I.

THE PRISON-DOOR.

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray,

steeple-crowned hats, intermixed 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 studded with iron

spikes.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and

happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it

among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the

virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a

prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that

the forefathers 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

sepulchres 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 overgrown 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 history;

but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, 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 directly on the threshold of our

narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal,

we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and

present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some

sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the

darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

II.

THE MARKET-PLACE.

The 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 England, 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 anticipated execution of some noted

culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed

the verdict of public sentiment. 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 Antinomian, a

Quaker, or other heterodox religionist was to be scourged out of the

town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom 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

solemnity 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 punishment 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 impropriety 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,

throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother has

transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer

beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of less

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'll 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 Dimmesdale, 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,-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."

"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 Scripture 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 wholesome 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, heretofore, 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 impulse to clasp the

infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly

affection, as that she might thereby conceal 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,

in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and

fantastic flourishes 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, evanescent, 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 ignominy 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,-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

humanity, 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 magistrates, 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!"

"O, peace, neighbors, peace!" whispered their youngest companion; "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 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 ignominious 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 journey 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 citizenship, 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 embodied 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 face 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 contrast, 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-creature, 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, without a murmur at its severity,

but had none of the heartlessness 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 infliction 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 intolerable 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 multitude,-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.

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 immaterial, 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 whatever

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. Standing 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 Elizabethan 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

gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own

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 letter 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.

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!"

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.

IV.

THE INTERVIEW.

After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in a

state of nervous excitement 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 impossible

to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment,

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 sustenance 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.

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 was announced as Roger 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! Verily, 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 relation 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 from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical

preparations, 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?" whispered 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.

"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! 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 purposes 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 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, nor feigned any."

"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, Hester, 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 unreservedly 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 the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek this

man, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in

alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious 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 garment, 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 contrive 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!"

"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 land 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 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 announce 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 Roger 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!"

V.

HESTER AT HER NEEDLE.

Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door

was thrown 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