บทที่ บทที่ 2 · THE MARKET-PLACE

. 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

or vagrant Indian, whom the white man’s firewater 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 demeanour on

the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion

and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so

thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and 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 had transmitted to her child

a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter

physical frame, if not 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.

Madame 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

acquaintance only with the grey 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 townspeople

and neighbours. 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 splendour 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

ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those

days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the

delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now recognised

as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike,

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 some thing 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 Madame 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!”

“Oh, peace, neighbours—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, Madame

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

schoolboys, 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 demeanour 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 grey 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 bold 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 lamp-light 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, grey houses, the huge cathedrals,

and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of

a continental city; where new life had awaited her, still in connexion

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 townspeople 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.