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The Scarlet Letter

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

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CONTENTS.

THE SCARLET LETTER.

Introductory Note

Preface to the Second Edition
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

XI. The Interior of a Heart

XIL The Minister's Vigil .

XIII. Another View of Hester

XIV. Hester and the Phtsician
XV. Hester and Pearl

XVI. A Forest Walk ....

XVII. The Pastor and his Parishioner

XVIII. A Flood of Sunshine

XIX. The Child at the Brook -Side

XX. The Minister in a Maze

XXI. The New England Holiday

XXII. The Procession

XXIII. The Revelation of the Scarlet L*tte

£XIV. Conclusion . ....

PAOB

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE SCARLET LETTER.

44 The Scarlet Letter " was the first sustained work
of fiction completed by Hawthorne after he had be-
come known to the public through the " Twice-Told
Tales ; " and was the first among his books which
attained popularity. He had meanwhile published
"Grandfather's Chair," for children, and his "Mosses
from an Old Manse." But it was not until he once
more took up his residence in Salem, while occupy-
ing the post of surveyor at the Custom House of that
port, that he began to hear — as he expressed it to
a friend — "a romance growling in his mind." This
romance was the now world-famous one, which is
again offered to readers in the present volume. It was
begun some time in the winter of 1849-50, after the
author had been deprived of his official situation. He
completed the book February 3, 1850, and on the fol-
lowing day wrote to Horatio Bridge : —

" I finished my book only yesterday, one end being
in the press in Boston, while the other was in my head
here in Salem ; so that, as you see, the story is al
least fourteen miles long. . . . Some portions of the
book are powerfully written ; but my writings do not,
nor ever will, appeal to the broadest class of sympa-
thies, and therefore will not attain a very wide popu-

10 INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

larity. Some like them very much ; others care noth-
ing for them and see nothing in them. There is an
introduction to this book, giving a sketch of my Cus-
tom House life, with an imaginative touch here and
there, which will perhaps be more attractive than the
main narrative. The latter lacks sunshine."

So much, indeed, did the gravity and gloom of the
situation in which he had placed Hester and Dimmes-
lale weigh upon him, that he described himself as hav-
ing had " a knot of sorrow " in his forehead all win-
ter. Like Balzac, he secluded himself while writing a
romance, and, in fact, saw scarcely any one. It was
noticed that he grew perceptibly thinner at such times ;
and how strongly the fortunes of his imaginary prog-
eny affected him is well shown by a reminiscence in
the "English Note-Books " (September 14, 1855) : —

" Speaking of Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at
his coolness in respect to his own pathos, and compare
it with my emotions when I read the last scene of
* The Scarlet Letter' to my wife, just after writing it
— tried to read it, rather, for my voice swelled and
heaved, as if I were tossed up and down on an ocean
as it subsides after a storm."

Nor was it only while in the act of composition with
the pen that his fictions thus occupied all his faculties.
During the time that he was engaged with " The Scar
let Letter," he would often become oblivious of his sur-
roundings and absorbed in reverie. One day while in
this mood he took from his wife's work-basket a piece
of sewing and clipped it into minute fragments, with-
out being aware of what he had done. This habit of
unconscious destruction dated from his youth. The
writer of these notes has in his possession a rocking-
^bair used by Hawthorne, from which he whittled

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 11

away the arms while occupied in study or in musings,
at college. He is likewise said to have consumed an
entire table in that manner during the same period.

Finished in February, " The Scarlet Letter " was
issued the next month. Although the publisher, Mr.
Fields, formed a high estimate of its merit as a work
of art, his confidence in its immediate commercial
value appears not to have been great, if we may judge
from the following circumstance. The first edition
printed numbered five thousand copies — in itself a
sufficiently large instalment — but the type from
which these impressions had been taken was immedi-
ately distributed ; showing that no very extensive de-
mand was looked for. But this edition was exhausted
in ten days, and the entire work had then to be re-set
and stereotyped, to meet the continued call for copies.

An illustration of Hawthorne's literary methods, and
the extreme deliberation with which he matured his
romances from the first slight germ of fancy or fact, is
offered in the story of " Endicott and The Red Cross,"
written and published before 1845. Mention is there
made of " a young woman with no mean share of
beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the
breast of her gown, in the eyes of all the world and
her own children. And even her own children knew
what that initial signified. Sporting with her infamy,
the lost and desperate creature had embroidered the
fatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and the
nicest art of needle-work ; so that the capital A might
have been thought to mean Admirable, or anything
rather than Adulteress." When this story appeared,
Miss E. P. Peabody remarked to a friend : " We
shall hear of that letter by and by, for it evidently has
made a profound impression on Hawthorne's mind/'

*

12 INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

fears after the sentences quoted above had been
printed in the second series of " Twice-Told Tales,"
the peculiar punishment referred to was elaborated and
refined into the theme of " The Scarlet Letter."

The prescribing of such a punishment by the Puri.
tan code is well authenticated. Hawthorne, it is under-
stood, had seen it mentioned in some of the records of
Boston, and it will be found among the laws of Plym-
outh Colony for 1658. A few years since, that close
student of New England annals, the Rev. Dr. George
E. Ellis, of Boston, stated incidentally in a lecture
that there was not the slightest authenticity as to the
person and character of the minister who plays the
chief male part in the " Scarlet Letter " drama. Dr.
Ellis held that, since Dimmesdale is represented as
preaching the Election Sermon in the year of Gov-
ernor Winthrop's death, he must be identified with the
Rev. Thomas Cobbett, of Lynn, who actually deliv-
ered the Election Sermon in the year named ; and he
wished to defend the character of that clergyman
against the suspicions of those who, like himself, con-
ceived Dimmesdale to be simply a mask for the real
Election preacher of that time. At the date under
notice there was but one church in Boston, and its
pastors were John Wilson and John Cotton. Wilson
is mentioned under his own name in the romance ; so
that there can be no confusion of his identity with
Dimmesdale's. Neither is there any reason for sup
posing that Hawthorne had the slightest intention of
ftxing the guilt of his imaginary minister on either
John Cotton, or Thomas Cobbett of Lynn. The very
fact that the name of Arthur Dimmesdale is a ficti-
tious one, while the Rev. Mr. Wilson and Governor
Bellingham are introduced under their true titles.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 13

ought to be proof enough that Dimmesdale's story
cannot be applied to the actual Election preacher of
1649. The historic particularization must be under-
stood as used simply to heighten the verisimilitude of
the tale, while its general poetic truth and the possi-
bility of the situation occurring in early New England
remain unquestionable.

I believe it has not before been recorded that, when
u The Scarlet Letter " had been written nearly
through, the author read the story aloud, as far as it
was then completed, to Mrs. Hawthorne ; and, on her
asking him what the ending was to be, he replied : " I
don't know." To his wife's sister, Miss Peabody, he
once said : " The difficulty is not how to say things,
but what to say ; " implying that, whenever he began
to write, his subject was already so well developed as
to make the question mainly one of selection. But it
is easy to understand how, when he came to the final
solution of a difficult problem, he might then, being
carried away by the conflicting interests of the differ-
ent characters, hesitate as to the conclusion.

When this romance was published it brought to
Hawthorne letters from strangers, people who had
sinned or were tempted and suffering, and who sought
his counsel as they would that of a comprehensive
friend or a confessor.

The introductory chapter on the Custom House,
upon which Hawthorne relied to alleviate the sombre-
ness of the story, successfully accomplished that re-
sult; but, at the time of its publication, its good-na-
tured and harmless humor roused great ire in some of
the Salem people, who recognized the sketches it con-
tained of now forgotten officials. One individual, of
considerable intelligence otherwise, was known to have

14 INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

firmly abstained from reading anything the author
afterwards wrote ; a curious revenge, which would
seem to be designed expressly to injure the censor
himself, without hurting or even being known to Haw-
thorne. G. P. L.

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, in-
troductory to The Scarlet Letter, has created an
unprecedented excitement in the respectable commu-
nity immediately 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 cherish a peculiar malevo-
lence. 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 carefully 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 im-
pressions of the characters therein described. As to
enmity, or ill-feeling of any kind, personal or political,
he utterly disclaims such motives. The sketch might,
perhaps, have been wholly omitted, without loss to the
public, or detriment to the book ; but, having under-
taken to write it, he conceives that it could not have

10 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

been done in a better or a 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.

THE SCARLET LETTER.

THE SCARLET LETTER.

THE CUSTOM HOUSE.

INTRODUCTORY TO "THE SCARLET LETTER."

It is a little remarkable, that — though disinclined
jo talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fire-
side, and to my personal friends — an autobiograph-
ical 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 indulgent 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 three
years' experience in a Custom House. The example
of the famous " P. P., Clerk of this Parish," was
never more faithfully followed. The truth seems to
be, however, 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 or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do
far more than this, and indulge themselves in such

18 THE SCARLET LETTER.

confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be
addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and
mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book,
thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to
find out the divided segment of the writer's own na-
ture, and complete his circle of existence by bringing
him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous,
however, to speak all, even where we speak imperson-
ally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance be-
numbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation
with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine
that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the
closest friend, is listening to our talk ; and then, a na-
tive reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness,
we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us,
and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me be-
hind its veil. To this extent, and within these limits,
an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without
violating either the reader's rights or his own.

It will be seen likewise, that this Custom House
sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always recog-
nized in literature, as explaining how a large portion
of the following 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 among the tales that make up
my volume, — this, and no other is my true reason for
assuming a personal relation with the public. In ac-
complishing the main purpose, it has appeared allow-
able, by a few extra touches, to give a faint represen-
tation 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 one.

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 19

In my native town of Salem, at the head of what,
half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby,
was a bustling wharf, — but which is 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 lan-
guid 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
harbor, stands a spacious edifice of brick. From 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 thir-
teen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally,
and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military
post of Uncle Sam's government is here established.
Its front is ornamented with a portico of 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 speci-
men of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a
shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a
bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows
in each claw. With the customary infirmity of tem-
per 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 cit.
izens, careful of their safety, against intruding on the

20 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 pre-
sume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness
of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tender-
ness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later, —
of tener soon than late, — is apt to fling off her nest-
lings, 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 ed-
ifice— 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 imperceptibly, 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 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 shipmaster, 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 no^»

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. ti

accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise
that will readily be turned to gold, or has buried him
under a bulk of incommodities, such as nobody will
care to rid him of. Here, likewise, — the germ of the
wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded, care-worn merchant,
— we have the smart young clerk, who gets the 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. 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 some'
times were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify
the group, and, for the time being, it made the Cus-
tom House a stirring scene. More frequently, how-
ever, on ascending the steps, you would discern — in
the entry, if it were summer time, or in their appro-
priate rooms, if wintry or inclement weather — a row
of venerable figures, sitting in old-fashioned chairs,
which were tipped on their hind legs back against the
wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally
might be heard talking together, in voices between
speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that
distinguishes the occupants of almshouses, and all
other human beings who depend for subsistence on
charity, on monopolized labor, or anything else, but
their own independent exertions. These old gentle-
men — seated, like Matthew, at the receipt of customs,

22 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 nar-
row 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 such other wharf-
rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room
itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its
floor is strewn with gray sand, in a fashion that has
elsewhere fallen into long disuse ; and it is easy to
conclude, 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 infre-
quent access. In the way of furniture, there is a
stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk,
with a three-legged stool beside it; two or three
wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and in-
firm ; and — not to forget the library — on some
shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Con-
gress, 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 wan-
dering up and down the columns of the morning news,
paper, — you might have recognized, honored reader,
the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery

TBE CUSTOM HOUSE.

23

little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleas*
antly 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
Locofoco 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 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 almshouse at the other, — such
being the features of my native town, it would be quite
as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a
disarranged checker-board. And yet, though invari-
ably 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 emigrant of my name, made his appear-
ance 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
earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion

24 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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.

But 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 remem-
ber. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-
feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in refer
ence to the present phase of the town. I seem to have
a stronger claim to a residence here on account of thii
grave, bearded, sabled-cloaked and steeple-crowned pro
genitor, — who came so early, with his Bible and hiij
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 wit-
ness 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 conspicu-
ous 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

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 25

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 cruel-
ties ; 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 represen-
tative, 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
browed Puritans would have thought it quite a suffi
cient retribution for his sins, that, after so long a
lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with
so much venerable 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
gray shadow of my forefathers to the other. ;A
writer of story-books ! What kind of a business in
'ife, — what mode of glorifying God, or being service-
able 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 ban-
died between 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 mine.

Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and
childhood, by these two earnest and energetic men,

26 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the race has ever since subsisted here ; always, too, In
respectability ; never, so far as I have known, dis-
graced by a single unworthy member ; but seldom or
never, on the other hand, after the first two genera-
tions, performing any memorable 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 ; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each generation,
retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, 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. This long con-
nection of a family with one spot, as its place of birth
and burial, creates a kindred between the human be-
ing and the locality, quite independent of any charm
in the scenery or moral circumstances that surround
him. It is not love, but instinct. 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 imbedded. 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 sentiment, the chill east
wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres, — all

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 27

these, and whatever faults besides he may see or im-
agine, 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 character which
had all along been familiar here, — ever, as one repre-
sentative of the race lay down in his grave, another as-
suming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main
street, — might still in my little day be seen and rec-
ognized in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sen-
timent is an evidence that the connection, which has
become an unhealthy one, should at last be severed.
Human nature will not flourish, any more than a po-
tato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a
series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My
children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as
their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike
their roots into unaccustomed earth.

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

28 THE SCARLET LETTER.

— 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 my-
self. 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 po-
sition 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 sol-
dier, — he stood firmly on the pedestal 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 heartquake. General
Miller was radically conservative ; a man over whose
kindly nature habit had no slight influence ; attach-
ing himself strongly to familiar faces, and with diffi-
culty moved to change, even when change might have
brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on tak-
ing charge of my department, I found few but aged
men. They were ancient sea-captains, for the most
part, who, after being tost on every sea, and standing
up sturdily against life's tempestuous blast, had finally
drifted into this quiet nook ; where, with little to dis-
turb them, except the periodical terrors o^ a presiden-
tial election, they one 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 bedridden, never dreamed
of making their appearance at the Custom House dur-
ing a large part of the year ; but, after a torpid win

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 29

ter, 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 republic. 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
believe it was — withdrew to a better world. It is a
pious consolation to me, that, through my interference,
a sufficient 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 sup-
posed 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
Surveyor was not a politician, and though a faithful
Democrat 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 infirmi-
ties withheld him from the personal administration of
his office, — hardly a man of the old corps would have
drawn the breath of official life, within a month af-
ter 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 dis-
eourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same

30 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 speaking-trumpet hoarsely enough to fright-
en Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excel-
lent old persons, that, by all 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 de-
servedly to my own discredit, therefore, and consider-
ably 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 thou-
sandth repetition of old sea-stories, and mouldy jokes,
that had grown to be passwords and countersigns
among them.

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 gentle-
men went through the various formalities of office.
Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into
£he holds of vessels I Mighty was their fuss about lit

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 81

tie matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness
that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers !
Whenever such a mischance occurred, — when a wag*
on-load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled
ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their
unsuspicious noses, — nothing could exceed the vigi-
lance and alacrity with which they proceeded 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
grateful 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, 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. Exter-
nally, 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

32 THE SCARLET LETTER.

matter ; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the
surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike
to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In
one case, however, it is real sunshine ; in the other, it
more resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying
wood.

It would be sad injustice, the reader must under-
stand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in
their dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were
not invariably old ; there were men among them in
their strength and prime, of marked ability and en
ergy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and de-
pendent 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 repair. But, as respects the ma-
jority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong
done, if I characterize them generally as a set of
wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth
preservation from their varied experience of life.
They seemed to have flung away all the golden grain
of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed 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 morning's
breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or to-morrow's din
ner, 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 In-
spector. He might truly be termed a legitimate sod

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 88

of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or, rather,
born in the purple ; since his sire, a Revolutionary
colonel, and formerly collector 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 Inspector, when I first knew him,
was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and cer-
tainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-
green that you would be likely to discover in a life-
time'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
business to touch. His voice and laugh, which per-
petually reechoed through the Custom House, had
aothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old
man's utterance ; 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 whole-
someness of his system, and his capacity, at that ex-
treme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights
which he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The
careless security of his life in the Custom House, on a
regular income, and with but slight and infrequent ap-
prehensions 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 in-
tellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and
spiritual ingredients ; these latter qualities, indeed,

34 THE SCARLET LETTER.

being in barely enough measure to keep the old gen*
tlenian from walking on all-fours. He possessed no
power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome
sensibilities ; nothing, in short, but a few common-
place 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 chil-
dren, most of whom, at every age of childhood 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 Inspector !
One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden
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 person-
age 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 absolute nonenity, in every other. My con-
clusion 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 char-
acter been put together, that there was no painful per-
ception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire con«
tentment with what I found in him. It might be
difficult — and it was so — to conceive how he should
exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem i

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 45

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 enjoy-
ment 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 recol-
lect the good dinners which it had made no small por-
tion of the happiness of his life to eat. His gour-
mandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear
him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle
or an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute,
and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual en-
dowment 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 remi-
niscences of good cheer, however 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 were still apparently as
fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just de-
voured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack
his lips over dinners, every guest at which, except
himself, had long b*«n food for worms. It was mar-
vellous 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 appre-
ciation and seeking to reduplicate an endless series of
enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual. A tender-
loin of beef, a hindquarter of veal, a sparerib of pork,

86 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 subsequent experience of our race, and
all the events that brightened or darkened his indi-
vidual career, had gone over him with as little perma-
nent 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 invet-
erately tough that the carving-knife would make no
impression on its carcass, and it could only be divided
with an axe and handsaw.

But it is time to quit this sketch ; on which, how-
ever, I. should be glad to dwell at considerably more
length, because, of all men whom I have ever known,
this individual 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 pe-
culiar 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 opportimities for
observation 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, sub-
sequently 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

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 31

quite, his threescore years and ten, and was pursuing
the remainder of his earthly march, burdened with in-
firmities which even 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 se-
renity of aspect at the figures that came and went ;
amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths,
the discussion 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 ob-
structed 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 evi-
dent effort, his face would briefly subside into its for.
mer not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to
behold this look ; for, though dim, it had not the im-
becility of decaying age. The framework of his na-
ture, originally strong and massive, was not yet crum-
bled into ruin.

To observe and define his character, however-, under
such disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace

38 THE SCARLET LETTER.

out and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress,
like Ticonderoga, from a view of its gray and broken
ruins. Here and there, perchance, the walls may re-
main 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 affec^
tion, — 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 was 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 over-
come, 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
extinct, 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 con-
sciousness, — roused by a trumpet-peal loud enough to
awaken all 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

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 89

more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment, his
demeanor would have still been calm. Such an ex-
hibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy ; not
to be anticipated, 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 ob-
stinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like
most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat
heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable and unman-
ageable as a ton of iron ore ; and of benevolence,
which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa
or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp
as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthro-
pists of 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 butterfly's wing. I have tjot known the
man, to whose innate kindliness I would more confi
dently make an appeal.

Many characteristics — and those, too, which con-
tribute not the least forcibly to impart resemblance in
a sketch — must have vanished, or been obscured, be-
fore I met the General. All merely graceful attri.
butes are usually the most evanescent ; nor does Na-
ture 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 Ticonderoga. Still,
even in respect of grace and beauty, there were point!

