Chương Chương 22 · THE PROCESSION

pass,” said Hester. “For the Governor

and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and all the great

people and good people, with the music and the soldiers marching before

them.”

“And will the minister be there?” asked Pearl. “And will he hold out

both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the

brook-side?”

“He will be there, child,” answered her mother, “but he will not greet

thee today, nor must thou greet him.”

“What a strange, sad man is he!” said the child, as if speaking partly

to herself. “In the dark nighttime he calls us to him, and holds thy

hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! And in

the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of

sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And he

kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it

off! But, here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us

not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand

always over his heart!”

“Be quiet, Pearl—thou understandest not these things,” said her mother.

“Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery

is everybody’s face today. The children have come from their schools,

and the grown people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose

to be happy, for, today, a new man is beginning to rule over them; and

so—as has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first

gathered—they make merry and rejoice: as if a good and golden year were

at length to pass over the poor old world!”

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that

brightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season of the

year—as it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of

two centuries—the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy

they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the

customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared

scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general

affliction.

But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedly

characterized the mood and manners of the age. The persons now in the

market-place of Boston had not been born to an inheritance of Puritanic

gloom. They were native Englishmen, whose fathers had lived in the

sunny richness of the Elizabethan epoch; a time when the life of

England, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been as

stately, magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had

they followed their hereditary taste, the New England settlers would

have illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires, banquets,

pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have been impracticable, in

the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful recreation

with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant

embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such

festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an attempt of this kind in

the mode of celebrating the day on which the political year of the

colony commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered splendour, a

colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in

proud old London—we will not say at a royal coronation, but at a Lord

Mayor’s show—might be traced in the customs which our forefathers

instituted, with reference to the annual installation of magistrates.

The fathers and founders of the commonwealth—the statesman, the priest,

and the soldier—seemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and

majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked upon as

the proper garb of public and social eminence. All came forth to move

in procession before the people’s eye, and thus impart a needed dignity

to the simple framework of a government so newly constructed.

Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in relaxing

the severe and close application to their various modes of rugged

industry, which at all other times, seemed of the same piece and

material with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the

appliances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the

England of Elizabeth’s time, or that of James—no rude shows of a

theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor

gleeman with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks

of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with

jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still effective, by their

appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such

professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been

sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the

general sentiment which give law its vitality. Not the less, however,

the great, honest face of the people smiled—grimly, perhaps, but widely

too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had witnessed, and

shared in, long ago, at the country fairs and on the village-greens of

England; and which it was thought well to keep alive on this new soil,

for the sake of the courage and manliness that were essential in them.

Wrestling matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and

Devonshire, were seen here and there about the market-place; in one

corner, there was a friendly bout at quarterstaff; and—what attracted

most interest of all—on the platform of the pillory, already so noted

in our pages, two masters of defence were commencing an exhibition with

the buckler and broadsword. But, much to the disappointment of the

crowd, this latter business was broken off by the interposition of the

town beadle, who had no idea of permitting the majesty of the law to be

violated by such an abuse of one of its consecrated places.

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being then

in the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring of sires

who had known how to be merry, in their day), that they would compare

favourably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants, even

at so long an interval as ourselves. Their immediate posterity, the

generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of

Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the

subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn

again the forgotten art of gaiety.

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint

was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet

enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their savage

finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and

yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and

stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity,

beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were

these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene.

This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part

of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to

see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes,

with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short

trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a

rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some

instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf,

gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of

animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules

of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the

beadle’s very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a

shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or

aqua-vitæ from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping

crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality

of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the

seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more

desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would

go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little

doubt, for instance, that this very ship’s crew, though no unfavourable

specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should

phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have

perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice.

But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at

its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any

attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might

relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity

and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life,

was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic

or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks,

starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at

the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it

excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen

as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the

market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the

questionable vessel.

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far as

apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. He wore a

profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold lace on his hat, which

was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a feather.

There was a sword at his side and a sword-cut on his forehead, which,

by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display

than hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this

face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without

undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring a

fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. As

regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as pertaining to

the character, as to a fish his glistening scales.

After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristol ship

strolled idly through the market-place; until happening to approach the

spot where Hester Prynne was standing, he appeared to recognise, and

did not hesitate to address her. As was usually the case wherever

Hester stood, a small vacant area—a sort of magic circle—had formed

itself about her, into which, though the people were elbowing one

another at a little distance, none ventured or felt disposed to

intrude. It was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which the

scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own reserve,

and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal

of her fellow-creatures. Now, if never before, it answered a good

purpose by enabling Hester and the seaman to speak together without

risk of being overheard; and so changed was Hester Prynne’s repute

before the public, that the matron in town, most eminent for rigid

morality, could not have held such intercourse with less result of

scandal than herself.

“So, mistress,” said the mariner, “I must bid the steward make ready

one more berth than you bargained for! No fear of scurvy or ship fever

this voyage. What with the ship’s surgeon and this other doctor, our

only danger will be from drug or pill; more by token, as there is a lot

of apothecary’s stuff aboard, which I traded for with a Spanish

vessel.”

“What mean you?” inquired Hester, startled more than she permitted to

appear. “Have you another passenger?”

