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he
seemed anxious rather to display than hide. A landsman

" THE MOST SHOWY AND GALLANT FIGURE."

could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face,
and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air,
without undergoing stern question before a magistrate,

314 The Scarlet Letter.

and probably incurring fine or imprisonment, or perhaps
an exhibition in the stocks. As regarded the shipmaster,
however, all was looked upon as pertaining to the char
acter, as to a fish his glistening scales.

After parting from the physician, the commander of
the Bristol ship strolled idly through the market-place ;
until, happening to approach the spot where Hester
Prynne was standing, he appeared to recognize, and did
not hesitate to address her. As was usually the case
wherever Hester stood, a small, vacant area — a sort of
magic circle — had formed itself about her, into which,
though the people were elbowing one another at a little
distance, none ventured, or felt disposed to intrude. It
was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which the
scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her
own reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though no
longer so unkindly, withdrawal of her fellow-creatures.
Now, if never before, it answered a good purpose, by
enabling Hester '*and the seaman to speak together with
out risk of being overheard ; and so changed was Hester
Prynne's repute before the public, that the matron in
town most eminent for rigid morality could not have held
such intercourse with less result of scandal than . hei-
self.

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

" What mean you ? " inquired Hester, startled more

The New England Holiday. 315

than she permitted to appear. " Have you another pas
senger ? "

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

" They know each other well, indeed," replied Hester,
(with a mien of calmness, though in the utmost consterna
tion. "They have long dwelt together."

Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hes
ter Prynne. But, at that instant, she beheld old Roger
Chillingworth himself, standing in the remotest corner of
the market-place, and smiling on her; a smile which —
across the wide and bustling square, and through all the
talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and
interests of the crowd — conveyed secret and fearful mean-

XXII.

THE PROCESSION.

EFORE Hester Prynne

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

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a
slow and stately march, turning a corner, and making its
way across the market-place. First came the music. It
comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps imperfectly
adapted to one another, and played with no great skill,
but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony
of drum and clarion addresses itself to the multitude, —
that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to the

The Procession. 317

scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at
first clapped her hands, but then lost, for an instant, the
restless agitation that had kept her in a continual efferves-
cence throughout the morning ; she gazed silently, and ;
seemed to be borne upward, like a floating sea-bird, on
the long heaves and swells of sound. But she was
brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the
sunshine on the weapons and bright armor of the mili
tary company, which followed after the music, and formed
the honorary escort of the procession. This body of sol
diery — which still sustains a corporate existence, and
marches down from past ages with an ancient and honor
able fame — was composed of no mercenary materials.
Its ranks were filled with gentlemen, who felt the stirrings
of martial impulse, and sought to establish a kind of
College of Arms, where, as in an association of Knights
Templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as
peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices of war.
The high estimation then placed upon the military char
acter might be seen in the lofty port of each individual
member of the company. Some of them, indeed, by their
services in the. Low Countries and on other fields of
European warfare, had fairly won their title to assume
the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array,
moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nod
ding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect
which no modern display can aspire to equal.

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came imme
diately behind the military escort, were better worth a
thoughtful observer's eye. Even in outward demeanor
they showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's
haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an age

318 The Scarlet Letter.

when what we call talent had far less consideration than
now, but the ma-ssive materials which produce stability
and dignity of character a great deal more. The people
possessed, by hereditary right, the quality of reverence ;
which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in
smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force in
the selection and estimate of public men. The change
may be for good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both.
In that old day, the English settler on these rude shores,
— having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank
behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence
were strong in him, — bestowed it on the white hair and
venerable brow of age; on long-tried integrity; on solid
wisdom and sad-colored experience; on endowments of
that grave and weighty order, which gives the idea of per
manence, and comes under the general definition of re
spectability. These primitive statesmen, therefore, —
Braclstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their com
peers, — who were elevated to power by the early choice
of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but
distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity
of intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and, in
time of difficulty or peril, stood up for the welfare of the
state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The
traits of character here indicated were well represented
in the square cast of countenance and large physical de
velopment of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a
demeanor of natural authority was concerned, the mother
country need not have been ashamed to see these fore
most men of an actual democracy adopted into the house
of peers, or made the Privy Council of the sovereign.
Next in order to the magistrates came the young and

The Procession. 319

eminently distinguished divine, from whose lips the relig
ious discourse of the anniversary was expected. His was
the profession, at that era, in winch intellectual ability
displayed itself far more than in political life ; for — leav
ing a higher motive out of the question— it offered induce
ments powerful enough, in the almost worshipping respect
of the community, to win the most aspiring ambition into
its service. Even political power — as in the case of In
crease Mather — was within the grasp of a successful
priest.

