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THE SCARLET LETTER

THE

SCARLET LETTER.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

JfUustratcd,

BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,

LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co.
1878.

October 22, 1874.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

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, introductory to THE SCARLET
LETTER, has created an unprecedented excitement in
the respectable community 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 malevolence. As the public disapprobation
would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious
of deserving it, the author begs leave to say, that he
has carefully read over the introductory pages, with a

iv PREFACE.

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 fea-
tures of the sketch are its frank and genuine good-
humor, and the general accuracy with which he has
conveyed his sincere impressions of the characters
therein described. As to enmity, or ill-feeling of any
kind, personal or political, he utterly disclaims such
motives. The sketch might, perhaps, have been wholly
omitted, without loss to the public, or detriment to
the book; but, having undertaken to write it, he con-
ceives that it could not have 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.

CONTENTS.

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. — INTRODUCTORY .

THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

XII. THE MINISTER'S VIGIL .

XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER

XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN .

PAGE
1

104

118

129

142

155

168

177

193

204

vi CONTENTS.

XV. HESTER AND PEARL .212

XVI. A FOREST WALK 223

XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER . . . 231

XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 245

XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE .... 253

XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE ..... 264

XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 277

XXII. THE PROCESSION 288

XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER . . 302

XXIV. CONCLUSION . . 315

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Drawn ly MARY HALLOCK FOOTE and Engraved by A. V. S. ANTHONY.
ornamental head-pieces are by L. S. IPSEN.

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE

THE PRISON DOOR

VIGNETTE, — WILD ROSE

THE GOSSIPS

"STANDING ON THE MISERABLE EMINENCE"

"SHE WAS LED BACK TO PRISON*'

"THE EYES OP THE WRINKLED SCHOLAR, GLOWED" .

THE LONESOME DWELLING

LONELY FOOTSTEPS

VIGNETTE

A TOUCH OF PEARL'S BABY-HAND ....

VIGNETTE

THE GOVERNOR'S BREASTPLATE

" LOOK THOU TO IT ! I WILL NOT LOSE THE CHILD ! "

THE MINISTER AND LEECH

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT

The

PAGE
1

104

113

118

125

135

148

165

viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE VIRGINS OF THE CHURCH 172

"THEY STOOD IN THE NOON OP THAT STRANGE SPLENDOR" . . 185

HESTER IN THE HOUSE OF MOURNING 195

MANDRAKE 211

"HE GATHERED HERBS HERE AND THERE3' . . . 213

PEARL ON THE SEA-&HORE 217

" WlLT THOU YET FORGIVE ME ? " 237

A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE 249

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 257

CHILLINGWORTH, — "SMILE WITH A SINISTER MEANING" . . . 287

NEW ENGLAND WORTHIES 289

" SHALL WE NOT MEET AGAIN ? " 311

HESTER'S RETURN . . . 320

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.

INTRODUCTORY TO "THE SCARLET LETTER."

is a little remarkable, that — though disin-
clined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs
at the fireside, and to my personal friends — an
autobiographical 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, be-
yond 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

2 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 ad-
dresses, 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 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
nature, 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 impersonally. But, as thoughts
are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in
some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to
imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the
closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native re-
serve 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 behind its veil. To this extent,
and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobio-
graphical, 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 recognized 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

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 3

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 accomplishing the main purpose, it has
appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint rep-
resentation 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.

In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a cen-
tury 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 languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty
grass, — here, with a view from its front windows adown this
not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the 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 thirteen 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 bal-
cony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends
towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous spe-
cimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield

4 THE SCARLET LETTER.

before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of inter-
mingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With
the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy
fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the
general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, care-
ful of their safety, against intruding on the premises which she
overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks,
many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter them-
selves 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 tenderness, even in
her best of moods, and, sooner or later, — oftener soon than
late, — is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch of her
claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed
arrows.

The pavement round about the above-described edifice — which
we may as well name at once as the Custom-House of the port —
has grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not,
of late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business.
In some months of the year, however, there often chances a fore-
noon when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occa-
sions 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

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 5

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 ship-
master, just in port, with his vessel's papers under his arm, in
a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful or
sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of
the now accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise
that will readily be turned to gold, or has buried him under a
bulk of 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 re-
cently 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 sometimes were,
with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for
the time being, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More
frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern —
in the entry, if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms,
if wintry or inclement weather — a row of venerable figures, sit-
ting 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

6 THE SCARLET LETTER.

speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distin-
guishes 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 gentlemen — seated, like Matthew, at the receipt of customs,
but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apos-
tolic errands — were Custom-House officers.

Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is
a certain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty
height; with two of its arched windows commanding a view of
the aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a
narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three
give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers,
and ship-chandlers; around the doors of which are generally to
be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and 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 infirm ; and — not to forget the library — on some
shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and
a bulky Digest of the Revenue Laws. A tin pipe ascends through
the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with
other parts of the edifice. And here, some six months ago, —
pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 7

stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up
and down the columns of the morning newspaper, — you might
have recognized, honored reader, the same individual who wel-
comed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine glim-
mered so pleasantly through the willow branches, on the western
side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek
him, you would inquire in vain for the 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 resi-
dence 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 invariably happiest elsewhere,
there is within me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a
better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The senti-
ment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which
my family has struck into the soil. It is now nearly two cen-
turies and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emi-
grant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-
bordered settlement, which has since become a city. And here

8 THE SCARLET LETTER.

his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their
earthy substance with the soil ; until no small portion of it must
necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little
while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the attachment
which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for
dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as
frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need
they consider it desirable to know.

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 remember. It still haunts me, and induces
a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in
reference to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a
stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave,
bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor, — who
came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the
unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a
figure, as a man of war and peace, — a stronger claim than for
myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known.
He was a soldier, legislator, judge ; he was a ruler in the Church ;
he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was
likewise a bitter persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who have
remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his
hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last
longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds,
although these were many. His son, too, inherited the perse-
cuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyr-
dom 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

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 9

dry bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain
it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust ! I know not
whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent,
and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they
are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them, in
another state of being. At all events, I, the present writer,
as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their
sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them — as I have
heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the
race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist — may
be now and henceforth removed.

Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed
Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for
his sins, that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of
the family tree, with so much 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 laud-
able; 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 life — what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to
mankind in his day and generation — may that be? Why, the
degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler ! " Such
are the compliments bandied 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 them-
selves with mine.

Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood,

10 THE SCARLET LETTER.

by these two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since
subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as
I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member; but
seldom or never, on the other hand, afcer 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 gen-
eration, 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
connection of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and
burial, creates a kindred between the human being and the
locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral
circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but 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 tena-
city 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 these, and what-

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. H

ever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the
purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the
natal spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case.
I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem my home ; so that
the mould of features and cast of character which had all along
been familiar here, — ever, as one representative of the race lay
down in his grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-
march along the main street, — might still in my little day be
seen and recognized in the old town. Nevertheless, this very
sentiment is an evidence that the connection, which has become
an unhealthy one, should at last be severed. Human nature
will not nourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and
replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-
out soil. My children have had other 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, unjoyous attachment for my native town, that brought
me to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when I might
as wrell, 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 inevi-
table centre of the universe. So, one fine morning, I ascended
the flight of granite steps, with the President's commission in
my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who
were to aid me in my weighty responsibility, as chief executive
officer of the Custom-House.

I doubt greatly — or, rather, I do not doubt at all — whether
any public functionary of the United States, either in the civil

12 THE SCARLET LETTER.

or military line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of vet-
erans under his orders as myself. The whereabouts of the
Oldest Inhabitant was at once settled, when I looked at them.
For upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent
position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House
out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the
tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldier, — New England's
most distinguished soldier, — he stood firmly on the 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 heart-quake. General Miller was radically
conservative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no
slight influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, and
with difficulty moved to change, even when change might have
brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking charge
of my department, I found few but aged men. They were an-
cient sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tost on
every sea, and standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous
blasts, had finally drifted into this quiet nook; where, with
little to disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presi-
dential election, they one and all acquired a new lease of exist-
ence. 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,
during a large part of the year ; but, after a torpid winter,
would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go
lazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 13

and convenience, betake themselves to bed again. I must plead
guilty to the charge of abbreviating 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 infirmities 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 after the exterminating angel had come up the Custom-
House steps. According to the received code in such matters,
it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, to
bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guil-
lotine. It was plain enough to discern, that the old fellows
dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at
the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that attended
my advent; to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a
century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an

14 THE SCAKLET LETTER.

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 frighten
Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excellent 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 deservedly to my own discredit,
therefore, and considerably to the detriment of my official con-
science, they continued, during my incumbency, to creep about
the wharves, and loiter up and down the Custom-House steps.
They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their accustomed
corners, with their chairs tilted back against the wall; awaking,
however, once or twice in a forenoon, to bore one another with
the several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories, and mouldy
jokes, that had grown to be passwords arid countersigns among
them.

The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Sur-
veyor had no great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts,
and the happy consciousness of being usefully employed, — in
their own behalf, at least, if not for our beloved country, — these
good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of
office. Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into
the holds of vessels ! Mighty was their fuss about little matters,
and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater
ones to slip between their fingers ! Whenever such a mischance
occurred, — when a wragon-load of valuable merchandise had
been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 15

their unsuspicious noses, — nothing could exceed the vigilance
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 praiseworthy 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 Cus-
tom-House officers had good traits, and as my position in refer-
ence 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 fer-
vent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family,
merely communicated a genial warmth to their half-torpid sys-
tems, — it was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry,
a row of them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the
frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came
bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity
of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children;
the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humor, has little
to do with the matter ; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon
the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the
green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In one case, how-
ever, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the
phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.

16 THE SCARLET LETTER.

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand,, to rep-
resent 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 energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and depend-
ent 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 majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no
wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of weari-
some 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, arid 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 dinner, than of the ship-
wreck 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 re-
spectable body of tide-waiters all over the United States — was a
certain permanent Inspector. He might truly be termed a legiti-
mate son 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
certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 17

that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's search. With
his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in a bright-
buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale
and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed — not young, indeed —
but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape
of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His
voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Cus-
tom-House, had nothing 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 wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity,
at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which
he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The careless security of
his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but
slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt
contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original
and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of
his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the
very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these
latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep
the old gentleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed no
power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibil-
ities ; nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts, which,
aided by the cheerful temper that grew inevitably out of his
physical well-being, did duty very respectably, and to general
acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband of
three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children,
most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had like-

18 THE SCARLET LETTER.

wise 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 nineteen years, was much the elder and
graver man of the two.

I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I
think, livelier curiosity, than any other form of humanity there
presented to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon;
so perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so im-
palpable, such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My conclu-
sion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I
have already said, but instincts : and yet, withal, so cunningly
had the few materials of his character been put together, that
there was no painful perception of deficiency, but, on my part,
an entire contentment with what I found in him. It might
be difficult — and it was so — to conceive how he should exist
hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely his
existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his last
breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral
responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger
scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed im-
munity from the dreariness and duskiness of age.

One point, in which he had vastly the advantage over his
four-footed brethren, was his ability to recollect the good din-
ners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his
life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and
to hear him talk of roast-meat was as appetizing as a pickle or

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 19

an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither
sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all
his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit
of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him
expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's meat, and the most
eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His reminis-
cences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual ban-
quet, 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 appar-
ently as fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just
devoured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips
over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been
food for worms. It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts
of bygone meals were continually rising up before him; not in
anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former apprecia-
tion and seeking to resuscitate an endless series of enjoyment, at
once shadowy and sensual. A tender-loin of beef, a hind-quarter
of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remark-
ably 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 individual career, had gone over him
with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chief
tragic event of the old man's life, so far as I could judge, was
his mishap with a certain goose which lived and died some
twenty or forty years ago; a goose of most promising figure,
but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough that the carv-
ing-knife would make no impression on its carcass, and it could
only be divided with an axe and handsaw.

20 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

There is one likeness, without which my gallery of Custom-
House portraits would be strangely incomplete; but which my
comparatively few opportunities for 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,
subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild Western terri-
tory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the decline
of his varied and honorable life. The brave soldier had already
numbered, nearly or quite, his threescore years and ten, and was
pursuing the remainder of his earthly inarch, 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 serenity 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

THE CUSTOM HOUSE. 21

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

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

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

22 THE SCARLET LETTER.

uneasy activity ; it must, at any period of his life, have required
an impulse to set him in motion; but, once stirred up, with
obstacles to overcome, and an adequate object to be attained,
it was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had
formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet 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 consciousness,

— 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 more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment, his
demeanor would have still been calm. Such an exhibition, how-
ever, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated,
nor desired. What I saw in him — as evidently as the inde-
structible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga already cited as the most
appropriate simile — were the features of stubborn and ponder-
ous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy
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 unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of
benevolence, which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chip-
pewa or Port Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp
as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists 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

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 23

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

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

There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit;
while the Surveyor — though seldom, when it could be avoided,
taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in con-
versation— 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; unattainable, though
we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own.

24 THE SCARLET LETTER.

It might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts,
than amid the unappropriate environment of the Collector's office.
The evolutions of the parade ; the tumult of the battle ; the flour-
ish of old, heroic music, heard thirty years before ; — such scenes
and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before 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 affairs
did the General appear to sustain the most distant relation. He
was as much out of place as an old sword — now rusty, but
which had flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still
a bright gleam along its blade — would have been, among the
inkstands, paper-folders, and mahogany rulers, on the Deputy
Collector's desk.

There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and
re-creating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier, — the
man of true and simple energy. It was the recollection of those
memorable words of his, — "I '11 try, Sir ! " — spoken on the
very verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing
the soul and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending
all perils, and encountering all. If, in our country, valor were
rewarded by heraldic honor, this phrase — which it seems so
easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger
and glory 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 companionship with indi-
viduals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose
sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 25

The accidents of my life have often afforded me this advantage,
but never with more fulness and variety than during my con-
tinuance in office. There was one man, especially, the observa-
tion 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 perplex-
ities, and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish, as
by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from boyhood
in the Custom-House, it was his proper field of activity; and
the many intricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper,
presented themselves before him with the regularity of a per-
fectly comprehended system. In my contemplation, he stood
as the ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House
in himself ; or, at all events, the main-spring that kept its vari-
ously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like
this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit
and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to their
fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce seek
elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus, by an
inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did our
man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody
met with. With an easy condescension, and kind forbearance
towards our 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 other-
wise than the main condition of an intellect so remarkably
clear and accurate as his, to be honest and regular in the ad-

26 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ministration of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to any-
thing that came within the range of his vocation, would trouble
such a man very much in the same way, though to a far
greater degree, that an error in the balance of an account or
an ink-blot on the fair page of a book of record. Here, in a
word, — and it is a rare instance in my life, — I had met with
a person thoroughly adapted to the situation which he held.

Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself
connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence,
that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past
habits, and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit
was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable
schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; after living
for three years within the subtile influence of an intellect like
Emerson's; after those wild, free days on the Assabeth, indulg-
ing fantastic speculations, beside 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
fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard's
culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Long-
fellow's hearthstone; — 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 lacking no essential part of
a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember,
I could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities,
and never murmur at the change.

Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little mo-

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 27

ment 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 inanimate within me. There would have been something
sad, unutterably dreary, in all this, had I not been conscious
that it lay at my own option to recall whatever was valuable in
the past. It might be true, indeed, that this was a life which
could not with impunity be lived too long; else, it might 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 instinct, a low whisper in my ear,
that, within no long period, and whenever a new change of cus-
tom should be essential to my good, a change would come.

Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Eevenue, and, so
far as I have been able to understand, as good a Surveyor as
need be. A man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten
times the Surveyor's proportion of those qualities) may, at any
time, be a man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself
the trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-cap-
tains 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

28 THE SCARLET LETTER.

whom was a custom-house officer in h'is 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 him-
self a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to
step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are rec-
ognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond
that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know
not that I especially needed the lesson, either in the way of
warning or rebuke ; but, at any rate, I learned it thoroughly :
nor, it gives me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came
home to my perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be
thrown off in a sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is true,
the Naval Officer — an excellent fellow, who came into office
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 bla-
zoned 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 mer-
chandise, 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 existence, so far as a

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 29

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 remark-
able occasions, when the habit of bygone days awoke in me,
was that which brings it within the law of literary propriety to
oifer the public the sketch which I am now writing.

In the second story of the Custom-House there is a large
room, in Tvhich the brick-work and naked rafters have never
been covered with panelling and plaster. The edifice — origi-
nally projected on a scale adapted to the old commercial enter-
prise of the port, and with an idea of subsequent prosperity des-
tined 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, ap-
pears 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 another, containing bundles of official documents. Large
quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was
sorrowful to think how many days and weeks and months and
years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were
now only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in
this forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes.
But, then, what reams of other manuscripts — filled not with the
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 — with-

30 THE SCARLET LETTER.

out purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which
the clerks of the Custom-House had gained by these worthless
scratchings of the pen ! Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps,
as materials of local history. Here, no doubt, statistics of the
former commerce of Salem might be discovered, and memorials
of her princely merchants, — old King Derby, old Billy Gray,
old Simon Forrester, and many another magnate in his day;
whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb, before
his mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of
the greater part of the families which now compose the aristoc-
racy 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-
established rank.

Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the
earlier documents and archives of the Custom- House having,
probably, baen carried off to Halifax, when all the King's officials
accompanied the British army in its flight from Boston. It has
often been a matter of regret with me; for, going back, perhaps,
to the days of the Protectorate, those papers must have con-
tained 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 dis-
covery 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 mer-
chants, never heard of now on 'Change, nor very readily decipher-

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 31

able on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters 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 only Salem knew the way thither, — I chanced to lay my
hand on a small package, carefully done up in a piece of an-
cient yellow parchment. This envelope had the air of an official
record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their
stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than
at present. There was something about it that quickened an
instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape, that
tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here
be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parch-
ment 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 remember 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 renewal of that
edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my
respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some frag-
ments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle; which, unlike
the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory preserva-
tion. But, on examining the papers which the parchment com-
mission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue's
mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the
frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.

32 THE SCARLET LETTER.

They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private
nature, or at least written in his private capacity, and appar-
ently with his own hand. I could account for their being in-
cluded in the heap of Custom-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 transfer of the archives
to Halifax, this package, proving to be of no public concern,
was left behind, and had remained ever since unopened.

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

But the object that most drew my attention, in the mysterious
package, was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and
faded. There were traces about it of gold embroidery, which,
however, was greatly frayed and defaced; so that none, or very

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 33

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

"While thus perplexed, — and cogitating, among other hypoth-
eses, whether the letter might not have been one of those deco-
rations 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 sensa-
tion not altogether physical, yet almost so, of burning heat;
and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I
shuddered,. and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.

In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had

34 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 rea-
sonably complete explanation 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 ances-
tors. She had flourished during the period between the early
days of Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth century.
Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from
whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered
her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of
a stately and solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an
almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of
voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good she
might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all mat-
ters, especially those of the heart; by which means, as a person
of such propensities inevitably must, she gained from many peo-
ple the reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine, was
looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying
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 entitled "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 in my pos-
session, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced
by the great interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of
them. I must not be understood as affirming, that, in the dress-

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 35

ing up of the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of
passion that influenced the characters who figure in it, I have
invariably confined myself within the limits of the old Surveyor's
half a dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have 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 contend 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 groundwork of a tale. It
impressed me as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hun-
dred 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 com-
mission, and who was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splen-
dor 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 scar-
let symbol, and the little roll of explanatory manuscript. With
his own ghostly voice, he had exhorted me, on the sacred con-
sideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him, — who
might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor, — to
bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public.
"Do this/' said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically
nodding the head that looked so imposing within its memor-
able wig, — " do this, and the profit shall be all your own !
You will shortly need it; for it is not in your days as it was
in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease, and oftentimes

36 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 hun-
dred-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 Weigh-
ers and Gangers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmer-
cifully 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 probably
fancied that my sole object — and, indeed, the sole object for
which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary mo-
tion — was, to get an appetite for dinner. And to say the
truth, an appetite, sharpened by the east wind that generally
blew along the passage, was the only valuable result of so much
indefatigable exercise. So little adapted is the atmosphere of
a custom-house to the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibil-
ity, 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 mis-
erable dimness, the figures with which I did my best to people
it. The characters of the narrative would not be warmed and
rendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intel-
lectual forge. They would take neither the glow of passion nor
the tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 37

corpses, and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin
of contemptuous defiance. "What have you to do with us?"
that expression seemed to say. "The little power you might
once have possessed over the tribe of 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, when-
ever— which was seldom 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 tor-
por, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied
me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which I most
absurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me, when, late
at night, I sat in the deserted parlor, lighted only by the
glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving to 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. Moonlight, in a familiar
room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures
so distinctly, — making every object so minutely visible, yet so
unlike a morning or noontide visibility, — is a medium the most
suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive
guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known

38 THE SCARLET LETTER.

apartment; the chairs,, with each its separate individuality; the
centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an
extinguished 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 sub-
stance, 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 strange-
ness 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, without affrighting us. It would be too much in
keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about
us and discover a form beloved, but gone hence, now sitting
quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspect that
would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar, or had
never once stirred from our fireside.

The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence in pro-
ducing the effect which I would describe. It throws its unob-
trusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon
the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam from the polish of the
furniture. This warmer light mingles itself witli 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. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold — deep within

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 39

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 sucli an hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting
all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like
truth, he need never try to write romances.

But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House expe-
rience, 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 susceptibilities, and a gift connected with them, — of no great
richness or value, but the best I had, — was gone from me.

It is my belief, however, that, had I attempted a different order
of composition, my faculties would not have been found so point-
less and inefficacious. I might, for instance, have contented my-
self with writing out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one
of the Inspectors, whom I should be most ungrateful not to men-
tion, since scarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laugh-
ter and admiration by his marvellous gifts as a story-teller.
Could I have preserved the picturesque force of his style, and
the humorous coloring which nature taught him how to throw
over his descriptions, the result, I honestly 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 sem-
blance 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

40 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 com-
monplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import.
A better book than I shall ever write was there ; leaf after leaf
presenting itself to me, just as it was written out by the reality
of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because
my brain wanted the insight and my hand the cunning to tran-
scribe 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 letters turn to gold upon the page.

These perceptions have come too late. At the instant, 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 toler-
ably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good
Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it
is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that
one^s intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your con-
sciousness, 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

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 41

long continuance,, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respect-
able 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 position — is, that, while
he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper
strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned
to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of
self-support. If he possess an unusual share of native 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 struggle amid a struggling world — may return to himself,
and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens.
He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin,
and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along
the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his
own infirmity, — that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost, —
he forever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of sup-
port external to himself. His pervading and continual hope —
a hallucination which, in the face of all discouragement, and
making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and,
I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, 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

42 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular
disease. Uncle Sam's gold — meaning no disrespect to the wor-
thy old gentleman — has, in this respect, a quality of enchant-
ment like that of the Devil's wages. Whoever touches it should
look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard
against him, involving, if not his soul, 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 char-
acter.

Here was a fine prospect in the distance ! Not that the Sur-
veyor brought the lesson home to himself, or admitted that he
could be so utterly undone, either by continuance in office, or
ejectment. Yet my reflections were not the most comfortable.
I began to grow melancholy and 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 apprehension, — as it would never
be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an individual as
myself, and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to
resign, — it was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely
to grow gray and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and become
much such another animal as the old Inspector. Might it not,

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 43

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 nucleus 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 unnecessary alarm. Providence had
meditated better things for me than I could possibly imagine
for myself.

A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorship —
to adopt the tone of "P. P." — was the election of General
Taylor to the Presidency. It is essential, in order to a complete
estimate of the advantages of official life, to view the incumbent
at the 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 occupy; with
seldom an alternative of good, on either hand, although what
presents itself to him as the worst event m?y very probably be
the best. But it is a strange experience, to a man of pride
and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control
of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and by
whom, since one or the other must needs happen, he would
rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who has
kept his calmness throughout the contest, 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

44 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the guillotine', as applied to office-holders, were a literal fact
instead of one of the most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere
belief that the active members of the victorious party were suf-
ficiently 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 prac-
tice 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 its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their
custom ignominiously to kick the head which they have just
struck off.

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

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never,

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 45

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 sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst,
of the accident which has befallen him. In my particular case,
the consolatory topics were close at hand, and, indeed, had sug-
gested 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 some-
what resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea
of committing suicide, and, although beyond his hopes, meet
with the good hap to be murdered. In the Custom-House, as
before in the Old Manse, I had spent three years; a term long
enough to rest a weary brain; long enough to break off old
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 human being, and
withholding myself from toil that would, 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 inactivity 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 diverge from one another — had sometimes
made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he was
a friend. Now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though
with no longer a head to wear it on), the point might be looked
upon as settled. Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more
decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party with

46 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 admin-
istration, 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 public prints, in my
decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman; ghastly and
grim, and longing to be buried, as a politically dead man ought.
So much for my 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 through long idle-
ness, some little space was requisite before my intellectual ma-
chinery could be brought to work upon the tale, with an effect
in any degree satisfactory. Even yet, though my thoughts were
ultimately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a
stern and sombre aspect; too much ungladdened by genial sun-
shine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences
which soften almost every scene of nature and real life, and,
undoubtedly, should soften every picture of them. This uncap-
tivating effect is perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished
revolution, and still seething turmoil, in which the story shaped
itself. It is no indication, however, of a lack of cheerfulness
in the writer's mind ; for he was happier, while straying through
the gloom of these sunless fantasies, than at any time since he

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE. 47

had quitted the Old Manse. Some of the briefer articles, which
contribute to make up the volume, have likewise been written
since my involuntary withdrawal from the toils and honors of
public life, and the remainder are gleaned from annuals and mag-
azines of such antique date that they have gone round the circle,
and come back to novelty again.* Keeping up the metaphor of
the political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the POST-
HUMOUS 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 ex-
cused in a gentleman who writes from beyond the grave. Peace
be with all the world ! My blessing on my friends ! My for-
giveness to my enemies! For I am in the realm of quiet!

The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind me.
The old Inspector, — who, by the by, I regret to say, was over-
thrown and killed by a horse, some time ago; else he would
certainly have lived forever, — he, and all those other venerable
personages who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are but
shadows in my view; white-headed and wrinkled images, which
my fancy used to sport with, and has now flung aside 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 disconnect me from
them all, not merely in act, but recollection ! It is with an effort
that I recall the figures and appellations of these few. Soon,

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

48 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 overgrown village in
cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants 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 towns-people
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 these familiar ones, it need hardly be
said, will do just as well without me.

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

THE SCARLET LETTER.

THE PRISON-DOOR.

A THRONG of bearded men,
in sad-colored garments, and
gray, steeple-crowned hats, in-
termixed with women, some
wearing hoods and others
bareheaded, was assembled in
front of a wooden edifice, the
door of which was heavily
timbered with oak, and stud-
ded with iron spikes.

The founders of a new col-
ony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might
originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earli-
est practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a
cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accord-
ance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers

52 THE SCARLET LETTER.

of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity
of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-
ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which
subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepul-
chres 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 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 over-
grown with burdock, pigweed, apple -peru, and such unsightly
vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil
that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a
prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the
threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June,
with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their
fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to
the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token
that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in his-
tory; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old
wildernes^ so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks
that originally overshadowed it, — or whether, as there is fair
authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps
of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,
— we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so di-
rectly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to

THE PRISON-DOOR.

issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do other-
wise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader.
It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blos-
som, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darken-
ing close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

II.

THE MARKET-PLACE.

HE grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane,
on a certain summer morning, not less than
two centuries 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 history of New Eng-
land, 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 antici-
pated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence
of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public senti-
ment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an
inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It
might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child,
whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to
be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Anti-
nomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist was to be
scourged out of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom

THE MARKET-PLACE. 55

the white man's fire-water had made riotous about the streets,
was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It
might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the
bitter- tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the
gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solem-
nity of demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted a
people amongst 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 bystanders,
at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty, which, in our
days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might
then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the 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, appeared 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 impro-
priety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from
stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging 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, separated
from them by a series of six or seven generations ; for, through-
out that chain of ancestry, every successive mother has trans-
mitted to her child a fainter bloorn, a more delicate and briefer
beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of less

56 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 representative 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, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of
speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be,
that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to
its purport or its volume of tone.

" Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, " I '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 Dimmes-
dale, 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,

THE MARKET-PLACE.

— little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her
gown ! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or
such like heathenish 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.J

" What do we talk of marks and
brands, whether on the bodice of her

gown, or the flesh of her forehead ? " cried another female, the
ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges.
" This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die.
Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in the Scrip-
ture and the statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have
made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and
daughters go astray ! "

"Mercy on us, goodwife," exclaimed a man in the crowd,
" is there no virtue in woman, save what springs from a whole-

58 THE SCARLET LETTER.

some 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 action marked with natural dignity and
force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her
own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some
three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face
from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, hereto-
fore, 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 im-
pulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by
an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby con-
ceal 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 towns-people and neighbors. On the breast of her gown,

THE MARKET-PLACE. 59

in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and
fantastic nourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was
so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous
luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting
decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of
a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly
beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the
colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance
on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy
that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which,
besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness
of complexion, had the 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; characterized by
a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanes-
cent, 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 startled, to perceive how her
beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and igno-
miny 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, —

60 THE SCARLET LETTER.

so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted
with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her
for the first time, — was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically
embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect
of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with human-
ity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

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

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

" 0, peace, neighbors, peace ! " whispered their youngest com-
panion; "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

THE MARKET-PLACE.

of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne
set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A
crowd of eager and curious 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 igno-
minious letter on her breast. It was no great distance, in those
days, from the prison-door to the market-place. Measured by
the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a jour-
ney of some length ; for, haughty 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 nature,
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 citizen-
ship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France.
It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose
the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as
to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it
up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was em-

62 THE SCARLET LETTER.

bodied and made manifest 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 facs
for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In
Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other
cases, her sentence bore, that she should stand a certain time
upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the
neck and confinement of the head, the 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 surrounding multitude, at about the height
of a man's shoulders above the street.

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, 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-crea-
ture, 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,

THE MARKET-PLACE. 63

without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heart-
lessness of another social state, which would find only a theme
for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there been
a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been
repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no
less dignified than the Governor, and several of his counsellors,
a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town; all of whom
sat or stood in a 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 inflic-
tion 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 intol-
erable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she
had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs
of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult;
but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn
mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all
those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and
herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the mul-
titude,— each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child,
contributing their individual parts, — Hester Prynne might have
repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under
the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt,
at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power
of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the
ground, or else go mad at once.

64 THE SCARLET LETTER.

Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she
was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her
eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a
mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind,
and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept
bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a
little town, on the edge of the Western wilderness; other faces
than were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those
steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences the most trifling and im-
material, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish
quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came
swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of what-
ever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture 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 entire track along
which she had been treading, since her happy infancy. Stand-
ing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native village,
in Old England, 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 Eliza-
bethan 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 gen-
tle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own

THE MARKET-PLACE. 67

face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior
of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it.
There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken
in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and
bleared by the 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 public 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 towns-people assembled and levelling their
stern regards at Hester Prynne, — yes, at herself, — who stood
on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the let-
ter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold-thread, upon
her bosom !

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

III.

THE RECOGNITION.

ROM this intense 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 posses-
sion 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
become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seem-
ingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had

THE RECOGNITION. 69

endeavored to conceal or abate the peculiarity, 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 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 look
inward, and to whom external 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 instan-
taneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a
single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness.
After a brief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible,
and finally subsided into the depths of his nature. When he
found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw
that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised
his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his
lips.

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," an-

70 THE SCARLET LETTER.

swered the townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and
his savage companion, "else you would surely have heard of
Mistress Hester Prynne, and her evil doings. She hath raised
a great scandal, I promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's
church."

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

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

"Ah! — aha! — I conceive you," said the stranger, with a bitter
smile. " So learned a man as you speak of should have learned
this too in his books. And who, by your favor, Sir, may be the

THE RECOGNITION. 71

father of yonder babe — it is some three or four months old, I
should judge — which Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?"

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

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

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

" A wise sentence ! " remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his
head. "Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the
ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me,
nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not, at least,
stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be known ! —
he will be known ! — he will be known ! "

He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and,
whispering a few words to his Indian attendant, they both made
their way through the crowd.

72 THE SCARLET LETTER.

While this passed,, Hester Prynne had been standing on her
pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger; so fixed a
gaze, that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects
in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her.
Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than
even to meet him as she now did, with the hot, midday sun
burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; witli
the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born
infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as to a
festival, staring at the features that should have been seen only
in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a
home, or beneath a matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it
was, she was conscious of a shelter in the presence of these
thousand witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many
betwixt him and her, than to greet him, face to face, they two
alone. She fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure,
and dreaded the moment when its protection should be with-
drawn from her. Involved in these thoughts, she scarcely heard
a voice behind her, until it had repeated her name more than
once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude.

" Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne ! " said the voice.

It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform
on which Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open
gallery, appended to the meeting-house. It was the place whence
proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of
the magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such pub-
lic observances in those days. Here, to witness the scene which
we are describing, sat Governor Bellmgham himself, with four
sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honor.
He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of embroidery on

THE RECOGNITION. 73

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 com-
munity, which owed its origin and progress, and its present
state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the
stern and tempered energies of manhood, and the sombre sagacity
of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined
and hoped so little. The other eminent characters, by whom
the chief ruler was surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity
of mien, belonging to a period when the forms of authority were
felt to possess the sacredness of Divine institutions. They were,
doubtless, good men, just and sage. But, out of the whole
human family, it would not have been easy to select the same
number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable
of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disen-
tangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect
towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face. She seemed
conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay
in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude ; for, as she
lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew
pale and trembled.

The voice which had called her attention was that of the
reverend and famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Bos-
ton, a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the pro-
fession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. This last
attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than his
intellectual gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame
than self-congratulation with him. There he stood, with a border
of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap ; while his gray eyes,
accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking, like

74 THE SCARLET LETTER.

those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He looked
like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old
volumes of sermons; and had no more right than one of those
portraits would have, to step forth, as he now did, and meddle
with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish.

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

There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occu-
pants of the balcony; and Governor Bellingham gave expression
to its purport, speaking in an authoritative voice, although tem-
pered with respect towards the youthful clergyman whom he
addressed.

