XXII

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, 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. The shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armour of the military company followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the procession. This body of soldiery 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.

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. 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. 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.

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; 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. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the music. 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 knew nothing of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the feeble frame and carried it along.

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 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, their sad and passionate talk. 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 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.

“Mother,” said she, “was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook? 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 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 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! Who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, would think how little while it is since he went 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, 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! 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 awe-stricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personal connexion between so many persons (herself among) and the Evil One.

“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. Thou wearest it openly, so there need be no question about that. But this minister! 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 shrilly 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.

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. 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 that touched a sensibility in every bosom! Even when the minister’s voice grew high and commanding if the auditor listened intently, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness, – at every moment, – 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. 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. 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. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the face, and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence she flew into the midst of a group of mariners and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid.

“Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter,” said the shipmaster, who had spoken to Hester Prynne. “Wilt thou carry her a message from me? Tell her 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 marketplace, the child returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester’s strong, steadfastly-enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom.

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. 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 marketplace! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!