XVI

A Forest Walk

Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of pain or consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For several days she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing him in some of the meditative walks. There would have been no scandal, indeed, had she visited him in his own study. But, partly that she dreaded the 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, Hester never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky.

At last, she learnt that he had gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian converts. Therefore, the next day, Hester took little Pearl and set forth.

The road was no other than a foot-path. 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 by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. The sportive sunlight 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 runs away and hides, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. 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? Will not it come of its own accord when I am a woman grown?”

“Run away, child, 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 splendor, until her mother had drawn almost nigh enough to step into the magic circle too.

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

“I can stretch out my hand and grasp some of it,” answered Hester, smiling.

As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge from the bright expression on Pearl’s features, the child had absorbed it into herself. There was no other attribute that so much impressed her in Pearl’s nature, as this never failing vivacity of spirits. 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, “we will sit down a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves.”

“I am not aweary, mother. But you may, if you will tell me a story.”

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

“Oh, a story about the Black Man,” answered Pearl. “How he haunts this forest, and carries a big book, with iron clasps; and offers his book 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?” asked mother, recognising a common superstition of the period.

“It was the old dame at the house where you watched last night. She fancied me asleep while she was talking of it. She said that a thousand people had met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on them. 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?”

“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 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. 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. As it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, soothing, but melancholy.

“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!”

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. 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, 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. I would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes.”

“Is it the Black Man? Wilt thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him?”

“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 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 another time,” cried Hester Prynne.

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, when he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest. There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, but would have been glad to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. To Hester’s eye, Mr. Dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of vivacious suffering, except that, as Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart.

XVII

The Pastor and His Parishioner

Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before Hester could gather voice to attract his observation.

“Arthur Dimmesdale!” she said, faintly at first, then louder, but hoarsely – “Arthur Dimmesdale!”

“Who speaks?” answered the minister. Gathering himself quickly up, like a man taken by surprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, so little relieved from the gray twilight that he knew not if it were a woman or a shadow.

He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter.

“Hester! Hester Prynne!», said he; “is it thou? Art thou in life?”

“Even so,” she answered. “In such life as has been mine these seven years past! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou yet live?”

It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another. So strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their state of disembodied beings. They were awe-stricken likewise at themselves, because the crisis revealed to each heart its history and experience, as life never does, except at such breathless epochs. It was with fear, and, as if, by a reluctant necessity, that Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as it was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. They now felt themselves inhabitants of the same sphere.

Without a word more spoken they glided back into the shadow of the woods and sat down on the heap of moss. When they found voice to speak, it was only to utter remarks and inquiries, such as any two acquaintances might have made, about the gloomy sky and, next, the health of each other. Thus they went onward, step by step, into the themes brooding deepest in their hearts. After a while, the minister fixed his eyes on Hester’s.

“Hester,” said he, “hast thou found peace?”

She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.

“Hast thou?” she asked.

“None – nothing but despair!” he answered. “What else could I look for, being what I am, leading such a life? Were I an atheist I might have found peace long ere now. Nay, I never should have lost it. But, as matters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all of God’s gifts that were the choicest, have become the ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, I am most miserable!”

“The people reverence thee,” said Hester. “And surely thou workest good among them! Doth this bring thee no comfort?”

“More misery, Hester! As concerns the good which I may appear to do, what can a ruined soul like mine effect towards the redemption of other souls? And as for the people’s reverence, I must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from it and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolize.”

“You wrong yourself in this,” said Hester gently. “You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy than it seems in people’s eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? Should it not bring you peace?”

“No, Hester! There is no substance in it! It can do nothing for me! Of penance, I have had enough! Of penitence, there has been none! Else, I should have thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly! Mine burns in secret! Had I one friend – or were it my worst enemy! – to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep itself alive. But now, it is all falsehood!”

His words here offered her the very point of circumstances in which to interpose what she came to say. She conquered her fears, and spoke:

“Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for,” said she, “with whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it! Thou hast also long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under the same roof!”

“What sayest thou?” cried he. “An enemy! Under mine own roof! What mean you?”

Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for so many years, at the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. There had been a period when Hester was less alive to this consideration; she left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom. But since the night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. The continual presence of Roger Chillingworth had been turned to a cruel purpose. The sufferer’s conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could be insanity, and, hereafter, eternal alienation from the Good and True.

Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once, nay, still so passionately loved! Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman’s good name, and death itself, would have been preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to choose.

“Oh, Arthur!” cried she, “forgive me! In all things else, I have striven to be true! Save when thy life, thy fame were put in question, I consented to a deception! But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see what I would say? That old man! He whom they call Roger Chillingworth! He was my husband!”

The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of passion, which was, in fact, the portion of him which the devil claimed, and through which sought to win the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been so much enfeebled, that even its lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down on the ground, and buried his face in his hands.

“I might have known it,” murmured he. “I did know it! Was not the secret told me, in the natural recoil of my heart at the first sight of him? Oh, Hester Prynne, thou little knowest all the horror of this! The shame of this exposure of a guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! Woman, thou art accountable for this! I cannot forgive thee!”

“Thou shalt forgive me!” cried Hester, flinging beside him. “Let God punish!”

With desperate tenderness she threw her arms around him, and pressed his head against her bosom, little caring though his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. He would have released himself, but strove in vain to do so. She would not set him free, lest he should look her sternly in the face. All the world had frowned on her, heaven, likewise, and she had not died. But the frown of this weak, sinful man was what Hester could not bear!

“Wilt thou yet forgive me?” she repeated. “Wilt thou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?”

“I do forgive you, Hester,” replied the minister at length, with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. “May God forgive us both. We are not the worst sinners in the world. That old man’s revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!”

“Never, never!” whispered she. “What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other. Hast thou forgotten it?”

“Hush, Hester!” said he, rising from the ground. “No; I have not forgotten!”

They sat down again, side by side, hand in hand, on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them a gloomier hour; and yet it unclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim another, and, after all, another moment.

How dreary looked the forest-track that led backward to the settlement, where Hester must take up again the burden of her ignominy and the minister the hollow mockery of his good name! So they lingered an instant longer. Here seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for one moment true!

He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.

“Hester!” cried he, “Roger Chillingworth knows your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he continue to keep secret? What will now be the course of his revenge?”

“There is a strange secrecy in his nature,” replied Hester, thoughtfully; “and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. He will doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark passion.”

“And I! How am I to live longer, breathing the same air with this deadly enemy? Hester, thou art strong! Resolve for me!”

“Thou must dwell no longer with this man,” said Hester, slowly and firmly. “Thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!”

“But how to avoid it? Shall I lie down on these withered leaves and die at once?”

“Alas! what a ruin has befallen thee!” said Hester, with the tears gushing into her eyes. “Wilt thou die for very weakness? There is no other cause!”

“The judgment of God is on me. It is too mighty for me to struggle with!”

“Heaven would show mercy, hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it. Is the world, then, so narrow?” exclaimed Hester Prynne, fixing her deep eyes on the minister’s, and instinctively exercising a magnetic power over his spirit so shattered and subdued. “Whither leads yonder forest-track? Backward to the settlement, but, onward, too! Deeper it goes into the wilderness. There thou art free! Is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of Roger Chillingworth?”

“Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen leaves!” replied the minister, with a sad smile.

“Then there is the broad pathway of the sea! It brought thee hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee back in our native land, in some remote rural village, or in vast London thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge! And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long already!”

“It cannot be!” answered the minister, listening as if he were called upon to realise a dream. “I am powerless to go. Wretched and sinful, I have had no other thought than to drag on my existence in the sphere where Providence placed me. Lost as my own soul is, I still do what I may for other human souls! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonour, when his watch shall come to an end!”

“Thou art crushed under this seven years’ weight of misery,” replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her energy. “But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! Begin all anew! The future is full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed, good to be done! Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be the teacher and apostle of the red men, or be a scholar and a sage among the wisest of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why tarry one other day in the torments that made thee feeble to will, to do, to repent? Up, and away!”

“Oh, Hester!” cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light flashed up and died away, “thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! There is not the strength left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world alone!”

It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his reach. He repeated – “Alone, Hester!”

“Thou shall not go alone!” answered she, in a deep whisper. Then, all was spoken!