THE RECOGNITION. 75

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

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

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

76 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Speak to the woman, my brother/' said Mr. Wilson. " It
is of moment to her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful Gov-
ernor 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 look-
ing down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good
man says, and seest the accountability under which I labor. If
thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly
punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I
charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-
sufferer ! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness
for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down
from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal
of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through
life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him —
yea, compel him, as it were — to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven
hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest
work out an open triumph over the evil within thee, and the
sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him — who,
perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself — the
bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips ! "

The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep,
and broken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather
than the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within
all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of sym-
pathy. Even the poor baby, at Hester's bosom, was affected by
the same influence; for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze
towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms, with a

THE RECOGNITION. 77

half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So powerful seemed the
minister's appeal, that the people could not believe but that
Hester Prynne would speak out the guilty name; or else that
the guilty one himself, in whatever high or lowly place he stood,
would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity,
and compelled to ascend to the scaffold.

Hester shook her head.

"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's
mercy ! " cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than
before. " That little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to sec-
ond and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out
the name ! That, and thy repentance, may avail to take the
scarlet letter off thy breast."

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

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

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

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

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind,

THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 imagi-
nation, and
seemed to de-
rive its scar-
let hue from
the flames of
the infernal pit. Hes-
ter Prynne, meanwhile,
kept her place upon the
pedestal of shame, with
glazed eyes, and an air
of weary indifference.
She had borne, that
morning, all that nature
could endure ; and as
her temperament was
not of the order that
escapes from too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could
only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while
the faculties of animal life remained entire. In this state, the
voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly,
upon her ears. The infant, during the latter portion of her

THE RECOGNITION.

ordeal, pierced the air with its wailings and screams; she strove
to hush it, mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathize with
its trouble. With the same hard demeanor, she was led back to
prison, and vanished from the public gaze within its iron-clamped
portal. It was whispered, by those who peered after her, that
the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark passage-way
of the interior.

IV.

THE INTERVIEW.

!FTEB her return to the prison, Hester Prynne
was found to be in a state of nervous excite-
ment that demanded constant watchfulness,
lest she should perpetrate violence on herself,
or do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor
babe. As night approached, it proving im-
possible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of pun-
ishment, Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a
physician. He described him as a man of skill in all Christian
modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever
the savage people could teach, in respect to medicinal herbs and
roots that grew in the forest. To say the truth, there was much
need of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself,
but still more urgently for the child; who, drawing its suste-
nance 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.

THE INTERVIEW. 81

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment appeared
that individual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowd
had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter.
He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence,
but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of
him, until the magistrates should have conferred with the Indian
sagamores respecting his ransom. His name wras announced as
Eoger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into the
room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quiet
that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had immediately
become as still as death, although the child continued to moan.

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

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

The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic
quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as
belonging. Nor did his demeanor change, when the withdrawal
of the prison-keeper left him face to face with the woman, whose
absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a re-
lation between himself and her. His first care was given to the
child ; whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the trundle-bed,
made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business
to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant carefully,
and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took

8£ THE SCARLET LETTER.

from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical prepa-
rations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water.

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

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

"Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whis-
pered she.

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

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of
mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered
the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the
leech's pledge. The moans of the little patient subsided; its
convulsive tossings gradually ceased ; and, in a few moments, as
is the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into
a profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had a fair
right to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother.
With calm and intent scrutiny he felt her pulse, looked into her
eyes, — a gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because
so familiar, and yet so strange and cold, — and, finally, satisfied
with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught.

THE INTERVIEW. 83

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

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

" I have thought of death," said she, — " have wished for it,
— would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I
should pray for anything. Yet if death be in this cup, I bid
thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See 1 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 pur-
poses wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of
vengeance, what could I do better for my object than to let
thee live, — than to give thee medicines against all harm and
peril of life, — so that this burning shame may still blaze upon
thy bosom?" As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on the
scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's
breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed her involuntary
gesture, and smiled. "Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom
with thee, in the eyes of men and women, — in the eyes of him
whom thou didst call thy husband, — in the eyes of yonder
child! And, that thou mayest live, take off this draught."

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained

84 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself
on the bed where the child was sleeping ; while he drew the only
chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her.
She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt
that — having now done all that humanity or principle, or, if so
it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for the relief of
physical suffering — he was next to treat with her as the man
whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured.

"Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast
fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the
pedestal of infamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not
far to seek. It was my folly, and thy weakness. I, — a man
of thought, — the bookworm of great libraries, — a man already
in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream
of knowledge, — what had I to do with youth and beauty like
thine own ! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude
myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical
deformity in a young girl's fantasy ! Men call me wise. If
sages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen
all this. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast
and dismal forest, and entered this settlement of Christian men,
the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester
Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people.
Nay, from the moment when we came down the old church steps
together, a married pair, I might have beheld the bale-fire of
that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our path ! "

"Thou knowest," said Hester, — for, depressed as she was, she
could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame,
— "thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love,
11 or feigned

THE INTERVIEW. 85

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

"I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.

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

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

" Never, sayest thou ? " rejoined he, with a smile of dark and
self-relying intelligence. " Never know him ! Believe me, Hes-
ter, there are few things, — whether in the outward world, or, to
a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought, — few things
hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unre-
servedly to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover up
thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it,
too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this
day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, and
give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come to

86 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek
this man, as 1 have sought truth in books; as I have sought
gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me con-
scious 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 gar-
ment, 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 con-
trive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame, if, as I
judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live ! Let him
hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he
shall be mine ! "

"Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled.
" But thy words interpret thee as a terror 1 "

"One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon
thee," continued the scholar. " Thou hast kept the secret of thy
paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this laid
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

THE INTERVIEW. 89

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 an-
nounce thyself openly, and cast me off at once?"

"It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the
dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It
may be for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live
and die unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband be to the world
as one already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come.
Recognize me not, by word, by sign, by look ! Breathe not the
secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou
fail me in this, beware ! His fame, his position, his life, will be
in my hands. Beware!"

"I will keep thy secret, as I have his," said Hester.

"Swear it ! " rejoined he.

And she took the oath.

"And now, Mistress Prynne," said old Eoger Chillingworth,
as he was hereafter to be named, "I leave thee alone; alone
with thy infant, and the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester?
Doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep?
Art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams ?"

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

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

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE.

ESTER PRYNNE'S term of confinement was
^ now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown

£5

open, and she came forth into the sunshine,
which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her
sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no
other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter
on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her
first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison, than
even in the procession and spectacle that have been described,
where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind
was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by
an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative
energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene
into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and
insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet
which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital
strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The
very law that condemned her — a giant of stern features, but
with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm —

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 91

had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy.
But now, with this unattended walk from her prison-door, began
the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it
forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath
it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her
through the present grief. To-morrow would bring its own trial
with it ; so would the next day, and so would the next ; each its
own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably
grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil
onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear
along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating
days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap
of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she
would become the general symbol at which the preacher and
moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody
their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the
young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet
letter flaming on her breast, — at her, the child of honorable
parents, — at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be
a woman, — at her, who had once been innocent, — as the figure,
the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that
she must carry thither would be her only monument.

It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her, —
kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the
limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure, —
free to return to her birthplace, or to any other European land,
and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior,
as completely as if emerging into another state of being, — and
having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to
her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with

92 THE SCARLET LETTER.

a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that
had condemned her, — it may seem marvellous, that this woman
should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she
must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feel-
ing so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom,
which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around
and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked
event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more
irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her
ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil.
It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the
first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every
other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary,
but life-long home. All other scenes of earth — even that village
of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood
seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put
off long ago — were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain
that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost
soul, but could never be broken.

It might be, too, — doubtless it was so, although she hid the
secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out
of her heart, like a serpent from its hole, — it might be that
another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had
been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with
whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, 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

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 93

seized, and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked
the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What
she compelled herself to believe — what, finally, she reasoned
upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of New Eng-
land— 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 outskirts of the
town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity
to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It

had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the
soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its compara-
tive 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

94 THE SCARLET LETTER.

grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage
from view, as seem to denote that here was some object which
would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In
this little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she
possessed, and by the license of the magistrates, who still kept
an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with
her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately
attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to compre-
hend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere
of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her
plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the
doorway, or laboring in her little garden, or coming forth along
the pathway that led townward; and, discerning the scarlet
letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, conta-
gious fear.

Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on
earth who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk
of want. She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that
afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food
for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art — then, as
now, almost the only one within a woman's grasp — of needle-
work. She bore on her breast, in the curiously embroidered
letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which
the dames of a court might gladly have availed themselves, to
add the richer and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity
to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed, in the sable
simplicity that generally characterized the Puritanic modes of
dress, there might be an infrequent call for the finer productions
of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age, demanding what-
ever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail to

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 95

extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast
behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to
dispense with. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the instal-
lation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms
in which a new government manifested itself to the people, were,
as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted
ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep
ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves,
were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming
the reins of power; and were readily allowed to individuals
dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade
these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order. In the
array of funerals, too, — whether for the apparel of the dead
body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth
and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors, — there was a fre-
quent and characteristic demand for such labor as Hester Prynne
could supply. Baby-linen — for babies then wore robes of state
— afforded still another possibility of toil and emolument.

By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would
now be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for
a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curi-
osity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless
things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then,
as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might
seek in vain; or because Hester really filled a gap which must
otherwise have remained vacant ; it is certain that she had ready
and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw
fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to
mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state,
the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her

96 THE SCARLET LETTER.

needlework was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men
wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked
the baby's little cap ; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder
away, in the coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that,
in a single instance, her skill was called in aid to embroider
the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride.
The exception indicated the ever-relentless rigor with which society
frowned upon her sin.

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence
of the plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and
a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the
coarsest materials and the most sombre hue ; with only that one
ornament, — the scarlet letter, — which it was her doom to wear.
The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a
fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which
served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to
develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also
a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter. Except
for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester
bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less
miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the
hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she might readily
have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in
making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there
was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she
offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many
hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a rich,
voluptuous, Oriental characteristic, — a taste for the gorgeously
beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle,
found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exer-

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 97

cise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to
the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester
Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore
soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected
it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an imma-
terial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and stead-
fast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might
be deeply wrong, beneath.

In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform
in the world. With her native energy of character, and rare
capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it had set
a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart than that
which branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with
society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she
belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence
of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often
expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she
inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common
nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind.
She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them, like
a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make
itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor
mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in mani-
festing its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horri-
ble 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 posi-
tion, although she understood it well, and was in little danger
of forgetting it, was often brought before her vivid self-perception,
like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the tenderest spot.

98 THE SCARLET LETTER.

The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be
the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched
forth to succor them. Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose
doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were accustomed
to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through
that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a
subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by
a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless
breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Hester had
schooled herself long and well; she never responded to these
attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over
her pale cheek, and again subsided into the depths of her bosom.
She was patient, — a martyr, indeed, — but she forbore to pray
for her enemies; lest, in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the
words of the blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into
a curse.

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the
innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly con-
trived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the
Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the street to address
words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled
grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she entered
a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal
Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the
discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; for they had
imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible
in this dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with
never any companion but one only child. Therefore, first allow-
ing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries,
and the utterance of a word that had no distinct purport to

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 101

their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as pro-
ceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to
argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew
of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang, had the leaves
of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves, — had
the summer breeze murmured about it, — had the wintry blast
shrieked it aloud ! Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze
of a new eye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet
letter, — and none ever failed to do so, — they branded it afresh
into Hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain,
yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand.
But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish
to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. Prom
first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful
agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never
grew callous ; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive
with daily torture.

But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many
months, she felt an eye — a human eye — upon the ignominious
brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her
agony were shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again,
with still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval,
she had sinned anew. Had Hester sinned alone?

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been
of a softer moral and intellectual fibre, would have been still
more so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walk-
ing to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world
with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared
to Hester, — if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent
to be resisted, — she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter

102 THE SCARLET LETTER.

had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe,
yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic
knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was terror-
stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were
they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the
bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman,
as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity
was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown,
a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester
Prynne's ? Or, must she receive those intimations — so obscure,
yet so distinct — as truth ? In all her miserable experience, there
was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It
perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportune-
ness 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 minister or magistrate,
the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique
reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with angels.
"What evil thing is at hand?"" would Hester say to herself.
Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within
the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint ! Again,
a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she
met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the
rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom
throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom,
and the burning shame on Hester Prynne's, — what had the two
in common? Or, once more, the electric thrill would give her
warning, — ' ' Behold, Hester, here is a companion ! " — and, look-
ing up, she would' detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing
at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted with

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. 103

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

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

VI.

PEARL.

WE have as yet hardly spoken
of the infant ; that little crea-
ture, whose innocent life had
sprung, hy the inscrutable de-
cree of Providence, a lovely
and immortal flower, out of
the rank luxuriance of a guilty
passion. How strange it seemed
to the sad woman, as she
watched the growth, and the
beauty that became every day
more brilliant, and the intelli-
gence that threw its quivering
sunshine over the tiny features
of this child ! Her Pearl ! —
For so had Hester called her;

not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of
the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated
by the comparison. But she named the infant " Pearl/' as being

PEARL. 105

of great price, — purchased with all she had, — her mother's only
treasure ! How strange, indeed ! Man had marked this woman's
sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous
efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were
sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which
man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place
was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever
with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed
soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less
with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been
evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would
be good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's
expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild
peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which
she owed her being.

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape,
its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried
limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden ;
worthy to have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels,
after the world's first parents were driven out. The child had a
native grace which does not invariably coexist with faultless
beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder
as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But
little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a
morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had
bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed
her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and deco-
ration of the dresses which the child wore, before the public eye.
So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed, and such
was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty, shining through

106 THE SCAELET LETTER.

the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler love-
liness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her,
on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn
and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just
as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite
variety; in this one child there were many children, compre-
hending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a
peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess.
Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain
depth of hue, which she never lost ; and if, in any of her changes,
she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be her-
self, — 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 existence, a great law
had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements
were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder; or with
an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety
and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered.
Hester could only account for the child's character — and even
then most vaguely and imperfectly — by recalling what she her-
self had been, during that momentous period while Pearl was
imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame
from its material of earth. The mother's impassioned state had
been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn
infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear
originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold,

PEARL. 107

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

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

108 THE SCARLET LETTER.

intelligent, yet inexplicable, 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 rather an airy sprite, which, after
playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage
floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that
look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested
her with a strange remoteness and intangibility ; it was as if she
were hovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering
light, that comes we know not whence, and goes we know not
whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards
the child, — to pursue the little elf in the flight which she inva-
riably 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 doubtful than before.
Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so
often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had
bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes
burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps, — for there was no
foreseeing how it might affect her, — Pearl would frown, and
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 before, like a thing incapable and unin-
telligent of human sorrow. Or — but this more rarely hap-
pened — 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;

PEARL. 109

it passed, as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these
matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but,
by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to
win the master-word that should control this new and incompre-
hensible 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, sad, delicious happiness; until — perhaps
with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her open-
ing 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 childish 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. Noth-
ing 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 pecu-
liarity, in short, of her position in respect 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 forefinger 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 settle-
ment, on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic

110 THE SCARLET LETTER.

thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the
Puritanic nurture would permit ; playing at going to church,
perchance ; or at scourging Quakers ; or taking scalps in a
sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks
of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never
sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak
again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did,
Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching
up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations,
that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the
sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue.

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intol-
erant 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 unfrequently 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, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted
her in the child's manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless,
to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had
existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl inher-
ited, by inalienable right, out of Hester's heart. Mother and
daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from
human society; and in the nature of the child seemed to be
perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester
Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed
away by the softening influences of maternity.

PEARL. Ill

At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted
not a wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life
went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself
to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it
may be applied. The unlikeliest materials — a stick, a bunch
of rags, a flower — were the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and,
without undergoing any outward change, became spiritually
adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner
world. Her one baby -voice served a multitude of imaginary
personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged,
black and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy
utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure
as Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their
children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmerci-
fully. It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which
she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting
up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activity, —
soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a
tide of life, — and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild
energy. It was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play
of the northern lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy, how-,
ever, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be
little more than was observable in other children of bright facul-
ties; 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 sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom
she rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad — then what

THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 utterance 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 intelligence, and resume her play.

One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be
told. The very first thing which she had noticed in her life was
— what? — not the mother's smile, responding to it, as other
babies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remem-
bered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion
whether it were indeed a smile. By no means ! But that first
object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was — shall we
say it? — the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom! One day, as
her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had been
caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter;
and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not
doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the
look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did
Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring
to tear it away ; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intel-
ligent touch of Pearl's baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's ago-
nized gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little

PEARL. 115

Pearl look into her eyes, and smile ! Prom 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, elvish cast came into the child's eyes,
while Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers
are fond of doing ; and, suddenly, — for women 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 herself with gathering
handfuls of wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her
mother's bosom; dancing up and down, like a little elf, when-
ever she hit the scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been
to cover her bosom with her clasped hands. But, whether from
pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best
be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse,
and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's
wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably
hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts

116 THE SCARLET LETTER.

for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how
to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the
child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing
image of a fiend peeping out — or, whether it peeped or no,
her mother so imagined it — from the unsearchable abyss of her
black eyes.