It was the observation of those who beheld him now,
that never, since Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the
New England shore, had he exhibited such energy as was
seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in
the procession. There was no feebleness of step, as at
other times ; his frame was not bent ; nor did his hand
rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman
were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the bodye
It might be spiritual, and imparted to him by angelic min
istrations. It might be the exhilaration of that potent
cordial, which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of ear
nest and long-continued thought. Or, perchance, his sen
sitive temperament was invigorated by the loud and pierc
ing music, that swelled' heavenward, and uplifted him on
its ascending wave. ' Nevertheless, so abstracted was his
look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even
heard the music. There was his body, moving onward,
and with an unaccustomed force. But where was *his
mind ? Far and deep in its own region, busying itself,
with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of
stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence ; and so
he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew npthing, of what

32 o The Scarlet Letter.

was around him ; but the spiritual element took up the
feeble frame, and carried it along, unconscious of the bur
den, and converting it to spirit like itself. Men of un
common intellect, who have grown morbid, possess this
occasional power of mighty effort, into which they throw
the life of many days, and then are lifeless for as many
more.

Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman,
felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or
whence she knew not ; unless that he seemed so remote
from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach. One
glance of recognition, she had imagined, must needs pass
between them. She thought of the dim forest, with its
little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the
mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand in hand, they had
mingled their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy
murmur of the brook. How deeply had they known each
other then ! And was this the man ? She hardly knew
him now ! He, moving proudly past, enveloped, as it
were, in the rich music, with the procession of majestic
and venerable fathers ; he, so unattainable in his worldly
position, and still more so in that far vista of his unsym-
pathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld
him !

Her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a
delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there
could be no real bond betwixt the clergyman and herself.
And thus much of woman was there in Hester, that she
could scarcely forgive him, — least of all now, when the
heavy footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard,
nearer, nearer, nearer ! — for being able so completely to
withdraw himself from their mutual world ; while she

The Procession. 321

groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and
found him not.

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

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

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

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

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

Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to
Mr. Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose eccen
tricities — or insanity, as we should term it — led her to do
what few of the townspeople would have ventured on; to
begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarlet letter,
in public. It was Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed in great
magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a
gown of rich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come

The Scarlet Letter.

forth to see the procession. As this ancient lady had the
renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than
her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of nec
romancy that were continually going forward, the crowd
gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her
garments, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous
folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester Prynne, — kindly
as so many now felt towards the latter, — the dread in
spired by Mistress Hibbins was doubled, and caused a gen
eral movement from that part of the market-place in which

the two women stood.
** N o w , w h a t
mortal imagination
could conceive it ! "
whispered the old
lady confidentially
to 1 lester. *4 Yon
der divine man !
That saint on earth,
as the people uphold
him to be, and as —
I must needs say —
he really looks!
\Yho, now, that saw

u SAME MKASI-RE WITH ME.- him Pass in lh° P™'
cession, would think

how little while it is since he went forth out of his
study, — chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in his
mouth, I warrant, — to take an airing in the forest ! Aha !
we know what that means, Hester Prynne ! But, truly.
forsooth, I rind it hard to believe him the same man.
Many a church-member saw T, walking behind the music,

DAKCED

The Procession. 323

that has danced in the same measure with me, when Some
body was fiddler, and it might be, an Indian powwow or a*
Lapland wizard changing hands with us ! That is but a
trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister !
Couldst thou surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same
man that encountered thee on the forest-path ! "

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

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

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

324 The Scarlet Letter.

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

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

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

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment ; inso
much that a listener, comprehending nothing of the lan
guage in which the preacher spoke, might still have been
swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. Like
all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emo
tions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human
heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by
its passage through the church-walls, Hester Prynne lis
tened with such intentness, and sympathized so intimately,
that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, en
tirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These, per
haps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a
grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense.