40 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 char-
acter 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 the fireplace, the brave old Genera)
used to sit ; while the Surveyor — though seldom, when
it could be avoided, taking upon himself the difficult
task of engaging him in conversation — was fond of
standing at a 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 ; un-
attainable, though we might have stretched forth oui
hands and touched his own. It might be that he lived
a more real life within his thoughts than amid the un-
appropriate environment of the Collector's office. The
evolutions of the parade ; the tumult of the battle ; the
flourish of old, heroic music, heard thirty years before,
— such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive be-
fore his intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants
and shipmasters, 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 af-
fairs did the General appear to sustain the most dis-
tant relation. He was as much out of place as an old
Bword — now rusty, but which had flashed once in the
battle's front, and showed still a bright gleam alon£

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 41

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 renew-
ing and re-creating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara
frontier, — the man of true and simple energy. It
was the recollection of those memorable words of his,
— " I '11 try, Sir I "— spoken on the very verge of a
desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the
soul and spirit of New England hardihood, compre-
hending 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 before
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
intellectual health, to be brought into habits of com-
panionship with individuals unlike himself, who care
little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities
he must go out of himself to appreciate. The acci-
dents 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, espe-
cially, 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 perplexities, and a faculty
of arrangement that made them vanish, as by the wav-
ing of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood
in the Custom House, it was his proper field of activ-
ity ; and the many intricacies of business, so harassing
to the interloper, presented themselves before him with
the regularity of a perfectly comprehended system. la

12 THE SCARLET LETTER.

my contemplation, he stood as the ideal of his class.
He was, indeed, the Custom House in himself ; or, at
all events, the mainspring that kept its variously re-
volving 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 lead-
ing reference to their fitness for the duty to be per-
formed, they must perforce seek elsewhere the dex-
terity 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 stupidity, — 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 con-
dition of an intellect so remarkably clear and accurate
as his, to be honest and regular in the administration
of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to anything
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 persoD
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
bo little akin to my past h*M** n,nd set myself aeif*

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 43

ously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had.
After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes
with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm ; after liv-
ing for three years within the subtile influence of an
intellect like Emerson's; after those wild, free days
on the Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, be-
side our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing;
after talking with Thoreau about pine-trees and Indian
relics, in his hermitage at Walden ; after growing fas-
tidious by sympathy with the classic refinement 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
nature, 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 look upon it as an evidence, in some
measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lack-
ing 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
spiritualized, passed away out of my mind. A gift, a
faculty if it had not departed, was suspended and in-
animate 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 what-
ever was valuable in the past. It might be true, in

44 THE SCARLET LETTEU.

deed, that this was a life which could not with impi*
nity be lived too long ; else, it might have made me
permanently other than I had been without transform"
ing 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 in
stinct, 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 gooc|
a Surveyor as need be. A man of thought, fancy, and
sensibility (had he ten times the Surveyor's propor-
tion of those qualities) may, at any time, be a man
of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the
trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants and
sea-captains with whom my official 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 presume, 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 de-
void of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he
achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that I es-
pecially needed the lesson, either in the wav of warn

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 45

mg or rebuko ; 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 lit-
erary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer — an excellent
fellow, who came into office with me and went out only
a little later — would often engage me in a discussion
about one or the other of his favorite topics, Napoleon
or Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too, —
a young gentleman who, it was whispered, 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 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 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 im-
post, and gone regularly through the office. Borne
on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my ex-
istence, 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 publio
the sketch which I am now writing.

46 THE SCARLET LETTER.

In the second story of the Custom House there i* *
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, therefore, over
the Collector's apartments, remains unfinished to this
day, and, in spite of the aged cobwebs that festoon its
dusky beams, appears still to await the labor of the
carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in a
recess, were a number of barrels, piled one upon an-
other, 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 dulness 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 day,
as these heaped-up papers had, and — saddest of all
— without purchasing for their writers the comforta-
ble 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 memo-
rials of her princely merchants, — old King Derby, —
old Billy Gray, — old Simon Forrester, — and many

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 47

another magnate in his day; whose powdered head,
however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his moun-
tain 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,
upward to what their children look upon as long-estab*
lished rank.

Prior to the Revolution, there is a dearth of rec-
ords ; the earlier documents and archives of the
Custom House 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, per-
haps, to the days of the Protectorate, those papers
must have contained many references 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.

But one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to
make a discovery of some little interest. Poking and
burrowing into the heaped-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 deciphera-
ble on their mossy tombstones ; glancing at such mat-
ters with the saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest
which we 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 region, and

48 THE SCARLET LETTER.

only Salem knew the way thither, — I chanced to lay
my hand on a small package, carefully done 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 chirog-
raphy on more substantial materials than at present.
There was something about it that quickened an in-
stinctive 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 fourscore 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 re-
newal of that edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to
mind, was left of my respected predecessor, save an
imperfect skeleton, and some fragments of apparel,
and a wig of majestic frizzle ; which, unlike the head
that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory pres-
ervation. 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 opera-
tions 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 ca-
pacity, and apparently with his own hand. I could
account for their being included in the heap of Cus-

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 49

torn House lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pue's
death had happened suddenly ; 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 trans-
fer of the archives to Halifax, this package, proving to
be of no public concern, was left behind and had re-
mained ever since unopened.

The ancient Surveyor — being little molested, I sup-
pose, at that early day, with business pertaining to his
office — seems to have devoted some of his many lei-
sure 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 other-
wise 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
third volume of this edition. The remainder may per-
haps 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 gen-
tleman, inclined, and competent, to take the unprofita-
ble labor off my hands. As a final disposition, I con-
template 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

50 THE SCARLET LETTER.

stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with suoh
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 careful examination, assumed
the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By
an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be pre-
cisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had
been intended, there could be no doubt, as an orna-
mental 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 scar-
let 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 contrive, 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 shuddered, and involunta-
rily let it fall upon the floor.

In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter,

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 51

I had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of
dingy 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 ex-
planation of the whole affair. There were several
foolscap sheets containing many particulars respecting
the life and conversation of one Hester Prynne, who
appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage
in the view of our ancestors. She had flourished
during the period between the early days of Massa
chusetts 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 decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn
aspect. It had been her habit, from an almost imme-
morial date, to go about the country as a kind of vol-
untary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good
she might ; taking upon herself, likewise, to give ad-
vice in all matters, especially those of the heart ; by
which means, as a person of such propensities inevita-
bly 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. Pry-
ing further into the manuscript, I found the record of
other doings and sufferings of this singular woman, for
most of which the reader is referred to the story enti-
tled " The Scarlet Letter " ; and it should be borne
carefully in mind, that the main facts of that story are
authorized and authenticated by the document of Mr.
Surveyor Pue. The original papers, together with the.
scarlet letter itself, — a most curious relic, — are still
m my possession, and shall be freely exhibited to
whomsoever, induced by the great interest of the nar»

52 THE SCARLET LETTER.

rative, may desire a sight of them. I must not be
understood as affirming, that, in the dressing up of
the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of pas-
sion that influenced the characters who figure in it, I
have invariably confined myself within the limits of
the old Surveyer's half a dozen sheets of foolscap. On
the contrary, I have allowed myself, as to such points,
nearly or altogether as much license as if the facts
had been entirely of my own invention. What I con-
tend for is the authenticity of the outline.

This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to
its old track. There seemed to be here the ground-
work of a tale. It impressed me as if the ancient Sur-
veyor, 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 illumi-
nated 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 explana-
tory manuscript. With his own ghostly voice he had
exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial
duty and reverence towards him, — who might rea-
sonably regard himself as my official ancestor, — to
bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before
the public. " Do this," said the ghost of Mr. Sur-
veyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head that looked
bo imposing within its memorable wig, — "do this, and

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 53

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 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 traversing, with a hundred-fold repetition,
the long extent 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 unmercifully lengthened tramp of
my passing and returning footsteps. Remembering
their own former habits, they used to say that the
Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck. They prob-
ably 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, sharp-
ened by the east wind that generally blew along the
passage, was the only valuable result of so much inde-
fatigable exercise. So little adapted is the atmos-
phere of a Custom House to the delicate harvest of
fancy and sensibility, that, had I remained there
through ten Presidencies yet to come, I doubt whether
the tale of "The Scarlet Letter" would ever have
been brought before the public eye. My imagination
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

54 THE SCARLET LETTER.

would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any
heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge.
They 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 pos-
sessed over the tribe of unrealities 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 sel-
dom and reluctantly — I 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 threshold of the Old Manse.
The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intel-
lectual 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 glim-
mering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth
imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out
on the brightening page in many-hued description.

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, — •

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 55

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 individuality; the centre-table, sus-
taining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extin-
guished lamp ; the sofa ; the bookcase ; the picture on
the wall, — all these details, so completely 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
carriage ; 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, therefore, 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, with-
out 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 moon-
shine, with an aspect that would make us doubt
whether it had returned from afar, or had never once
stirred from our fireside.

The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influ-
ence 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

56 THE SCARLET LETTER.

a reflected gleam from the polish of the furniture.
This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirit-
uality of the moonbeams, and communicates, as it
were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness
to the forms which fancy summons up. It converts
them from snow-images into men and women. Glanc-
ing 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 further 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 tilings, and make them
look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom
House experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the
glow of firelight, were just alike in my regard ; and
neither of them was of one whit more avail than the
twinkle of a tallow -candle. An entire class of sus-
ceptibilities, 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
different order of composition, my faculties would not
have been found so pointless and inefficacious. I
might, for instance, have contented myself with writ-
ing out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of
the Inspectors, 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 marvel-
lous 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

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 51

ills descriptions, the result, I honestly believe, 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 intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself
back into another age ; or to insist on creating the
semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at
every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-
bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual
circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to
diffuse thought and imagination 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 was 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 fath-
omed 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 be-
cause 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 scattered fragments and
broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the
Jetters turn to gold upon the page.

These perceptions have come too late. At the in-
stant, 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 to be a writer of tolerably pool
tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good

68 THE SCARLET LETTER.

Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, never.
theless, it is anything but agreeable 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. Of 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, perhaps, I
may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here
to say, that a Custom House officer, of long continu-
ance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable
personage, for many reasons ; one of them, 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 posi-
tion — 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 weak-
ness or force of his original nature, the capability of
self-support. If he possess an unusual share of na-
tive energy, or the enervating magic of place do not
operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may
be redeemable. The ejected officer — fortunate in the
unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes to strug-
gle amid a struggling world — may return to himself,
and become all that he has ever been. But this sel-
dom 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 foot-

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 59

path of life as he best may. Conscious of his own in-
firmity, — that his tempered steel and elasticity are
lost, — he forever afterwards looks wistfully about him
in quest of support external to himself. His pervad-
ing and continual hope — a hallucination which, in the
face of all discouragement, and making light of impos-
sibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like
the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for
a brief space after death — is that finally, and in no
long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances,
he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than
anything 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 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 observe how slight a taste of of-
fice suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular
disease. Uncle Sam's gold — meaning no disrespect
to the 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, involv-
ing, if not his soul, 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 I Not that
Jie Surveyor brought the lesson home to himself, or
admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by

60 THE SCARLET LETTER.

continuance in office or ejectment. Yet my reflection*
were not the most comfortable. I began to grow mel-
ancholy and restless ; continually prying into my mind,
to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and
what degree of detriment had already accrued to the
remainder. I endeavored 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 appr>
hension, — as it would never be a measure of policy
to turn out so quiet an individual as myself, and it be-
ing hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign, —
it was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to
grow gray and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and be-
come 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 definition of happiness to live throughout
the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities !
But, all this while, I was giving myself very unneces-
sary alarm. Providence had meditated better things
for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.

A remarkable event of the third year of my Survey-
orship — to adopt the tone of " P. P." — was the elec-
tion of General Taylor to the Presidency. It is essen-
tial, in order to a complete estimate of the advantages
of official life, to view the incumbent at the incoming
of a hostile administration. His position is then one of
the most singularly irksome, and, in every contingency,
disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can possibly oc-
cupy ; with seldom an alternative of good, on either

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. W

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 in-
dividuals who neither love nor understand him, a*d 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 throughout the con-
test, to observe the blood thirstiness that is developed
in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious 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 neighbors — to
grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power
of inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to
oflice holders, were a literal fact instead of one of the
most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the
active members of the victorious party were sufficiently
excited 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 victory as defeat — that this fierce and bitter
spirit of malice 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 sharp, indeed, but
ts edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will ; nor is it theii
custom ignominiously to kick the head which they
\iave iust struck off

62 THE SCARLET LETTEH.

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 par-
tisans, I began now, at this season of peril and adver-
sity, 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 cal-
culation of chances, I saw my own prospect of retain-
ing office to be better than those of my Democratic
brethren. But who can see an inch into futurity be-
yond 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
agreeable 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 suf-
ferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of
the accident which has befallen him. In my particu-
lar case, the consolatory topics were close at hand, and,
indeed, had suggested themselves to my meditations a
considerable time before it was requisite to use them.
In view of my previous weariness of office, and vague
thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resem-
bled 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 Cus-
tom 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 intellectual 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 huma*
being, and withholding myself from toil that would

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 63

at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then,
moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment,
the late Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be
recognized by the Whigs as an enemy ; since his inac-
tivity in political 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 di-
verge 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. Fi-
nally, 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
falling ; 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 humiliating mercy of a friendly one.

Meanwhile the press had taken up my affair, and
kept me, for a week or two, careering through the pub-
lic prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Head-
less Horseman ; ghastly and grim, and longing to be
buried, as a politically dead man ought. So much for
my figurative self. The real human being, all this
time with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought
himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything
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
predecessor, Mr. Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty

64 THE SCARLET LETTER.

through long idleness, some little space was requisite
before my intellectual machinery could be brought to
work upon the tale, with an effect in any degree satis-
factory. Even yet, though my thoughts were ulti-
mately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye,
a stern and sombre aspect ; too much ungladdened by
genial sunshine ; too little revealed 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 due to the period of hardly accomplished rev-
olution, 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 han-
pier, 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 contrib-
ute 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 gleaned
from annuals and magazines of such antique date
that they have gone round the circle, and come back
to novelty again.1 Keeping up the metaphor of the
political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the
Posthumous Papers of a Decapitated Surveyor;
and the sketch which I am now bringing to a close,
if too autobiographical for a modest person to publish
in his lifetime, 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 forgive-
ness to my enemies ! For I am in the realm of quiet !

1 At the time of writing this article, the author intended to pub-
lish, along with The Scarlet Letter, several shorter tales and sketches
These it has been thought advisable to defer.

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 65

The life of the Custom House lies like a dream be<
hind me. The old Inspector, — who, by the by, 1 re-
gret to say, was overthrown and killed by a horse,
some time ago ; else he would certainly have lived
forever, — he, and all those other venerable person-
ages 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 forever. The merchants, — Pingree,
Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, 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 dis-
connect me from them all, not merely in act, but re-
collection ! It is with an effort that I recall the fig-
ures and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise,
my old native town will loom upon me through the
haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it ;
as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an over-
grown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary in-
habitants to people its wooden houses, and walk its
homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its
main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of
my life. I am a citizen of somewhere 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
mind. I shall do better amongst other faces ; and

66 THE SCARLET LETTER.

these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will do just
as well without me.

It may be, however, — oh, transporting and trium-
phant thought ! — that the great-grandchildren of the
present race may sometimes think kindly of the scrib-
bler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days to
come, among the sites memorable in the town's his-
tory, shall point out the locality of The Town Pump 1

THE SCARLET LETTER.

THE PRISON-DOOR.

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments,
and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women,
some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was as-
sembled 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 necessities 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 prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Corn-
hill, 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 churchyard
of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or
twenty years after the settlement of the town, the
wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains
and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker
aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The

68 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 between 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, an3
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. i

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 over-
shadowed it, — or whether, as there is fair authority
for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of
the sainted Anne Hutchinson, as she entered the pris-
on-door,— we shall not take upon us to determine.
Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narra-
tive, which is now about to issue from that inauspi-
cious 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 moral
blossom, that may be found along the track, or re-
lieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty
and sorrow.

n.

THE MARKET-PLACE.

The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on
a certain summer morning, not less than two centu-
ries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of
the inhabitants 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 his-
tory of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified
the bearded physiognomies of these good people would
have augured some awful business in hand. It could
have betokened nothing short of the anticipated exe-
cution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of
a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of pub-
lic sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Pu-
ritan 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 cor-
rected at the whipping -post. It might be, that an
Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist
was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and
vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire-water hac|
made riotous about the streets, was to be driven witlj
stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be;
too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bit-
ter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon
the gallows. In either case, there was very much the

70 THE SCARLET LETTER.

same solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spec-
tators; as befitted a people ,ajnongsft_whom religion
and law were almost-identical, and in whose character
both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest
and the severest acts of public discipline were alike
made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold
was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for
from such by-standers, at the scaffold. On the other
hand, a penalty, which, in our days, would infer a de-
gree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be
invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punish-
ment 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, ap-
peared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal
infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had
not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety
restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale
from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedg-
ing their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were,
into the throng nearest to the scaffold 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 descendants, sepa-
rated from them by a series of six or seven genera-
tions ; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every
sucessive 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 solidity, than her own. The women who were
now standing about the prison-door stood within less
than half a century of the period when the man-like
Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable rep-

THE MARKET-PLACE. 71

resentative of the sex. They were her countrywomen ;
and the 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 England. There was, more-
over, 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 '11 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 magistrates have awarded ? Marry,
I trow not ! "

"People say," said another, "that the Reverend
Master 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
merciful 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 oi
her gown ! Why, look you, she may cover it with a

72 THE SCARLET LETTER.

brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so
walk the streets as brave as ever ! "

" Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife,
holding 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 fore-
head ? " 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 not 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, good wife," 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 hardest word yet ! Hush, now, gossips ! for the
lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes
Mistress Prynne herself."

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 his hand. This personage prefigured
and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity
of the Puritanic code 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
woman, whom he thus drew forward ; until, on the
threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an

THE MARKET-PLACE. 73

action marked with natural dignity and force of char-
acter, 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, who winked and turned aside
its little face from the too vivid light of day ; because
its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquainted
only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other
darksome apartment of the prison.

When the young woman — the mother of this child
— stood fully revealed 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 affec-
tion, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token,
which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a
moment, 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 elaborate embroidery and
fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter
A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fer-
tility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all
the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the ap-
parel which she wore ; and which was of a splendor
in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly be*
yond 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 abun-
dant 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,

74 THE SCARLET LETTER.

had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow
and deep black eyes. She was lady-like, too, after the
manner of the feminine gentility of those days ; char-
acterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than
by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace,
which is now recognized as its indication. 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 star-
tled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and 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
occasion, 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 picturesque peculiarity. But the point which
drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,
— so that both men and women, who had been fa-
miliarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now im-
pressed as if they beheld her for the first time, — was
that Scarlet Letter, so fantastically 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 huzzy, 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 thev, worthy gentlemen, meant for
u punishment ? *

THE MARKET-PLACE. 75

*' 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 let-
ter, which she hath stitched so curiously, I '11 bestow
a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter
one ! "

" Oh, peace, neighbors, peace ! " whispered their
youngest 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.

" 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 un-
kindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth to-
wards the place appointed for her punishment. A
crowd of eager and curious school-boys, understanding
little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them
a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their
heads continually to stare into her face, and at the
winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious let-
ter on her breast. It was no great distance, in those
days, from the prison-door to the market-place. Meas-
ured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might
be reckoned a journey of some length ; for, haughty

76 THE SCARLET LETTER.

as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent 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 na-
ture, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous
and merciful, 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 deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne
passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came
to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the
market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of
Boston's earliest church, and appeared 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 holding it up to the public gaze. The
very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made mani-
fest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can
be no outrage, methinks, 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 Prynne's instance, how-
ever, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentenco
bore, that she should stand a certain time upon th«
platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the

THE MARKET-PLACE. 77

neck and confinement of the head, the proneness 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
shoulders above the street.

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puri-
tans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so
picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant
at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of
Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters
have vied with one another to represent ; something
which should remind him, indeed, but only by con-
trast, 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 witnesses 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 its 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 re-
pressed 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 minis-

78 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ters of the town ; all of whom sat or stood in a balcony
of the meeting-house, looking down upon the platform.
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
infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest
and effectual 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 unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her,
and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intoler-
able to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate
nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings
and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking it-
self 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 behold all
those rigid countenances contorted with scornful mer-
riment, and herself the object. Had a roar of lauglr
ter burst from the multitude, — each man, each wo-
man, 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 indis-
tinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped
and spectral images. Her mind, and especially her
memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing

THE MARKET-PLACE. 79

tip other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a lit-
tle town, on the edge of the Western wilderness ; other
faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the
brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences
the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy
and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the lit-
tle domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarm-
ing back upon her, intermingled with recollections of
whatever was gravest in her subsequent life ; one pic-
ture precisely as vivid as another ; as if all were of
similar importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, 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.

Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a
point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the en-
tire track along which she had been treading since
her happy infancy. Standing on that miserable emi-
nence, she saw again her native village, in Old Eng-
land, and her paternal home ; a decayed house of gray
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 Elizabethan ruff ; her mother's,
too, with the look of heedful and anxious love which
it always wore in her remembrance, and which, even
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 be-
held another countenance, of a man well stricken in
years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim

80 THE SCARLET LETTER.

and bleared by the lamplight 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, gray houses, the huge cathedrals, and the pub-
lic edifices, ancient 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 settlement, with all the
townspeople assembled and levelling their stern re-
gards 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 embroid-
ered 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 !

m.

THE RECOGNITION.

