第 十六 章 · A FOREST WALK

. A FOREST WALK

Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr.

Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences,

the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For

several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing

him in some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be in the

habit of taking along the shores of the Peninsula, or on the wooded

hills of the neighbouring country. There would have been no scandal,

indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman’s good fame,

had she visited him in his own study, where many a penitent, ere now,

had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by the

scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised

interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her conscious

heart imparted suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly

that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to

breathe in, while they talked together—for all these reasons Hester

never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the

open sky.

At last, while attending a sick chamber, whither the Rev. Mr.

Dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt that he had

gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian

converts. He would probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon

of the morrow. Betimes, therefore, the next day, Hester took little

Pearl—who was necessarily the companion of all her mother’s

expeditions, however inconvenient her presence—and set forth.

The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the Peninsula to the

mainland, was no other than a footpath. It straggled onward into the

mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and

stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect

glimpses of the sky above, that, to Hester’s mind, it imaged not amiss

the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. The day

was chill and sombre. Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly

stirred, however, by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine

might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This

flitting cheerfulness was always at the further extremity of some long

vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight—feebly sportive, at

best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scene—withdrew

itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the

drearier, because they had hoped to find them bright.

“Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs

away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.

Now, see! There it is, playing a good way off. Stand you here, and let

me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me—for I

wear nothing on my bosom yet!”

“Nor ever will, my child, I hope,” said Hester.

“And why not, mother?” asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the

beginning of her race. “Will not it come of its own accord when I am a

woman grown?”

“Run away, child,” answered her mother, “and catch the sunshine. It

will soon be gone.”

Pearl set forth at a great pace, and as Hester smiled to perceive, did

actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the midst of it, all

brightened by its splendour, and scintillating with the vivacity

excited by rapid motion. The light lingered about the lonely child, as

if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawn almost nigh

enough to step into the magic circle too.

“It will go now,” said Pearl, shaking her head.

“See!” answered Hester, smiling; “now I can stretch out my hand and

grasp some of it.”

As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge from the

bright expression that was dancing on Pearl’s features, her mother

could have fancied that the child had absorbed it into herself, and

would give it forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they should

plunge into some gloomier shade. There was no other attribute that so

much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigour in

Pearl’s nature, as this never failing vivacity of spirits: she had not

the disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter

days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors.

Perhaps this, too, was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy

with which Hester had fought against her sorrows before Pearl’s birth.

It was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to

the child’s character. She wanted—what some people want throughout

life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanise and make

her capable of sympathy. But there was time enough yet for little

Pearl.

“Come, my child!” said Hester, looking about her from the spot where

Pearl had stood still in the sunshine—“we will sit down a little way

within the wood, and rest ourselves.”

“I am not aweary, mother,” replied the little girl. “But you may sit

down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile.”

“A story, child!” said Hester. “And about what?”

“Oh, a story about the Black Man,” answered Pearl, taking hold of her

mother’s gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into

her face.

“How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big, heavy

book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and

an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they

are to write their names with their own blood; and then he sets his

mark on their bosoms. Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother?”

“And who told you this story, Pearl,” asked her mother, recognising a

common superstition of the period.

“It was the old dame in the chimney corner, at the house where you

watched last night,” said the child. “But she fancied me asleep while

she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and a thousand people

had met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on

them. And that ugly tempered lady, old Mistress Hibbins, was one. And,

mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man’s

mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him

at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And dost thou

go to meet him in the nighttime?”

“Didst thou ever awake and find thy mother gone?” asked Hester.

“Not that I remember,” said the child. “If thou fearest to leave me in

our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I would very gladly

go! But, mother, tell me now! Is there such a Black Man? And didst thou

ever meet him? And is this his mark?”

“Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?” asked her mother.

“Yes, if thou tellest me all,” answered Pearl.

“Once in my life I met the Black Man!” said her mother. “This scarlet

letter is his mark!”

Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to secure

themselves from the observation of any casual passenger along the

forest track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss; which at

some epoch of the preceding century, had been a gigantic pine, with its

roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and its head aloft in the upper

atmosphere. It was a little dell where they had seated themselves, with

a leaf-strewn bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing

through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees

impending over it had flung down great branches from time to time,

which choked up the current, and compelled it to form eddies and black

depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier passages

there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand.

Letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could

catch the reflected light from its water, at some short distance within

the forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of

tree-trunks and underbrush, and here and there a huge rock covered over

with gray lichens. All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed

intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing,

perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper

tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror

its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed,

as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet,

soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was

spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry

among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue.

“Oh, brook! Oh, foolish and tiresome little brook!” cried Pearl, after

listening awhile to its talk, “Why art thou so sad? Pluck up a spirit,

and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!”

But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest

trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help

talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl

resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a

well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as

heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and

sparkled, and prattled airily along her course.

“What does this sad little brook say, mother?” inquired she.

“If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it,”

answered her mother, “even as it is telling me of mine. But now, Pearl,

I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of one putting aside

the branches. I would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to

speak with him that comes yonder.”

“Is it the Black Man?” asked Pearl.

“Wilt thou go and play, child?” repeated her mother, “But do not stray

far into the wood. And take heed that thou come at my first call.”

“Yes, mother,” answered Pearl, “But if it be the Black Man, wilt thou

not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book under his

arm?”

“Go, silly child!” said her mother impatiently. “It is no Black Man!

Thou canst see him now, through the trees. It is the minister!”

“And so it is!” said the child. “And, mother, he has his hand over his

heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the

Black Man set his mark in that place? But why does he not wear it

outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?”

“Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another time,”

cried Hester Prynne. “But do not stray far. Keep where thou canst hear

the babble of the brook.”

The child went singing away, following up the current of the brook, and

striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with its melancholy voice.

But the little stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling

its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had

happened—or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet

to happen—within the verge of the dismal forest. So Pearl, who had

enough of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all

acquaintance with this repining brook. She set herself, therefore, to

gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbines that

she found growing in the crevice of a high rock.

When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made a step or two

towards the track that led through the forest, but still remained under

the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister advancing along

the path entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the

wayside. He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless

despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterised him

in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he

deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in this

intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a

heavy trial to the spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait, as if

he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do

so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling

himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for

evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually

accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether

there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be

wished for or avoided.

To Hester’s eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of

positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little Pearl had

remarked, he kept his hand over his heart.

XVII.