The Procession. 325

Now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking
clown to repose itself ; then ascended with it, as it rose
through progressive gradations of sweetness and power,
until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmos
phere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as
the voice sometimes became, there was for ever in it an
essential character of plaintiveness. A loud or low ex
pression of anguish, — the whisper, or the shriek, as it
might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched
a sensibility in every bosom ! At times this deep strain
of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard,
sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the min
ister's voice grew high and commanding, — when it gushed
irrepressibly upward, — when it assumed its utmost breadth
and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way
through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in the open air,
— still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose,
he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it ? The
complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance
guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to
the great heart of mankind ; beseeching its sympathy or
forgiveness, — at every moment, — in each accent,— and
never in vain ! It was this profound and continual un
dertone that gave the clergyman his most appropriate
power.

During all this time Hester stood, statue-like, at the
foot of the scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept
her there, there would nevertheless have been an inevi
table magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first
hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense within
her, — too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing
heavily on her mind, — that her whole orb of life, both be-

326

The Scarlet Letter.

i

' HESTER STOOD, STATUE-LIKE, AT THE FOOT OF THE SCAFFOLD.'

The Procession. 327

fore and after, was connected with this spot, as with the
one point that gave it unity.

Little Pearl, meanwhile, ha;1. Quitted her mother's side,
and was playing at her own will about the market-place.
She made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and
glistening ray ; even as a bird of bright plumage illumi
nates a whole tree of dusky foliage by darting to and fro,
half seen and half concealed, amid the twilight of the clus
tering leaves. She had an undulating, but, oftentimes, a
sharp and irregular movement. It indicated the restless
vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly indefati
gable in its tiptoe dance, because it was played upon and
vibrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever Pearl
saw any thing to excite her ever active and wandering curi
osity, she flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized
upon that man or thing as her own property, so far as she
desired it ; but without yielding the minutest degree of
control over her motions in requital. The Puritans looked
on, and, if they smiled, were none the less inclined to pro
nounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescrib
able charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through
her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She ran
and looked the wild Indian in the face ; and he grew con
scious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with na
tive audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she
flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-
cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the
land ; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at
Pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of
a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire,
that flashes beneath the prow in the night-time.

One of these seafaring men — the shipmaster, indeed,

328 The Scarlet Letter,

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Procession. 329

With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in
which the shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was
also subjected to another trial. There were many people

" HE WILL CHASE THY SHIP WITH A TEMPEST."

present, from the country round about, who had often
heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had been

330 The Scarlet Letter.

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

The Procession. 331

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy,
where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to
have fixed her forever, the admirable preacher was look
ing down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience, whose
very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The\
sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scar-'
let letter in the market-place ! What imagination would
have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same
scorching stisrma was on them both.

XXIII.

TIIE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER.

rHE eloquent voice, on which
the souls of the listening
audience had been borne
aloft, as on the swelling
waves of the sea, at length
came to a pause. There was a mo
mentary silence, profound as what
should follow the utterance of ora
cles. 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 return
ing 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 bur
dened 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

The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter. 333

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 pos
sessing him, and continually lifting him out of the written
discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas
that must have been as marvellous to himself as to his
audience. His subject, it appeared, had been the rela
tion between the Deity and the communities of mankind,
with a special reference to the New England which they
were here planting in the wilderness. And, as, he drew
towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon
him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old
prophets of Israel were constrained ; only with this differ
ence, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judg
ments 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 couhl not be interpreted
otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to pass
away. Yes ; their minister whom they so loved — and
who so loved them all, that he could not depart heaven
ward without a sigh — had the foreboding of untimely
death upon him, and would soon leave them in their
tears ! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the
last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had pro
duced ; it was as if an angel, in his passage to the skies,

334 The Scarlet Letter.

had shaken his bright wings over the people for an in
stant, — at once a shadow and a splendor, — and had shed
down a shower of golden truths upon them.

Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale
— as to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom
recognized until they see it far behind them — an epoch
of life more brilliant and full of triumph than an}/ pre
vious 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, pre
vailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanctity,
could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days,
when the professional character was of itself a lofty ped
estal. Such was the position which the minister occupied
as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pul
pit at the close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile,
Hester Prynne was standing beside the scaffold of the
pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast.'

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

Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and
majestic fathers was seen moving through a broad path
way of the people, who drew back reverently, on either
side, as the Governor and magistrates, the old and wise
men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent and
renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When
they were fairly in the market-place, their presence was
greeted by a shout. This — though doubtless it might
acquire additional force and volume from the childlike

The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter. 335

loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers — was felt to
be an irrepressible outburst of the enthusiasm kindled in
the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which was
yet reverberating in their ears. Each felt the impulse
in himself, and, in the same breath, caught it from his
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 univer
sal impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of
the many. Never, from the soil of New England, had gone
up such a shout ! Never, on New England soil, had stood
the man so honored by his mortal brethren as the
preachef !

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

As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved
onward, all eyes were turned towards the point where the
minister was seen to approach among them. The shout
died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd after
another obtained a glimpse of him. How feeble and pale
he looked amid all his triumph ! The energy — or say,
rather, the inspiration which had held him up, until he
should have delivered the sacred message that brought its
own strength along with it from heaven — was withdrawn,
now that it had so faithfully performed its office. The

336 The Scarlet Letter.

glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his
cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down
hopelessly among the late-decaying embers. It seemed
hardly the face of a man alive, with such a deathlike hue ;
it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on his
path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fall !

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

Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an
anxious eye upon him. He now left his own place in the
procession and advanced to give assistance ; judging
from Mr. Dimmesdale's aspect that he must otherwise
inevitably fall. But there was something in the latter's
expression that warned back the magistrate, although a

The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter.

337

man not readily obeying the vague intimations that pass
from one spirit to another. The crowd, meanwhile,
looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness
was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's
celestial strength ; nor would it have seemed a miracle
too high to be wrought
for one so holy, had he
ascended before their
eyes, waxing dimmer
and brighter, and fading
at last into the light of
heaven !

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

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

It was a ghastly look
with which he regarded
them ; but there was
something at once tender
and strangely triumphant
in it. The child, with
the bird-like motion
which was one of her
characteristics, flew to
him, aad — clasped— -her
arms about his knees.
Hester Prynne — slowly?

as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her
strongest will — likewise drew near, but paused before she

' STRETCHED FORTH HIS ARMS.I!

338 The Scarlet Letter.

reached him. At this instant old Roger Chillingworth
thrust himself through the crowd, — or, perhaps, so dark,
disturbed, and evil was his look, he rose up out of some
nether region, — to snatch back his victim from what he
sought to do ! Be that as it might, the old man rushed
forward and caught the minister by the arm.

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

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

He again extended his hand to the woman of the scar
let letter.

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

The crowd was in a Jtumult. The men of rank and
dignity, who stood more immediately around the clergy
man, were so taken by surprise, and so perplexed as to
the purport of what they saw, — unable to receive the
explanation which most readily presented itself, or to

The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter. 339

imagine any other, — that they remained silent and inac
tive 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 cla-s'pecl in his.
Old Roger Chillingworth followed, as one intimately con
nected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they
had all been actors, and well entitled, therefore, to be
present at its closing scene.

" Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he,
looking darkly at the clergyman, "there was no one place
so secret, — no high place nor lowly place, where thou
couklst 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 expres
sion of doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evi
dently betrayed, that there was a feeble smile upon his
lips.

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

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

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

Partly supported by Hester Ptyane, and holding one
hand of little Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale

34° The Scarlet Letter.

turned to the dignified aujLy.enerable rulers ; to the holy
ministers, who were his brethren ; to the people, whose
great heart was thoroughly appalled, yet overflowing with
tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep life-matter
— which, if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance
likewise — was now to be laid open to them. The sun,
but little past its me/radian, shone down upon the clergy
man, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood out
from all the earth to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of
Eternal Justice.