From this intense consciousness of being the object
of severe and universal observation, 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 Indian, 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 remarkable 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 be-
come manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by
a seemingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous
garb, he had endeavored to conceal or abate the pe-
culiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne
that one of this man's shoulders 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

82 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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
before she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on
Hester Prynne. It was carelessly, at first, like a man
chiefly accustomed to loois inward, and to whom exter-
nal matters are of little value and import, unless they
bear relation to something within his mind. Very
soon, however, 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, nevertheless, he so instantaneous^
controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a sin-
gle moment, its expression might have passed for calm-
ness. 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 rec-
ognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger,
made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his
lips.

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 questioner and his savage companion, " else you
would surely have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne,
and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scan-

THE RECOGNITION. 83

dal, I promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's
church."

" You say truly," replied the other. " I am a stran-
ger, and have been a wanderer, sorely against my wilL
I have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and
have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk,
to the southward ; and am now brought hither by this
Indian to be redeemed out of my captivity. Will it
please you, therefore, to tell me of Hester Prynne's, —
have I her name rightly ? — of this woman's offences,
and what has brought her to yonder scaffold ? "

" Truly, friend ; and methinks it must gladden your
heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilder-
ness," said the townsman, " to find yourself, at length,
in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished
in the sight of rulers and people, as here in our godly
New England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know,
was the wife of a certain learned man, English by
birth, but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam, whence,
some good time agone, he was minded to cross over and
cast in his lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this
purpose, he sent his wife before him, remaining him-
self to look after some necessary affairs. Marry, good
Sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman has
been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come
of this learned gentleman, Master Prynne ; and his
young wife, look you, being left to her own misguid-
ance " —

" Ah ! — aha ! — I conceive you," said the stranger
with a bitter smile. " So learned a man as you speak
of should have learned this too in his books. And
who, by your favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder
babe — it is some three or four months old, I should
judge — which Mistress Prynne is holding in hei
arms ? "

84 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle ;
and the Daniel who shall expound it is yet a-wanting,"
answered the townsman. " Madam Hester absolutely
refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their
heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one
stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of
man, and forgetting that God sees him."

"The learned man," observed the stranger, with
another smile, " should come himself, to look into the
mystery."

" It behooves him well, if he be still in life," re-
sponded the townsman. " Now, good Sir, our Massa-
chusetts magistracy, bethinking themselves that this
woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly
tempted to her fall, — and that, moreover, as is most
likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea,
— they have not been bold to put in force the extrem-
ity of our righteous law against her. The penalty
thereof is death. But in their great mercy and ten-
derness of heart, they have doomed Mistress Prynne
to stand only a space of three hours on the platform
of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the remain-
der of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon
her bosom."

" A wise sentence ! " remarked the stranger, gravely

, rs^ bowing his head. " Thus she will be a living sermon

N^ ^ against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved

upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that

V ^ ( the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand

on the scaffold by her side. But he will be known ! — *

he will be known ! — he will be known ! "

He bowed courteously to the communicative towns-
man, and, whispering a few words to his Indian at-
tendant, they both made their way through the crowd.

THE RECOGNITION. 85

While this passed, Hester Prynne had been stand-
ing 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 inter-
view, perhaps, would have been more terrible than
even to meet him as she now did, with the hot, mid-
day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up
its shame ; with the scarlet token of infamy on her
breast ; with the sin-born infant in her arms ; with a
whole people, drawn forth, as to a festival, staring at
the features that should have been seen only in the
quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a
home, or beneath a matronly veil, at church. Dread-
ful as it was, she was conscious of a shelter in the pres-
ence of these thousand witnesses. It was better to
stand thus, with so many betwixt him and her, than to
greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled for
refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded
the moment when its protection should be withdrawn
from her. Involved in these thoughts, she scarcely
heard a voice behind her, until it had repeated her
name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone, au-
dible 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 magis-
tracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such pub-
lic observances in those days. Here, to witness the
scene which we are describing, sat Governor Belling*

86 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ham himself, with four sergeants about his chair, bear,
ing halberds, as a guard of honor. He wore a dark
feather in his hat, a border of embroidery on his cloak,
and a black velvet tunic beneath ; a gentleman ad-
vanced in years, with a hard experience written in his
wrinkles. He was not ill fitted to be the head and
representative of a community, which owed its origin
and progress, and its present state of development,
not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tem-
pered energies of manhood, and the sombre sagacity
of age ; accomplishing so much, precisely because it
imagined and hoped so little. The other eminent
characters, by whom the chief ruler was surrounded,
were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to
a period when the forms of authority were felt to
possess the sacredness of Divine institutions. They
were, doubtless, good men, just, and sage. But, out
of the whole human family, it would not have been
easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous
persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judg-
ment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling
its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid as-
pect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her
face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever
sympathy she might expect lay in the larger and
warmer heart of the multitude ; for, as she lifted her
eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew
pale and trembled.

The voice which had called her attention was that
of the reverend and famous John Wilson, the eldest
clergyman of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his
contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of
kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however,
had been less carefully developed than his intellectual

THE RECOGNITION. 87

gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than
self -congratulation with him. There he stood, with a
border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap ; while
his gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his
study, were winking, like those of Hester's infant, in
the unadulterated sunshine. He looked like the darkly
engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old vol-
ume 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, pas-
sion, and anguish.

" Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, " I have
striven with my young brother here, under whose
preaching of the word you have been privileged to
sit," — here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder
of a pale young man beside him, — "I have sought, I
say, to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal
with you, here in the face of Heaven, and before thestt
wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of all the peo
pie, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin.
Knowing your natural temper better than I, he coxdd
the better judge what arguments to use, whether of
tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your
hardness and obstinacy ; insomuch that you should no
longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this
grievous fall. But he opposes to me (with a young
man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond his years) that
it were wronging the very nature of woman to force
her to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad day-
light, and in presence of so great a multitude. Truly,
as I sought to convince him, the shame lay in the com-
mission of the sin, and not in the showing of it forth.
What say you to it, once again, Brother Dimmesdale 1
Must it be thou, or I, that shall deal with this pool
sinner's soul ? "

88 THE SCARLET LETTER.

There was a murmur among the dignified and re-
verend occupants of the balcony ; and Governor Bel-
lingham gave expression to its purport, speaking in an
authoritative voice, although tempered with respect to-
wards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed.

" Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, " the respon-
sibility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you. It
behooves you, therefore, to exhort her to repentance,
and to confession, as a proof and consequence there-
of."

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 re-
ligious fervor had already given the earnest of high
eminence in his profession. He was a person of very
striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending
brow, large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth
which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt
to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility
and a vast power of self-restraint. Notwithstanding
his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments,
there was an air about this young minister, — an ap-
prehensive, a startled, a half -frightened look, — as of
a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in
the pathway of human existence, and could only be
at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so
far as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy
by-paths, and thus kept himself simple and childlike ;
coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness,
and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as
many people said, affected them like the speech of an
angel.

THE RECOGNITION. 39

Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr.
Wilson and the Governor had introduced so openly to
the public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing
of all men, to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred
even in its pollution. The trying nature of his posi-
tion drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips
tremulous.

" Speak to the woman, my brother," said Mr. Wil-
son. " It is of moment to her soul, and therefore, as
the worshipful Governor says, momentous to thine
own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess
the truth ! "

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

" Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony
and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, " thou near-
est what this good man says, and seest the accounta-
bility under which I labor. If thou f eelest it to be for
thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will
thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge
thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and
fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken
pity and tenderness for him ; for, believe me, Hester,
though he were to step down from a high place, and
stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet
better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through
life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt
him — yea, compel him, as it were — to add hypocrisy
to sin ? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy,
that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph
over the evil within thee, and the sorrow without.
Take heed how thou deniest to him — who, perchance,
hath not the courage to grasp it for himself — the bit-
ter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thj
ttpsl"

\

\

JK) THE SCARLET LETTER.

The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich,
deep, and broken. The feeling that is so evidently
manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words,
caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the
listeners into one acGord of sympathy. Even the poor
baby, at Hester's bosom, was affected by the same in-
fluence; for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze to-
wards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms,
with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So power-
ful seemed the minister's appeal that the people could
not believe but that Hester Prynne would speak out
the guilty name ; or else that the guilty one himself,
in whatever high or lowly place he stood, would be
drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity,
and compelled to ascend the scaffold.

Hester shook her head.

" Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heav-
en's mercy ! " cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more
harshly than before. "That little babe hath been
gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel
which thou hast heard. Speak out the name ! That,
and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet let-
ter 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 en-
dure 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 heav-
onlv Father : she shall never know an earthly one ! *

THE RECOGNITION. 91

" 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 cul-
prit's mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully
prepared himself for the occasion, addressed to the
multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but
with continual reference to the ignominious letter. So
forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or
more during which his periods were rolling over the
people's heads, that it assumed new terrors in their
imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from
the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, mean-
while, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with
glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. She
had borne, that morning, all that nature could endure ;
and as her temperament was not of the order that es-
capes from too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit
could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insen-
sibility, while the faculties of animal life remained en-
tire. In this state, the voice of the preacher thundered
remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The in-
fant, 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 pas>
sage-way of the interior.

IV.

THE INTERVIEW.

After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was
found to be in a state of nervous excitement that de-
manded constant watchfulness lest she should perpe-
trate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied mis-
chief to the poor babe. As night approached, it prov-
ing impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke
or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer,
thought fit to introduce a physician. He described
him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of phys-
ical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the
savage people could teach, in respect to medicinal
herbs and roots that grew in the forest. To say the
truth, there was much need of professional assistance,
not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently
for the child ; who, drawing its sustenance from the
maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all
the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded
the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions
of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame,
of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne
throughout the day.

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apart-
ment appeared that individual, of singular aspect,
whose presence in the crowd had been of such deep
interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was
lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence*

THE INTERVIEW. 93

but as the most convenient and suitable mode of dis-
posing of him, until the magistrates should have con-
ferred with the Indian sagamores respecting his ran«
som. His name was announced as Roger Chilling-
worth. The jailer, after ushering him into the room,
remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative
quiet that followed his entrance ; for Hester Prynne
had immediately become as still as death, although
the child continued to moan.

" Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient,"
said the practitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you
shall briefly have peace in your house ; and, I promise
you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter be more amena-
ble to just authority than you may have found her
heretofore."

"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," an-
swered Master Brackett, " I shall own you for a man
of skill indeed ! Verily, the woman hath been like a
possessed one ; and there lacks little, that I should
take in hand to drive Satan out of her with stripes."

The stranger had entered the room with the char-
acteristic quietude of the profession to which he an-
nounced himself as belonging. Nor did his demeanor
change, when the withdrawal of the prison-keeper left
him face to face with the woman, whose absorbed
notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a
relation between himself and her. His first care wa*
given to the child ; whose cries, indeed, as she lay
writhing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory
necessity to postpone all other business to the task of
soothing her. He examined the infant carefully, and
then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he
took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain
medical preparations, one of which he mingled with s
Tup of water

94 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" My old studies in alchemy," observed he, " and
my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people
well versed in the kindly properties of simples, have
made a better physician of me than many that claim
the medical degree. Here, woman ! The child is
yours, — she is none of mine, — neither will she rec-
ognize my voice or aspect as a father's. Administer
this draught, therefore, with thine own hand."

Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same
time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into
his face.

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

" Foolish woman ! " responded the physician, half
coldly, half soothingly. " What should ail me, to
harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? The
medicine is potent for good ; and were it my child, —
yea, mine own, as well as thine ! — I could do no bet-
ter for it."

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasona-
ble state of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and
himself administered the draught. It soon proved its
efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge. The moans
of the little patient subsided ; its convulsive tossings
gradually ceased ; and, in a few moments, as is the
custom of young children after relief from pain, it
sank into a profound and dewy slumber. The physi-
cian, as he had a fair right to be termed, next be-
stowed 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, be-
cause so familiar, and yet so strange and cold, — and,
finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to
mingle another draught.

THE INTERVIEW. i>5

u I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he •
* but I have learned many new secrets in the wilder-
ness, and here is one of them, — a recipe that an In-
dian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own,
that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it ! It may be
less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot
give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of
thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempes-
tuous sea."

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

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

"Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold
composure. " Dost thou know me so little, Hester
Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow?
Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could
I do better for my object than to let thee live, — than
to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of
life, — so that this burning shame may still blaze upon
thy Iwsom ? " As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger
on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch
into Hester's breast, as if it had been red-hot. He
noticed her involuntary gesture, and smiled. "Live,
therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the
eyes of men and women, — in the eyes of him whom
thou didst call thy husband, — in the eyes of yonder

96 THE SCARLET LETTER.

child! And, that thou mayest live, take off this
draught."

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester
Prynne drained the cup, and, at the motion of the
man of skill, seated herself on the bed where the
child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair
which the room afforded, and took his own seat be-
side her. She could not but tremble at these prepa-
rations ; for she felt that — having now done all that
humanity, or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cru-
elty, impelled him to do, for the relief of physical suf-
fering— he was next to treat with her as the man
whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured.

" Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how,
thou hast fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast
ascended to the pedestal of infamy, on which I found
thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was my folly,
and thy weakness. I, — a man of thought, — the
book-worm of great libraries, — a man already in
decay, having given my best 3rears to feed the hungry
dream of knowledge, — what had I to do with youth
and beauty like thine own ! Misshapen from my
birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea
that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in
a young girl's fantasy ! Men call me wise. If sages
were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have fore-
seen all this. I might have known that, as I came out
of the vast and dismal forest, and entered this settle-
ment 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 ! "

THE INTERVIEW. 97

" 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
laid it. But, up to that epoch of my life, I had lived
in vain. The world had been so cheerless ! My heart
was a habitation large enough for many guests, but
lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I
longed to kindle one ! It seemed not so wild a dream,
— old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen
as I was, — that the simple bliss, which is scattered
far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet
be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart,
into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee
by the warmth which thy presence made there ! "

" I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.

" We have wronged each other," answered he.
" Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy bud-
ding youth into a false and unnatural relation with
my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought
and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot
no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale
hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives
who has wronged us both ! Who is he ? "

"Ask me not! " replied Hester Prynne, looking
firmly into his face. " That thou shalt never know ! "

" Never, sayest thou ? " rejoined he, with a smile of
dark and self-relying intelligence. " Never know him !
Believe me, Hester, there are few things, — whether
in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the in-
visible sphere of thought, — few things hidden from
the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreserv-
edly to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover

98 THE SCARLET LETTER.

up thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou may-
est conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates,
even as thou didst this day, when they sought to
wrench the name out of thy heart, and give thee a
partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come to the
inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall
seek this man, as I have sought truth in books ; as 1
have sought gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy
that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him
tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and
unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine ! "

The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely
upon her, that Hester Prynne clasped her hands over
her heart, dreading lest he should read the secret there
at once.

" Thou wilt not reveal his name ? Not the less he
is mine," resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if
destiny were at one with him. " He bears no letter of
infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost ; but I
shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him!
Think not that I shall interfere with Heaven's own
method of retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him
to the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine
that I shall contrive aught against his life ; no, nor
against his fame, if, as I judge, he be a man of fair
repute. Let him live ! Let him hide himself in out
ward 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

THE INTERVIEW. 99

There axe none in this land that know me. Breathe
not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me
husband ! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I
shall pitch my tent ; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and
isolated from human interests, I find here a woman, a
man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist
the closest ligaments. No matter whether of love or
hate ; no matter whether of right or wrong ! Thou
and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home
is where thou art, and where he is. But betray me
not ! "

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

" It may be," he replied, " because I will not en-
counter 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 al-
ready 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 Soger Chil-
lingworth, as he was hereafter to be named, " I leave
thee alone ; alone with thy infant, and the scarlet let-
ter ! 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 ? "

100 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Why dost thou smile so at me ? " inquired Hester,
troubled at the expression of his eyes. " Art thou like
the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us ?
Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the
ruin of my soul? "

" Not thy soul," he answered, with another smile
u No, not thine 1 ,?

V.

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE.

Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at
an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she
came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all
alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if
meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet
letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real
torture in her first unattended footsteps from the
threshold of the prison, than even in the procession
and spectacle that have been described, where she was
made the common infamy, at which all mankind was
summoned to point its finger. Then, she was sup-
ported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by
all the combative energy of her character, which ena-
bled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid
triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated
event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet
which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call
up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many
quiet years. The very law that condemned her — a
giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as
well as to annihilate, in his iron arm — had held her
up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But
now, with this unattended walk from her prison-door,
began the daily custom ; and she must either sustain
and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her
nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer bor-

i02 THE SCARLET LETTER.

row from the future to help her through the present
grief. To-morrow would bring its own trial with it :
so would the next day, and so would the next ; each
its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so
unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the
far-off future would toil onward, still with the same
burden for her to take up, and bear along with her,
but never to fling down ; for the accumulating days,
and added years, would pile up their misery upon the
heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her
individuality, she would become the general symbol at
which the preacher and moralist might point, and in
which they might vivify and embody their images of
woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young
and pure would be taught to look at her, with the
scarlet letter flaming on her breast, — at her, the child
of honorable parents, — at her, the mother of a babe,
that would hereafter be a woman, — at her, who had
once been innocent, — as the figure, the body, the re-
ality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that
she must carry thither would be her only monument.

It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before
her, — kept by no restrictive clause of her condemna-
tion within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so re-
mote and so obscure, — free to return to her birthplace,
or to any other European land, and there hide her
character and identity under a new exterior, as com-
pletely as if emerging into another state of being, —
and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable
forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature
might assimilate itself with a people whose customs
and life were alien from the law that had condemned
her, — it may seem marvellous that this woman should
still call that place her home, where, and where onlji

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE, 103

She must needs be the type of shame. But there is a
fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it
has the force of doom, which almost invariably com-
pels 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 ir-
resistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her
sin, her ignominy, were the roots which sue had struck
into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger
assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-
land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and
wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but
life-long home. All other scenes of earth — even that
village of rural England, where happy infancy and
stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her moth-
er's keeping, like garments put off long ago — were
foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound
her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost
soul, but could never be broken.

It might be, too, — doubtless it was so, although
she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale when-
ever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from
its hole, — it might be that another feeling kept her
within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal.
There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she
deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecog-
nized on earth, would bring them together before the
bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-
altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Over
and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this
idea upon Hester's contemplation, and laughed at the
passionate and desperate joy with which she seized,
and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked
the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dun-

104 THE SCARLET LETTER.

geon. What she compelled herself to believe — what,
finally, she reasoned upon, as her motive for continu-
ing a resident of New England — was half a truth,
and half a self-delusion. Here, she said to herself,
had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the
scene of her earthly punishment ; and so, perchance,
the torture of her daily shame would at length purge
her soul, and work out another purity than that which
she had lost ; more saint-like, because the result of
martyrdom.

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 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 com-
parative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that
social activity which already marked the habits of the
emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a
basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards
the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone
grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the
cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was
some object which would fain have been, or at least
ought to be, concealed. In this little, lonesome dwell-
ing, with some slender means that she possessed, and
by the license of the magistrates, who still kept an
inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established her-
self, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of sus-
picion immediately attached itself to the spot. Chil-
dren, 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 hei
needle at the cottage-window, or standing at the doors

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 105

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, how-
ever, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art
that sufficed, even in a land that afforded compara
tively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for
her thriving infant and herself. It was the art — »
then, as now, almost the only one within a woman's
grasp — of needlework. She bore on her breast, in
the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her
delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of
a court might gladly have availed themselves, to add
the richer and more spiritual adornment of human
ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, in-
deed, in the sable simplicity that generally character-
ized the Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an
infrequent call for the finer productions of her handi-
work. Yet the taste of the age, demanding whatever
was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not
fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors
who had cast behind them so many fashions which it
might seem harder to dispense with. Public ceremo-
nies, such as ordinations, the installation of magis-
trates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in
which a new government manifested itself to the peo-
ple, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately
and well-conducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet
a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought
bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all
deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming
the reins of power ; and were readily allowed to indi«

106 THE SCARLET LETTER.

viduals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sump
tuary 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 an-
other possibility of toil and emolument.

By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became
what would now be termed the fashion. Whether
from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a
destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a
fictitious value even to common or worthless things ,•
or by whatever other intangible circumstance was
then, as now sufficient to bestow, on some persons,
what others might seek in vain; or because Hester
really filled a gap which must otherwise have re-
mained vacant ; it is certain that she had ready and
fairly requited employment for as many hours as she
saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be,
chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials
of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought
by her sinful hands. Her needlework was seen on
the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on
their scarfs, and the minister on his band ; it decked
the baby's little cap ; it was shut up to be mildewed
and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead. But it
is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was
called in aid to embroider the white veil which was
to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception
indicated the ever-relentless rigor with which society
frowned upon her sin.