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

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

But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to 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 earnestness; for, such was
Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted
whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her
existence, and might not now reveal herself.

" Yes ; I am little Pearl ! " repeated the child, continuing
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, coming up to
Hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell
me!"

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

But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acute-
ness of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freak-

PEARL. 117

ishness, 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 ! " answered
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 dis-
mal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered — betwixt a smile and
a shudder — the talk of the neighboring towns-people ; who, seek-
ing 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.

VII.

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 or-
der, 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 influential place among the
colonial magistracy.

Another and far more important reason than the delivery of
a pair of embroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to
seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. H9

in the affairs of the settlement. It had reached her ears, that
there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants,
cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and
government, to deprive her of her child. On the supposition
that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good
people not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the
mother's soul 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 ele-
ments of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the
fairer prospect of these advantages, by being transferred to wiser
and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those
who promoted the 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 ques-
tion 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 legislators and acts of state. The
period was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when
a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig not only
caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the
colony, but resulted in an important modification of the frame-
work 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

120 THE SCARLET LETTER.

of nature, on the other, — Hester Prynne set forth from her soli-
tary cottage. 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 tumble. We have spoken of
PearFs rich and luxuriant beauty ; a beauty that shone with deep
and vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity
both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown,
and which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There
was fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremedi-
tated offshoot of a passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving
the child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her
imagination their full play ; arraying her in a crimson velvet
tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies
and nourishes of gold-thread. So much strength of coloring,
which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a
fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to PearFs 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 irresistibly and inevi-
tably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne
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

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL.

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 con-
sequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to
represent the scarlet letter in her appearance.

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

" Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet 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 frowning, stamp-
ing her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threat-
ening 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
accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother, and looked
up, smiling, into her face.

Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Gov-
ernor Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a
fashion of which there are specimens 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 occur-

122 THE SCARLET LETTER.

rences, 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 cheer-
fulness, 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 sunshine fell aslant- wise over the
front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds
had been flung against it by the double handful. The brill-
iancy might have befitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the man-
sion 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 dura-
ble, for the admiration of after times.

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

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

They approached the door; which was of an arched form,
and flanked on each side by a narrow tower or 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 portal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which
was answered 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

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 123

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 a new-comer in
the country, he had never before seen. " 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," answered Hester Prynne, and
the bond- servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air,
and the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great
lady in the land, offered no opposition.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of
entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his
building-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of
social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation
after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land.
Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending
through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium
of general communication, more or less directly, with all the
other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was
lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small
recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though
partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated
by one of those embowed hall-windows which we read of in old
books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat.
Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles

THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 con-
sisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elabo-
rately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table
in the same taste; the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or
perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the Gov-
ernor's paternal home. On the table — in token that the senti-
ment 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 fore-
fathers 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 por-
traits so invariably 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 enjoyments of
living men.

At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall,
was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral
relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufac-
tured 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 especially the
helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with
white radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about
upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere

THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 127

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 Bellingharn into a soldier, as
well as a statesman and ruler.

Little Pearl — who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming
armor as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the
house — spent some time looking into the polished mirror of
the breastplate.

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

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

128 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine,
rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening space,
and deposited 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 oifer 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 penin-
sula; 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 Gov-
ernor is coming, and gentlemen along with him ! "

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

VIII.

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.

OVERNOR BELLINGHAM, in a loose gown
and easy cap, — such as elderly gentlemen
loved to endue themselves with, in their
domestic privacy, — walked foremost, and ap-
peared 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 forefathers — though accus-
tomed to speak and think of human existence as a state merely
of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacri-
fice 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,

130 THE SCARLET LETTER.

for instance, by the venerable pastor, John Wilson, whose beard,
white as a snow-drift, was seen over Governor Bellinghanr's
shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears arid peaches
might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and that
purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against
the sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the
rich bosom of the English Church, had a long-established and
legitimate taste for all good and comfortable things ; and however
stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof
of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still the genial
benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection
than was accorded to any of his professional contemporaries.

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

The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two
steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window,
found himself close to little Pearl. The 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 pro-
fess, I have never seen the like, since my days of vanity, in old
King James's time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favor

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 131

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?"

"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 bedizen
thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian child, —
ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those
naughty elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind
us, with other relics of Papistry, in merry old England?"

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

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

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

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

132 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stem regard
on the wearer of the scarlet letter, " there hath been much ques-
tion concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily
discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do
well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul,
such as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who
hath stumbled and fallen, amid the pitfalls of this world. Speak
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 finger on the red token.

" Woman, it is thy badge of shame ! " replied the stern magis-
trate. "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 better, albeit they can profit nothing to my-
self."

" 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, unac-
customed to the touch or familiarity of any but her mother,
escaped through the open window, and stood on the upper step,

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 133

looking like a wild tropical bird, of rich plumage, ready to take
flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not a little astonished
at this outbreak, — for he was a grandfatherly sort of person-
age, and usually a vast favorite with children, — essayed, how-
ever, 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 England Primer, or
the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unac-
quainted 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 possession 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 question, the child finally announced
that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her
mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door.

This fantasy was probably suggested by the near 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 coming hither.

THE SCARLET LETTER.

Old Boger Chillingworth, with a smile on his 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 startled to perceive what a change had come over
his features, — how much uglier they were, — how his dark com-
plexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more mis-
shapen,— since the days when she had familiarly known him.
She met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained
to give all her attention to the scene now going forward.

" This is awful ! " cried the Governor, slowly recovering from
the astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him.
"Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who
made her ! Without question, she is equally in the dark as to
her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny ! Methinks,
gentlemen, we need 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 minister, "the
child shall be well cared for ! — far better than thou canst do it ! "

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 137

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

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

138 THE SCARLET LETTER.

a quality of awful sacredness 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. "For, 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 account 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!"

"O, not so! — not so!" continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She
recognizes, believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath
wrought, in the existence of that child. And may she feel,
too, — what, methinks, is the very truth, — that this boon was
meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive,
and to preserve her from blacker depths of sin into which Satan
might else have sought to plunge her ! Therefore it is good for
this poor, sinful woman that she hath an infant immortality, a

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 139

being capable of eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care, —
to be trained up by her to righteousness, — to remind her, at
every moment, of her fall, — but yet to teach her, as it were
by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to
heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is
the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester
Prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let
us leave them as Providence hath seen fit to place them ! "

"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old
Eoger Chillingworth, smiling at him.

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

" Indeed hath he/' answered the magistrate, " and hath adduced
such arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now
stands; so long, at least, as there shall 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 withdrawn a
few steps from the group, and stood with his face partially con-
cealed in the heavy folds of the window-curtain ; while the shadow
of his figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was trem-
ulous with the vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and
flighty little elf, stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in
the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it ; a caress so
tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was look-

140 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ing on, asked herself, — " Is that my Pearl ? " Yet she knew that
there was love in the child's heart, although it mostly revealed
itself in passion, and hardly twice in her lifetime had been softened
by such gentleness as now. The minister, — for, save the long-
sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks
of childish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual
instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us something truly
worthy to be loved, — the minister looked round, laid his hand
on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her
brow. Little Pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no
longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily,
that old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes
touched the floor.

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

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

"Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the
clew of profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. "Better to fast
and pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mys-
tery as we find it, unless Providence reveal it of its own accord.
Thereby, every good Christian man hath a title to show a father's
kindness towards the poor, deserted babe."

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne,
with Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the
steps, it is averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 141

thrown open, and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face
of Mistress Hibbins, Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sis-
ter, and the same who, a few years later, was executed as a
witch.

" Hist, hist ! " said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy
seemed to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house.
"Wilt thou go with us to-night? There will be a merry com-
pany 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!"

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

But here — if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hib-
bins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable —
was already an illustration of the young minister's argument
against sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring
of her frailty. Even thus early had the child saved her from
Satan's snare.

IX.

THE LEECH.

NDER 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 cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin
before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all
men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the public
market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach
them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained
nothing but the contagion of her dishonor; which would not
fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion with
the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship. Then
why — since the choice was with himself — should the individual,
whose connection with the fallen woman had been the most
intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his

THE LEECH. 143

claim to an inheritance so little desirable ? He resolved not to
be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to
all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her
silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind,
and, as regarded his former ties and interests, 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 like-
wise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force
enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the
Puritan town, as Roger Chilling worth, without other introduction
than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more
than a common measure. As his studies, at a previous period
of his life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical
science of the day, it was as a physician that he presented him-
self, and as such was cordially received. 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 guardianship of an aged deacon
and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were stronger
testimonials in his favor than any that he could have produced
in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one who

144 THE SCARLET LETTER.

combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily
arid habitual flourish of a razor. To such a professional body
Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He soon mani-
fested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery
of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a multitude
of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately com-
pounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life.
In his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowl-
edge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he
conceal from his patients, that these simple medicines, Nature's
boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his
own confidence as the European pharmacopeia, 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. Diinmesdale.
The young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford,
was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than
a heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for
the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now
feeble New England Church, as the early Pathers had achieved
for the infancy of the Christian faith. About this period, how-
ever, 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 devo-
tion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and,
more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which he made a fre-
quent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly
state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some
declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it

THE LEECH. 145

was cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any
longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the other hand,
with characteristic humility, avowed his belief, that, if Provi-
dence 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 Eoger Chillingworth made his advent to the town.
His first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence, drop-
ping 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
valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir
Kenelm Digby, and other famous men, — whose scientific attain-
ments were esteemed hardly less than supernatural, — as having
been his correspondents or associates. Why, with such rank in
the learned world, had he come hither? What could he, whose
sphere was in great cities, be seeking in the 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 miracle, by transporting an

146 THE SCARLET LETTER.

eminent Doctor of Physic, from a German university, bodily
through the air, and setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmes-
dale'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 clergyman; he attached
himself to him as a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly
regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility. He
expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was
anxious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed
not despondent of a favorable result. The elders, the deacons,
the motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens, of Mr.
Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he should make
trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. Mr. Dimmesdale
gently repelled their entreaties.

"I need no medicine/' said he.

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. Dimmes-
dale by the elder ministers of Boston and the deacons of his
church, who, to use their own phrase, " dealt with him " on the
sin of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out.
He listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the
physician.

THE LEECH. 147

""Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale,
when, in fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chil-
Engworth's professional advice, "I could be well content, that
my labors, and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should
shortly end with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in
my grave, and the 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 quietness 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 better content to toil here."

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

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became
the medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not
only the disease interested the physican, 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-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the

148

THE SCARLET LETTER.

guest of the other, in his place of study and retirement. There
was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man
of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual cultivation
of no moderate depth or scope ; together with a range and free-
dom 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 senti-
ment largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself
powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passnge con-
tnually 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

THE LEECH. 149

framework. 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 physician 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 path-
way in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared
when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which
might call out something new to the surface of his character.
He deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before
attempting to do him good. Wherever there is a heart and an
intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the
peculiarities of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and
imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the
bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there.
So Roger Chillingworth — the man of skill, the kind and friendly
physician — strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving
among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing
everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a
dark cavern. Eew 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

150 THE SCARLET LETTER.

sagacity, and a nameless something more, — let us call it intui-
tion ; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent
characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must
be bom 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 understood; if to
these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded
by his recognized character as a physician ; — then, at some inevi-
table moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and 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 inti-
macy, 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 matters that seemed personal
to themselves; and yet no secret, 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, indeed,
that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bodily disease had
never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve !

After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends
of Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two
were lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of
the minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious

THE LEECH. 151

and attached physician. There was much joy throughout the
town, when this greatly desirable object was attained. It was
held to be the best possible measure for the young clergyman's
welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorized
to do so, he had selected some one of the many blooming dam-
sels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife.
This latter step, however, there was no present prospect that
Arthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take ; he rejected
all suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his
articles of church-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, there-
fore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavory
morsel always at another's board, and endure the life-long chill
which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's
fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, 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 covering pretty nearly
the site on which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has
since been built. It had the graveyard, originally Isaac John-
son's home-field, on one side, and so was well adapted to call
up serious reflections, suited to their respective employments, in
both minister and man of physic. The motherly care of the
good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment, with
a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create a noon-
tide 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 Bathsheba, and
Nathan the Prophet, in colors still unfaded, but which made the

152 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends,
as we have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand
of Providence had done all this, for the purpose — besought in
so many public, and domestic, and secret prayers — of restoring
the young minister to health. But — it must now be said —
another portion of the community had latterly begun to take its
own view of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesclale and the myste-
rious old physician. When an uninstructed multitude attempts
to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When,
however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intui-
tions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained
are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess the char-
acter of truths supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case
of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger Chil-
lingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation.

THE LEECH. 153

There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a
citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's mur-
der, 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 Doctor Eorman, the
famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Over-
bury. Two or three individuals hinted, that the man of skill,
during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments
by joining in the incantations of the savage priests; who were
universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often per-
forming seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black
art. A large number — and many of these were persons of such
sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would
have been valuable, in other matters — affirmed that Eoger Chil-
lingworth's aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he
had dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with Mr.
Dimmesdale. At first, his expression had been calm, meditative,
scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly and evil in his
face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew
still the more obvious to sight, the oftener they looked upon
him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory
had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with
infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was get-
ting sooty with the smoke.

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion,
that the Eeverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other person-
ages 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 Eoger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the
Divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's

154 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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
he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it was
sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he
must struggle towards his triumph.

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

THE LEECH AND HLS PATIENT.

•LD Boger 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 investiga-
tion, as he imagined, with the severe and
equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the
question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures
of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs
inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination,
a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity, seized the old man
within its gripe, and never set him free again, until he had done
all its bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart,
like a miner searching for gold ; or, rather, like a sexton delving
into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried
on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mor-
tality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these were
what he sought!

156 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 hillside, and quivered on
the pilgrim's face. The soil where this dark miner was working
had perchance shown indications that encouraged him.

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

Then, after long search into ^the minister's dim interior, and
turning over many precious materials, in the shape of high aspi-
rations for the welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure sen-
timents, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and
illuminated by revelation, — all of which invaluable gold was
perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker, — he would turn
back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards another point.
He groped along as stealthily, 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 pur-
pose to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple
of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor
would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the
shadow of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown
across his victim. In other words, Mr. Diinmesdale, whose sen-
sibility 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 LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 157

the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathizing, 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 rendered him suspicious of all man-
kind. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize
his enemy 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 rec-
reation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were con-
verted into drugs of potency.

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on
the sill of the open window, that looked towards the graveyard,
he talked with Eoger Chillingworth, while the old man was
examining a bundle of unsightly plants.

"Where/' asked he, with a look askance at them, — for it
was the clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, 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 physi-
cian, 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."

158 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" And wherefore?" rejoined the physician. "Wherefore not;
since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confes-
sion of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a
buried heart, to make manifest an unspoken crime ? "

" That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours," replied the min-
ister. " 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 revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as
to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds,
then to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That,
surely, were a shallow view of it. No ; these revelations, unless
I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satis-
faction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that
day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowl-
edge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution
of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts
holding such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them
up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutter-
able."

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

"They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his
breast as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. " Many,
many a poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on
the death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation.

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 159

And ever, after such an outpouring, O, what a relief have I
witnessed in those sinful brethren ! even as in one who at last
draws free air, after long stifling with his own polluted breath.
How can it be otherwise? Why should a wretched man, guilty,
we will say, of murder, prefer to keep the dead corpse buried
in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the
universe take care of it ! "

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

"True; there are such men/' answered Mr. Dimmesdale.
" But, not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they
are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature. Or, —
can we not suppose it? — guilty as they may be, retaining,
nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they
shrink from displaying 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 cannot
rid themselves."

"These men deceive themselves," said Eoger Chillingworth,
with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight
gesture with his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame
that rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal
for God's service, — these holy impulses may or may not coexist
in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has
unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish
breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them
not lift heavenward their unclean hands ! If they would serve

160 THE SCARLET LETTER.

their fellow-men, let them do it by making manifest the power
and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential
self-abasement ! Wouldst thou have me to believe, O wise and
pious friend, that a false show can be better — can be more
for God's glory, or man's welfare — than God's own truth?
Trust me, such men deceive themselves ! "

"It may be so/' said the young clergyman, indifferently, as
waiving a discussion that he considered irrelevant or unseason-
able. He had a ready faculty, indeed, 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 adja-
cent burial-ground. Looking instinctively from the open win-
dow, — for it was summer-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 contact. 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

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 161

their nature was, tenaciously adhered. Hester did not pluck
them off.

Eoger 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," remarked he, as much to himself as
to his companion. "I saw her, the other day, bespatter the
Governor himself with water, at the cattle-trough in Spring
Lane. What, in Heaven's name, is she? Is the imp alto-
gether evil ? Hath she affections ? Hath she any discoverable
principle of being?-"

"None, save the freedom of a broken law," answered 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, looking up
to the window, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and
intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensitive clergyman shrunk, with ner-
vous dread, from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl
clapped her little hands, in the most extravagant ecstasy. Hester
Prynne, likewise, had involuntarily looked up ; and all these four
persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till
the child laughed aloud, and shouted, — " Come away, mother !
Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you ! He hath
got hold of the minister already. Come away, mother, or he
will catch you ! But he cannot catch little Pearl ! "

So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking
fantastically, among the hillocks of the dead people, like a crea-

162 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ture that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried
generation, nor owned herself akin to it. It was as if she had
been made afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be
permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself, with-
out her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.