" People of New England ! " cried he, with 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 grovelling down upon my face ! Lo, the
scarlet letter which Hester wears ! Ye have all shud
dered 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
repugnance 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.

The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter. 341

He threw off all assistance, and stepped passionately for
ward a pace before the woman and the child.

" It was on him !" he continued, with a kind of fierce
ness; so determined was he to speak out the whole.
"God's eye beheld it ! The angels were for ever point
ing at it ! The Devil knew it well and fretted it continu
ally 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 kin
dred ! 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 more than the type of what
has seared his inmost heart ! Stand any here that ques
tion 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 irreverent to describe that revelation. For an
instant the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude was con
centred 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 Chil-
lingworth knelt clown beside him, with a blank, dull
countenance, out of which the life seemed to have de
parted.

" Thou hast escaped me ! " he repeated more than
once. " Thou hast escaped me ! "

342 The Scarlet Letter.

"May God forgive thee ! " said the minister. " Thou,
too, hast deeply sinned ! "

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
"Isweet 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 for ever
do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards
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 together ? Surely, surely, we have ran
somed 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 so
lemnity. " The law we broke ! — the sin here so awfully
revealed ! — let these alone be in thy thought ! I fear !
I fear ! It may be, that, when we forgot our God, — when
we violated our reverence each for the other's soul, — it
was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet here
after, in an everlasting and pure reunion. God knows ;

The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter. 343

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 ago
nies been wanting, I had been lost for ever ! Praised J§e
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.

XXIV.

CONCLUSION.

FTER many days, when
time sufficed for the
people to arrange their
thoughts in reference
to the foregoing scene,
there was more than one ac
count of what had been wit
nessed on the scaffold.

Most of the spectators
testified to having seen, on
the breast of the unhappy
minister, a SCARLET LETTER —
the very semblance of that

worn by Hester Prynne — imprinted in the flesh. As re
garded its origin, there were various explanations, all of
which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some
affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very
day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious
badge, had begun a course of penance, — which he after
wards, in so many futile methods, followed out, — by in
flicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended
that the stigma had not been produced until a long time
subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potent

Conclusion '. 345

necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency
of magic and poisonous drugs. Others, again, — and
those best able to appreciate the minister's peculiar sensi
bility, and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the
body, — whispered their belief, that the awful symbol was
the effect of the ever active tooth of remorse, gnawing
from the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting
Heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible presence of
the letter. The reader may choose among these theories.
We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the
portent and would gladly, now that it has done its office,
erase its deep print out of our own brain ; where long
meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.

It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who
were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never
once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever
on his breast, more than on a new-born infant's. Neither,
by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor
even remotely implied, any, the slightest connection, on
his part, with the guilt for which Hester Prynne had so
long worn the scarlet letter. According to these highly
respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was
dying, — conscious, also, that the reverence of the multi
tude placed him already among saints and angels, — had
desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that
fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nuga
tory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. After
exhausting life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good,
he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order
to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful
lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners

346 The Scarlet Letter.

all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest among
us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern
more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate
more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would
look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so
momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version
of Mr. Dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that
stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends — and espe
cially a clergyman's — will sometimes uphold his character »
when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet
letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of
the dust.

The authority which we have chiefly followed — a manu
script of old date, drawn up from the verbal testimony of
individuals, some of whom had known Hester Prynne,
while others had heard the tale from contemporary wit
nesses — fully confirms the view taken in the foregoing
pages. Among many morals which press upon us from
the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this
into a sentence : — " Be true ! Be true ! Be true ! Show
freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait
whereby the worst may be inferred ! "

Nothing was more remarkable than the change jvhich
took, place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's
death, in the appearance and demeanor of the old man
known as Roger __C.hillingworth. All his strength and
energy — all his vital and intellectual force — seemed at
once to desert him ; insomuch that he positively withered
up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal
sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun.
This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life
to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of

Conclusion. 347

revenge ; and when, by its completes! triumph and con
summation, that evil principle was left with no further
material to support it, — when, in short, there was no
more devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained
for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his
Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his
wages duly. But, to all these shadowy beings, so long
our near acquaintances, — as well Roger Chillingworth as
his companions, — we would fain be merciful. It is a
curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether
hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each,
in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of
intimacy and heart-knowledge ; each renders one individ
ual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual
life upon another ; each leaves the passionate lover, or
the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the
withdrawal of his object. Philosophically considered,
therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same,
except that one happens to be seen in a celestial ra
diance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In the
spiritual world, the old physician and the minister —
mutual victims as they have been — may, unawares, have
found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy trans
muted into golden love.