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 107

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a
subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic descrip-
tion, 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 orna-
ment, — the scarlet letter, — which it was her doom to
wear. The child's attire, on the other hand, was dis-
tinguished 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 here-
after. Except for that small expenditure in the
decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all her
superfluous means in charity, on wretches less misera-
ble than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted
the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she
might readily have applied to the better efforts of her
art, she employed in making coarse garments for the
poor. It is probable that there was an idea of pen-
ance 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 na-
ture a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic, — a
taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the
exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing
else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exercise
itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incomprehen-
sible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the
needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a
mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the pas-
sion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as
sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an
immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no

108 THE SCARLET LETTER.

genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubt-
ful, something that might be deeply wrong, beneath.

In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part
to perform in the world. With her native energy of
character, and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast
her off, although it had set a mark upon her, more in-
tolerable 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 con-
tact, implied, and often expressed, that she was ban-
ished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another
sphere, or communicated with the common nature by
other organs and senses than the rest of human kind.
She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside
them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside,
and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more
smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kin-
dred sorrow ; or, should it succeed in manifesting its
forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and hor-
rible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its
bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion
that she retained in the universal heart. It was not
an age of delicacy ; and her position, although she un-
derstood it well, and was in little danger of forget-
ting it, was often brought before her vivid self-percep-
tion, 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 suc-
cor them. Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose
doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were
accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart;

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 109

sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by
which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordi-
nary trifles ; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expres-
sion, 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 re-
sponded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson
that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again
subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was pa-
tient,— a martyr, indeed, — but she forbore to pray
for her enemies ; lest, in spite of her forgiving aspi-
rations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly
twist themselves into a curse.

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she
feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been
so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the
ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergy-
men paused in the street to address words of exhorta-
tion, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and
frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she entered
a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the
Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find her-
self the text of the discourse. She grew to have a
dread of children; for they had imbibed from their
parents a vague idea of something horrible in this
dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with
never any companion but one only child. Therefore,
first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a dis-
tance 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
Strgue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature
knew of it ; it could have caused her no deeper pang,

110 THE SCARLET LETTER.

had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story
among themselves, — had the summer breeze mur
mured about it, — had the wintry blast shrieked it
aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaae
of a new eye. When strangers looked curiously at
the scarlet letter, — and none ever failed to do so, —
they branded it afresh into Hester's soul; so that
oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did
refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand.
But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its
own anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity
was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Hester
Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a
human eye upon the token ; the spot never grew cal-
lous ; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensi-
tive with daily torture.

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 momen*
tary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. The
next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a
deeper throb of pain ; for, in that brief interval, she
had sinned anew. Had Hester sinned alone?

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had
she been of a softer moral and intellectual fibre, would
have been still more so, by the strange and solitary
anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those
lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was
outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hes-
ter, — if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too po-
tent 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

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. Ill

sin in other hearts. She was terror-stricken by the
revelations that were thus made. What were they %
Could they be other than the insidious whispers of
the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the
struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the
outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if
truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter
would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester
Prynne's ? Or, must she receive those intimations —
so obscure, yet so distinct — as truth ? In all her
miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful
and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well
as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of
the occasions that brought it into vivid action. Some-
times the red infamy upon her breast would give a
sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable min-
ister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice,
to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as
to a mortal man in fellowship with angels. " What
evil thing is at hand ? " would Hester say to herself.
Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing hu-
man within the scope of view, save the form of this
earthly saint ! Again, a mystic sisterhood would con-
tumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified
frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor
of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom
throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's
bosom, and the burning shame on Hester Prynne's, —
what had the two in common ? Or, once more, the
electric thrill would give her warning, — ** Behold,
Hester, here is a companion ! " — and, looking up,
she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glanc-
ing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly
averted with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks ; as

112 THE SCARLET LETTER.

if her purity were somewhat sullied by that momen-
tary glance. O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal
symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth
or age, for this poor sinner to revere ? — such loss of
faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it
accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this
poor victim of her own frailty, and man's hard law,
that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no
fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were al-
ways contributing a grotesque horror to what inter-
ested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet
letter which we might readily work up into a terrific
legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere
scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-
hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all
alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the
night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Hes-
ter's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more
truth in the rumor than our modern incredulity may
be inclined to admit.

VI.

PEARL

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant ; that
Uttle creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the
inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immoi\
tal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty pas-
sion. 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, imimpassioned lustre
that would be indicated by the comparison. But she
named the infant " Pearl," as being of great price, —
purchased with all she had, — her mother's only treas-
ure ! How strange, indeed ! Man had marked this
woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent
and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could
reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as
a direct consequence of the sin which man thus pun-
ished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on
that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent for
ever with the race and descent of ,mortals«JincLia-
finally a blessed soul in heavenj J Yet these thoughts
affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehen-
sion. She knew that her deed had been evil ; she
could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be

114 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 per-
fect 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 sim-
ple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the
very garb that precisely became it best. But little
Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother,
with a morbid purpose, that may be better understood
hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full
play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses
which the child wore, before the public eye. So mag-
nificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed, and
such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty,
shining through the gorgeous robes which might have
extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an
absolute circle of radiance around her, on the dark-
some cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and
soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of
her just as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a
spell of infinite variety ; in this one child there were
many children, comprehending the full scope between
the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the
pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout
all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain
depth of hue, which she never lost ; and if, in any of

PEARL. 115

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 amenable to rules. In giving her exist"
ence, 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 va-
riety and arrangement was difficult or impossible 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,
during that momentous period while Pearl was imbib-
ing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily
frame from its material of earth. The mother's im-
passioned state had been the medium through which
were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its
moral life ; and, however white and clear originally,
they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold,
the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untem-
pered light of the intervening substance. Above all,
the warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was per-
petuated in Pearl. She could recognize her wild, des-
perate, 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 o€

116 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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, en-
joined 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 Prynne, nevertheless, the
lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk of err-
ing on the side of undue severity. Mindful, how-
ever 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 restraint was effectual, of
course, while it lasted. As to any other kind of dis
cipline, whether addressed to her mind or heart, lit
tie Pearl might or might not be within its reach, in
accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment.
Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew ac-
quainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her
when it would be labor thrown away to insist, per-
suade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet in-
explicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but
generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that
Hester could not help questioning, at such moments,
whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rath'
er an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic
sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would

PEARL. 117

flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look
appeared in her wild, bright, deeply-black eyes, it in-
vested her with a strange remoteness and intangibil-
ity; 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 pursue the little elf in the flight which
she invariably began, — 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 doubt-
ful than before.

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell,
that so often came between herself and her sole treas-
ure, 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
clench her little fist, and harden her small features
into a stern, unsympathizing look of discontent. Not
seldom, she would laugh anew, and louder than be-
fore, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of hu-
man 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

118 THE SCARLET LETTER.

win the master-word that should control this new and
incomprehensible intelligence. 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, deli-
cious happiness; until — perhaps with that perverse
expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids
— little Pearl awoke !

How soon — with what strange rapidity, indeed! —
did Pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social
intercourse, beyond the mother's ever-ready smile and
nonsense-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 child-
ish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her
own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of
a group of sportive children ! But this could never
be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world.
An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had
no right among christened infants. Nothing was more
remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, 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 re-
spect to other children. Never, since her release from
prison, had Hester met the public gaze without 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 grim fashion as the
Puritanic nurture would permit ; playing at going to

PEARL. 119

church, perchance ; or at scourging Quakers ; or tak-
ing 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 ac-
quaintance. 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, with shrill,
incoherent exclamations, that made her mother trem-
ble 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
therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfre-
quently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt
the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred
that can be supposed 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, in-
stead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in
the child's manifestations. It appalled her, neverthe-
less, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the
evil that had existed in herself. All this enmity and
passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out
of Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood to-
gether in the same circle of seclusion from human so-
ciety; and in the nature of the child seemed to be
perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted
Hester Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had since be-
gun to be soothed away by the softening influences of
maternity.

120 THE SCARLET LETTER.

At home, within and around her mother's cottage,
Pearl wanted not a wide and various circle of ac-
quaintance. The spell of life went forth from her
ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thou-
sand 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, without undergoing any out-
ward change, became spiritually adapted to whatever
drama occupied the stage of her inner world. Her
one baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary per-
sonages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-
trees, aged, black, and solemn, and flinging groans
and other melancholy utterances on the breeze, needed
little transformation to figure as Puritan elders ; the
ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom
Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully.
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 suc-
ceeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. It
was like nothing 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 moie than was observable
in other children of bright faculties ; except as Pearl,
in the dearth of human playmates, 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

PEARL. 121

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 recognition 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 ut-
terance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan, — "0
Father in Heaven, — if Thou art still my Father, —
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 mother, smile with sprite-like in-
telligence, 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, responding to it, as other babies do, by that
faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered
so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discus-
sion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means !
But that first object of which Pearl seemed to be-
come 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 let-
ter ; 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

122 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it
away ; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the in-
telligent 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 unawares, like the stroke
of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile,
and odd expression of the eyes.

Once, this freakish, elfish 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 in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are
pestered with unaccountable 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 features that she had 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 illusion.

In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after
Pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused her-
self with gathering handf uls of wild-flowers, and fling-
ing them, one by one, at her mother's bosom; dan-
cing 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, whethel

PEARL. 123

from pride or resignation, or a feeling that Iter pen-
ance 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, almost invariably hitting
the mark, and covering the mother'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.

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

But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to
dance up and down, with the humorsome gesticulation
of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly up
the chimney.

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

Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but,
for the moment, with a portion of genuine earnest-
ness ; for, such was Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that
her mother half doubted whether she were not ac-
quainted with the secret spell of her existence, and
might not now reveal herself.

" Yes ; I am little Pearl ! " repeated the child, con-
tinuing her antics.

" Thou art not my child ! Thou art no Pearl of
mine ! " said the mother, half playfully ; for it was
often the case that a sportive impulse 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, com'

124 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ing up to Hester, and pressing herself close to hei
knees. " Do thou tell me ! "

" Thy Heavenly Father sent thee ! " answered Hes-
ter Prynne.

But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape
the acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by
her ordinary 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
seriously, but laughing, and capering about the floor.
" It is thou that must tell me ! "

But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself
in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered —
betwixt a smile and a shudder — the talk of the neigh-
boring 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 been seen on earth, through
the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some
foul and wicked purpose. Luther, 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.

vn.

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL.

Hester Prynne went, one day, to the mansion of
Governor Bellingham, with a pair of gloves, which
she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and
which were to be worn on some great occasion 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 influ-
ential place among the colonial magistracy.

Another and far more important reason than the de-
livery 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 of the settle-
ment. It had reached her ears, that there was a de-
sign on the part of some of the leading inhabitants,
cherishing the more rigid order of principles in relig-
ion 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
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

126 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the design, 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 days, would have been referred to no higher
jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town,
should then have been a question publicly discussed,
and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. At
that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of
even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic
weight, than the welfare of Hester and her child, were
strangely mixed up with the deliberations of legisla-
tors and acts of state. The period was hardly, if at
all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute con-
cerning 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, — Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cot-
tage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion.
She was now of an age to run lightly along by her
mother's side, and, constantly in motion, from morn
till sunset, could have accomplished 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 harmless trip and tum-
ble. We have spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant
beauty; a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints;
a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 127

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 passion-
ate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's
garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imag-
ination their full play ; arraying her in a crimson vel-
vet 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 admi-
rably 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 irresist-
ibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token
which Hester Pyrnne was doomed to wear upon her
bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form ; the
scarlet letter endowed with life ! The mother herself
— as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into
her brain that all her conceptions assumed its form —
had carefully 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 contrived so perfectly to rep-
resent 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 som-
bre little urchins, — and spake gravely one to an-
other : —

128 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frown-
ing, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand
with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made
a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to
flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them,
an infant pestilence, — the scarlet fever, or some such
half -fledged angel 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 accom-
plished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother, and
looked up, smiling, into her face.

Without further adventure, they reached the dwell-
ing of Governor Bellingham. This was a large wood-
en house, built in a fashion of which there are speci-
mens still extant in the streets of our older towns;
now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy
at heart with 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 overspread with a
kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass
were plentifully intermixed ; so that, when the sun-
shine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it
glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 129

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 diagrams, 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 ad-
miration of after times.

Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house, be-
gan 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
projection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice-
windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at
need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the por-
tal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was an-
swered by one of the Governor's bond-servants ; a
free-born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave.
During that term he was to be the property of his
master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale
as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf wore the blue
coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men of
that period, and long before, in the old hereditary
halls of England.

" Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within ? "
inquired Hester.

"Yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring
with wide-open eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being
ft new-comer in the country, he had never before seen,

TOI* V- 9

130 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he hath
a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a
leech. Ye may not see his worship now."

" Nevertheless, I will enter," replied Hester Prynne,
and the bond-servant, perhaps judging from the deci-
sion of her air, and the glittering symbol in her bosom,
that she was a great lady in the land, offered no oppo-
sition.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into
the hall of entrance. With many variations, sug-
gested by the nature of his building-materials, diver-
sity of climate, 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 communica-
tion, more or less directly, with all the other apart-
ments. 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 deep and cushioned seat. Here,
on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chron-
icles 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 furniture of the hall consisted of some
ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately
carved with wreaths of oaken flowers ; and likewise a
table in the same taste ; the whole being of the Eliza-
bethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, tran*

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 131

ferred hither from the Governor's paternal home. On
the table — in token that the sentiment of old English
hospitality had not been left behind — stood a large
pewter 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 invaria-
bly put on ; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the
pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with
harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and en-
joyments of living men.

At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined
the hall, was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pic-
tures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date ;
for \t 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 cuirass, a gorget, and greaves, with a pair of
gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath ; all, and es-
pecially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished
as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumi-
nation everywhere about upon the floor. This bright
panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had
been worn by the Governor 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 accustomed to speak of Bacon,
Coke, Noye, and Finch as his professional associates,
the exigencies of this new country had transformed
Governor Bellingham into a soldier as well as a states*
man and ruler,

132 THE SCARLET LETTER.

Little Pearl — who was as greatly pleased with the
gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering
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 ; anc
she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this con-f
vex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exag-
gerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatlj
the most prominent feature of her appearance,
truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Peai
pointed upward, also, at a similar picture in the hez
piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intel
gence that was so familiar an expression on her smj
physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment wa
likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much bread!
and intensity of effect, that it made Hester PrynAe
feel as if it could not be the image of her own chif
but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself
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
farther end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a
garden-walk, carpeted with closely shaven grass, and
bordered with some rude and immature attempt at
shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to
have relinquished, 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 ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 133

plain sight ; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some dis-
tance, had run across the intervening space, and de-
posited one of its gigantic 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, dear little Pearl ! I hear voices in the
garden. The Governor is coming, and gentlemen
along with him ! "

In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a num-
ber 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 became
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.

vm.

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.

Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy
«ap, — such as elderly gentlemen loved to endue them-
selves with, in their domestic privacy, — walked fore-
most, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and
expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide
circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray
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 fore-
fathers— though accustomed to speak and think of
human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare,
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 snow-drift, 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.

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 135

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 pro-
fessional 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 dis-
grace ; and, in close companionship with him, old
Roger Chi^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 min-
ister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by
his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and du-
ties 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 shadow of the curtain fell on Hester Prynne, and
partially 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 1
was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to
a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these
small apparitions, in holiday time ; and we called them
children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a
guest into my hall ? "

136 THE SCARLET LETTER.

"Ay, indeed ! " cried good old Mr. Wilson. " What
little bird of scarlet plumage may this be ? Methinks
I have seen just such figures, when the sun has been
shining 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 bedi-
zen thee in this strange fashion ? Art thou a Chris-
tian 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 I — or Coral ! — or Red
Rose, at the very least, judging from thy hue ! " re-
sponded 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, whis-
pered, " This is the selfsame child of whom we have
held speech together ; and behold here the unhappy
woman, Hester Prynne, her mother ! "

" Sayest thou so ? " cried the Governor. " Nay, we
aiight 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
been much question concerning thee, of late. The
point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 137

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 thou, 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 fin-
ger 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
growing 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 bet-
ter, albeit they can profit nothing to myself."

" We will judge warily," said Bellingham, " and
look 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 familiar-
ity 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

138 THE SCARLET LETTER.

astonished at this outbreak, — for he was a grand-
fatherly sort of personage, and usually a vast favorite
with children, — essayed, however, to proceed with the
examination.

" Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, " thou must
take heed 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
Hester 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 attainments of her three years' lifetime,
could have borne a fair examination in the New Eng-
land Primer, or the first column of the Westminster
Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward
form of either of those celebrated works. But that
perversity which all children have more or less of,
and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now,
at the most inopportune moment, took thorough pos-
session of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to
speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her
mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good
Mr. Wilson's questions, 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
proximity 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 com-
ing hither.

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 189

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on bis face,
whispered something in the young clergyman's ear.
Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even
then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was star-
tled to perceive what a change had come over his fea-
tures, — 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 in-
stant, but was immediately constrained to give all her
attention to the scene now going forward.

" This is awful ! " cried the Governor, slowly recov-
ering from the astonishment into which Pearl's re-
sponse had thrown him. " Here is a child of three
years old, and she cannot tell who made her ! With-
out question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul,
its present depravity, and future destiny ! Methinks,
gentlemen, we need inquire 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, 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 ! I will die first ! "

" My poor woman," said the not unkind old minis-

140 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ter, "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 ! " — 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 custom whenever his peculiarly ner-
vous temperament was thrown into agitation. He
looked now more careworn and emaciated than as we
described him at the scene of Hester's public igno-
miny ; and whether it were his failing health, or what-
ever 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 minis-
ter, with a voice sweet, trenmlous, but powerful, inso-
much 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

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 141

its nature and requirements, — both seemingly so pe-
culiar, — which no other mortal being can possess.
And, moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacred-
ness in the relation between this mother and this
child?"

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

" It must be even so," resumed the minister. " Forv
if we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that
the Heavenly Father, the Creator of all flesh, hath
lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no ac-
count the distinction 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 bitterness 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 retribution too ; a
torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment ; a
pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of
a troubled joy! Hath she not expressed this thought
in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding 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 ! "

" Oh, not so ! — not so ! " continued Mr. Dimmest
dale. " She recognizes, believe me, the solemn mira-
cle 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 a!]
things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to pre-

142 THE SCARLET LETTER.

serve 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 capable of eternal joy or
sorrow, confided to her care, — to be trained up by
her to righteousness, — to remind her, at every mo*
ment, 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 Providence 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. Wil-
son. "What say you, worshipful Master Belling-
ham ? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor wom-
an?"

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

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 win-
dow-curtains; while the shadow of his figure, which
the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous witlu-

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 143

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 tender, and withal so unob-
trusive, 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 life-
time 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 child-
ish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual
instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us some-
thing 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 un-
wonted 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 pro-
fess," said he to Mr. Dimmesdale. " She needs no
old woman's broomstick to fly withal! "

" A strange child ! " remarked old Roger Chilling-
worth. " 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?"

" Nay ; it would be sinful, in such a question, to fol-
low the clew of profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson,
" Better to fast and pray upon it ; and still better, it
may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless
Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby,

144 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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
Prynn©, 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,,
Governor 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 phys-
iognomy seemed to cast a shadow over the cheerful
newness of the house. " Wilt thou go with us to-
night ? There will be a merry company in the forest ;
and I wellnigh 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
Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic,
and not a parable — was already an illustration of the
young minister's argument against sundering the rela-
tion of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty.
Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan's
snare.

THE LEECH.

