The Scarlet Letter

HE RECOGNITION.

From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and
universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length
relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which
irresistibly took possession of her thoughts. An Indian, in his native
garb, was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequent
visitors of the English settlements, that one of them would have
attracted any notice from Hester Prynne, at such a time; much less
would he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. By
the Indian’s side, and evidently sustaining a companionship with him,
stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage
costume.

He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, could
hardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in his
features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it
could not fail to mould the physical to itself, and become manifest by
unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of
his heterogeneous garb, he had 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
instantaneously 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,” answered the
townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage
companion, “else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester
Prynne, and her evil doings. She hath raised a great 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 captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tell
me of Hester Prynne’s,—have I her name rightly?—of this woman’s
offences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?”

“Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your
troubles and sojourn in the 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 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 townsman. “Madam
Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid
their heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one stands
looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that
God sees him.”

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

“It behooves him well, if he be still in life,” 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.

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, mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and
lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast;
with the sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth
as to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen
only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a
home, or beneath a matronly veil, at church. 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 withdrawn from her. Involved in these
thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her, until it had repeated
her name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone, 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 public observances in those days. Here,
to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Governor Bellingham
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 his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a
gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his
wrinkles. He was not ill fitted to be the head and representative of a
community, which owed its origin and progress, and its present state
of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and
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
disentangling 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 Boston, a great scholar,
like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of
kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, had been less
carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth,
rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him. There he
stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while
his gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were
winking, like those of Hester’s infant, in the unadulterated
sunshine. He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see
prefixed to old 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 grievous fall. But
he opposes to me (with a young man’s over-softness, albeit wise beyond
his years), that it were wronging the very nature of woman to force
her to lay open her heart’s secrets in such broad daylight, and in
presence of so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to convince him,
the shame lay in the commission 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 occupants of the
balcony; and Governor Bellingham gave expression to its purport,
speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered with respect
towards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed.

“Good Master Dimmesdale,” said he, “the responsibility of this woman’s
soul lies greatly with you. It behooves you, therefore, to exhort her
to repentance, and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof.”

The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale; a young clergyman, who had come from one
of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the
age into our wild forest-land. His eloquence and religious fervor had
already given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. He was a
person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending
brow, large brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he
forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both
nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint.
Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments,
there was an air about this young minister,—an 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 Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor
had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in
the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman’s soul, so sacred
even in its pollution. The trying nature of his position drove the
blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous.

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

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

“Hester Prynne,” said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down
steadfastly into her eyes, “thou 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 sympathy. 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 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 second 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. Wilson, but into
the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. “It is too deeply
branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might 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 woman’s heart! She will not speak!”

[Illustration: “She was led back to Prison”]

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit’s mind, the
elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion,
addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches,
but with continual reference to the ignominious letter. So forcibly
did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his
periods were rolling over the people’s heads, that it assumed new
terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue
from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, 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 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.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

IV.