C 17
Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before Hester
Prynne could gather voice enough to attract his observation. At
length she succeeded.
“Arthur Dimmesdale!” she said, faintly at first, then louder, but
hoarselyÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯”Arthur Dimmesdale!”
“Who speaks?” answered the minister. Gathering himself quickly
up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood to
which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes
anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form
under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little relieved
from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy
foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were
a woman or a shadow. It may be that his 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.
“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 tremulously, and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant
necessity, that Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death,
and touched the chill hand of Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as it
was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. They now felt
themselves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere.
Without a word more spokenÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯neither he nor she assuming the
guidance, but with an unexpressed consentÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 acquaintances might have
made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and, next, the
health of each. Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step,
into the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts. So long
estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed something slight
and casual to run before and throw open the doors of intercourse, so
that their real thoughts might be led across the threshold.
After awhile, 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.
“NoneÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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
atheistÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯a man devoid of conscienceÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯a wretch with coarse and
brutal instinctsÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯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?Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯or a polluted soul towards their purification? And as for the
people’s reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred!
Canst thou deem it, Hester, a consolation that I must stand up in my
pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the
light of heaven were beaming from it!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯must see my flock hungry for
the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were
speaking!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯and then look inward, and discern the black reality of
what they idolise? I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart,
at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And Satan
laughs at it!”
“You wrong yourself in this,” said Hester gently.
“You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you
in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth,
than it seems in people’s eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence
thus sealed and witnessed by good works? And wherefore should it
not bring you peace?”
“No, HesterÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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
recognises me for what I am! Had I one friendÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯or were it my worst
enemy!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I
could daily betake myself, and 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!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯all emptiness!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯all
death!”
Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. Yet,
uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he did, his
words here offered her the very point of circumstances in which to
interpose what she came to say. She conquered her fears, and
spoke:
“Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for,” said she, “with
whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it!” Again
she hesitated, but brought out the words with an effort “Thou hast
long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under the same
roof!”
The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and clutching
at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his bosom.
“Ha! What sayest thou?” cried he. “An enemy! And under mine
own roof! What mean you?”
Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which
she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for
so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one
whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. The very
contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might
conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a
being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had been a period
when Hester was less alive to this 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
ChillingworthÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air
about himÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯and his authorised interference, as a physician, with the
minister’s physical and spiritual infirmitiesÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯that these bad
opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of them,
the sufferer’s conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the
tendency of which was, not to cure by 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, onceÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯nay,
why should we not speak it?Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯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 laid down on the forest leaves, and
died there, at Arthur Dimmesdale’s feet.
“Oh, 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 goodÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯
thy lifeÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯thy fameÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯were put in question! Then I consented to a
deception. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on
the other side! Dost thou not see what I would say? That old man!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯
the physician!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯he whom they call Roger Chillingworth!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯he was my
husband!”
The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of
passion, whichÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯intermixed in more shapes than one with his higher,
purer, softer qualitiesÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯was, in fact, the portion of him which the devil
claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest. Never was
there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Hester now encountered. For
the brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his
character had been so much enfeebled by suffering, that even its
lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle.
He sank down on the ground, and buried his face in his hands.
“I might have known it,” murmured heÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯”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? Oh, Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the
horror of this thing! And the shame!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯the indelicacy!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯the horrible
ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye
that would gloat over it! Woman, woman, thou art accountable for
this!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯I cannot forgive thee!”
“Thou shalt forgive me!” cried Hester, flinging herself on the fallen
leaves beside him. “Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!”
With sudden and desperate tenderness she threw her arms
around him, and pressed his head against her bosom, little caring
though his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. He would have
released himself, but strove in vain to do so. Hester would not set
him free, lest he should look her sternly in the face. All the world had
frowned on herÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯for seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely
womanÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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. “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 alongÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯and yet it
unclosed 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 forbode 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!
He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.
“Hester!” cried he, “here is a new horror! Roger Chillingworth
knows your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he continue,
then, to keep our secret? What will now be the course of his
revenge?”
“There is a strange secrecy in his nature,” replied Hester,
thoughtfully; “and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of
his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. He will
doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark passion.”
“And I! Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯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 heartÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 weakness? There is no
other cause!”
“The judgment of God is on me,” answered the conscience-
stricken priest. “It is too mighty for me to struggle with!”
“Heaven would show mercy,” rejoined Hester, “hadst thou but the
strength to take advantage of it. ”
“Be thou strong for me!” answered he. “Advise me what to do.”
“Is the world, then, so narrow?” exclaimed Hester Prynne, fixing
her deep eyes on the minister’s, and instinctively exercising 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
LondonÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯or, surely, in Germany, in France, in pleasant ItalyÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 realise a dream. “I am powerless to go. Wretched and sinful
as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on my earthly
existence in the sphere where Providence hath placed me. Lost as
my own soul is, I would still do what I may for other human souls! I
dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure
reward is death and dishonour, 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!”
“Oh, Hester!” cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light,
kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, “thou tellest of
running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I
must die here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture
into the wide, strange, difficult world alone!”
It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit.
He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his
reach.
He repeated the wordÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯”Alone, Hester!”
“Thou shall not go alone!” answered she, in a deep whisper. Then,
all was spoken!