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, 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 cheerful-
ness 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 dis-
honor, — which would not fail to be distributed in strict
accordance and proportion with the intimacy and sa-
credness of their previous relationship. Then why —
since the choice was with himself — should the indi-
vidual, whose connection with the fallen woman had
been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come
forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so lit-
tle 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

you. r. 10

146 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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
interests 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 fac-
ulties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his resi-
dence in the Puritan town, as Roger Chillingworth,
without other introduction than the learning and in-
telligence 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 re-
ceived. Skilful men, of the medical 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 involve art enough to
comprise 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 guar-
dianship 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

THE LEECH. 147

brilliant acquisition. He soon manifested his famil-
iarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of
antique physic ; in which every remedy contained a
multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients,
as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result
had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity,
moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the prop-
erties of native herbs and roots ; nor did he conceal
from his patients, that these simple medicines, Na-
ture's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large
a share of his own confidence as the European phar-
macopoeia, 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. Dimmesdale. 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
a3 the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of
the Christian faith. About 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 clog,
ging 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

148 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 melancholy 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 off twigs from the forest-trees, like
one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was value-
less to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir
Kenelm Digby, and other famous men, — whose scien-
tific attainments were esteemed hardly less than super-
natural, — as having been his correspondents or asso-
ciates. 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 wilderness ? In
answer to this query, a rumor gained ground, — and,
however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible
people, — that Heaven had wrought an absolute niira

THE LEECH. 149

cle, by transporting an eminent Doctor of Physic, from
a German university, bodily through the air, and set-
ting 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 the
stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition,
were inclined to see a providential hand in Roger
Chillingworth's so opportune arrival.

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest
which the physician ever manifested in the young cler-
gyman ; 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 anx-
ious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken,
seemed not despondent of a favorable result. The el-
ders, 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.

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 si-
lence, and finally promised to confer with the physi*
cian.

150 THE SCARLET LlsTTEdo

" Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mx. Dim-
mesdale, when, in fulfilment of this pledge, he re-
quested old Roger Chillingworth's professional advice,
" I could be well content that my labors, and my sor-
rows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end
with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my
grave, and the spiritual 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 the New
Jerusalem."

"Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his
hand to his heart, with a flush of pain flitting over his
brow, " were I worthier to walk there, I could be bet-
ter content to toil here."

" Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly,"
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 sea-shore,
or in the forest ; mingling various talk with the plash
and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-an-

THE LEECH. 151

them among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was
the guest of the other, in his place of study and retire-
ment. There was a fascination for the minister in
the company of the man of science, in whom he rec-
ognized 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 de-»
veloped, 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,
supporting, while it confined him within its iron frame-
work. Not the less, however, though with a tremulous
enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking
at the universe through the medium of another kind
of intellect than those with 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
lamplight, or obstructed day-beams, and the musty
fragrance, be it sensual 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 phy-
sician with him, withdrew again within the limits of
what their church defined as orthodox.

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient
carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life,
keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of

152 THE SCARLET LETTER.

thoughts familiar to him, and aa 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 peculiarities
of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and imag-
ination 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 prin-
ciples, prying into his recollections, and probing every-
thing with a cautious 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 native sagacity,
and a nameless something more, — let us call it intui-
tion ; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagree-
ably 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 unawares have spoken what he imagines himself
only to have thought ; if such revelations be received
without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by an
uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath,
and here and there a word, to indicate that all is un-
derstood ; if to these qualifications of a confidant be
joined the advantages afforded by his recognized char-
acter as a physician, — then, at some inevitable mo-
ment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and

THE LEECH. 153

flow forth in a dark, but transparent stream, bringing
all its mysteries into the daylight.

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, on both sides, of mat-
ters that seemed personal to themselves ; and yet no
Becret, such as the physician fancied must exist there,
ever stole out of the minister's consciousness into his
companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions, in-
deed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bod-
ily disease had never fairly been revealed to him. It
was a strange reserve I

After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth,
the friends of Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrange-
ment 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 at
tained. It was held to be the best possible measure
for the young clergyman's welfare ; unless, indeed, as
often urged by such as felt authorized to do so, he had
selected some one of the many blooming damsels, spir-
itually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife.
This latter step, however, there was no present pros-
pect that Arthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed
apon to take ; he rejected all suggestions of the kind,
as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of
eburch-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, there*

164 THE SCARLET LETTER.

fore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat hk
unsavory morsel always at another's board, and en-
dure 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, benevo-
lent old physician, 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
widow, of good social rank, who dwelt in a house cov-
ering pretty nearly the site on which the venerable
structure of King's Chapel has since been built. It
had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's home-
field, on one side, and so well adapted to call up seri-
ous 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 Gobelin looms, and at all events,
representing the Scriptural story of David and Bath
sheba, and Nathan the Prophet, in colors still un-
faded, 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 divines, even while they vilified and de-
cried that class of writers, were yet constrained often
to avail themselves. On the other side of the house,
»ld Roger Chillingworth arranged his study and lab-
oratory ; not such as a modern man of science would

THE LEECH. 15S

jeokon 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 com-
modiousness of situation, these two learned persons
sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet fa-
miliarly passing from one apartment to the other, and
bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into
one another's business.

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best dis-
cerning friends, as we have intimated, very reasona-
bly imagined that the hand of Provider} ce had done
all this, for the purpose — besought in so many pub-
lic, and domestic, and secret prayers — of restoring
the young minister to health. But — it must now be
said — another portion of the community had latterly
begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt
Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician.
When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with
its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. W^hen,
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 super-
uaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which
we speak, oould justify its prejudice against Roger
Chilling^ or\ch by no fact or argument worthy of seri-
ous 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 having seen the
physician, under some other name, which the narrator
of the story had now forgotten, in company with Doc-
tor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was inv

156 THE SCARLET LETTER.

plicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three
individuals hinted, that the man of skill, during his
Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attain-
ments by joining in the incantations of the savage
priests ; who were universally acknowledged to be
powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly mi-
raculous 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. Dim-
mesdale. At first his expression had been calm, med-
itative, 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 vis-
age was getting sooty with the smoke.

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely dif-
fused 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 side the victory would turn. The people looked,
with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come forth
out of the conflict transfigured with the glory which

THE LEECH. 157

he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, neverthe-
less, 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
*o*e one, and the victory anything but secure.

X.

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT.

Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had
been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of
warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations
with the world, a pure and upright man. He had
begun 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 in-
flicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible
fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, neces-
sity 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 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 per-
chance sho vn indications that encouraged him.

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 159

* This man," said he, at one such moment, to hinv
self, " 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 further
in the direction of this vein ! "

Then, after long search into the minister's dim in
terior, 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 illu
minated by revelation, — all of which invaluable gold
was perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker,
he would turn back discouraged, and begin his quest
towards another point. He groped along as stealth-
ily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook,
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 pre-
meditated carefulness, the floor would now and then
creak ; his garments would rustle ; the shadow of his
presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown
across his victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale,
whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect
of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware
that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself
into relation with him. But old Roger Chillingworth,
too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive ; and
when the minister threw his startled eyes towards
him, there the physician sat ; his kind, watchful, sym-
pathizing, but never intrusive friend.

Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this
individual's character more perfectly, if a certain
morbidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not

160 THE SCARLET LETTER.

rendered him suspicious of all mankind. Trusting
no man as his friend, he could not recognize his ene»
my when the latter actually appeared. He therefore
still kept up a familiar intercourse 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 converted into drugs
of potency.

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and
his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked
towards the graveyard, he talked with Roger Chil-
lingworth, 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 sel-
dom, nowadays, 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 graveyard 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 with him, and which
he had done better to confess during his lifetime."

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

" And wherefore ? " rejoined the physician. " Where-
fore not ; since all the powers of nature call so ear-
nestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds
have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make mani
fest an unspoken crime t "

TUB LBECH AND HIS PATIENT. 161

14 That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours,'* replied
the minister. " There can be, if I forebode aright, no
power, short of the Divine 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 day when all hidden things shall be re*
vealed. 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 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 completest solution of that problem. And 1
conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such mis-
erable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at
that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy un-
utterable."

" Then why not reveal them here ? " asked Roger
Chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at the minister.
" Why should not the guilty ones sooner avail them-
selves 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
confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while
strong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after
such an outpouring, oh, 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 pol-
luted breath. How can it be otherwise9 Why should

162 THE SCARLET LETTER.

a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefei
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. Dim-
mesdale. " But, not to suggest more obvious reasons,
it may be that they are kept silent by the very consti-
tution 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 themselves black and filthy in the
view of men ; because, thenceforward, no good can be
achieved by them ; no 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 can-
not rid themselves."

"These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chil-
lingworth, with somewhat more emphasis than usual,
and making a slight gesture with his forefinger.
" They fear to take up the shame that rightfully be-
longs 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 heavenward
their unclean hands ! If they would serve their fellow-
men, let them do it by making manifest the power and
reality of conscience, in constraining them to peniten-
tial self-abasement! Wouldst thou have me to be-

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 168

lieve, O wise and pious friend, that a false show can
be better — can be more for God's glory, or man's wel«
fare — than God's own truth ? Trust me, such men
deceive themselves 1 "

" It may be so," said the young clergyman, indiffer-
ently, as waiving a discussion that he considered irrel-
evant or unreasonable. He had a ready faculty, in-
deed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too
sensitive and nervous 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,
proceeding from the adjacent burial-ground. Looking
instinctively from the open window, — for it was sum-
mer-time, — the minister beheld Hester Prynne and
little Pearl passing along the footpath that traversed
the enclosure. Pearl looked as beautiful as the day,
but was in one of those moods of perverse merriment
which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her
entirely out of the sphere of sympathy or human con-
tact. She now skipped irreverently 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.

164 THE SCARLET LETTER,

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

" There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no
regard for human ordinances or opinions, right or
wrong, mixed up with that child's composition," re-
marked 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," an-
swered Mr. Dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had
been discussing the point within himself. " Whether
capable of good, I know not."

The child probably overheard their voices ; for, look-
ing 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 sensi-
tive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the
light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped
her little hands in the most extravagant ecstasy. Hes-
ter Pyrnne, 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 com-
mon with a bygone and buried generation, nor owned
herself akin to it. It was as if she had been made

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 165

afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be per-
mitted 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 Chilling-
worth, 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 miserable, 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 spared the sight of. But still, methinks, 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.
Dimmesdale, " 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

166 THE SCARLET LETTER.

watchful physician might well hope to cure you. But
— I know not what to say — the disease is what 1
seem to know, yet know it not."

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

" Then to speak more plainly," continued the phy-
sician, " and I crave pardon, Sir, — should it seem to
require pardon, — for this needful plainness of my
speech. Let me ask, — as your friend, — as one hav-
ing charge, under Providence, of your life and phys-
ical well-being, — hath all the operation of this disor-
der been fairly laid open and recounted to me ? "

"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, oftentimes, 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 con-
joined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with
the spirit whereof it is the instrument."

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

" Thus, a sickness," continued Roger Chillingworth,
going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 16T

interruption, — but standing up, and confronting the
emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low,
dark, and misshapen figure, — "a sickness, a sore
place, if we may so call it, in your spirit, hath imme-
diately its appropriate manifestation in your bodily
frame. Would you, therefore, that your physician
heal the bodily evil ? How 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 physi-
cian ! " cried Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately, and turn
ing his eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of fierce-
ness, on old Roger Chillingworth. " Not to thee !
But, if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit my
self 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 justice and wisdom, he shall
see good. But who art thou, that meddlest in this
matter ? — that dares thrust himself between the suf-
ferer and his God ? "

With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room.

" It is as well to have made this step," said Roger
Chillingworth to himself, looking after the minister
with a grave smile. " There is nothing lost. We
shall be friends again anon. But see, now, how pas-
sion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out
of himself ! As with one passion, so with another !
H», hath done a wild thing erenow, this pious Master
Dimmesdale, 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 degree as heretofore. The young clergyman,
after a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the dis-
order of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly

168 THE SCARLET LETTER.

outbr*,ak of temper, which there had been nothing in
the physician's words to excuse or palliate. He mar-
velled, indeed, at the violence 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 am-
plest apologies, and besought his friend still to con-
tinue 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
Chillingworth readily assented, and went on with his
medical 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 re-
corded, that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noon-
day, 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 profound depth of the minister's
repose was the more remarkable, 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 re*

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 169

moteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into
itself, that he stirred not in his chair when old Roger
Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution,
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 al-
ways 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 hor-
ror ! With what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too
mighty to be expressed only by the eye and features,
and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugli-
ness of his figure, and making itself even riotously
manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he
threw up his arms towards the ceiling, and stamped
his foot upon the floor ! Had a 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 !

XL

THE INTERIOR OF A HEABT.

After the incident last described, the intercourse
between the clergyman and the physician, though ex-
ternally the same, was really of another character than
it had previously been. The intellect of Roger Chil-
lingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it.
It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid
out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as
he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of
malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfor-
tunate old man, which led him to imagine a more inti-
mate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon
an enemy. To make himself the one trusted friend, to
whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the
agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush
of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain ! All that guilty
sorrow, hidden from the world, 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, t« whom
nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of ven-
geance 1

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 victim for its own purposes, and, peit

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 171

chance, 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 mat*
tered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from
what other region. By its aid, in all the subsequent
relations betwixt him and Mr. Dimmesdale, 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 move-
ment. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only,
but a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior world.
He could play upon him as he chose. Would he
arouse him with a throb of agony ? The victim was
forever 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 waving of a magician's wand, uprose
a grisly phantom, — uprose a thousand phantoms, — .
in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all
flocking round about the clergyman, 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 per-
ception of some evil influence watching over him, could
never 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 dis-

172 THE SCARLET LETTER.

trust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious
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 Chilling-
worth, disregarded 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 mat-
ter of principle, continued his habits of social familiar-
ity with the old man, and thus gave him constant op-
portunities for perfecting the purpose 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 Reverend 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 reputations 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 un-
derstanding ; which, duly mingled with a fair nropor

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 173

Hon of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly re-
spectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety <ii 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
with the better world, into which their purity of life
had almost introduced these holy personages, with their
garments of mortality still clinging to them. All that
they lacked was the gift that descended upon the
chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flames;
symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of speech in
foreign and unknown languages, but that of address-
ing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's na-
tive 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 ex-
press the highest truths through the humblest medium
of familiar words and images. Their 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 char-
acter, naturally 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 lis-
tened to and answered I But this very burden it was
that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful
brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrated in

174 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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.
Often est persuasive, but sometimes terrible ! The
people knew not the power that moved them thus.
They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holi-
ness. 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, vic-
tims 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 infirm-
ity, believed that he would go heavenward before 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 ques-
tioned 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
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? — a substance? — or the dimmest
of all shadows? He longed to speak out, from his
own pulpit, at the full height of his voice, and tell the
people what he was. " I, whom you behold in these
black garments of the priesthood, — I, who ascend the
tacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 175

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 foot-
steps, 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 pas-
tor, whom you so reverence 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 alto,
gether 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
uot see his wretched body shrivelled up before 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 im-
pulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit, which he
denied ? Not so, indeed \ They heard it all, and did
but reverence him the more. They little guessed what
deadly purport lurked in those self -condemning words.
** The godly youth ! " said they among themselves.
* The saint on earth I Alas, if he discern such sin-

176 THE SCARLET LETTER.

fulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle
would he behold in thine or mine ! " The minister
well knew — subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he
was ! — the light in which his vague confession would
be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat upon him-
self by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but
had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowl-
edged shame, without the momentary 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. Therefore,
above all things else, he loathed his miserable self !

His inward trouble drove him to practices more in
accordance 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. Dimmesdale's secret
closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge.
Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had
plied it on his own shoulders ; laughing bitterly at
himself the while, and smiting so much the more piti-
lessly 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, in order to purify
the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial
illumination, but rigorously, and until his knees trem-
bled 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, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by
the most powerful light which he could throw upon it.
He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith
he tortured, but could not purify, himself. In these
lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 177

seemed to flit before him ; perhaps 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 dia-
bolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale min-
ister, and beckoned him away with them ; now a group
of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-
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, turn-
ing her face away as she passed by. Ghost of a moth-
er,— 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 forefinger, 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
substances through their misty lack of substance, and
convince himself that they were not solid in their na-
ture, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big,
square, leathern-bound and brazen-clasped volume of
divinity. But, for all that, they were, in one sense,
the truest and most substantial 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 sub.
stance 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 uni-
verse is false, — it is impalpable, — it shrinks to noth-
ing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as h$

shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, oj%
vou v 12

178 THE SCARLET LETTER.

indeed, 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 undissem-
bled expression 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!

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. Attir-
ing 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.

xn.

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL.

Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it tfere,
and perhaps actually under the influence of a species
of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale reached the spot
where, now so long since, Hester Prynne had lived
through her first hours of public ignominy. The
same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained
with the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and
foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who
had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the
balcony of the meeting-house. The minister 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 eye-witnesses while Hester Prynne sustained
her punishment could now have been summoned f ortl ,
they would have discerned no face above the platform,
nor hardly the outlinf ot a human shape, in the dark
gray of the midnighi. But the town was all asleep.
There was no peril of discovery. The minister might
stand there, if 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 prayej And ser-

180 THE SCARLET LETTER.

mon. No eye could see him, save that ever -wake-
ful one which had seen him in his closet, wielding
the bloody scourge. Why, then, had he come hither ?
Was it but the mockery of penitence? A mockery,
indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself ! A
mockery at 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 everywhere, 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 pur-
pose, 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 repentance.

And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this
vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome
with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were
gazing at a scarlet token ou his naked breast, right
over his heart. On that spci, in very truth, there
was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poi-
sonous tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his
will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud ;
an outcry that went pealing through the night, and
was beaten back from one house to another, and re-
verberated from the hills in the background ; as if a
company of devils, detecting so much misery and tor*

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 131

ror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were
bandying it to and fro.

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

But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded
with a far 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, uncov-
ered 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 appearance of the old magistrate
himself, with a lamp in his hand, a white nightcap on
his head, and a long white gown enveloping his figure.
He looked like a ghost, evoked unseasonably from the
grave. The cry had evidently startled him. At an-
other 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 expres-
sion 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 vener-
able witch-lady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale'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 excur-
sions into the forest.

Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp,

182 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the old lady quickly extinguished her own, and van*
ished. Possibly, she went up among the clouds. The
minister saw nothing further of her motions. The
magistrate, after a wary observation of the darkness,
— into which, nevertheless, he could see but little fur-
ther 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 latticed
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 doorstep. The
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale noted all these minute par-
ticulars, 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 lan-
tern 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 min-
ister 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

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 183

distant shine of the celestial city, while looking thith-
erward to see the triumphal 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 con-
ceits to Mr. Dimmesdale, who smiled, — nay, almost
laughed at them, — and then wondered if he were
going mad.

As the Reverend Mr. Wilson 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 spo-
ken ? For one instant, he believed that these words
had passed his lips. But they were uttered only
within his imagination. The venerable Father Wilson
continued to step slowly onward, looking carefully at
the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once
turning his head towards the guilty platform. When
the light of the glimmering lantern had faded quite
away, the minister discovered, by the faintness which
came over him, that the last few moments had been a
crisis of terrible anxiety ; although his mind had made
an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid
playfulness.

Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the hu-
morous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of
his thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the
unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted
whether he should be able to descend the steps of the

184 THE SCARLET LETTER.

scaffold. Morning would break, and find him there.
The neighborhood 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 tu-
mult 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 pub-
lic view, with the disorder of a nightmare in their as-
pects. 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 hav-
ing 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 church, and the young virgins who
so idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for
him in their white bosoms ; which now, by the by, in
their hurry and confusion, 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 scaffold. Whom would
they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 185

brow? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmer
dale, 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 imme-
diately responded to by a light, airy, childish laugh, in
which, with a thrill of the 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 ! Hes-
ter Prynne ! Are you there ? "

" Yes ; it is Hester Prynne ! " she replied, in a
tone of surprise ; and the minister heard her footsteps
approaching 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
Hester 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, thou and little Pearl,"
said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. " Ye have both
been here before, but I was not with you. Come up
hither once again, and we will stand all three to-
gether ! "

She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the
platform, 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

186 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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. Dim-
mesdale.

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

" Nay ; not so, my little Pearl," answered the min-
ister ; for with the new energy of the moment, all the
dread of public exposure, that had so long been the
anguish 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 him-
self. " Not so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with
thy mother and thee, one other day, but not to-mor-
row."

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."

" And what other time ? " persisted the child.

" At the great judgment day," whispered the min-
ister, — and, strangely enough, the sense that he was
a professional 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

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 187

tight 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, burn-
ing out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmos-
phere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thor-
oughly 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 distinctness of mid-day,
but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to
familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. The wood-
en houses, with their jutting stories and quaint gable-
peaks ; the doorsteps and thresholds, with the early
grass springing up about them ; the garden-plots,
black with freshly-turned earth ; the wheel-track, lit-
tle 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 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 glimmering on
her bosom ; and little Pearl, herself a symbol, and
me connecting link between those two. They stood
in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if
it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the
daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one an-
other.

