The Scarlet Letter

HE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER.

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

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

“Who speaks?” answered the minister.

Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by
surprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses.
Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, he
indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments so
sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which the
clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he
knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be, that his
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 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
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 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 of heaven
were beaming from it!—must see my flock hungry for the truth, and
listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking!—and
then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolize?
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast
between what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it!”

“You wrong yourself in this,” said Hester, gently. “You have deeply
and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you, in the days long
past. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems
in people’s eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and
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 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 Chillingworth,—the secret poison
of his malignity, infecting all the air about him,—and his authorized
interference, as a physician, with the minister’s physical and
spiritual infirmities,—that these bad opportunities had been turned
to a cruel purpose. By means of them, the sufferer’s conscience had
been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to
cure by 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 Dimmesdale’s feet.

“O Arthur,” cried she, “forgive me! In all things else, I have striven
to be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast, and
did hold fast, through all extremity; save when thy good,—thy
life,—thy fame,—were put in question! Then I consented to a
deception. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the
other side! Dost thou not see what I would say? That old man!—the
physician!—he whom they call Roger Chillingworth!—he was my
husband!”

[Illustration: “Wilt thou yet forgive me?”]

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

“I might have known it,” murmured he. “I did know it! Was not the
secret told me, in the natural 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! Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this!
I cannot forgive thee!”

“Thou shalt forgive me!” cried Hester, flinging herself on the fallen
leaves beside him. “Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!”

With sudden and desperate tenderness, she threw her arms around him,
and pressed his head against her bosom; little caring though his cheek
rested on the scarlet letter. He would have released himself, but
strove in vain to do so. Hester would not set him free, lest he should
look her sternly in the face. All the world had frowned on her,—for
seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely woman,—and still she
bore it all, nor ever once turned away her firm, sad eyes. Heaven,
likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had not died. But the frown of
this pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what 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 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!

He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.

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

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

“And I!—how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with this
deadly enemy?” exclaimed Arthur 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 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
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 than to drag on my earthly
existence in the sphere where Providence hath placed me. Lost as my
own soul is, I would still do what I may for other human souls! I dare
not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is
death and dishonor, when his dreary watch shall come to an end!”

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

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

He repeated the word.

“Alone, Hester!”

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

Then, all was spoken!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XVIII.