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

"I do verily believe it," answered the clergyman. "Never-
theless, 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 watchful physician

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 163

might well hope to cure you. But — I know not what to say-
the disease is what I seem to know, yet know it not/'

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

"Then, to speak more plainly/' continued the physician, "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 having charge, under Providence, of your life
and physical well-being, — hath all the operation of this disorder
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 Eoger Chil-
lingworth, 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
conjoined, 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 medi-
cine for the soul ! "

"Thus, a sickness," continued Eoger Chillingworth, going on,
in an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, — but

164 THE SCARLET LETTER.

standing up, and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked
minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure, — "a sick-
ness, 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 physician ! " cried
Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and
bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger Chilling-
worth. " Not to thee ! But if it be the soul's disease, then
do I commit myself to the one Physician of the soul ! He,
if it stand with his good pleasure, can cure ; or he can kill !
Let him do with me as, in his justice and wisdom, he
shall see good. But who art thou, that meddlest in this mat-
ter?— that dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his
God?"

With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room.

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

It proved not difficult to re-establish 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 disorder of his nerves had hurried him
into an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT.

165

nothing in the physician's words to excuse or palliate. He
marvelled, 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 him-
self had expressly sought. With these remorseful feelings, he
lost no time in making the amplest apologies, and besought his
friend still to continue the care, which, if not successful in

restoring him to health, had, in all probability, been the means
of prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. Roger Chilling-
worth readily assented, and went on with his medical super-
vision 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. Dimmes-

166 THE SCARLET LETTER.

dale's presence,, but grew strongly evident as the physician
crossed the threshold.

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

It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded,
that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noonday, and entirely
unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair,
with a large black-letter volume open before him on the table.
It must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous
school of literature. The 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 remoteness, however, had his spirit now with-
drawn 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 always covered it even from
the professional eye.

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

After a brief pause, the physician turned away.

But, with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror ! With
what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed
only by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through
the whole ugliness 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!

THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT.

167

Had a man seen old Boger 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 !

THE IVTZ?.:;?. :? A

: -:..-: T-- -..-;-. ••:•; .- ; -:

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART.

The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this
scheme. Roger ('hillingworlh, 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 pur-
poses, and, perchance, pardoning where it seemed most to punish
— had substituted for his black devices. A revelation, he could
almost say, had been granted to him. It mattered little, for his
object, whether celestial, or from what other region. By its aid,
in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and Mr. 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 movement. 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 con-
trolled the engine ; — and the physician knew it well ! Would
he startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magi-
cian's wand, uprose a grisly phantom, — uprose a thousand phan-
toms,— 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 perception 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

170 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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. Tor, as it was impossible to assign a reason for
such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that
the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire
substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause.
He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to
Eoger Chillingworth, 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 matter of principle,
continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and
thus gave him constant opportunities 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 Eeverend 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 experi-
encing 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 over-
shadowed 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

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 171

endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard, iron, or gran-
ite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportion
of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, effica-
cious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. There were
others, again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elabo-
rated 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 intro-
duced 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 flame; symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of speech
in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the
whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language. These
fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and rarest
attestation of their office, the Tongue of Flame. They would
have vainly sought — had they ever dreamed of seeking — to
express the highest truths through the humblest medium of
familiar words and images. Their vocies came down, afar and
indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt.
Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr.
Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of character, 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 low-
est; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the angels
might else have listened to and answered ! But this very bur-
den it was, that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful
brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated in unison

172

THE SCARLET LETTER.

with theirs, and received their pain into itself, and sent its own
throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of
sad, persuasive eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes
terrible ! The people knew not the power that moved them
thus. They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness.
They fancied him the mouthpiece of Heaven's messages of wis-
dom, and rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very ground on

which he trod was sanc-
tified. The virgins of
his church grew pale
around him, victims of
a passion so imbued with
religious sentiment that
they imagined it to be
all religion,
and brought
it openly, in
their white
bosoms, as
their most
a cceptable
sacrifice be-
fore the altar.
The aged
members of
his flock, be-
holding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they were them-
selves so rugged in their infirmity, 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 pas-

THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 173

tor's holy grave. And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr.
Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with him-
self 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 venera-
tion 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 sacred desk, and turn,
my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold commun-
ion, in your behalf, with the Most High Omniscience, — I, in
whose daily life you discern the sanctity of Enoch, — I, whose
footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly track,
whereby the pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided
to the regions of the blest, — I, who have laid the hand of
baptism upon your children, — I, who have breathed the part-
ing prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded
faintly from a world which they had quitted, — I, your pastor,
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

174 THE SCARLET LETTER.

than a hundred times — he had actually spoken ! Spoken !
But how? He had told his hearers that he was altogether vile,
a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abom-
ination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity; and that the only
wonder was, that they did not 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 impulse, 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-condemn-
ing words. " The godly youth ! " said they among themselves.
" The saint on earth ! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his
own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold in thine
or mine ! " The minister well knew — subtle, but remorseful
hypocrite that he was ! — the light in which his vague confes-
sion would be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat upon
himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had
gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, with-
out 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 accord-
ance 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 INTERIOR OF A HEART. 175

the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of
that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that
of many other pious Puritans, to fast, — not, however, like
them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter
medium of celestial illumination, but rigorously, and until his
knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept
vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness ;
sometimes with a glimmering lamp ; and sometimes, 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, him-
self. In these lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and
visions 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 diabolic shapes, that
grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him
away with them ; now a group of shining angels, who flew
upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more ethereal as they
rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth, and his white-
bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother, turning
her face away as she passed by. Ghost of a mother, — thinnest
fantasy of a mother, — methinks she might yet have thrown a
pitying glance towards her son ! And now, through the chamber
which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided Hester
Prynne, leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and
pointing her 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

176 THE SCARLET LETTER.

misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not
solid in their nature, 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 substance out of whatever realities there are around
us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit's joy and
nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false, — it
is impalpable, — it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he
himself, in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes
a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. The only truth that con-
tinued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on this earth,
was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled expres-
sion 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. Attiring himself with as much care as if it had
been for public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he
stole softly down the staircase, undid the door, and issued forth.

XII.

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL.

ALKING in the shadow of a dream, as it
were, and perhaps actually under the influ-
ence 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 forth, they would have discerned no face above the
platform, nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark
gray of the midnight. But the town was all asleep. There
was no peril of discovery. The minister might stand there, if

178 THE SCARLET LETTER.

it so pleased him, until morning should redden in the east,
without other risk than that the dank and chill night-air would
creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and
clog his throat with catarrh and cough ; thereby defrauding
the expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No
eye could see him, save that ever-wakeful one which had seen
him in his closet, 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
purpose, and fling it off at once ! This feeble and most sensi-
tive 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 on
his naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very
truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and
poisonous tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will,
or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud; an outcry that

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 179

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

" 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, there-
fore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes
and looked about him. At one of the chamber- windows of
Governor Bellingham's mansion, which stood at some distance,
on the line of another street, he beheld the appearance of the
old magistrate himself, with a lamp in his hand, a white night-
cap on his head, and a long white gown enveloping his figure.
He looked like a ghost, evoked unseasonably from the grave.
The cry had evidently startled him. At another window of the
same house, moreover, appeared «old Mistress Hibbins, the Gov-
ernor's sister, also with a lamp, which, even thus far off,
revealed the expression of her sour and discontented face. She
thrust forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiously
upward. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this venerable witch-
lady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale's outcry, and interpreted it,
with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamor

180 THE SCARLET LETTER.

of the fiends and night-hags, with whom she was well known to
make excursions into the forest.

Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp, the old
lady quickly extinguished her own, and vanished. 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 further
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 particulars,
even while firmly convinced that the doom of his existence was
stealing onward, in the footsteps which he now heard ; and that
the gleam of the lantern would fall upon him, in a few moments
more, and reveal his long-hidden secret. As the light drew
nearer, he beheld, within its illuminated circle, his brother clergy-
man, — or, to speak more accurately, his professional father, as
well as highly valued friend, — the Reverend Mr. Wilson ; who,
as Mr. Dimmesdale now conjectured, had been praying at the
bedside of some dying man. And so he had. The good old
minister came freshly from the death-chamber of Governor
Winthrop, who had passed from earth to heaven within that
very hour. And now, surrounded, like the saint- like personages
of olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified him amid
this gloomy night of sin, — as if the departed Governor had

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 181

left him an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had caught
upon himself the distant shine of the celestial city, while look-
ing thitherward to see the triumphant pilgrim pass within its
gates, — now, in short, good Father Wilson was moving home-
ward, aiding his footsteps with a lighted lantern ! The glimmer
of this luminary suggested the above conceits to Mr. Dimmes-
dale, who smiled, — nay, almost laughed at them, — and then
wondered if he were going mad.

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

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

Good heavens ! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually spoken ? For
one instant, he believed that these words had passed his lips.
But they were uttered only within his 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 glim-
mering 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 humorous 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 scaffold. Morning would break, and find him there.
The neighborhood would begin to rouse itself. The earliest

182 THE SCARLET LETTER.

riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely
defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and, half crazed
betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go, knocking from door to
door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost — as he
needs must think it — of some defunct transgressor A dusky
tumult would flap its wings from one house to another. Then —
the morning light still waxing stronger — old patriarchs would
rise up in great haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly
dames, without pausing to put off their night-gear. The whole
tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen
with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public
view, with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old
Governor Bellingham would come grimly forth, with his King
James's ruff fastened askew; and Mistress Hibbins, with some
twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer
than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night
ride; and good Father Wilson, too, after spending half the
night at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early,
out of his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, likewise,
would come the elders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's 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 brow ? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmes-
dale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and stand-
ing where Hester Prynne had stood !

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 183

Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the min-
ister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a great
peal of laughter. It was immediately responded to by a light,
airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of 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 ! Hester Prynne ! Are
you there?"

" Yes ; it is Hester Prynne ! " she replied, in a tone of sur-
prise; 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. e ' 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 together!"

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 through all his veins, as if the mother and the child
were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid sys-
tem. The three formed an electric chain.

184 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Minister ! " whispered little Pearl.

"What wouldst thou say, child ?" asked Mr. Dimmesdale.

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

"Nay; not so, my little Pearl," answered the minister; for,
with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public expos-
ure, 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
himself. "Not so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy
mother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow."

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

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

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

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

"And what other time?" persisted the child.

"At the great judgment day," whispered the minister, — 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 light gleamed
far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused
by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often
observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmos-
phere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illu-

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 187

ruinated 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 wooden
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, little worn, and, even in the market-place, mar-
gined with green on either side ; — all were visible, but with
a singularity of aspect that seemed to give another moral inter-
pretation 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 glim-
mering on her bosom; and little Pearl, herself a symbol, and
the 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 another.

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

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to 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 revelations from a supernatural source. Thus,
a blazing spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows,

188 THE SCARLET LETTER.

seen in the midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence
was known to have been foreboded bj a shower of crimson
light. We doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil,
ever befell New England, from its settlement down to Revolu-
tionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been previously
warned by some spectacle of this nature. Not seldom, it had
been seen by multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested
on the faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder
through the colored, magnifying, and distorting medium of his
imagination, and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought.
It was, indeed, a majestic idea, that the destiny of nations
should be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of
heaven. A scroll so wide might not be deemed too expansive
for Providence to write a people's doom upon. The belief was
a favorite one with our forefathers, as betokening that their
infant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of pecul-
iar intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when an
individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on
the same vast sheet of record ! In such a case, it could only
be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a
man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and
secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of
nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than
a fitting page for his soul's history and fate !

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

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 189

imagination gave it ; or, at least, with so little defmiteness, that
another's guilt might have seen another symbol in it.

There was a singular circumstance that characterized Mr.
Dimmesdale's psychological state, at this moment. All the time
that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless, per-
fectly aware that little Pearl was pointing her finger towards
old Roger Chillingworth, 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 expres-
sion ; 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 admon-
ished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment,
then might Roger Chillingworth have passed with them for the
arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim his
own. So vivid was 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.

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

She remembered her oath, and was silent.

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

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

" Quickly, then, child ! " said the minister, bending his ear

190 THE SCARLET LETTER.

close to her lips. " Quickly ! — and as low as thou canst
whisper."

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

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

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

" 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 ! "

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

" Verily, and in good faith," answered Eoger Chillingworth,
" 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, Eeverend Sir; else you will be poorly able to do Sabbath
duty to-morrow. Aha ! see now, how they trouble the brain,

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 191

— 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 heavenly influences, that had ever
proceeded from his lips. Souls, it is said more souls than one,
were brought to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and
vowed within themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards
Mr. Dimmesdale 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, he was blind and foolish, as he
ever and always is. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it ! "

"Thank you, my good friend," said the minister, 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 reverence must
needs handle him without gloves, henceforward," remarked the
old sexton, grimly smiling. "But did your reverence hear

192

THE SCARLET LETTER.

of the portent that was seen last night ? — a great red letter in
the sky, — the letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel.
For, as our good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this
past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some
notice thereof ! "

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

XIII.

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER.

N her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmes-
dale, Hester Prynne was shocked at the con-
dition to 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 faculties 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 readily 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. Know-
ing 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 instinc-
tively discovered enemy. She decided, moreover, that he had a
right to her utmost aid. Little accustomed, in her long seclusion

194 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same posi-
tion in which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her
ignominy. Years had come and gone. Pearl was now seven
years old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast,
glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar
object to the towns-people. 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 ulti-
mately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the
credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is
brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred,
by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love,
unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation
of the original feeling of 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 sympathies. Then,
also, the blameless purity of her life during all these years in
which she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned largely

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER.

195

in her favor. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of man-
kind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining any-
thing, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had
brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.

It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put 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 acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of
man, whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready
as she to give of her little substance to every demand of pov-
erty; 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 em-

196 THE SCARLET LETTER.

broidered 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 intercourse with her fellow-creatures.
There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its
unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper
of the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the suf-
ferer'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, Hester'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 symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was
found in her, — so much power to do, and power to sympa-
thize,— 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 zealously.

ANOTHER VIEW OE HESTER. 197

Meeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive
their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her, she laid her
finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. This might be pride,
but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening influ-
ence of the latter quality on the public mind. The public is
despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice,
when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as fre-
quently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made,
as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity. Inter-
preting Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal of this nature,
society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign
countenance than she cared to be favored with, or, perchance,
than she deserved.

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community,
were longer in acknowledging the influence of Hesters good
qualities than the people. The prejudices which they shared in
common with the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron
framework of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labor to
expel them. Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid
wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course
of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence.
Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent posi-
tion 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

198 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 position in respect
to society that was indicated by it — on the mind of Hester
Prynne herself, was powerful and peculiar. All the light and
graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this
red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and
harsh outline, which might have been repulsive, had she pos-
sessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even the
attractiveness of her person had undergone 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 by a cap,
that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sun-
shine. 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

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 199

had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essen-
tial to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and
such the stern development, of the feminine character and per-
son, 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 tenderness will either be crushed
out of her, or — and the outward semblance is the same —
crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never 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 Prynrie
were ever afterwards so touched, and so transfigured.

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to
be attributed to the circumstance, that her life had turned, in
a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Stand-
ing alone in the world, — alone, as to any dependence on society,
and with little Pearl to be guided and protected, — alone, and
hopeless of retrieving her 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 human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken
a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before.
Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men
bolder than these had overthrown and 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 Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had

200 THE SCARLET LETTER.

they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than
that stigmatized by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage,
by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her, such as dared to enter no
other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would
have been as perilous as 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 quietude 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 otherwise.
Then, she might have come down to us in history, hand in
hand with Ann Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious
sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess.
She might, and not improbably would, have suffered death
from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to under-
mine the foundations of the Puritan establishment. But, in the
education of her child, the mother's enthusiasm of thought had
something to wreak itself upon. Providence, in the person of
this little girl, had assigned to Hester's charge the germ and
blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a
host of difficulties. Everything was against her. The world
was hostile. The child's own nature had something wrong in
it, which continually betokened that she had been born amiss, —
the effluence of her mother'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

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 201

worth accepting, even to the happiest among them? As con-
cerned her own individual existence,, she had long ago decided
in the negative,, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency
to speculation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does
man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hope-
less 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 suitable posi-
tion. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot
take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself
shall have undergone 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 overcomes these
problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be
solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come upper-
most, 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 insurmountable
precipice ; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was
wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and com-
fort 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. Dimmes-
dale, 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 sacrifice for its attainment. She had wit-

202 THE SCATILET LETTER.

nessed the intense misery beneath which the minister straggled,
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 prof-
fered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side,
under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed
himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the
delicate springs of Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. Hester could not
but ask herself, whether there had not originally been a defect
of truth, courage, and loyalty, on her own part, in allowing the
minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was
to be foreboded, and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only
justification lay in the fact, that she had been able to discern
no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had over-
whelmed herself, except by acquiescing in Eoger Chillingworth's
scheme of disguise. Under that impulse, she had made her
choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched
alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her error, so
far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard
and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to
cope with Eoger 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 perhaps
below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for.

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband,
and do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim

ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER.

203

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 concoct his
medicines withal.

XIV.

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN.

ESTER 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 pat-
tering 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, step-
ping 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.