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 elfish. She withdrew her hand from Mr. Dimmes-
dale's, and pointed across the street. But he clasped
both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes to«
wards the zenith.

188 THE SCARLET LETTER.

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to
interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural
phenomena, that occurred with less regularity than
the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revela-
tions from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing
spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows,
seen in the midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare.
Pestilence was known to have been foreboded by a
shower of crimson light. We doubt whether any
marked event, for good or evil, ever befell New Eng-
land, from its settlement down to Revolutionary times,
of which the inhabitants had not been previously
warned by some spectacle of this nature. Not sel-
dom, 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 col-
ored, magnifying, and distorting medium of his imag-
ination, 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 Provi-
dence to write a people's doom upon. The belief was
a favorite one with our forefathers, as betokening
that their infant commonwealth was under 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 statef
when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by
long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his ego-
tism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firma-
ment itself should appear no more than a fitting page
for his soul's history and fate !

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 189

We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his
own eye and heart, that the minister, looking up-
ward 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 defi-
niteness, that another's guilt might have seen another
symbol in it.

There was a singular circumstance that character
ized Mr. Dimmesdale's psychological state at this mo-
ment. All the time that he gazed upward to the ze*
nith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little
Pearl was pointing her finger towards old Roger Chil-
lingworth, who stood at no great distance from the
scaffold. The minister appeared 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
that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman
of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chilling-
worth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, stand-
ing there with a smile and scowl to claim his own. So
vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's
perception of it, that it seemed still 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.

44 Who is that man, Hester ? " gasped Mr. Dimmea*

190 THE SCARLET LETTER.

dale, overcome with terror. " I shiver at him 1 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 1 — and as low as
thou canst whisper."

Pearl mumbled something into his ear, that sounded,
indeed, like hmnan language, but was only such gib-
berish as children may be heard amusing themselves
with, by the hour together. At all events, if it in-
volved any secret information in regard to old Roger
Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the
erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilder-
ment of his mind. The elfish 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 noon-
tide ! "

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

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 191

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

" Verily, and in good faith," answered Roger Chil-
lingworth, "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, likewise, 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
nerveless, from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to
the physician, 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 heav-
enly 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 throughout the long hereafter. But,
as he came down the pulpit steps, the gray-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,

192 THE SCARLET LETTER,

he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. h
pure hand needs no glove to cover it ! "

" Thank you, my good friend," said the minister,
gravely, but startled at heart ; for so confused was his
remembrance, 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 rever
ence must needs handle him without gloves, hence-
forward," 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 aq
angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that
there should be some notice thereof ! "

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

xm.

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER.

In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmes
dale, Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition ta
which she found the clergyman reduced. His nerve
seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was
abased into more than childish weakness. It grovelled
helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual fac
ulties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps
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 read-
ily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own
conscience, 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 woman, — for support against his
instinctively discovered enemy. She decided, more-
over, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little ac-
customed, in her long seclusion from society, to meas-
ure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard ex-
ternal 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, of

vou y. IS

194 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 earliel
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 prominence 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 na-
ture, 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 trans-
formed to love, unless the change be impeded by a
continually new irritation of the original feeling of
hostility. 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 ; she made no claim upon it, in requital
for what she suffered ; she did not weigh upon its sym-
pathies. 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 anything,
it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had
brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.

It was perceived, too, that while Hester never nul

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 195

forward even the humblest title to share in the world's
privileges, — further 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 ac-
knowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, when-
ever 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 embroidered a monarch's
robe. None so self -devoted as Hester, when pestilence
stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity,
indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast
of society at once found her place. She came, not as
a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household
that was darkened by trouble ; as if its gloomy twilight
were a medium in which she was entitled to hold in-
tercourse 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
the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in
the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time.
It had shown 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, Hes-
ter's nature showed itself warm and rich ; a well-spring
of human tenderness, unfailing 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 sym-

196 THE SCARLET LETTER.

bol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in nert
— 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 inmate 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 zeal-
ously. Meeting them in the street, she never raised
her head to receive their greeting, If they were reso-
lute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet let-
ter, and passed on. This might be pride, but was so
like humility, that it produced all the softening influ-
ence of the latter quality on the public mind. The
public is despotic in its temper ; it is capable of deny-
ing 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. Interpreting
Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal of this na-
ture, society was inclined to show its former victim a
more benign countenance than she cared to be fa-
vored with, or, perchance, than she deserved.

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the
community, were longer in acknowledging the influ-
ence of Hester's good qualities than the people. The
prejudices which they shared in common with the lat-
ter were fortified in themselves by an iron framework
of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labor to expel
them. Day by day, nevertheless* their sour and rigid

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 197

wrinkles were relaxing into something whieh, 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 position 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 imparted 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, and believed by many,
that an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge,
and that the missile struck it, but fell harmless to the
ground.

The effect of the symbol — or, rather, of the posi-
tion 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

198 THE SCARLET LETTER.

she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by
it. Even the attractiveness of her person had under-
gone a similar change. It might be partly owing to
the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the
lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad
transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair
had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden
Dy a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once
gushed into the sunshine. It was due in part to all
these causes, but still more to something else, that
there seemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face
for Love to dwell upon ; nothing 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 pillow 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 experience of peculiar severity. If she be
all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the ten-
derness 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 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 there were
only the magic touch to effect the transfiguration.
We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever after-
wards so touched, and so transfigured.

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impres.
sion was to be attributed to the circumstance, that her
life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 199

feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world, —
alone, as to any dependence on society, and with lit-
tle Pearl to be guided and protected, — alone, and
hopeless of retrieving her position, 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 hu-
man intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more
active and a wider range than for many centuries be-
fore. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and
kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and
rearranged — 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 assumed a freedom of speculation,
then common enough on the other side of the At-
lantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it,
would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stig-
matized by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cot-
tage, 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
demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen
so much as knocking at her door.

It is remarkable that persons who speculate the
most boldly often conform with the most perfect qui-
etude to the external regulations of society. The
thought suffices them, without investing itself in the
flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with
Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to her
from the spiritual world, it might have been far oth-
erwise. Then, she might have come down to us in
history, hand in hand with Anne Hutchinson, as the

200 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 under-
mine the foundations of the Puritan establishment.
But, in the education of her child, the mother's enthu-
siasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon.
Providence, in the person of this little girl, had as-
signed 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 some-
thing wrong in it, which continually betokened that
she had been born amiss, — the effluence of her moth-
er's lawless passion, — and often impelled 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-
istence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and
dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to specu-
lation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does
man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be,
such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the
whole system of society is to be torn down, and built
up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex,
or its long hereditary habit, which has become like
nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman
can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suit-
able position. Finally, all other difficulties being ob-
viated, woman cannot take advantage of these pre

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 201

Limlnary reforms, until she herself shall have under-
gone a still mightier change ; in which, perhaps, the
ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will
be found to have evaporated. A woman never over
comes these problems by any exercise of thought,
They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her
heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus,
Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and
healthy throb, wandered without a clew in the dark
labyrinth of mind: now turned aside by an insur-
mountable precipice ; now starting back from a deep
chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around
her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times, a
fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it
were not better to send Pearl at once to heaven, and
go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should
provide.

The scarlet letter had not done its office.

Now, however, her interview with the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given
her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an
object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sac-
rifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the in-
tense misery beneath which the minister struggled,
or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle.
She saw that he stood on the 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. Dim*

202 THE SCARLET LETTER.

mesdale'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 allow-
ing the minister to be thrown into a position where
so much evil was to be foreboded, and nothing au-
spicious 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 over-
whelmed herself, except by acquiescing in Roger Chil-
lingworth'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 sin, 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 per-
haps 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
rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set
his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One
afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the
peninsula, 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 con
oct his medicines withal.

XIV.

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN.

Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin
of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea-
weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder
gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird,
and, making bare her small white feet, went pattering
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, beckoned likewise, as if to
say, — " This is a better place ! Come thou into the
pool ! " And Pearl, stepping in, mid-leg deep, beheld
her own white feet at the bottom ; while, out of a still
lower depth, came the gleam of a kind 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 o\d Roger Chillingworth ? " answered he, raising
himself from his stooping posture. " With all my
heart ! Why, Mistress, I hear good tidings of you on

/--$>

204 THE SCARLET LETTER.

all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve, a magi*.
trate, 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 com*
mon 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 forth-

^^dth!"

I " 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

Vspeak a different purport."
"^^s^*' 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
gayly 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 grown older ; for though the traces
of advancing life were visible, he wore 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, wnicn waa what she bestTeffiembered
to him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded
by an eager, searching, almost tierce, yet carefully
guaiHletTTopk. It seemed to BIT his wish and purpose
lo mask this expression with a smile ; but the latter
played him false, and flickered over his visage so de-
risively, that the spectator could see his blackness al)

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 205

the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a
glare of jj rl ligfrt out of his eyes ; as if the old man's
soul were _qjb, fire, and kept on smouldering duskily
wKnin nil" breast, until, by some casual puff of pas-
sion, 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
evidence 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 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, " novf
seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a prom

206 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ise of secrecy, as touching the former relation betwixt
yourself and me. As the life and good fame of yon-
der man were in your hands, there seemed no choice
to me, save to be silent, in accordance with your be-
hest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I
thus bound myself ; for, having cast off all duty to-
wards other human beings, there remained a duty to-
wards him ; and something whispered 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 permitting 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 Chilling-
worth. " 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.

" What evil have I done the man ? " asked Roger
Chillingworth 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 perpetration 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. Oh, 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 mo ! "

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 207

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

" Yea, woman, thou sayest truly ! " cried old Roger
Chilling worth, 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 conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwell-
ing always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some
spiritual sense, — for the Creator never made another
being so sensitive 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 himself 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 my presence ! — the
closest propinquity of the man whom he had most
vilely wronged! — and who had grown to exist 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 for 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, usurping the place of his own image in a
glass. It was one of those moments — which some-
times occur only at the interval 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.

208 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" 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 man-
ner 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 welfare. 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 lit-
tle 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 face, and permitting the whole evil within him to
be written 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 letter," replied Roger
Chillingworth. " If that have not avenged me, I can
do no more ! "

He laid his finger on it, with a smile.

" It has avenged thee ! " answered Hester Prynne.

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

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 209

** 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
confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin
I have been, shall at length be paid, bo far as con-
cerns 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 de-
spair which she expressed. " Thou hadst great ele-
ments. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a
better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity
thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy na-
ture!"

" 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 retri-
bution 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

210 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 priv-
ilege ? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit ? "

" Peace, Hester, peace ! " replied the old man, with
gloomy sternness. " It is not granted me to pardon.
I have no such power as thou 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 mejfffi riot BjbIhL save -*11 a Eonttbl
typical illusion ; neither am I fiend-like, who have
snatched STfiend's office from his hands. It is our
fatel Liet the black nowerblossom as it may 1 Now
go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man."

He waved his hand, and betook himself again to hk
employment of gathering herbs.

XV.

HESTER AND PEARL.

So 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 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 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
Bink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot,
where, in due course of time, would be seen deadl*

212 THE SCARLET LETTER.

nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of
vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, al]
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 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. Attempting 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 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 subse-
quent life, they classed themselves among her ugli-
est remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes
could have been ! She marvelled how she could 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 offence committed by Koger 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

HESTER AND PEARL. 219

they 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 im-
age 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 repentance ?

The emotions of that brief space, while she stood
gazing after the crooked figure of old Roger Chilling'
worth, threw a dark light on Hester's state of mind,
revealing much that she might not otherwise have ac-
knowledged 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
■i pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and —
as it declined to venture — seeking a passage for her-
self into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattain-
able sky. Soon finding, however, that either she oi
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
kail, and made prize of several five-fingers, and laid
out a jellv-fish to melt in the warm sun. Than she

214 THE SCARLET LETTER,

took up the white foam, that streaked the line of thf
advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scam-
pering 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 gray 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 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
various kinds, and make herself a scarf, or mantle,
and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little
mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devis-
ing drapery and costume. As the last touch to her
mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass, and imi-
tated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the deco-
ration with which she was so familiar on her mother's.
A letter, — the letter A, — but freshly green, instead
of scarlet I 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

HESTER AND PEARL. 216

silence, ** tlie green letter, and on thy childish bosom,
nas no purport. But dost thou know, my child, what
this letter means which thy mother is doomed to
wear ? "

" Yes, mother," said the child. *4 It is the great
letter A. Thou hast taught 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.

" 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 I "

" And what reason is that ? " asked Hester, half
smiling at the absurd incongruity of the child's obser-
vation ; 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 I
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 sel-
dom 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 as she

216 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 pur-
pose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tender-
ness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone
about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleas-
ure at your heart. And this, moreover, was a moth-
er's estimate of the child's disposition. Any other ob-
server might have seen few but unamiable 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 sorrows as could be imparted, without irrev-
erence either to the parent or the child. In the little
chaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerg-
ing — 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 examined, 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 unripe fruit. With all
these sterling attributes, thought Hester, the evil which
she inherited from her mother must be great indeed* ii
a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child.

HESTER AND PEARL. 217

Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma
of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her be-
ing. From the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she
had entered upon this as her appointed mission. Hes-
ter 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 de-
sign, 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 converted it into a tomb ? — and to help her to
overcome the passion, 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 ?

218 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 se-
vere, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her ;
as recognizing that, in spite of his strict watch over
her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some old
one had never been expelled. As for little Pearl, the
earnestness soon passed out of her face.

But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop.
Two or 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 gleam-
ing 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 ! — 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 me, else I shall shut
thee into the dark closet ! "

XVI.

A FOREST WALK.

Hester Prtnne remained constant in her resoivw
to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk
of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true char-
acter of the man who had crept into his intimacy.
For several days, however, she vainly sought an op-
portunity of addressing him in some of the medita-
tive 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 vis-
ited 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 con-
scious heart imputed suspicion where none could have
been felt, and partly that both the minister and she
would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while
they talked together, — 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. Dimmesdale had been summoned to
make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day
before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian

220 THE SCARLET LETTER.

converts. He would probably return, by a certain
hour, in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes, there-
fore, the next day, Hester took little Pearl, — who was
necessarily the companion of all her mother's expedi-
tions, 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 forest. 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 wilder-
ness in which she had so long been wandering. The
day was chill and sombre. Overhead was a gray ex-
panse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze ;
so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and
then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This
flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extrem-
ity of some long vista through the forest. The spor-
tive sunlight — feebly sportive, at best, in the predom-
inant pensiveness of the day and scene — withdrew
itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it
had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to
find them bright.

" 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

A FOREST WALK. 221

short, just at the beginning of her race. " Will not it
eome of 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 splendor, and scintillating with the vivacity ex-
cited 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
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 dan-
cing on Pearl's features, her mother could have fan-
cied 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 untransmitted vigor in Pearl's
nature, as this never-failing vivacity of spirits ; she
had not the disease of sadness, which almost all chil-
dren, in these latter days, inherit, 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 be-
fore Pearl's birth. It was certainly a doubtful charm,
imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's char-
acter. 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 enough yet for little Pearl.

222 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Come, my child ! " said Hester, looking about hei
from the spot where Pearl had stood still in the sun-
shine. " 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?"

" Oh, 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 every-
body 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 Black Man, mother ? "

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

" It was 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
(he night-time?"

A FOREST WALK. 223

" 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? w
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 I "

Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into
the wood to secure themselves from the observation
of any casual passenger along the forest track. Here
they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss, which, at
some epoch of the preceding century, had been a
gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the dark-
some shade, and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere.
It was a little dell where they had 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 compelled 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 undeis
brush, and here and there a huge rock covered ovel

224 THE SCARLET LETTER.

with gray lichens. All these giant trees and bowlders
of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the
course of this small brook ; fearing, perhaps, that, with
its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out
of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mir-
ror 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
♦he time sighing and murmuring ! "

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

"Tf 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."

A FOREST WALK. 225

" Is it the Black Man ? " asked Pearl.

" Wilt thou go and play, child ? " repeated her
mother. " But do not stray far into the wood. And
take heed that thou come at my first call."

" Yes, mother," answered Pearl. " But if it be the
Black Man, wilt 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 trees. It is the minister ! "

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

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

The child went singing away, following up the cur-
rent of the brook, and striving to mingle a more light-
some cadence with its melancholy voice. But the
little stream would not be comforted, and still kept
telling its unintelligible 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 gathering violets and
wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbines 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

VOL. T. 15

226 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the forest, but still remained under the deep shadow oi
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 sit-
uation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here
it was wofully visible, in the intense seclusion of the
forest, which, of itself, would have been a heavy trial
to the spirits. There was a listlessness 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 anything, 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. Death
was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.
To Hester's eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale ex-
hibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffer-
ing, except that, as little Pearl had remarked, he kept
his hand over his heart.

XVIi.

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER.

Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone
by, before Hester Prynne could gather voice enough
to attract his 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 garments so
sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight
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 path-
way through life was haunted thus, by a spectre that
had stolen out from among his thoughts.

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

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

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

It was no wonder that they thus questioned one
another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted

228 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 inti-
mately connected in their former life, but now stood
coldly shuddering, in mutual dread ; as not yet famil-
iar 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 his-
tory 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 ne-
cessity, 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 interview. They now felt them-
selves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere.

Without a word more spoken, — neither he nor she
assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed con-
sent, — they glided back into the shadow of the woods,
whence Hester had emerged, and 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 ac-
quaintance 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 brooding deepest in their
hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances,
they needed something slight and casual to run bef ore,
and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that theif
real thoughts might be led across the threshold.

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 229

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

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

She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.

" Hast thou ? " she asked.

" None ! — nothing but aespair ! " he answered.
" What else could I look for> being what I am, and
leading such a life as mine ? Were I an atheist, — a
man devoid of conscience, — a wretch with coarse and
brutal instincts, — I might have found peace, long ere
now. Nay, I never should have lost it ! But, as mat-
ters 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 tor-
ment. 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
concerns 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 re-
demption 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 up-
ward to my face, as if the light of heaven were beam-
ing 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 be»

230 THE SCARLET LETTER.

tween 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 witnessed 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 holi-
ness, 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 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, methinks my soul might keep
itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would
save me ! But, now, it is all falsehood ! — all empti-
ness ! — 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,*

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 231

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 consideration ; or, per-
haps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble, 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
continual presence of Roger Chillingworth, — the
secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air
about him, — and his authorized interference, as a
physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual
infirmities, — that these bad opportunities had been
turned to a cruel purpose. By means of them, the
sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated
state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by whole-

232 THE SCARLET LETTER.

some pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual
being. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be in-
sanity, 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 passionately loved ! Hester felt that the sacrifice
of the clergyman's good name, and death itself, as
she had already told Roger Chillingworth, would have
been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she
had taken upon herself 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 Dimmesdale'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 deception. 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 Chilling"
worth ! — 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 quali-
ties — 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 char-
acter had been so much enfeebled by suffering, thai

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 233

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
recoil of my heart, at the first sight of him, and as
often as I have seen him since ? Why did I not un-
derstand ? 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 ! "

" Thou shalt forgive me ! " cried Hester, flinging
herself 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 scarlet letter. He would have released himself,
but strove in 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 this lonely woman, — and still
she bore it all, nor ever once turned away her firm,
sad eyes. Heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her,
and she had not died. But the frown of this pale,
weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what Hes-
ter 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 sad*

234 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ness, 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,
me 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 the fallen tree. Life
had never brought them a gloomier hour ; it was the
point whither their pathway had so long been tend-
ing, and darkening ever, as it stole along; and yet
it enclosed 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 above their heads ;
while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to an-
other, 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 for-
est-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 precious as the gloom
of this dark forest. Here, seen only by his eyes, the
scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the
fallen woman I Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 235

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 doubt-
less 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
Dimmesdale, 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 ! "

" It were far worse than death! " replied the minis-
ter. " 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 Hes-
ter, 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
conscience-stricken priest. " It is too mighty for me
to struggle with 1 "

236 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" 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 in-
stinctively exercising a magnetic power over a spirit
so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold it-
self 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 yonder forest -track? Backward to
the settlement, thou sayest ! 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 ? "

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

" Then there is the broad pathway of the sea ! " con-
tinued Hester. " It brought thee hither. If thou so
choose, it will bear thee back again. In our native
land, whether in some remote rural village or in vast
London, — or, surely, in Germany, in France, ii
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 bondage too long alreadv ! "

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 237

il It cannot be ! " answered the minister, listening as
if he were called upon to realize a dream. " I am pow-
erless to go ! Wretched and sinful as I am, I have
had no other thought than to drag on my earthly ex-
istence 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 ! "

" Thou art crushed under this seven years' weight
of misery," replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy
him up with her own energy. " But thou shalt leave
it all behind thee ! It shall not cumber thy steps, as
thou treadest 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 hap-
pened. 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 most renowned of the cul-
tivated 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 I
Up, and away 1 "

238 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" 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 better
fortune that seemed within his reach.

