C 18 A
Arthur 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 intricate, and
shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were
now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and
heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed
as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had
looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and
whatever priests or legislators had established; criticising all with
hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical
band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the
church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her
free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other
women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been
her teachersÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯stern and wild onesÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 fearfully
transgressed one of the most sacred of them. But this had been a
sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. Since that
wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal and minuteness,
not his actsÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯for those it was easy to arrangeÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯but each breath of
emotion, and his every thought. At the head of the social system, as
the clergymen of that day stood, he was only the more trammelled
by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices. As a priest,
the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who
had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully
sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been
supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at
all.
Thus we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the whole
seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a
preparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! Were such a
man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his
crime? None; unless it avail him somewhat that he was broker, down
by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and
confused by the very remorse which harrowed it; that, between
fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as a hypocrite,
conscience might find it hard to strike the balance; that it was human
to avoid the peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable
machinations of an enemy; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his
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, would yet endure, for the sake of that
earnest of Heaven’s mercy. But nowÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯since I am irrevocably doomed
Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯wherefore should I not snatch the solace allowed to the
condemned culprit before his execution? Or, if this be the path to a
better life, as Hester would persuade me, I surely give up no fairer
prospect by pursuing it! Neither can I any longer live without her
companionship; so powerful is she to sustainÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯so tender to soothe!
O Thou to whom I dare not lift mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me?”
“Thou wilt go!” said Hester calmly, as he met her glance.
The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its
flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the
exhilarating effectÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon
of his own heartÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an
unredeemed, unchristianised, lawless region His spirit rose, as it
were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than
throughout all the misery which had kept him grovelling on the earth.
Of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of
the devotional in his mood.
“Do I feel joy again?” cried he, wondering at himself. “Methought
the germ of it was dead in me! Oh, Hester, thou art my better angel! I
seem to have flung myselfÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened
Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯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 if 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 further flight, it would have fallen into
the water, and have give, 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.
The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the
burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite
relief! She had not known the weight until she felt the 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 womanhood. A crimson flush was
glowing on her cheek, that had been long so pale. Her sex, her
youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what
men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her
maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic
circle of this hour. And, as if 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 mystery of joy.
Such was the sympathy of NatureÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯that wild, heathen Nature of
the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher
truthÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 a thrill of another joy.
“Thou must know Pearl!” said she. “Our little Pearl! Thou hast
seen herÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯yes, I know it!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯but thou wilt see her now with other eyes.
She is a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love
her dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her!”
“Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?” asked the
minister, somewhat uneasily. “I have long shrunk from children,
because they often show a distrustÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯a backwardness to be familiar
with me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!”
“Ah, that was sad!” answered the mother. “But she will love thee
dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her. Pearl! Pearl!”
“I see the child,” observed the minister. “Yonder she is, standing in
a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other side of the brook.
So thou thinkest the child will love me?”
Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible at some
distance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelled
vision in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of
boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or
distinctÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯now like a real child, now like a child’s spiritÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯as the
splendour 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 forestÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯stern as it
showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world
into its bosomÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 flavour. 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
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 merrimentÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯for the squirrel is such a choleric and humorous
little personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moodsÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 saidÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯but here the
tale has surely lapsed into the improbableÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 recognised a kindred wilderness 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 Bowers appeared to
know it, and one and another whispered as she passed, “Adorn
thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!” Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯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.
SlowlyÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯for she saw the clergyman!