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

348 The Scarlet Letter.

So Pearl — the elf-child, — the demon offspring, as some
people, up to that epoch, persisted in considering her —
became the richest heiress of her day, in the New World.
Not improbably, this circumstance wrought a very ma
terial change in the public estimation ; and, had the
mother and child remained here, little Pearl, at a mar
riageable period of life, might have mingled her wild
blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan among
them all. But, in no long time after the physician's
death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, and
Pearl along with her. For many years, though a vague
report would now and then find its way across the sea, —
like a shapeless piece of driftwood tost ashore, with the
initials of a name upon it, — yet no tidings of them un
questionably authentic were received. The story of the
scarlet letter grew into a legend. Its spell, however,
was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the
poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the
sea-shore, where Hester Prynne had dwelt. Near this
latter spot, one afternoon, some children were at play,
when they beheld a tall woman, in a grey robe, approach
the cottage-door. In all those years it had never once
been opened ; but either she unlocked it, or the decaying
wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided shadow-
like through these impediments, — and, at all events, went
in.

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

Conclusion.

349

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her
long-forsaken shame. But where was little Pearl ? If

" ON THE THRESHOLD SHE PAUSED."

still alive, she must now have been in the flush and

350 The Scarlet Letter.

bloom of early womanhood. None knew — nor ever
learned, with the fulness of perfect certainty — whether
the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave ;
or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and
subdued, and made capable of a woman's gentle happiness.
But, through the remainder of Hester's life, there were
indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the
object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another
land. Letters came, with armorial seals upon them,
though of bearings unknown to English heraldry. In
the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury,
such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth
could have purchased, and affection have imagined for her.
There were trifles, too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens
of a continual remembrance, that must have been
wrought by delicate fingers, at the impulse of a fond
heart. And, once, Hester was
seen embroidering a baby-gar
ment, with such a lavish richness
of golden fancy as would
have raised a public tumult,
had any infant, thus
apparelled, been shown
to our sober-hued com
munity.

In fine, the gos
sips of that day be
lieved, — a n d Mr.
Surveyor Pue, who
made investiga-
tions a century
' ARTICLES OF COMFORT AND LUXURY." later, believed,

Conclusion. 351

and one of his recent successors in office, moreover,
faithfully believes, — -that Pearl was not only alive, but
married, and happy, and mindful of her mother ; and that
she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and
lonely mother at her fireside.

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here,
in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl
had found a home. Here had been her sin ; here, her
sorrow ; and here was~yet to be her penitence. She had
returned, therefore, and resumed, — of her own free will,
for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would
have imposed it, — resumed the symbol of which we have
related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her
bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and
self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet
letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's
scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to
be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with
reverence too. And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish
ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and
enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexi
ties, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself
gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially,
— in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted,
wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion, — or with
the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued
and unsought, — came to Hester's cottage, demanding why
they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester
comforted and counselled them, as best she might. She
assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter
period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in
Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in

352 The Scarlet Letter.

order to establish the whole relation between man and
woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier
in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might
be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognized
the impossibility that any mission of divine and myste
rious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin,
bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life
long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming
rjevelation must .Rflf 'woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and
beautiful ; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief,
but the ethereal medium of joy ; and showing how sacred
love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life
successful to such an end !

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes
downward at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many
years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken
one, in that burial-ground beside which King's Chapel
has since been built. It was near that old and sunken
grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two
sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone
served for both. All around, there were monuments
carved with armorial bearings ; arid on this simple slab of
slate — as the curious investigator may still discern, and
perplex himself with the purport — there appeared the sem
blance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a
herald's wording of which might serve for a moito and
brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre
is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light
gloomier than the shadow : —

" ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GtfLES."

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