He repeated the word.

" Alone, Hester ! "

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

Then, all was spoken I

xvm.

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE.

Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face
yith a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed,
out 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 es-
tranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated
herself to such latitude of speculation as was alto-
gether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered,
without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as
vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed for-
est, amid the gloom of which they were now holding
a colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intel-
lect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert
places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian
in his woods. For years past she looked from this
estranged point of view at human institutions, and
whatever priests or legislators had established; crit-
icising 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_wt>a k^ p^°gpr>r* in*o regions
where other women daxed__not tread. Shame, De-
spair, Solitude 1 These had been her teachers, — * stem

240 THE SCARLET LETTER.

and wild ones, — and they had made her strong, but

-taught her nr^irch ami'^,

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

Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester
Prynne, the whole seven years of outlaw and igno-
miny had been little other than a preparation for this
very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale ! Were such a
man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in
extenuation of his crime ? None ; unless it avail him
somewhat, that he was broken down by long and ex-
quisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and
confused by the very remorse which harrowed it ; that
between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining
as a hypocrite, conscience might find it hard to strike
the balance ; that it was human to avoid the peril of
death and infamy, and the inscrutable machinations
of an enemy ; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 241

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
rained wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the foe
that would win over again his unforgotten triumph.

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

" If, in all these past seven years," thought he, " I
could recall one instant of peace or hope, I would yet
endure for the sake of that earnest of Heaven's mer-
cy. 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 per-
suade me, I surely give up no fairer prospect by pur-
suing it ! Neither can I any longer live without her
companionship ; so powerful is she to sustain, — so
tender to soothe ! O Thou to whom I dare not lift
mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me!"

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

The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoy-
ment 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

SOL. T. 16

242 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 »
deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a
tinge of the devotional in his mood.

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

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

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

The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh,
in which the burden of shame and anguish departed

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 243

from her spirit. Oh exquisite relief ! She had not
known the weight, until she felt the freedom ! By an-
other impulse, she took off the formal cap that con-
fined her hair ; and down it fell upon her shoulders,
dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in
its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to
her features. There played around her mouth, and
beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile,
that seemed gushing from the very heart of woman-
hood. 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 them-
selves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before
unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And,
as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the
effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with
their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden smile of
heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood
into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf,
transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleam-
ing adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The
objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied
the brightness now. The course of the little brook
might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the
wood's heart of mystery, which had become a mystery
of joy.

Such was the sympathy of Nature — that wild,
heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by
human law, nor illumined by higher truth — with the
bliss of these two spirits ! Love, whether newly born,
or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always
create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance,
that it overflows upon the outward world. Had the

244 THE SCARLET LETTER.

forest still kept its gloom, it would have been bright
in Hester's eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimmesdale's I

Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.

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

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

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

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

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

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely,
while her mother sat talking with the clergyman. The
great black forest — stern as it showed itself to those
who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 245

its bosom — became the playmate of the lonely infant,
as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on
the kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered
her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding
autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red
as drops of blood upon the withered leaves. These
Pearl gathered, and was pleased with their wild flavor.
The small denizens of the wilderness hardly took
pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed,
with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threaten-
ingly, but soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked
to her young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone
on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and
uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A
squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree,
chattered either in anger or merriment, — for a squir-
rel is such a choleric and humorous little personage,
that it is hard to distinguish between his moods, —
so he chattered at the child, and flung down a nut
upon her head. It was a last year's nut, and already
gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his
sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked in-
quisitively at Pearl, as doubting whether it were bet-
ter 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 noins
ished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the human
child.

And she was gentler here than in the grassy-mar
gined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cot
tage. The flowers appeared to know it ; and one and

246 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

Slowly ; for she saw the clergyman.

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE.

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

" Dost thou know, Hester," said Arthur Dimmes-
dale, with an unquiet smile, " that this dear child, trip-
ping 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 strik-
ingly that the world might see them ! But she is
mostly thine ! "

" No, no ! Not mostly ! " answered the mother, with
a tender smile. "A little longer, and thou needest
not to be afraid to trace whose child she is. But how
strangely beautiful she looks, with those wild-flower!!
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

248 THE SCARLET LETTER.

them. She had been offered to the world, these seven
years past, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was re-
vealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide, — all
written in this symbol, — all plainly manifest, — had
there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the
character of flame ! And Pearl was the oneness of
their being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how
could they doubt that their earthly lives and future
destinies were conjoined, when they beheld at once the
material union, and the spiritual idea, in whom they
met, and were to dwell immortally together ? Thoughts
like these — and perhaps other thoughts, which they
did not acknowledge or define — threw an awe about
the child as she came onward.

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

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

"And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 249

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 pictur-
esqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers
and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized
than the reality. This image, so nearly identical with
the living Pearl, seemed to communicate somewhat of
its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child
herself. It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood,
looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium
of the forest-gloom ; herself, meanwhile, all glorified
with a ray of sunshine that was attracted thitherward
as by a certain sympathy. In the brook beneath stood
another child, — another and the same, — with 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, had strayed out of the sphere in which she
and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly
seeking to return to it.

There was both truth and error in the impression :
the child and mother were estranged, but through
Hester's fault, not Pearl's. Since the latter rambled
from her side, another inmate had been admitted with-
in the circle of the mother's feelings, and so modified
the aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning wan*

250 THE SCARLET LETTER.

derer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly kne^
where she was.

" I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive
minister, " that this brook is the boundary between
two worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy Pearl
again. Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends
of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a run-
ning stream? Pray hasten her; for this delay has al-
ready 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.
' -Fui suine unaccountable reason, as Arthur Diinmes-
dalft-i<4%-tfatrcluld]s_eyes upon himself, his hancP^
^esiureso habitual as to have become in-

. — a—singular air of authority, Pearl stretched out her

Tiand,~with flgpgnaM rnmOn^m' Bxtendsi; ,J""' p™™*-

• lng~ evidently towards her mother's brea,st. And be-
neath, in tne 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.

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 251

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 un-
accustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a
yet more imperious look and gesture. In the brook,
again, was the fantastic beauty of the image, with its
reflected frown, its pointed finger, and imperious ges-
ture, 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 sud-
denly burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently
and throwing her small figure into the most extrava-
gant contortions. She accompanied this wild outbreak
with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated
on all sides ; so that, alone as she was in her childish
and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden mul-
titude were lending her their sympathy and encour-
agement. Seen in the brook, once more, was the shad-
owy 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 fore-
finger 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

252 THE SCARLET LETTER.

aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearl
misses something which she has always seen me wear ! "

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

Hester turned again towards Pearl, with a crimson
blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside at the
clergyman, and then a heavy sigh ; while, even before
she had time to spea^, 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
brookl^-^""

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

" Bring it hither ! " said Hester.

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

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

With these words, she advanced to the margin of

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 253

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

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

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

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

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

254 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems
instinctive with every petted child towards a danger-
ous rival, or from whatever caprice of her freakish
nature, Pearl would show no favor to the clergyman.
It was only by an exertion of force that her mother
brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting
her reluctance by odd grimaces ; of which, ever since
her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety,
and could transform her mobile physiognomy into a
series of different aspects, with a new mischief in
them, each and all. The minister — painfully embar-
rassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman
to admit him into the child's kindlier regards — bent

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 255

forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon,
Pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to
the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead,
until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and
diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water.
She then remained apart, silently watching Hester
and the clergyman ; while they talked together, and
made such arrangements as were suggested by their
new position, and the purposes soon to be fulfilled.

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

XX.

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE.

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

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness
and duplicity of impression, which vexed it with a
strange disquietude, he recalled and more thoroughly
defined the plans which Hester and himself had
sketched for their departure. It had been deter-
mined between them that the Old World, with its
crowds and cities, offered them a more eligible shel-
ter and concealment than the wilds of New England,
or all America, with its alternatives of an Indian wig-

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 257

warn, or the few settlements of Europeans, scattered
thinly along the seaboard. Not to speak of the cler-
gyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships
of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his
entire development would secure him a home only in
the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher
the state, the more delicately adapted to it the man.
In furtherance of this choice, it so happened that a
ship lay in the harbor; one of those questionable
cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being
absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its
surface with a remarkable irresponsibility of charac-
ter. This vessel had recently arrived from the Span-
ish Main, and, within three days' time, would sail for
Bristol. Hester Prynne — whose vocation, as a self -en-
listed 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 fortu-
nate ! " he had then said to himself. Now, why the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale considered it so very for-
tunate, we hesitate to reveal. Nevertheless, — to hold
nothing back from the reader, — it was because, on
the third day from the present, he was to preach the
Election Sermon ; and as such an occasion formed an
honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergy-
man, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable
mode and time of terminating his professional career.

u At least, they shall say of me," thought this exem-
voi* v. 17

258 THE SCARLET LETTER.

plary man, " that I leave no public duty unperformed,
nor ill performed ! " Sad, indeed, that an introspec-
tion so profound and acute as this poor minister's
should be so miserably deceived ! We have had, and
may still have, worse things to tell of him ; but none,
we apprehend, so pitiably weak ; no evidence, at once
so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease, that had
long since begun to eat into the real substance of his
character. No man, for any considerable period, can
wear one face to himself, and another to the multi-
tude, without finally getting bewildered as to which
may be the true.

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale's feelings, as he
returned from his interview with Hester, lent him un-
accustomed physical energy, and hurried him town-
ward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods
seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural ob-
stacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he
remembered it on his outward journey. But he leaped
across the plashy places, thrust himself through the
clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into
the hollow, and overcame, in short, all the difficulties
of the track, with an unweariable activity that aston-
ished him. He could not but recall how feebly, and
with what frequent pauses for breath, he had toiled
over the same ground, only two days before. As he
drew near the town, he took an impression of change
from the series of familiar objects that presented them-
selves. It seemed not yesterday, not one, nor two, but
many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted
them. There, indeed, was each former trace of the
street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of
the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and
a weathercock at every point where his memory sug

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 252

gested one. Not the less, however, came this importu
uately obtrusive sense of change. The same was trut
as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and al
the well-known shapes of human life, about the little
town. They looked neither older nor younger now ;
the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the
creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day ; it
was impossible to describe in what respect they differed
from the individuals on whom he had so recently be-
stowed a parting glance ; and yet the minister's deep-
est 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 hith-
erto, or that he was merely dreaming about it now.

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

#-

260 THE SCARLET LETTER.

him, — " Thou art thyself the man ! " — but the error
would have been their own, not his.

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner
man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the
sphere of thought and feeling. In truth, nothing short
of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in fliat
interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the im-
pulses now communicated to the unfortunate~anTT^tar-
tletHSmister. At every step he was incited to do some
Strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense tnat
it would be at once involuntary and intentional ; in
spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self
than that which opposed the impulse. For instance,
he met one of his own deacons. The good old man
addressed him with the paternal affection and patriar-
chal privilege, wnicn nis venerable age, his upright and
holy character, and his station in the Church, entitled
Turn to use ; and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost
worshipping respect, which the minister's professional
and private claims alike demanded. Never was there
a more beautiful example of how the majesty of age
and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and re*
spect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank,
^d inferior^ order of endowment, towards a higher.
.Now, during a conversation of some two or three mo-
ments between the Eeverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this
excellent and hoary-bearded deacon^it was only by the
most careful self-control that the former coutdTrefraiB
firohr-txttering certain blasphemous suggestions that
rose into his mind, respecting the communion supper.
"Tie absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest
his tongue should wag itself, in utterance of these hor-
rible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing,
without his having fairly given it. And. even with

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 261

this terror in. his heart, he could hardly avoid laugh-
ing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal
deacon would have been petrified by his minister's
impiety !

Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurry-
ing along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale
encountered the eldest female member of his church ;
a most pious and exemplary old dame ; poor, widowed,
lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about
her dead husband and children, and her dead friends
of long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied grave-
stones. Yet all this, which would else" Eave beenlmch
Heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her de-
vout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths
of Scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually
for more than thirty years. And, since Mr. Dimmes-
dale had taken her in charge, the good grandam's chief
earthly comfort — which, unless it had been likewise a
heavenly comfort, could have been none at all — was
to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of set purpose,
and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant,
heaven-breathing Gospel truth, from his beloved lips,
into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But,
on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips
to the old woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale^ as the great
enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of
Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and,
as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument
against the immortality of the human soul. The in-
stilment thereof into her mind would probably have
caused this aged sister to drop down dead at once, as
by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. What
he really did whisper, the minister could never after-
wards recollect. There was, perhaps, a fortunate dis-

262 THE SCARLET LETTER.

order in his utterance, which failed to impart any di»
tinct idea to the good widow's comprehension, or which
Providence interpreted after a method of its own. As-
suredly, as the minister looked back, he beheld an ex
pression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed
like the shine of the celestial city on her face, so
wrinkled and ashy pale.

Again a third instance. After parting from the old
church-member, he met the youngest sister of them
all. It was a maiden newly won — and won by the
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's own sermon, on the Sab-
bath after his vigil — to barter the transitory pleas-
ures of the world for the heavenly hope, that was to
assume brighter substance as life grew dark around
her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final
glory. She was fair and pure as a lily that had
bloomed in Paradise. The minister knew well that
he was himself enshrined within the stainless sanc-
tity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about
his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love,
and to love a religious purity. Satan, that afternoon,
had surely led the poor young girl away from her
mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of this
sorely tempted, or — shall we not rather say ? — this
lost and desperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch-
fiend whispered him to condense into small compass
and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that
would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black
fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power over this
virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister
felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but
one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but
a word. So — with a mightier struggle than he had
yet sustained — he held his Geneva cloak before his

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 268

face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recogni*
tion, and leaving the young sister to digest his rude-
ness as she might. She ransacked her conscience, — -
which was full of harmless little matters, like her
pocket or her work-bag, — and took herself to task,
poor thing ! for a thousand imaginary faults ; and
went about her household duties with swollen eyelids
the next morning.

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

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

264 THE SCARLET LETTER.

wickedness which his most foul imagination can coa
ceive ? "

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

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

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

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 265

the many precious souls he hath won from heathen-
dom ! "

" 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
turning back her head and smiling at him, like one
willing to recognize a secret intimacy of connection.

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

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

He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the
edge of the burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs,
took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to
have reached this shelter, without first betraying him-
self to the world by any of those strange and wicked
eccentricities to which he had been continually im>

266 THE SCARLET LETTER.

pelled while passing through the streets. He entered
the accustomed room, and looked around him on its
books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried
comfort of the walls, with the same perception of
strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk
from the forest-dell into the town, and thitherward.
Here he had studied and written ; here, gone through
fast and vigil, and come forth half alive ; here, striven
to pray ; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies !
There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with
Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God's
voice through all ! There, on the table, with the inky
pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sen-
tence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had
ceased to gush out upon the page, two days before. He
knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked
minister, who had done and suffered these things, and
written thus far into the Election Sermon ! But he
seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with
scornful, pitying, but half -envious curiosity. That self
was gone. Another man had returned out of the for-
est ; 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 be-
hold an evil spirit. And so he did ! It was old Roger
Chillingworth that entered. The minister stood, white
and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew Scrip
tures, and the other spread upon his breast.

" Welcome home, reverend Sir," said the physician
"And how found you that godly man. the Apostle
Eliot ? But methinks, dear Sir, you look pale : a.% if

£HE MINISTER 7JV A MAZE. 267

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 Ser-
mon?"

" Nay, 1 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 Chillingworth 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 suspi-
cion, with respect to his own interview with Hester
Prynne. The physician knew then, that, in the min-
ister's regard, he was no longer a trusted friend, but
his bitterest enemy. So much being known, it would
appear natural that a 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 dis-
turbing it. Thus, the minister felt no apprehension
that Roger Chillingworth would touch, in express
words, upon the real position which they sustained to-
wards 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 occa
rion of the Election discourse. The people loot foi

268 THE SCARLET LETTER.

great things from you ; apprehending that another
jrear 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, touching 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 due effect. Happy man were
I, and well deserving 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 ! "
rejoined old Roger Chillingworth, as he took his leave.
" Yea, they are the current gold coin of the New Jeru-
salem, 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 al-
ready written pages of the Election Sermon into the
fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote with
such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that
he fancied himself inspired ; and only wondered that
Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and sol-
emn music of its oracles through so foul an organ-pipe
as he. However, leaving that mystery to solve itself,
or go unsolved forever, 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 ;

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 269

morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the cur-
tains ; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into
the study and laid it right across the minister's bedaz-
zled eyes. There he was, with the pen still betweeD
his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written
space behind him !

XXI.

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY.

Betimes in the morning of the day on which the
new Governor was to receive his office at the hands of
the people, Hester Prynne and little Pearl 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 gray cloth. Not more by its hue than by some
indescribable 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 indistinctness, and revealed her under the
moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so
long familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble
quietude which they were accustomed to behold there.
It was like a mask; or, rather, like the frozen calm,
ness of a dead woman's features ; owing this dreary
resemblance to the fact that Hester was actually dead,
in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had de-
parted out of the world, with which she still seemed
to mingle.

It might be, on this one day, that there was an

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY- 271

expression unseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to
be detected, 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 neces-
sity, a penance, and something which it was a stern
religion to endure, she now, for one last time more,
encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to con-
vert what had so long been agony into a kind of tri-
umph. " 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 in-
consistency too improbable to be assigned to human
nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret in Hes-
ter'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, breath-
less draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with
which nearly all her years of womanhood had been per-
petually 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 ; of
else leave an inevitable and weary languor, after the
lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as
with a cordial of intensest potency.

Pearl was decked out with airy gayety. It would
have been impossible to guess that this bright and

272 THE SCARLET LETTER.

sunny apparition owed its existence to the shape of
gloomy gray ; 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 difficult, 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 outward manifestation of
her character, no more to be separated 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 day,
moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and
excitement 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 sym-
pathy in the agitations of those connected with them ;
always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impend-
ing revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circum-
stances ; 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
movement, rather than walk by her mother's side.
She broke continually into shouts of a wild, inartic-
ulate, and sometimes piercing music. When they
reached the market-place, she became still more rest-
less, 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.

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 273

" Why, what is this, mother ? " cried she. " Where-
fore have all the people left their work to-day ? Is it
a play-day for the whole world? See, there is the
blacksmith ! He has washed his sooty face, and put
on 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," an-
swered 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
gray, and wearest the scarlet letter. But see, mother)
how many faces of strange people, and Indians among
them, and sailors ! What have they all come to do,
here in the market-place ? "

" They wait to see the procession pass," said Hes-
ter. " 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

VOL. v. 18

274 THE SCARLET LETTER.

hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee,
sitting on a heap of moss ! And he kisses my fore-
head, 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
minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery is
everybody'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 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 centu-
ties — 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 holiday, they appeared scarcely
more grave than most other communities at a period
of general affliction.

But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge,
which undoubtedly characterized the mood and man-
ners 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

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY, 275

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 ceremo-
nies, to combine mirthful recreation with solemnity,
and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroi-
dery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such
festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an at-
tempt 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 col-
orless 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 annual installation of
magistrates. The fathers and founders of the com-
monwealth— the statesman, the priest, and the sol-
dier — 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 proces-
sion 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 en-
couraged, 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

276 THE SCARLET LETTER.

appliances which popular merriment would so read-
ily 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 glee-
man, with an ape dancing to his music ; no juggler,
with his tricks of mimic witchcraft ; no Merry An-
drew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps hun-
dreds 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 jocular-
ity 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, however,
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 essential in them. Wrest-
ling-matches, in the different 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 commencing
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 maj-
esty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one
of its consecrated places.

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole (the
people being then in the first stages of joyless deport*

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 277

ment, 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 de-
scendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves.
Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the
early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritan-
ism, 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 gray, brown, or
black of the English emigrants, 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 countenances of inflexible
gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could at-
tain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were
they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinc-
tion 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 Elec-
tion Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with
sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard ; their
wide, short trousers were confined about the waist by
belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and
sustaining always a long knife, and, in some instances,
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 ferocity. They
transgressed, without fear or scruple, the rules of be-
havior that were binding on all others ; smoking to*

278 THE SCARLET LETTER.

bacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff
would have cost a townsman a shilling ; and quaffing,
at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from
pocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the gap-
ing crowd around them. It remarkably characterized
the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call
it, that a license was allowed the seafaring class, not
merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more des-
perate 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 instance,
that this very ship's crew, though no unfavorable spec-
imens 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 reg-
ulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave
might relinquish his calling, 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 traf-
fic, 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 ; and it ex-
cited neither surprise nor animadversion when so rep-
utable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the phy-
sician, was seen to enter the market-place, in close
and familiar talk with the commander of the question-
able vessel.