“Why, know you not,” cried the shipmaster, “that this physician

here—Chillingworth he calls himself—is minded to try my cabin-fare with

you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your

party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of—he that is in

peril from these sour old Puritan rulers.”

“They know each other well, indeed,” replied Hester, with a mien of

calmness, though in the utmost consternation. “They have long dwelt

together.”

Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne. But at

that instant she beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself, standing in

the remotest corner of the market-place and smiling on her; a smile

which—across the wide and bustling square, and through all the talk and

laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of the

crowd—conveyed secret and fearful meaning.

XXII.

Chapter 22. THE PROCESSION

Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and consider

what was practicable to be done in this new and startling aspect of

affairs, the sound of military music was heard approaching along a

contiguous street. It denoted the advance of the procession of

magistrates and citizens on its way towards the meeting-house: where,

in compliance with a custom thus early established, and ever since

observed, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver an Election

Sermon.

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and stately

march, turning a corner, and making its way across the market-place.

First came the music. It comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps

imperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill; but

yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of drum and

clarion addresses itself to the multitude—that of imparting a higher

and more heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye.

Little Pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost for an instant

the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence

throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to be borne

upward like a floating sea-bird on the long heaves and swells of sound.

But she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the

sunshine on the weapons and bright armour of the military company,

which followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the

procession. This body of soldiery—which still sustains a corporate

existence, and marches down from past ages with an ancient and

honourable fame—was composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were

filled with gentlemen who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and

sought to establish a kind of College of Arms, where, as in an

association of Knights Templars, they might learn the science, and, so

far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices of war. The

high estimation then placed upon the military character might be seen

in the lofty port of each individual member of the company. Some of

them, indeed, by their services in the Low Countries and on other

fields of European warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the

name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover, clad in

burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions,

had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal.

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind the

military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer’s eye. Even in

outward demeanour they showed a stamp of majesty that made the

warrior’s haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an age when

what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the

massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a

great deal more. The people possessed by hereditary right the quality

of reverence, which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists

in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force in the

selection and estimate of public men. The change may be for good or

ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day the English

settler on these rude shores—having left king, nobles, and all degrees

of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of

reverence was strong in him—bestowed it on the white hair and venerable

brow of age—on long-tried integrity—on solid wisdom and sad-coloured

experience—on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gave the

idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of

respectability. These primitive statesmen, therefore—Bradstreet,

Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their compeers—who were elevated to

power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often

brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than

activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and in

time of difficulty or peril stood up for the welfare of the state like

a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The traits of character

here indicated were well represented in the square cast of countenance

and large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. So far

as a demeanour of natural authority was concerned, the mother country

need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual

democracy adopted into the House of Peers, or make the Privy Council of

the Sovereign.

Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently

distinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse of the

anniversary was expected. His was the profession at that era in which

intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in political life;

for—leaving a higher motive out of the question—it offered inducements

powerful enough in the almost worshipping respect of the community, to

win the most aspiring ambition into its service. Even political

power—as in the case of Increase Mather—was within the grasp of a

successful priest.

It was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never, since

Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England shore, had he

exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which he

kept his pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step as at

other times; his frame was not bent, nor did his hand rest ominously

upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength

seemed not of the body. It might be spiritual and imparted to him by

angelical ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that potent

cordial which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest and

long-continued thought. Or perchance his sensitive temperament was

invigorated by the loud and piercing music that swelled heavenward,

and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was

his look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the

music. There was his body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed

force. But where was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying

itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of stately

thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw nothing, heard

nothing, knew nothing of what was around him; but the spiritual element

took up the feeble frame and carried it along, unconscious of the

burden, and converting it to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon

intellect, who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of

mighty effort, into which they throw the life of many days and then are

lifeless for as many more.

Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary

influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not, unless

that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her

reach. One glance of recognition she had imagined must needs pass

between them. She thought of the dim forest, with its little dell of

solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where,

sitting hand-in-hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk

with the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply had they known each

other then! And was this the man? She hardly knew him now! He, moving

proudly past, enveloped as it were, in the rich music, with the

procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in

his worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his

unsympathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld him! Her spirit

sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that,

vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the

clergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was there in Hester, that

she could scarcely forgive him—least of all now, when the heavy

footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer,

nearer!—for being able so completely to withdraw himself from their

mutual world—while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold

hands, and found him not.

Pearl either saw and responded to her mother’s feelings, or herself

felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen around the

minister. While the procession passed, the child was uneasy, fluttering

up and down, like a bird on the point of taking flight. When the whole

had gone by, she looked up into Hester’s face—

“Mother,” said she, “was that the same minister that kissed me by the

brook?”

“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!” whispered her mother. “We must not

always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”

“I could not be sure that it was he—so strange he looked,” continued

the child. “Else I would have run to him, and bid him kiss me now,

before all the people, even as he did yonder among the dark old trees.

What would the minister have said, mother? Would he have clapped his

hand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me begone?”

“What should he say, Pearl,” answered Hester, “save that it was no time

to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the market-place? Well

for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him!”

Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr. Dimmesdale,

was expressed by a person whose eccentricities—insanity, as we should

term it—led her to do what few of the townspeople would have ventured

on—to begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarlet letter in

public. It was Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed in great magnificence,

with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a

gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. As this ancient

lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than

her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of necromancy

that were continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and

seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague

among its gorgeous folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester Prynne—kindly

as so many now felt towards the latter—the dread inspired by Mistress

Hibbins had doubled, and caused a general movement from that part of

the market-place in which the two women stood.

“Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it?” whispered the old

lady confidentially to Hester. “Yonder divine man! That saint on earth,

as the people uphold him to be, and as—I must needs say—he really

looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, would think how

little while it is since he went forth out of his study—chewing a

Hebrew text of Scripture in his mouth, I warrant—to take an airing in

the forest! Aha! we know what that means, Hester Prynne! But truly,

forsooth, I find it hard to believe him the same man. Many a church

member saw I, walking behind the music, that has danced in the same

measure with me, when Somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an Indian

powwow or a Lapland wizard changing hands with us! That is but a

trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister. Couldst thou

surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same man that encountered thee

on the forest path?”

“Madam, I know not of what you speak,” answered Hester Prynne, feeling

Mistress Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely startled and

awe-stricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personal

connexion between so many persons (herself among them) and the Evil

One. “It is not for me to talk lightly of a learned and pious minister

of the Word, like the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale.”

“Fie, woman—fie!” cried the old lady, shaking her finger at Hester.

“Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times, and have yet

no skill to judge who else has been there? Yea, though no leaf of the

wild garlands which they wore while they danced be left in their hair!

I know thee, Hester, for I behold the token. We may all see it in the

sunshine! and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it

openly, so there need be no question about that. But this minister! Let

me tell thee in thine ear! When the Black Man sees one of his own

servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters so that the

mark shall be disclosed, in open daylight, to the eyes of all the

world! What is that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always

over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne?”

“What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?” eagerly asked little Pearl. “Hast

thou seen it?”

“No matter, darling!” responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a

profound reverence. “Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another.

They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince of Air! Wilt

thou ride with me some fine night to see thy father? Then thou shalt

know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart!”

Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the weird

old gentlewoman took her departure.

By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the

meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale were

heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept Hester

near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit

another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of

the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon

to her ears, in the shape of an indistinct but varied murmur and flow

of the minister’s very peculiar voice.

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a

listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher

spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and

cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and

emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart,

wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through the

church walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intenseness, and

sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for

her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These, perhaps,

if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and

have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low undertone, as

of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it

rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its

volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn

grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was

for ever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. A loud or low

expression of anguish—the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be

conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every

bosom! At times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard,

and scarcely heard sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the

minister’s voice grew high and commanding—when it gushed irrepressibly

upward—when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the

church as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself

in the open air—still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the

purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The

complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its

secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind;

beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,—at every moment,—in each

accent,—and never in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone

that gave the clergyman his most appropriate power.

During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the

scaffold. If the minister’s voice had not kept her there, there would,

nevertheless, have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence

she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense

within her—too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily

on her mind—that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was

connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity.

Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother’s side, and was playing

at her own will about the market-place. She made the sombre crowd

cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray, even as a bird of bright

plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage by darting to and

fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the clustering

leaves. She had an undulating, but oftentimes a sharp and irregular

movement. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which

today was doubly indefatigable in its tip-toe dance, because it was

played upon and vibrated with her mother’s disquietude. Whenever Pearl

saw anything to excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she

flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man or thing

as her own property, so far as she desired it, but without yielding the

minutest degree of control over her motions in requital. The Puritans

looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less inclined to

pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of

beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and

sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the

face, and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence,

with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she

flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild

men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and they gazed

wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam had

taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the

sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in the night-time.

One of these seafaring men the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to

Hester Prynne was so smitten with Pearl’s aspect, that he attempted to

lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it as

impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he took

from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to

the child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist with

such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her, and

it was difficult to imagine her without it.

“Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter,” said the seaman,

“Wilt thou carry her a message from me?”

“If the message pleases me, I will,” answered Pearl.

“Then tell her,” rejoined he, “that I spake again with the

black-a-visaged, hump shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring

his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thy

mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt thou tell her

this, thou witch-baby?”

“Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!” cried

Pearl, with a naughty smile. “If thou callest me that ill-name, I shall

tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!”

Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returned to

her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester’s

strong, calm steadfastly-enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on

beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which

at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister and

herself out of their labyrinth of misery—showed itself with an

unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path.

With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the

shipmaster’s intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to

another trial. There were many people present from the country round

about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had

been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumours, but who

had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after exhausting

other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynne with rude

and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could

not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. At that distance

they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the

repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of sailors,

likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport

of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and

desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were affected

by a sort of cold shadow of the white man’s curiosity and, gliding

through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on Hester’s

bosom, conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly

embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her

people. Lastly, the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this

worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they

saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented Hester

Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool,

well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and recognized

the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited her

forthcoming from the prison-door seven years ago; all save one, the

youngest and only compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had

since made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the

burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and

excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than

at any time since the first day she put it on.

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning

cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for ever, the

admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an

audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The

sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in the

market-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to

surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!

XXIII.