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 205

Meanwhile, her mother had accosted the physician.

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

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

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

"Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better/' rejoined he. "A
woman must needs follow her own fancy, touching the adorn-
ment 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 bore his age
well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But
the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and
quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had alto-

206 THE SCARLET LETTER.

gether vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching,
almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his
wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile; but
the latter played him false, and nickered over his visage so deri-
sively, that the spectator could see his blackness all the better
for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out
of his eyes ; as if the old man's soul were on fire, and kept on
smouldering duskily within his breast, until, by some casual
puff of passion, it was blown into a momentary flame. This
he repressed, as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if
nothing of the kind had happened.

In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking 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 con-

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 207

fidant. "Not to hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts
happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. So speak
freely; and I will make answer/''

"When we last spake together," said Hester, "now seven
years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy,
as touching the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As
the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands,
there seemed no choice to me, save to be silent, in accordance
with your behest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings
that I thus bound myself; for, having cast off all duty towards
other human beings, there remained a duty towards him ; and
something 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 Eoger 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 Eoger Chilling-
worth 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.

208 THE SCARLET LETTER.

For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne
up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. 0,
I could reveal a goodly secret ! But enough ! What art can
do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes, and
creeps about on earth, is owing all to me ! "

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

" Yea, woman, thou sayest truly ! " cried old Roger 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 dwelling 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 curi-
ously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he
knew not that the eye and hand were mine ! With the super-
stition 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 propin-
quity 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

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. £09

place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments
— which sometimes 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.

" 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 ! " answered
the physician; and as he proceeded his manner lost its fiercer
characteristics, and subsided into gloom. "Dost thou remember
me, Hester, as I was nine years agone? Even then, I was in
the autumn of« my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all
my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet
years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowl-
edge, 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 little for him-
self, — 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 Chilling-
worth. " If that have not avenged me, I can do no more ! "

210 THE SCARLET LETTER.

He laid his finger on it, with a smile.

' ' It has avenged thee ! " answered Hester Prynne.

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

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

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

"And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that
has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend ! Wilt thou
yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human ? If not
for his sake, then doubly for thine own ! Forgive, and leave
his further retribution to the Power that claims it ! I said, but
now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or

HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 211

me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of
evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we
have strewn our path. It is not so ! There might be good for
thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and
hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only
privilege? Wilt thou reject that 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 me are not sinful, save in a kind of
typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a
fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black
flower blossom as it may ! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou
wilt with yonder man."

He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employ-
ment of gathering herbs.

XV.

HESTER AND PEARL.

>0 Eoger 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, look-
ing 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

HESTER AND PEARL. 215

sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon
him ? Or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous
shadow moving along with his deformity, whichever way he
turned himself? And whither was he now going? Would he
not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted
spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly night-
shade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wick-
edness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous
luxuriance ? Or would he spread bat's wings and flee away,
looking so much the uglier, the higher he rose towards heaven ?

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

She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not over-
come 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 dis-
mal medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among
her ugliest 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 Roger Chillingworth, than any
which had since been done him, that, in the time when her

216 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 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 image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon
her as the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to have
done with this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven
long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so
much of misery, and wrought out no repentance?

The emotions of that brief space, while she stood gazing after
the crooked figure of old Eoger Chillingworth, threw a dark
light on Hester's state of mind, revealing much that she might
not otherwise have acknowledged to herself.

He being gone, she summoned back her child.

" Pearl ! Little Pearl ! Where are you ? "

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no
loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer
of herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully
with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom
forth, and — as it declined to venture — seeking a passage for
herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky.
Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal,
she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats
out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snail-shells, and sent

HESTER AND PEARL.

217

out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in
New England; but the larger part of them foundered near the
shore. She seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and made prize
of several five-fingers,, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the
warm sun. Then she took up the white foam, that streaked
the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze,
scampering after it, with winged footsteps, to catch the great

snow-flakes ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds,
that fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked
up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock
after these small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelt-
ing 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

218 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 devising drapery and costume. As the last
touch to her mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass, and
imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration
with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letter, —
the letter A, — but freshly green, instead of scarlet ! The child
bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with
strange interest ; even as if the one only thing for which she
had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import.

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

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

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

" Yes, mother," said the child. " 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-

HESTER AND PEARL. 219

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

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

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

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

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

220 THE SCARLET LETTER.

be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure
at your heart. And this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of
the child's disposition. Any other observer might have seen
few but 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 irreverence either to the parent or
the child. In the little chaos of Pearl's character there might
be seen emerging — and could have been, from the very first —
the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage, — an uncon-
trollable 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 disagree-
able, 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, if a noble woman do
not grow out of this elfish child.

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

HESTER AND PEARL. 221

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 over-
come 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 ques-
tions, once, and again, and still a third time.

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

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

Then she spoke aloud.

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

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

222

THE SCARLET LETTER.

and once after she seemed to be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up,
with mischief gleaming in her black eyes.

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

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

" Mother ! — 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 be-
fore. " Do not tease me ; else I shall shut thee into the dark
closet!"

XYI.

A FOREST WALK.

[ESTER PRYNNE remained constant in her
resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale,
at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior
consequences, the true character of the man
SI i ^-5 : ^N=S Hal wno had crept into his intimacy. For several
' days, however, she vainly sought an oppor-
tunity of addressing him in some of the meditative walks which
she knew him to be in the habit of taking, along the shores of
the peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighboring coun-
try. There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to
the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame, had she
visited him in his own study; where many a penitent, ere now,
had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one be-
tokened by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the
secret or undisguised interference of old Eoger Chillingworth,
and partly that her conscious 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

224 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 Rever-
end 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 converts. He would probably return,
by a certain hour, in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes,
therefore, the next day, Hester took little Pearl, — who was
necessarily the companion of all her mother's expeditions, how-
ever inconvenient her presence, — and set forth.

The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the penin-
sula 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 wilderness in
which she had so long been wandering. The day was chill and
sombre. Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred,
however, by a breeze ; so that a gleam of nickering sunshine
might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path.
This flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of
some long vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight —
feebly sportive, at best, in the predominant 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

A FOREST WALK. 225

off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but
a child. It will not flee from me ; for I wear nothing on my
bosom yet ! "

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

" And why not, mother ? " asked Pearl, stopping short, just
at the beginning of her race. "Will not it come of 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 per-
ceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the
midst of it, all brightened by its splendor, and scintillating with
the vivacity excited by rapid motion. The light lingered about
the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother
had drawn almost nigh enough to step into the magic circle too»

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

" See ! " answered Hester, smiling. " Now I can stretch out
my hand, and grasp some of it."

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

226 THE SCARLET LETTER.

Pearl's birth. It was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a
hard, metallic lustre to the child's character. She wanted —
what some people want throughout 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.

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

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

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

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

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

"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

A FOREST WALK. 227

at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And
dost thou go to meet him in the night-time?"

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

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

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

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

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

Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood
to secure themselves from the observation of any casual pas-
senger along the forest track. Here they sat down on a lux-
uriant heap of moss ; which, at some epoch of the preceding
century, had been a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in
the darksome 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 flow-
ing 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,

228 THE SCARLET LETTER.

but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of tree-
trunks and underbrush,, and here and there a huge rock covered
over with 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 loqua-
city, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest
whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface
of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet
kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like
the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy with-
out playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad
acquaintance and events of sombre hue.

" 0 brook ! 0 foolish and tiresome little brook ! " cried
Pearl, after listening awhile to its talk. "Why art thou so
sad? Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing
and murmuring ! "

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

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

" If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee
of it/' answered her mother, " even as it is telling me of mine !
But now, Pearl, I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of
one putting aside the branches. I would have thee betake thyself
to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder."

A FOREST WALK. 229

"Is it the Black Man?" asked Pearl.

" Wilt thou go and play, child ? " repeated her mother.
"Bat 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 current of the
brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with
its melancholy voice. But the little stream would not be com-
forted, and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some
very mournful mystery that had happened — or making a pro-
phetic 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 acquaint-
ance with this repining brook. She set herself, therefore, to
gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet colum-
bines that she found growing in the crevices of a high rock.

When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made a step

230 THE SCARLET LETTER.

or two towards the track that led through the forest, but still
remained under the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the
minister advancing along the path, entirely alone, and leaning
on a staff which he had cut by the wayside. He looked haggard
and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air,
which had never so remarkably characterized him in his walks
about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed
himself liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in this
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, forevermore. 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 exhibited no
symptom of positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little
Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart.

XVII.
THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER.

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

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

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 of their own. So
strangely did they meet, in the dim wood, that it was like the
first encounter, in the world beyond the grave, of two spirits
who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now
stood coldly shuddering, in mutual dread; as not yet familiar
with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied
beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost !
They were awe-stricken likewise at themselves; because the crisis
flung back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each
heart its history and experience, as life never does, except at
such breathless epochs. The soul beheld its features in the
mirror of the passing moment. It was with fear, and tremu-
lously, and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that
Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and
touched the chill hand of Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as
it was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. They
now felt themselves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere.

Without a word more spoken, — neither he nor she assuming
the guidance, but with an unexpressed consent, — they glided
back into the shadow of the woods, whence 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
acquaintance might have made, about the gloomy sky, the threat-

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 233

erring 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
before, and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their
real thoughts might be led across the threshold.

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

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

She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.

"Hast thou?" she asked.

" None ! — nothing but despair ! " he answered. " What else
could I look for, being what I am, and 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 matters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there
originally was in me, all of God's gifts that were the choicest
have become the ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, I am
most miserable ! "

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

" More misery, Hester ! — only the more misery ! " answered
the clergyman, with a bitter smile. " As 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
redemption of other souls ? — or a polluted soul towards their
purification ? And as for the people's reverence, would that
it were turned to scorn and hatred ! Canst thou deem it,
Hester, a consolation, that I must stand up in my pulpit, and
meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light

234 THE SCARLET LETTER.

of heaven were beaming from it ! — must see my flock hungry
for the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of
Pentecost were speaking ! — and then look inward, and discern
the black reality of what they idolize? I have laughed, in bit-
terness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem
and what I am ! And Satan laughs at it ! "

"You wrong yourself in this/' said Hester, gently. "You
have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you,
in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in
very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no reality
in the penitence thus sealed and 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 holiness, and have shown myself to mankind
as they will see me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you,
Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom !
Mine burns in secret ! Thou little knowest what a relief it is,
after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye
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 emptiness ! — all death ! "

Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak.
Yet, uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he
did, his words here offered her the very point of circumstances

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 235

in which to interpose what she came to say. She conquered
her fears, and spoke.

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

The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and clutch-
ing 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 what-
ever mask the latter might conceal himself, was enough to dis-
turb 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, perhaps, 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 physi-
cian, with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmities,—
that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel pur-
pose. By means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been

236 THE SCARLET LETTER.

kept in an irritated state,, the tendency of which was, not to
cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his
spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be
insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the Good
and True, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type.

Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once, —
nay, why should we not speak it ? — still so 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 Dimmes-
d ale's feet.

" 0 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 ques-
tion ! 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 Chillingworth ! — he was my hus-
band ! "

The minister looked at her, for an instant, with all that vio-
lence of passion, which — intermixed, in more shapes than one,
with his higher, purer, softer qualities — was, in fact, the portion
of him which the Devil claimed, and through which he sought
to win the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown
than Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it lasted,
it was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been so

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 239

much enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were
incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down
on the ground, and buried his face in his hands.

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

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

"I do forgive you, Hester," replied the minister, at length,
with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger.

240 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" I freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both ! We
are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one
worse than even the polluted priest ! That old man's revenge has
been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the
sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so ! "

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

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

They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand,
on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought
them a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway
had so long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along ;
— and yet it 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 another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat
beneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come.

And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-track
that led backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must
take up again the burden of her ignominy, and the minister the
hollow mockery of his good name ! So they lingered an instant
longer. No golden light had ever been so 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 !
Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God
and man, might be, for one moment, true !

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 241

He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.

" Hester/' cried he, " here is a new horror ! Roger Chilling-
worth 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 prac-
tices of his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray
the secret. He will doubtless seek other means of satiating his
dark passion/'

"And I! — how am I to live longer, breathing the same
air with this deadly enemy?" exclaimed Arthur 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 minister. " But
how to avoid it? What choice remains to me? Shall I lie
down again on these withered leaves, where I cast myself when
thou didst tell me what he was ? Must I sink down there, and
die at once?"

" Alas, what a ruin has befallen thee ! " said Hester, with the
tears gushing into her eyes. "Wilt thou die for very weak-
ness ? 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 ! "

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

242 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" 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 instinctively exer-
cising a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued
that it could hardly hold itself erect. " Doth the universe lie
within the compass of yonder town, which only a little time
ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us ?
Whither leads 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 ! " continued
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, in pleasant Italy, — thou wouldst be beyond his power
and knowledge ! And what hast thou to do with all these iron
men, and their opinions ? They have kept thy better part in
bondage too long already ! "

" It cannot be ! " answered the minister, listening as if he
were called upon to realize a dream. " I am powerless to go !
Wretched and sinful as I am, I have had no other thought

THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 243

than to drag on my earthly existence in the sphere where Provi-
dence 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 happened.
Meddle no more with it ! Begin all anew ! Hast thou exhausted
possibility in the failure of this one trial ? Not so ! The future
is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed !
There is good to be done ! Exchange this false life of thine for
a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission,
the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, — as is more thy
nature, — be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the
most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach ! Write ! Act !
Do anything, save to lie down and die ! Give up this name of
Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one,
such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst
thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have
so gnawed into thy life ! — that have made thee feeble to will
and to do ! — that will leave thee powerless even to repent !
Up, and away ! "

" O Hester ! " cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fit-
ful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away,
"thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tot-
tering beneath him ! I must die here ! There is not the

244

THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 a deep whisper.

Then, all was spoken !

XVIII.

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE.

RTHUR DIMMESDALE gazed into Hester's
face with a look in which hope and joy
shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt
them, and a kind of horror at her boldness,
who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at,
but dared not speak.
But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity,
and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed,
from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation
as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered,
without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as in-
tricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of
which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide
their fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were,
in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian
in his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged
point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legis-
lators had established ; criticising all with hardly more reverence

246 THE SCARLET LETTER.

than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial
robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The
tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The
scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women
dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude ! These had been
her teachers, — stern and wild ones, — and they had made her
strong, but taught her much amiss.

The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an
experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally
received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fear-
fully 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 prin-
ciples, 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 sensi-
tive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been
supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never
sinned at all.

Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the
whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other
than a preparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmes-
dale ! Were such a man once more to fall, what plea could
be urged in extenuation of his crime ? None ; unless it avail
him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite
suffering ; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 247

remorse which harrowed it ; that, between fleeing as an avowed
criminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find
it hard to strike the balance; that it was human to avoid the
peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable machinations of
an enemy; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and
desert path, faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a glimpse of
human affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in
exchange for the heavy doom which he was now expiating. And
be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt
has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal
state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded; so that the
enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might
even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in
preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there
is still the ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the
foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph.

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

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

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

The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw

248 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself.
" Methought the germ of it was dead in me ! 0 Hester, thou
art my better angel! I seem to have flung myself — sick, sin-
stained, and sorrow -blackened — down upon these forest-leaves,
and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to
glorify Him that hath been merciful ! This is already the better
life ! Why did we not find it sooner ? "

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

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

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE.

249

The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which
the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. 0
exquisite relief! She had not known the weight, until she felt
the freedom ! By another impulse, she took off the formal cap

that confined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders,
dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance,
and imparting the charm of softness to her features. There
played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant
and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of

250 THE SCARLET LETTER.

womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that
had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole rich-
ness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable
past, and clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a
happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour.
And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the
effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow.
All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the
sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening
each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and
gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects
that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now.
The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam
afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a mys-
tery of joy.

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

Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.

"Thou must know Pearl!" said she. "Our little Pearl!
Thou hast seen her, — yes, I know it! — but thou wilt see her
now with other eyes. She is a strange child! I hardly compre-
hend 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?"

A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 251

asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. "I have long shrunk
from children, because they often show a distrust, — a back-
wardness to be familiar with me. I have even been afraid of
little Pearl I"

" 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, mak-
ing her figure dim or distinct, — now like a real child, now like
a child's spirit, — as the splendor went and came again. She
heard her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the
forest.

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while her
mother sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest
— stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and
troubles of the world into its bosom — became the playmate of
the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was,
it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered
her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn,
but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood
upon the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was pleased
with their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wilderness
hardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed,
with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but

252 THE SCARLET LETTER.

Soon repented of her fierceness,, and clucked to her young ones
not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed
Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting
as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic
tree, chattered either in anger or merriment, — for a squirrel is
such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to
distinguish between his moods, — so he chattered at the child, and
flung down a nut upon her head. It was a last year's nut,
and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from
his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively
at Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, or
renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said, — but here
the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable, — came up, and
smelt of Pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted
by her hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-
forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognized
a kindred wildness in the human child.

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

Slowly; for she saw the clergyman.

XIX.

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE.

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

" Dost thou know, Hester," said Arthur Dimmesdale, with
an unquiet smile, "that this dear child, tripping about always
at thy side, hath caused me many an alarm? Methought — 0
Hester, what a thought is that, and how terrible to dread it ! —
that my own features were partly repeated in her face, and so
strikingly that the world might see them ! But she is mostly
thine!"