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 279

figure, so far as apparel went, anywhere to be seeu
among the multitude. He wore a profusion of ril>
bons on his garment, and gold-lace on his hat, which
was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted
with a feather. There was a sword at his side, and a
sword-cut on his forehead, which, by the arrangement
of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than
hide. A landsman 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, 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 character, 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 recog-
nize, 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 elbow-
ing 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, with-
drawal of her fellow-creatures. Now, if never before,
it answered a good purpose, by enabling Hester and
the seaman to speak together without risk of being
overheard ; and so changed was Hester Prynne's re-
pute 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 herself.

280 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" So, mistress," said the mariner, " I must bid the
steward make ready one more berth than you bar-
gained for ! No fear of scurvy or ship-fever this voy-
age! 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
than she permitted to appear. " Have you another
passenger?"

" 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 have known it ; for he tells me he is of your
party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke
of, — be thakjsin peril from these sour old Puritan
rulers ! "

" Theyxknow each other well, indeed," replied Hes-
ter, with a mien of calmness, though in the utmost
consternation. " They have long dwelt together."

Nothing further passed between the mariner and
Hester Prynne. But, at that instant, she beheld old
Roger Chillingworth himself, standing in the remot-
est 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— con-
veyed secret and fearful meaning.

THE PROCESSION.

Before 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 con-
tiguous street. It denoted the advance of the proces-
sion of magistrates and citizens, on its way towards
the meeting-house ; where, in compliance with a cus-
tom thus early established, and ever since observed,
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver an Elec-
tion Sermon.

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with
a slow and stately march, turning a corner and mak-
ing 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 it-
self to the multitude, — that of imparting a higher
and more heroic air to the scene of life that passes be-
fore 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 effervescence 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 sun*

282 THE SCARLET LETTER.

shine on the weapons and bright armor of the military
company, which followed after the music, and formed
the honorary escort of the procession. This body of
soldiery — which still sustains a corporate existence,
and marches down from past ages with an ancient and
honorable fame — was composed of no mercenary ma-
terials. Its ranks were filled with gentlemen, who felt
the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to estab-
lish a kind of College of Arms, where as in an asso-
ciation of Knights Templars, they might learn the sci-
ence, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them,
the practices of war. The high estimation then placed
upon the military character 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 warfare, had fairly
won their title to assume the name and pomp of sol-
diership. The entire array, moreover, clad in bur-
nished steel, and with plumage nodding 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 de-
meanor, they showed a stamp of majesty that made
the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd.
It was an age when what we call talent had far less
consideration than now, but the massive 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 de-
scendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller pro-
portion, and with a vastly diminished force, in the se-
lection and estimate of public men. The change maj

THE PROCESSION. 283

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 in-
tegrity ; on solid wisdom and sad-colored experience j
on endowments of that grave and weighty order which
gives the idea of permanence, and comes under the
general definition of respectability. These primitive
statesmen, therefore, — Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley,
Bellingham, and their compeers, — 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 rep-
resented in the square cast of countenance and large
physical development of the new colonial magistrates.
So far as a demeanor of natural authority was con-
cerned, the mother country need not have been
ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual de-
mocracy adopted into the House of Peers, or made
the Privy Council of the sovereign.

Next in order to the magistrates came the young and
eminently distinguished divine, from whose lips the
religious discourse of the anniversary was expected.
His was the profession, at that era, in which intellec-
tual ability displayed itself far more than in political
life ; for — leaving a higher motive out of the ques-
tion — it offered inducements powerful enough, in tha
almost worshipping respect of the community, to win

284 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the most aspiring ambition into its service. Even po-
litical power — as in the case of Increase 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, it
the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed
not of the body. It might be spiritual, and imparted
to him by angelic ministrations. It might be the ex-
hilaration of that potent cordial which is distilled only
in the furnace glow of earnest and long - continued
thought. Or, perchance, his sensitive temperament
was invigorated by the loud and piercing 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 on-
ward, and with an unaccustomed force. But where
was his mind ? Far and deep in its own region, busy-
ing 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
nothing, of what was around him ; but the spiritual
element took up the feeble frame, and carried it along,
unconscious of the burden, and converting it to spirit
like itself. Men of uncommon 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,

THE PROCESSION. 285

felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or
whence she knew not ; unless that he seemed so re-
mote 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, mov-
ing 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 unsympathiz-
ing 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 be-
ing able so completely to withdraw himself from their
mutual world ; while she groped darkly, and stretched
forth her cold hands, and found him not.

Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feel
ings, or herself felt the remoteness and intangibility
that had fallen around the minister. While the pro-
cession 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 ? "

286 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl ! " whispered hei
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 peo«
pie ; 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 be gone ? "

" 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
eccentricities — 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 Hib-
bins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a triple
ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and
a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the proces-
sion. 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 necromancy
that were continually going forward, the crowd gave
way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her
garment, 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 inspired by Mistress Hibbins was doubled, and
caused a general movement from that part of the ma»
ket-place in which the two women stood.

THE PROCESSION. 287

" Now, what mortal imagination conld conceive it ! "
whispered the old lady, confidentially, to Hester.
:t Yonder divine man ! That saint on earth, as the
people uphold him to be, and as — I must needs say
— he really looks ! Who, now, that saw him pass in
the procession, 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 find it hard
to believe him the same man. Many a church-mem-
ber saw I, walking behind the music, that has danced
in the same measure with me, when Somebody was fid-
dler, and, it might be, an Indian powwow or a Lap-
land wizard changing hands with us ! That is but a
trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this min-
ister ! Couldst thou surely tell, Hester, whether he
was the same man that encountered thee on the for-
est-path ? "

" Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered
Hester Prynne, feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of in-
firm mind; yet strangely startled and awe -stricken
by the confidence with which she affirmed a personal
connection between 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. Dimmesdale ! "

" Fie, woman, fie ! " cried the old lady, shaking her
finger at Hester. " Dost thou think I have been
to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill
to judge who else has been there ? Yea ; though no
leaf of the wild 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 sun»

288 THE SCARLET LETTER.

shine ; 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, ir
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 dis»
closed 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 ? "

" 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 depar-
ture.

By this time the preliminary prayer had been of-
fered 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 peculiar voice.

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment •,
insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of

THE PROCESSION. 289

the language 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 emotions high or tender, in a tongue
native to the human heart, wherever educated. Muf-
fled as the sound was by its passage through the
church-walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intent-
ness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon
had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from
its indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more
distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser me-
dium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she
caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking
down 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
atmosphere 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 expression of anguish, — the whisper, or
the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering hu-
manity, 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 minister's voice grew high
and commanding, — when it gushed irrepressibly up-
ward, — 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; be*

vol. y. 19

290 THE SCARLET LETTER.

seeching its sympathy or forgiveness, — at every mo-
ment, — in each accent, — and never in vain ! It was
this profound and continual undertone 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
inevitable 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 before and after, was connected with
this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity.

Little Pearl, meanwhile, had 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 illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage by
darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid
the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an un-
dulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp and irregular move-
ment. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit,
which to-day was doubly indefatigable 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 curiosity,
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 in-
clined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from
the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity
that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with

THE PROCESSION. 291

its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in
the face ; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder
than his own. Thence, with native 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 searfire,
that flashes beneath the prow in the night-time.

One of these seafaring men — the shipmaster, in-
deed, 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. Find-
ing it as impossible to touch her as to catch a hum-
ming-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 difficult to imagine
her without it.

" Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet let-
ter," said the seaman. " Wilt thou carry her a mes-
sage 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 a naughty smile. " If
thou callest me that ill name, I shall tell him of thee,
and he will chase thy ship with a tempest ! "

292 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 be-
holding this dark and grim countenance of an inevi-
table 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 un-
relenting smile, right in the midst of their path.

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 present, from the country round about, who had
often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had
been 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 accord-
ingly 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 purport of the scarlet
letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado-
looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were af-
fected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's cu-
riosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their
snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom ; conceiving,
perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroi-
dered badge must needs be a personage of high dig-
nity among her people. Lastly, the inhabitants of the
town (their own interest in this worn-out subject Ian*

THE PROCESSION. 293

guidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw
others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tor-
mented 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 forth-
coming 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 become 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.

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
looking 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 scarlet letter in the market-place ! What imagi-
nation would have been irreverent enough to surmise
that the same scorching stigma was on them both'

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER.

The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listen.
ing audience had been borne aloft as on the swelling
waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. There
was a momentary silence, profound as what should
follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a mur-
mur and half-hushed tumult; as if the auditors, re-
leased from the high spell that had transported them
into the region of another's mind, were returning into
themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy
on them. In a moment more, the crowd began to
gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that
there was an end, they needed other breath, more fit
to support the gross and earthly life into which they
relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher
had converted into words of flame, and had burdened
with the rich fragrance of his thought.

In the open air their rapture broke into speech.
The street and the market-place absolutely babbled,
from side to side, with applauses of the minister. His
hearers could not rest until they had told one another
of what each knew better than he could tell or hear.
According to their united testimony, never had man
spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he
that spake this day ; nor had inspiration ever breathed
through mortal lips more evidently than it did through
his. Its influence could be seen, as it were, descend-

REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 295

ing upon him, and possessing him, and continually
lifting him out of the written discourse that lay be-
fore 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 relation 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 dif-
ference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced
judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mis-
sion to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the
newly gathered people of the Lord. But, throughout
it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been
a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could
not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural re-
gret of one soon to pass away. Yes ; their minister
whom they so loved — and who so loved them all, that
he could not depart heavenward without a sigh — had
the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would
soon leave them in their tears ! This idea of his tran-
sitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the ef-
fect which the preacher had produced ; it was as if
an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his
bright wings over the people for an instant, — at once
a shadow and a splendor, — and had shed down a
shower of golden truths upon them.

Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dim-
mesdale — as to most men, in their various spheres,
though seldom recognized unti} they see it far behind
them — an epoch of life more brilliant and full of tri-
umph than any previous one, or than any which could

296 THE SCARLET LETTER.

hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very
proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts
of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a rep-
utation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman
in New England's earliest days, when the professional
character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was
the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed
his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at
the close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester
Prynne was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory,
with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast !

Now was heard again the clangor of 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 day.

Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and
majestic fathers was seen moving through a broad
pathway of the people, who drew back reverently, on
either side, as the Governor and magistrates, the old
and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were
eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of
them. When they were fairly in the market - place,
their presence was greeted by a shout. This — though
doubtless it might acquire additional force and vol-
ume from the childlike loyalty which the age awarded
to its rulers — was felt to be an irrepressible outburst
of 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

REVELATION OP THE SCARLET LETTER. 297

and symphonious feeling, to produce that more im-
pressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, o*
the thunder, or the roar of the sea ; even that mighty
swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by
the universal impulse which makes likewise one vast
heart out of the many. Never, from the soil of New
England, had gone up such a shout 1 Never, on New
England soil, had stood the man honored by his mor-
tal brethren as the preacher !

How fared it with him then ? Were there not the
brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head ?
So etherealized by spirit as he was, and so apotheo-
sized 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 en-
ergy — or say, rather, the inspiration which had held
him up until he should have delivered the sacred mes-
sage that brought its own strength along with it from
Heaven — was withdrawn, now that it had so faith-
fully performed its office. The glow, which they had
just before beheld burning on his cheek, was extin-
guished, 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. Dim-
mesdale was left by the retiring' wave of intellect an^

298 THE SCARLET LETTER.

sensibility, stepped forward hastily to offer his sup-
port. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled
the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if that
movement could be so described, which rather resem-
bled the wavering effort of an infant with its mother's
arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward.
And now, almost imperceptible as were the latter
steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well-
remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where,
long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between,
Hester Prynne had encountered the world's ignomin-
ious stare. There stood Hester, holding 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 I — 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, judg-
ing, from Mr. Dimmesdale's aspect, that he must oth-
erwise inevitably fall. But there was something in
the latter's expression that warned back the magis-
trate, although a man not readily obeying the vague
intimations that pass from one spirit to another. The
crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder.
This earthly faintness was, in their view, only another
phase of the minister's celestial strength ; nor would
it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for
one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, wax-
ing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the
light of heaven.

He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth
his arms.

REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 299

" 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, and
clasped her arms about his knees. Hester Prynne —
slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against
her strongest will — likewise drew near, but paused
before she reached him. At this instant, old Roger
Chfllingworth 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 infamy 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
scarlet letter.

" Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnest-
ness, " in the name of Him, so terrible and so merci-
ful, 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

SOU THE SCARLET LETTER.

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, He*
ter, come ! Support me up yonder scaffold ! "

The crowd was in a tumult. The men of ranis
and dignity, who stood more immediately around the
clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so per-
plexed as to the purport of what they saw, — unable
to receive the explanation which most readily pre-
sented itself, or to imagine any other, — that they re-
mained silent and inactive spectators of the judgment
which Providence seemed about to work. They be-
held the minister, leaning on Hester's shoulder, and
supported by her arm around him, approach the scaf-
fold, and ascend its steps ; while still the little hand
of the sin-born child was clasped in his. Old Roger
Chillingworth followed, as one intimately connected
with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had
all been actors, and well entitled, therefore, to be pres-
ent at its closing scene.

" Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he,
looking darkly at the clergyman, " there was no one
place so secret, — no high place nor lowly place, where
thou couldst have escaped me, — save on this very
scaffold ! "

" Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither ! " an-
swered the minister.

Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester with an ex-
pression of doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less
evidently betrayed, that there was a feeble smile upon
his lips.

" Is not this better," murmured he, " than what we
dreamed of in the forest?"

*' I know not ! I know not! n she hurriedly replied

REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER, 801

" 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 Prynne, and holding
one hand of little Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmes-
dale turned to the dignified and venerable rulers ; to
the holy ministers, who were his brethren ; to the peo-
ple, 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 merid-
ian, shone down upon the clergyman, and gave a dis-
tinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all the
earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eter-
nal 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 re-
morse and woe, — " ye, that have loved me ! — ye,
that have deemed me holy 1 — 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 hith-
erward, sustains me, at this dreadful moment, from
grovelling down upon my face ! Lo, the scarlet letter
which Hester wears ! Ye have all shuddered at it !
Wherever her walk hath been, — wherever, so miser*

302 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ably burdened, she may have hoped to find repose,—
it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repug-
nance round about her. But there stood one in the
midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye
have not shuddered ! "

It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must
leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he
fought back the bodily weakness, — and, still more,
the faintness of heart, — that was striving for the
mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and
stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman
and the child.

" It was on him I " he continued, with a kind of
fierceness, — so determined was he to speak out the
whole. " God's eye beheld it ! The angels were for-
ever pointing at it! The Devil knew it well, and
fretted it continually with the touch of his burning
finger! But he hid it cunningly from men, and
walked among you with the mien of a spirit, mourn-
ful, because so pure in a sinful world ! — and sad, be-
cause he missed his heavenly kindred ! Now, at the
death-hour, he stands up before you ! He bids you
look again at Hester's scarlet letter! He tells you,
that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the
shadow of what he bears on his own breast, and that
even this, his own red stigma, is no more than the
type of what has seared his inmost heart ! Stand any
here that question God's judgment on a sinner ? Be-
hold ! Behold a dreadful witness of it ! "

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the minis-
terial 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 concentred on the ghastly miracle ; while the mi»

REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 303

ister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one
who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory.
Then, down he sank upon the scaffold ! Hester partly
raised him, and supported his head against her bosom.
Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with
a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed
to have departed.

" Thou hast escaped me ! " he repeated more than
once. " Thou hast escaped me I "

"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 sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit
sinking into deep repose ; nay, now that the burden
was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be spor-
tive with the child, — " dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss
me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest I
But now thou wilt ? "

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The
great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a
part, had developed all her sympathies ; and as her
tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge
that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow,
nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman
in it. 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, bend-
ing her face down close to his. " Shall we not spend
our immortal life together ? Surely, surely, we have
ransomed one another, with all this woe 1 Thou look-
est far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes!
Then tell me what thou seest9 *

304 THE SCARLET LETTER,

" Hush, Hester, hush ! " said he, with tremulous so-
lemnity. " The law we broke ! — the sin here so aw-
fully revealed ! — let these alone be in thy thoughts !
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 hereafter, in an everlasting and pure re-
union. God knows ; and He is merciful ! He hath
proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By
giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast !
By sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep
the torture always at red-heat ! By bringing me hither,
to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the
people ! Had either of these agonies been wanting, I
had been lost forever ! Praised be his name ! His
will be done ! Farewell ! "

That final word came forth with the minister's ex-
piring 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 murmiw
that rolled so heavily after the departed, spirit.

XXIV.

CONCLUSION.

After many days, when time sufficed for the peo
pie to arrange their thoughts in reference to the fore-
going scene, there was more than one account of what
had been witnessed 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 regarded its origin,
there were various explanations, all of which must nec-
essarily 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 afterwards, in
so many futile methods, followed out, — by inflicting
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 necromancer, had caused it to appear, through
the agency of magic and poisonous drugs. Others,
again, — and those best able to appreciate the minis-
ter's peculiar sensibility, 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 out-
wardly, and at last manifesting Heaven's dreadful
judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The

THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 medi-
tation 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 in-
fant'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 let-
ter. According to these highly respectable witnesses,
the minister, conscious that he was dying, — conscious,
also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him
already among saints and angels, — had desired, by
yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen wom-
an, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the
choicest of man's own righteousness. After exhaust-
ing 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 sin-
ners 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 especially a clergyman — will

CONCLUSION. 30T

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
manuscript of old date, drawn up from the verbal tes-
timony of individuals, some of whom had known Hes-
ter Prynne, while others had heard the tale from con-
temporary witnesses, — fully confirms the view taken
in the foregoing pages. Among many morals which
press upon us from the poor minister's miserable ex-
perience, 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 I "

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which
took place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's
death, in the appearance and demeanor of the old man
known as Roger Chillingworth. 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 revenge ; and when, by its com-
pletest triumph and consummation, 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 mor-
tal 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 acquain
tances, — as well Roger Chillingworth as his compan*
ions, — we would fain be merciful. It is a curious

308 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 inti-
macy and heart-knowledge ; each renders one individ-
ual dependent for the food of his affections and spirit-
ual life upon another ; each leaves the passionate lover,
or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by
the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically consid-
ered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the
same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial
radiance, 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
transmuted 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 lit-
tle Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne.

So Pearl — the elf-child, — the demon offspring, as
some people, up to that epoch, persisted in consider-
ing her, — became the richest heiress of her day, in
the New World. Not improbably, this circumstance
wrought a very material change in the public estima-
tion ; and, had the mother and child remained here,
little Pearl, at a marriageable 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.

CONCLUSION. 309

For many years, though a vague report would now and
then find its way across the sea, — like a shapeless
piece of drift-wood tost ashore, with the initials of a
name upon it, — yet no tidings of them unquestion-
ably authentic were received. The story of the scaiv
let 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 gray robe, ap-
proach 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 shadowlike through these impediments, —
and, at all events, went in.

On the threshold she paused, — turned partly roimd
— for, perchance, the idea of entering all alone, and
all so changed, the home 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.

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her
long-forsaken shame ! But where was little Pearl ? If
still alive, she must now have been in the flush and
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 hap-
piness. 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 armo

310 THE SCARLET LETTER.

rial 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 deli-
cate fingers, at the impulse of a fond heart. And,
once, Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment,
with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would
have raised a public tumult, had any infant, thus ap*
parelled, been shown to our sober-hued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believed, — and Mr.
Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later,
believed and one of his recent successors in office,
moreovei, 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 fire-
side.

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
Borrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with

CONCLUSION. 811

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 per-
plexities, 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 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 mysterious 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 revelation must be a woman
indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful ; and wise, more-
over, 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 I

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 ha* since been built. It was near that old and

812 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 ; and on
this simple slab of slate — as the curious investigator
may still discern, and perplex himself with the pur-
port — there appeared the semblance of an engraved
escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of
which might serve for a motto and brief description
of our now concluded legend ; so sombre is it, and re-
lieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier
than the shadow : —

"On a field, sable, the letter A, gules."