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

254 THE SCARLET LETTER.

looks, with those wild-flowers in her hair ! It is as if one of
the fairies, whom we left in our dear old England, had decked
her out to meet us."

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

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

"Thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing aside
at Hester Prynne, "how my heart dreads this interview, and
yearns for it! But, in truth, as I already told thee, children
are not readily won to be familiar with me. They will not
climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile ;
but stand apart, and eye me strangely. Even little babes, when

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 255

I take them in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl, twice in
her little lifetime, hath been kind to me ! The first time, —
thou knowest it well ! The last was when thou ledst her with
thee to the house of yonder stern old Governor."

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

By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and
stood on the farther side, gazing silently at Hester and the
clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk, wait-
ing 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 pictu-
resqueness 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 com-
municate 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 sym-
pathy. In the brook beneath stood another child, — another
and the same, — with likewise its ray of golden light. Hester
felt herself, in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged
from Pearl; as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the
forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her
mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to return
to it.

There was both truth and error in the impression; the child

256 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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

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

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

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

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 259

beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower-
girdled and sunny image of little Pearl, pointing her small fore-
finger too.

"Thou strange child, why dost thou not come to me?" ex-
claimed Hester.

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

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

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

260 THE SCARLET LETTER.

gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing its small
forefinger at Hester's bosom !

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

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

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

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

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

" Bring it hither ! " said Hester.

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

" Was ever such a child ! " observed Hester, aside to the
minister. " 0, 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, —

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 261

until we shall have left this region, and look back hither as
to a land which we have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide
it! The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it
up forever ! "

With these words, she advanced to the margin of the brook,
took up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom.
Hopefully, but a moment ago, as Hester had spoken of drown-
ing 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, re-
proachfully, but with a subdued tone. "Wilt thou come across
the brook, and own thy mother, now that she has her shame
upon her, — now that she is sad ? "

" 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 im-

262 THE SCARLET LETTER.

pelled this child to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to
give with a throb of anguish — Pearl put up her mouth, and
kissed the scarlet letter too!"

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

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

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

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

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

"And will he always keep his hand over his heart?" in-
quired Pearl.

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

But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive
with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from what-
ever caprice of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no favor
to the clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force that
her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifest-
ing her reluctance by odd grimaces ; of which, ever since her
babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could trans-
form her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects,

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 263

with a new mischief in them, eachA and all. The minister —
painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a
talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier regards — bent
forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl
broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped
over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was
quite washed off, and diffused through a long lapse of the glid-
ing water. She then remained apart, silently watching Hester
and the clergyman ; while they talked together, and made such
arrangements as were suggested by their new position, and the
purposes soon to be fulfilled.

And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The
dell was to be left a solitude among its dark, old trees, which,
with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what
had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melan-
choly 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 cheer-
fulness of tone than for ages heretofore.

XX.

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE.

the minister departed, in advance of Hester
Prynne and little Pearl, he threw a back-
ward 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 riot 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

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 265

and himself had sketched for their departure. It had been deter-
mined bstween them, that the Old World, with its crowds and
cities, offered them a more eligible shelter and concealment than
the wilds of New England, or all America, with its alternatives
of an Indian wigwam, or the few settlements of Europeans,
scattered thinly along the seaboard. Not to speak of the clergy-
man's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest
life, his native gifts, his culture, and his entire 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 cruis-
ers, frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws
of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irre-
sponsibility of character. This vessel had recently arrived from
the Spanish Main, and, within three days' time, would sail for
Bristol. Hester Prynne — whose vocation, as a self-enlisted
Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain
and crew — could take upon herself to secure the passage of
two individuals and a child, with all the secrecy which circum-
stances 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 pres-
ent. " That is most fortunate ! " he had then said to himself.
Now, why the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale considered it so very
fortunate, we hesitate to reveal. Nevertheless, — to hold noth-
ing 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

266 THE SCARLET LETTEK.

a New England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a
more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional
career. "At least, they shall say of me" thought this exem-
plary man, "that I leave no public duty unperformed, nor ill
performed ! " Sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound
and acute as this poor minister's should be so miserably deceived !
We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him;
but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once
so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease, that had long
since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. No
man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself,
and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered
as to which may be the true.

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

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 267

of the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and a
weathercock at every point where his memory suggested one.
Not the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense
of change. The same was true as regarded the acquaintances
whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of human life,
about the little town. They looked neither older nor younger
now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the
creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day ; it was
impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the
individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting
glance ; and yet the minister's deepest sense seemed to inform
him of their mutability. A similar impression struck him most
remarkably, as he passed under the walls of his own church.
The edifice had so very strange, and yet so familiar, an aspect,
that Mr. Dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas ; either
that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was
merely dreaming about it now.

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed,
indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a
change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the interven-
ing 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 trans-
formation. 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 tlnn cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not

268 THE SCARLET LETTER.

flung down there, like a cast-off garment ! " His friends, no
doubt, would still have insisted with him, — " Thou art thyself
the man!" — but the error would have been their own, not his.
Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave
him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought
and feeling. In truth, nothing short of a total change of
dynasty and moral code, in that interior kingdom, was adequate
to account for the impulses now communicated to the unfortu-
nate and startled minister. At every step he was incited to do
some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it
would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite of him-
self, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which
opposed the impulse. For instance, he met one of his own
deacons. The good old man addressed him with the paternal
affection and patriarchal privilege, which his venerable age, his
upright and holy character, and his station in the Church,
entitled him to use ; and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost
worshipping respect, which the minister's professional and private
claims alike demanded. Never was there a more beautiful
example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comport
with the obeisance and respect enjoined upon it, as from a
lower social rank, and inferior order of endowment, towards
a higher. Now, during a conversation of some two or three
moments between the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this excel-
lent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the most careful
self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain
blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the
communion supper. He absolutely trembled and turned pale as
ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself, in utterance of these
horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, with-

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 269

out his having fairly given it. And, even with this terror in
his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the
sanctified old patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by
his minister's impiety !

Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying along
the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest
female member of his church; a most pious and exemplary old
dame ; poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of
reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her
dead friends of long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied
gravestones. Yet all this, which would else have been such
heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her devout old
soul, by religious consolations and the truths of Scripture,
wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty
years. And, since Mr. Dimmesdale had taken her in charge,
the good grandam's chief earthly comfort — which, unless it had
been likewise a heavenly comfort, could have been none at all
— was to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of set purpose,
and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant, heaven-breath-
ing 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. Dimmes-
dale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no
text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as
it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the
immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her
mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down
dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion.
What he really did whisper, the minister could never afterwards
recollect. There was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in his utter-

270 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to the good
widow's comprehension, or which Providence interpreted after a
method of its own. Assuredly, as the minister looked back, he
beheld an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed
like the shine of the celestial city on her face, so wrinkled and
ashy pale.

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

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 271

young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. She ransacked
her conscience, — which was full of harmless little matters, like
her pocket or her work-bag, — and took herself to task, poor
thing! for a thousand imaginary faults; and went about her
household duties with swollen eyelids the next morning.

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

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

At the moment when the Keverend Mr. Dimmesdale thus

272 THE SCARLET LETTER.

communed with himself/ and struck his forehead with his hand,
old Mistress Hibbins, the reputed witch-lady, is said to have
been passing by. She made a very grand appearance; having
on a high head-dress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up
with the famous yellow starch, of which Ann Turner, her espe-
cial friend, had taught her the secret, before this last good lady
had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. Whether
the witch had read the minister's thoughts, or no, she came to
a full stop, ^looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and —
though little given to converse with clergymen — began a 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 gain-
ing any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder potentate
you wot of ! "

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

" Ha, ha, ha ! " cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her
high head-dress at the minister. " Well, well, we must needs

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 273

talk thus in the daytime ! You carry it off like an old hand !
But at midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk
together ! "

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

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

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

He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the edge of
the burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in
his study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter,
without first betraying himself to the world by any of those
strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been con-
tinually impelled while passing through the streets. He entered
the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its
windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the walls,
with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted him

274 THE SCARLET LETTER.

throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town, and
thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here, gone
through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here, striven
to pray ; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies ! There was
the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets
speaking to him, and God's voice through all ! There, on the
table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon,
with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had
ceased to gush out upon the page, two days before. He knew
that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who
had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into
the Election Sermon ! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye
this former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity.
That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the forest ;
a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the
simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter
kind of knowiedge that !

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the
door of the study, and the minister said, " Come in ! " — not
wholly devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit.
And so he did ! It was old Roger Chillingworth that entered.
The minister stood, white and speechless, with one hand on the
Hebrew Scriptures, 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 ; as if the travel through the wilderness had
been too sore for you. Will not my aid be requisite to put
you in heart and strength to preach your Election Sermon ? "

"Nay, I think not so," rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmes-
dale. "My journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder,

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 275

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, Eoger Chillingworth was looking at the min-
ister with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards
his patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the latter was
almost convinced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his
confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with Hester
Prynne. The physician knew then, that, in the minister's regard,
he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest enemy. So
much being known, it would appear natural that a part of it
should be expressed. It is singular, however, how long a time
often passes before words embody things; and with what security
two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may approach
its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus, the
minister felt no apprehension that Eoger Chillingworth would
touch, in express words, upon the real position which they sus-
tained towards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark
way, creep frightfully near the secret.

"Were it not better," said he, "that you use my poor skill
to-night? Verily, dear Sir, we must take pains to make you
strong and vigorous for this occasion of the Election discourse.
The people look for great things from you; apprehending that
another year may come about, and find their pastor gone."

"Yea, to another world," replied the minister, with pious
resignation. " Heaven grant it be a better one ; for, in good
sooth, I hardly think to tarry with my flock through the flitting
seasons of another year! But, touching your medicine, kind
Sir, in my present frame of body, I need it not."

276 THE SCARLET LETTER.

"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 Jerusalem, with the King's
own mint-mark on them ! "

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house,
and requested food, which, being set before him, he ate with
ravenous appetite. Then, flinging the already written pages of
the Election Sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another,
which he wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and
emotion, that he fancied himself inspired; and only wondered
that Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and solemn
music of its oracles through so foul an organ-pipe as he. How-
ever, 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 career-
ing on it; morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the
curtains ; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the
study and laid it right across the minister's bedazzled eyes.
There he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast,
immeasurable tract of written space behind him !

XXI.

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY.

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 metrop-
olis 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 towns-people, showed the marble quietude
which they were accustomed to behold there. It was like a

278 THE SCARLET LETTER.

mask ; or, rather, like the frozen calmness 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 departed out of the world with which she still seemed to
mingle.

It might be, on this one day, that there was an 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 develop-
ment in the countenance and mien. Such a spiritual seer might
have conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of the multitude
through seven miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and
something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for
one last time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in
order to convert what had so long been agony into a kind of
triumph. "Look your last on the scarlet letter and its wearer!"
— the people's victim and life-long bond-slave, as they fancied
her, might say to them. " Yet a little while, and she will be
beyond your reach ! A few hours longer, and the deep, mys-
terious ocean will quench and hide forever the symbol which ye
have caused to burn upon her bosom ! " Nor were it an incon-
sistency too improbable to be assigned to human nature, should
we suppose a feeling of regret in Hester's mind, at the moment
when she was about to win her freedom from the pain which
had been thus deeply incorporated with her being. Might there
not be an irresistible desire to quaff a last, long, breathless
draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which nearly
all her years of womanhood had been perpetually flavored? The
wine of life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be
indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and golden

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 279

beaker ; or 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 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 out-
ward 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 sympathy in the agita-
tions of tho^e connected with them ; always, especially, a sense
of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in
domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem
on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of
her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble
passiveness of Hester's brow.

This effervescence made her flit with a birdlike movement,
rather than wnlk by her mother's side. She broke continually
into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and sometimes piercing music.
When they reached the market-place, she became still more rest-

280 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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.

"Why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "Wherefore have
all the people left their work to-day? Is it a play-day for the
whole world ? See, there is the 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/' answered
Hester.

" He should not nod and smile at me, for all that, — the
black, grim, ugly-eyed old man ! " said Pearl. " He may nod
at thee, if he will; for thou art clad in 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 Hester. "Eor
the Governor and the magistrates are to go by, and the minis-
ters, 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 speak-
ing partly to herself. "In the dark night-time he calls us to

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 281

him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him
on the scaffold yonder. And in the deep forest, where only the
old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with
thee, sitting on a heap of moss ! And he kisses my forehead,
too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off ! But
here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows
us not; nor must we know him ! A strange, sad man is he,
with his hand always over his heart ! "

" Be quiet, Pearl ! Thou understandest not these things,"
said her mother. "Think not now of the 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 centuries — the Puritans compressed what-
ever 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 manners of the age.
The persons now in the market-place of Boston had not been

282 THE SCARLET LETTER.

born to an inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native
Englishmen,, whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the
Elizabethan epoch; a time when the life of England,, viewed as
one great mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnifi-
cent, 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, ban-
quets, pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have been
impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to com-
bine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were,
a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great robe of
state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. There was
some shadow of an attempt of this kind in the mode of cele-
brating the day on which the political year of the colony
commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered splendor, a
colorless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld
in proud old London, — we will not say at a royal coronation,
but at a Lord Mayor's show, — might be traced in the cus-
toms which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the
annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders
of the commonwealth — 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 procession before the people's eye, and thus
impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a govern-
ment so newly constructed.

Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged,
in relaxing the severe and close application to their various
modes of rugged industry, which, at all other times, seemed of

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 283

the same piece and material with their religion. Here, it is
true, were none of the applicances which popular merriment
would so readily have found in the England of Elizabeth's
time, or that of James ; — no rude shows of a theatrical kind ;
no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman,
with an ape dancing to his music ; no juggler, with his tricks
of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multi-
tude with jests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but still effective,
by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sym-
pathy. All such professors of the several branches of jocularity
would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid disci-
pline 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. Wrestling-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 busi-
ness was broken off by the interposition of the town beadle,
who had no idea of permitting the majesty of the law to be
violated by such an abuse of one of its consecrated places.

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

284 THE SCAB-LET LETTER.

offspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their
day,) that they would compare favorably, in point of holiday
keeping, with their descendants, even at so long an interval as
ourselves. Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the
early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so
darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent
years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn
again the forgotten art of gayety.

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its
general tint was the sad 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 attain. Nor, wild
as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature
of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by
some mariners, — a part of the crew of the vessel from the
Spanish Main, — who had come ashore to see the humors of
Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-
blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide, short
trousers were 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 behavior that
were binding on all others ; smoking tobacco under the beadle's
very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 285

shilling; and quaffing, at their pleasure, draughts of wine or
aqua-vitae from pocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the
gaping crowd around them. It 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 desperate deeds on their proper element.
The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a
pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance,
that this very ship's crew, though no unfavorable specimens of
the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase
it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would
have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice.

But the sea, in those old times, heaved, swelled, and foamed,
very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous
wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law.
The buccaneer on the wave might 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 traffic,
or casually associate. Thus, the Puritan elders, in their black
cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not
unbenignantly at the clamor and rude deportment of these jolly
seafaring men ; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion,
when so reputable a citizen as old Eoger Chillingworth, the
physician, was seen to enter the market-place, in close and
familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so
far as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude.
He wore a profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold-lace
on his hat, which was also encircled by a gold chain, and sur-

286 THE SCARLET LETTER.

mounted 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 lands-
man 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 recognize, and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually
the case wherever Hester stood, a small vacant area — a sort of
magic circle — had formed itself about her, into which, though
the people were elbowing one another at a little distance, none
ventured, or felt disposed to intrude. It was a forcible type of
the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated
wearer; partly by her own reserve, and partly by the instinc-
tive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal of her fellow-
creatures. Now, if never before, it answered a good purpose,
by enabling Hester and the seaman to speak together without
risk of being overheard; and so changed was Hester Prynne's
repute before the public, that the matron in town most eminent
for rigid morality could not have held such intercourse with less
result of scandal than herself.

"So, mistress/' said the mariner, "I must bid the steward
make ready one more berth than you bargained for ! No fear
of scurvy or ship-fever, this voyage ! What with the ship's

THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY.

287

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 phy-
sician 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,
— he that is in peril
from these sour old Pu-
ritaii rulers ! "

" They know each
other well, indeed," re-
plied Hester, with a
mien of calmness, though
in the utmost conster-
nation. "They have long dwelt together.1"

Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne.
But, at that instant, she beheld old Eoger Chillingworth himself,
standing in the remotest corner of the market-place, and smiling
on her; a smile which — across the wide and bustling square,
and through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts,
moods, and interests of the crowd — conveyed secret and fearful
meaning.

XXII.

THE PROCESSION.

>EFOKE 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 contiguous street.
It denoted the advance of the procession of
magistrates and citizens, on its way towards the meeting-house ;
where, in compliance with a custom thus early established, and
ever since observed, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver
an Election Sermon.

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow
and stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across
the market-place. Pirst came the music. It comprised a variety
of intruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and
played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object
for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to
the multitude, — that of imparting a higher and more heroic air
to the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at
first clapped her hands, but then lost, for an instant, the rest-

THE PROCESSION.

289

less 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 sunshine 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 materials. Its ranks

were filled with
gentlemen, who
felt the stirrings
of martial im-
pulse, and sought
to establish a

kind of College of Arms, where, as in an association of Knights
Templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful
exercise would teach them, the practices of war. The high
estimation then placed upon the military character might be

290 THE SCARLET LETTER.

seen in the lofty port of each individual member of the company.
Some of them, indeed, by their services in the Low Countries
and on other fields of European warfare, had fairly won their
title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire
array, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nod-
ding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which
no modern display can aspire to equal.

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately
behind the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful
observer's eye. Even in outward demeanor, they showed a stamp
of majesty that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar,
if not absurd. It was an age 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 rever-
ence; which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in
smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force, in the
selection and estimate of public men. The change may be for
good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day,
the English settler on these rude shores — having left king,
nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the
faculty and necessity of reverence were strong in him — bestowed
it on the white hair and venerable brow of age ; on long-tried
integrity ; on solid wisdom and sad-colored experience ; on
endowments of that grave and weighty order which gives the
idea of 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

THE PROCESSION. 291

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 tem-
pestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated were well
represented in the square cast of countenance and large physical
development of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a
demeanor of natural authority was concerned, the mother country
need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an
actual democracy adopted into the House of Peers, or made
the Privy Council of the sovereign.

Next in order to the magistrates came the young and emi-
nently distinguished divine, from whose lips the religious dis-
course of the anniversary was expected. His was the profession,
at that era, in which intellectual ability displayed itself far more
than in political life; for — leaving a higher motive out of the
question — it offered inducements powerful enough, in the almost
worshipping respect of the community, to win the most aspiring
ambition into its service. Even political power — as in the case
of 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, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed
riot of the body. It might be spiritual, and imparted to him
by angelic ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that
potent cordial, which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of
earnest and long-continued thought. Or, perchance, his sensitive

292 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But
where was his mind ? Far and deep in its own region, busying
itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of
stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw
nothing, heard nothing, knew 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, felt a
dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she
knew not; unless that he seemed so remote from her own
sphere, and utterly beyond her reach. One glance of recogni-
tion, she had imagined, must needs pass between them. She
thought of the dim forest, with its little dell of solitude, and
love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand
in hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk with
the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply had they
known each other then ! And was this the man ? She hardly
knew him now ! He, moving proudly past, enveloped, as it
were, in the rich music, with the procession of majestic and
venerable fathers ; he, so unattainable in his worldly position,
and still more so in that far vista of his unsympathizing
thoughts, through which she now beheld him ! Her spirit sank

THE PROCESSION. 293

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 jnight be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer ! — for being 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 feelings, or
herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen
around the minister. While the procession passed, the child
was uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point
of taking flight. When the whole had gone by, she looked up
into Hester's face.

" Mother/' said she, " was that the same minister that kissed
me by the brook ? "

" Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl ! " whispered her mother.
"We must not always talk in the market-place of what hap-
pens to us in the forest."

ftl could not be sure that it was he; so strange he looked,"
continued the child. "Else I would have run to him, and bid
him kiss me now, before all the people ; even as he did yonder
among the dark old trees. What would the minister have said,
mother? Would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and
scowled on me, and bid me 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 ! "

294

THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 towns-people would have ventured on; to begin a conversa-
tion with the wearer of the scarlet letter, in public. It was
Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a
triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and
a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. As
this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her
no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all
the works of 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 Mis-
tress Hibbins was doubled, and caused a general movement
from that part of the market-place in which the two women
stood.

" Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it ! " whis-
pered the old lady, confidentially, to Hester. " 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-member saw I, walking behind the music,
that has danced in the same measure with me, when Somebody
was fiddler, and, it might be, an Indian powwow or a Lapland

THE PROCESSION. 295

wizard changing hands with us! That is but a trifle, when a
woman knows the world. But this minister ! Couldst thou
surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same man that encoun-
tered thee on the forest-path?'"

"Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered Hester
Prynne, feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet
strangely startled and awe-stricken by the confidence with which
she affirmed a personal connection between so many persons (her-
self 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 sunshine;
and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it
openly; so there need be no question about that. But this
-minister! Let me tell thee, in thine ear! When the Black
Man sees one of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy
of owning to the bond as is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he
hath a way of ordering matters so that the mark shall be 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

296 THE SCARLET LETTER.

or another. They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the
Prince of the Air ! Wilt thou ride with me, some fine night,
to see thy father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister
keeps his hand over his heart ! "

Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her,
the weird old gentlewoman took her departure.

By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the
meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmes-
dale were heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feel-
ing kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too
much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her posi-
tion 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 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. Muffled as the
sound was by its passage through the church-walls, Hester
Prynne listened with such intentness, and sympathized so inti-
mately, 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 medium,
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

THE PROCESSION. 297

with, an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet,
majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever in it
an essential character of plaintiveness. A loud or low expres-
sion of anguish, — the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be
conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in
every bosom ! At times this deep strain of pathos was all that
could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid a desolate
silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high and
commanding, — when it gushed irrepressibly upward, — when it
assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church
as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in
the open air, — still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the
purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it ?
The complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty,
telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart
of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness, — at every
moment, — in each accent, — and never in vain ! It was this
profound and continual 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 ;

298 THE SCAELET LETTER.

even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of
dusky foliage, by darting to and fro, half seen and half con-
cealed amid the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an
undulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp and irregular movement. It
indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was
doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because it was played
upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever
Pearl saw anything 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 inclined to pronounce the child
a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and
eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and sparkled
with its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the
face; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own.
Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as charac-
teristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the
swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of
the land ; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl,
as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little
maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes
beneath the prow in the night-time.

One of these seafaring men — the shipmaster, indeed, who had
spoken to Hester Prynne — was so smitten with Pearl's aspect,
that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch
a kiss. Finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a
humming-bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain
that was twisted about it, and threw it to the child. Pearl

THE PROCESSION. 299

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 letter," said
the seaman. " Wilt thou carry her a message from me ? "

" If the message pleases me, I will," answered Pearl.

" Then tell her/' rejoined he, " that I spake again with the
black-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to
bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him.
So let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee.
Wilt thou tell her this, thou witch-baby ? "

" Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air ! "
cried Pearl, with 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 ! "

Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child
returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner
had said. Hester's strong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit
almost sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grirn counte-
nance of an inevitable doom, which — at the moment when a
passage seemed to open for the minister and herself out of
their labyrinth of misery — showed itself, with an unrelenting
smile, right in the midst of their path.

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 amuse-

300 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ment, 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 dis-
tance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force
of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole
gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and
learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their
sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the
Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white
man's curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their
snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps,
that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs
be a personage of high dignity among her people. Lastly
the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-
out subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what
they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter,
and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest,
with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame.
Hester saw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group
of matrons, who had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-
door, seven years ago ; all save one, the youngest and only
compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had since
made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside
the burning letter, it had strangely 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

THE PROCESSION.

301

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
imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that
the same scorching stigma was on them both !

XXIII.

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER.

HE eloquent voice, on which the souls of
the listening audience had been borne aloft
as on the swelling waves of the sea, at
length came to a pause. There was a
momentary silence, profound as what should
follow the utterance of oracles. Then en-
sued a murmur and half-hushed tumult; as if the auditors,
released from the high spell that had transported them into the
region of another's mind, were returning into themselves, writh
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 con-
verted 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

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 303

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 influ-
ence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and
possessing him, and continually lifting him out of the written
discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that
must have been as 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
difference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judg-
ments and ruin on their country, it was his mission to foretell
a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of
the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole dis-
course, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos,
which could not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural
regret of one soon to pass away. Yes ; their minister whom
they so loved — and who so loved them all, that he could not
depart heavenward without a sigh — had the foreboding of
untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them in their
tears ! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last
emphasis to the effect which the preacher had 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

304 THE SCARLET LETTER.

and a splendor, — and had shed down a shower of golden truths
upon them.

Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale —
as to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recog-
nized until they see it far behind them — an epoch of life more
brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than
any which could hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on
the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts
of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of
whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's ear-
liest days, when the professional character was of itself a lofty
pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied,
as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at
the close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne
was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet
letter still burning on her breast!

Now was heard again the clangor of the music, and the
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 peo-
ple, who drew back reverently, on either side, as the Governor
and magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and
all that were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst
of them. When they were fairly in the market-place, their
presence was greeted by a shout. This — though doubtless it
might acquire additional force and volume from the childlike
loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers — was felt to be an

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 305

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

How fared it with him then ? Were there not the brilliant
particles of a halo in the air about his head ? So etherealized by
spirit as he -was, and so apotheosized by worshipping admirers,
did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust
of earth ?

As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward,
all eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was
seen to approach among them. The shout died into a murmur,
as one portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse
of him. How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his. triumph !
The energy — or say, rather, the inspiration which had held
him up, until he should have delivered the sacred message that
brought its own strength along with it from heaven — was
withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully performed its office.
The glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his
cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hope-

306 THE SCARLET LETTER.

lessly 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. Dimmesdale was
left by the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped
forward hastily to offer his support. The minister tremulously,
but decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. He still walked
onward, if that movement could be so described, which rather
resembled the wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's
arms in view, 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 ignominious
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 sum-
moned him onward, — onward to the festival ! — but here he
made a pause.

Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious
eye upon him. He now left his own place in the procession,
and advanced to give assistance; judging, from Mr. Dimmes-
dale's aspect, that he must otherwise inevitably fall. But there
was something in the latter's expression that warned back the
magistrate, although a man not readily obeying the vague inti-
mations that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd, mean-
while, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 307

was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's celestial
strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be
wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes,
waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light
of heaven.

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

" Hester/' said he, " come hither ! Come, my little Pearl ! "

It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them ; but
there was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in
it. The child, with the bird-like motion which was one of her
characteristics, flew to him, 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
Chillingworth thrust himself through the crowd, — or, perhaps,
so dark, disturbed, and evil, was his look, he rose up out of
some nether region, — to snatch back his victim from what he
sought to do ! Be that as it might, the old man rushed for-
ward, and caught the minister by the arm.

" Madman, hold ! what is your purpose ? " whispered he.
" Wave back that woman ! Cast off this child ! All shall be
well ! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor ! I
can yet save you ! Would you bring infamy on your sacred
profession ? "

" Ha, tempter ! Methinks thou art too late ! " answered the
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 earnestness, " in

308 THE SCARLET LETTER.

the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me
grace, at this last moment, to do what — for my own heavy
sin and miserable agony — I withheld myself from doing seven
years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me !
Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which
God hath granted me ! This wretched and wronged old man is
opposing it with all his might ! — with all his own might, and the
fiend's ! Come, Hester, come ! Support me up yonder scaffold ! "

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

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

" Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither ! " answered the
minister.

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

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 309

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

" I know not ! I know not ! " she hurriedly replied. " Bet-
ter ? 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. Eor, 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. Dimmesdale turned to the dig-
nified and venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his
brethren; to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly
appalled, yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that
some deep life-matter — which, if full of sin, was full of anguish
and repentance likewise — was now to be laid open to them.
The sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon the clergy-
man, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood out from
all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eternal
Justice.

"People of New England!" cried he, with a voice that rose
over them, high, solemn, and majestic, — yet had always a tremor
through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a
fathomless depth of remorse and woe, — " ye, that have loved
me ! — ye, that have deemed me holy ! — behold me here, the
one sinner of the world ! At last ! — at last ! — I stand upon the
spot where, seven years since, I should have stood; here, with
this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength where-
with I have crept hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadful
moment, from grovelling down upon my face ! Lo, the scarlet
letter which Hester wears ! Ye have all shuddered at it ! Wher-

310 THE SCARLET LETTER.

ever her walk hath been, — wherever, so miserably burdened, she
may have hoped to find repose, — it hath cast a lurid gleam of
awe and horrible repugnance round about her. But there stood
one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye
have not shuddered ! "

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

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

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band
from before his breast. It was revealed ! But it were irrev-
erent to describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of
the horror-stricken multitude was concentred on the ghastly mir-
acle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 313

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 counte-
nance, out of which the life seemed to have departed.

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

" May God forgive thee ! " said the minister. " 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 sportive with the child, — "dear little
Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in
the forest ! But now thou wilt ? "

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene
of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all
her sympathies ; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek,
they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human
joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be
a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a
messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.

" Hester/' said the clergyman, " farewell ! "

" Shall we not meet again ? " whispered she, bending her face
down close to his. " Shall we not spend our immortal life
together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with
all this woe ! Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright
dying eyes ! Then tell me what thou seest ? "

314 THE SCARLET LETTER.

" Hush, Hester, hush ! " said he, with tremulous solemnity.
" The law we broke ! — the sin here so awfully revealed ! — let
these alone be in thy thoughts ! I fear ! I fear ! It may be,
that, when we forgot our God, — when we violated our rever-
ence each for the other's soul, — it was thenceforth vain to
hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure
reunion. God knows ; and He is merciful ! He hath proved
his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me this
burning torture to bear upon my breast ! By sending yonder
dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-
heat ! By bringing me hither, to die this death of triumphant
ignominy before the people ! Had either of these agonies been
wanting, I had been lost forever ! Praised be his name ! His
will be done ! Farewell ! "

That final word came forth with the ministers expiring breath.
The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice
of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save
in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit.

XXIV.
CONCLUSION.

FTER many days, when time sufficed for the
people to arrange their thoughts in refer-
ence to the foregoing scene, there was more
than one account of what had been wit-
nessed on the scaffold.

Most of the spectators testified to having
seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER
— the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne — imprinted
in the flesh. As regarded its origin, there were various expla-
nations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural.
Some affirmed that the Eeverend 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
Eoger Chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it
to appear, through the agency of magic and poisonous drugs.

316 THE SCARLET LETTER.

Others, again, — and those best able to appreciate the minister'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 outwardly, and at last manifesting Heaven's
dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The
reader may choose among these theories. We have thrown all
the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly,
now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our
own brain; where long meditation has fixed it in very undesir-
able 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 Eeverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied
that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on
a new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying
words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any, the slight-
est connection, on his part, with the guilt for which Hester
Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these
highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was
dying, — conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude
placed him already among saints and angels, — had desired,
by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to
express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of
man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts
for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his
death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty
and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we
are sinners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest
among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to dis-

CONCLUSION. 317

cern 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. Dimmes-
dale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with
which a man's friends — and especially a clergyman's — will some-
times 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 testimony of individuals,
some of whom had known Hester Prynne, while others had
heard the tale from contemporary witnesses, — fully confirms the
view taken in the foregoing pages. Among many morals which
press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we
put only this into a sentence : — "Be true ! Be true ! Be true !
Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait
whereby the worst may be inferred ! "

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took
place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the
appearance and demeanor of the old man known as Roger Chil-
lingworth. 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 completest 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

318 THE SCARLET LETTER.

on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unlmmanized
mortal to betake himself whither his Master would find him
tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But, to all these
shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances, — as well Roger
Chillingworth as his companions, — we would fain be merci-
ful. It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether
hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in
its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy
and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent
for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another;
each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate
hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject.
Philosophically considered, 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 little Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne.

So Pearl — the elf-child, — the demon offspring, as some
people, up to that epoch, persisted in considering her, — became
the richest heiress of her day, in the New World. Not improb-
ably, this circumstance wrought a very material change in the

CONCLUSION. 319

public estimation; 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. 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
H} — yet no tidings of them unquestionably authentic were
received. The story of the scarlet letter grew into a legend.
Its spell, however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful
where the poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by
the sea-shore, where Hester Prynne had dwelt. Near this latter
spot, one afternoon, some children were at play, when they
beheld a tall woman, in a gray robe, approach the cottage-
door. In all those years it had never once been opened ; but
either she unlocked it, or the decaying wood and iron yielded
to her hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impedi-
ments, — and, at all events, went in.

On the threshold she paused, — turned partly round, — for,
perchance, the idea of entering all alone, and all so changed,
the home of so intense a former life, was more dreary and deso-
late 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 woman-
hood. None knew — nor ever learned, with the fulness of per-
fect certainty — whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to

320

THE SCARLET LETTER.

a maiden grave ; or whether her wild, rich nature had been
softened and subdued, and made capable of a woman's gentle
happiness. But, through the remainder of Hester's life, there
were indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the

object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land.
Letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings
unknown to English heraldry. In the cottage there were articles
of comfort and luxury such as Hester never cared to use, but
which only wealth could have purchased, and affection have

CONCLUSION. 321

imagined for her. There were trifles, too, little ornaments,
beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have
been wrought by delicate fingers, at the impulse of a fond heart.
And, once, Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment, with
such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a
public tumult, had any infant, thus apparelled, been shown to
our sober-hued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believed, — and Mr. Sur-
veyor Pue, who made investigations a century later, believed,
— and one of his recent successors in office, moreover, faith-
fully 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 magis-
trate of that iron period would have imposed it, — resumed the
symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never after-
wards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome,
thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life,
the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the
world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something
to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with rever-
ence 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 perplexities, and besought her counsel, as
one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. "Women,

322 THE SCARLET LETTER.

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 happi-
ness. 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 reve-
lation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beau-
tiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the
ethereal medium of joy ; and showing how sacred love should
make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such
an end !

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward
at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new
grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-
ground beside which King's Chapel has since been built. It
was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between,
as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet
one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monu-
ments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab
of slate — as the curious investigator may still discern, and

CONCLUSION. 323

perplex himself with the purport — there appeared the semblance
of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device,, a herald's word-
ing of which might serve for a motto and brief description of
our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only
by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow : —

"ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES."

Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

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