 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 13 Another View of Hester. In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It groveled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy which disease alone could have given them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others, she could readily infer that besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear and was still operating on Mr. Dimmesdale's well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor fallen man had once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which she had appealed to her the outcast woman for support against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided moreover that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little accustomed in her long seclusion from society to measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself, Hester saw, or seemed to see, that there lay a responsibility upon her in reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no other nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest of humankind, links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material, had all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations. Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. Years had come and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the townspeople. As is apt to be the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the community, and at the same time interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred by a gradual and quiet process will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage. She made no claim upon it in requital for what she suffered. She did not weigh upon its sympathies. Then also the blameless purity of her life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy was reckoned largely in her favour. With nothing now to lose in the sight of mankind, and with no hope and seemingly no wish of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths. It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put forward even the humblest title to share in the world's privileges, further than to breathe the common air and earn daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the faithful labour of her hands, she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty, even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a jive in requital of the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's road. None so self-devoted as Hester when pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creature. There glimmered the embroidered letter with comfort in its unearthly ray, elsewhere the token of sin it was the taper of the sick chamber. It had even thrown its gleam in the sufferer's hard extremity across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such emergencies Hester's nature showed itself warm and rich, a wellspring of human tenderness unfailing to every real demand and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a sister of mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her, so much power to do and power to sympathize, that many people refused to interpret the Scarlet A. by its original signification. They said it meant able, so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength. It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When sunshine came again she was not there. Her shadow had faded across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed without one backward glance to gather up the mead of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously. Meeting them in the street she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her she laid her finger on the Scarlet letter and passed on. This might be pride, but was so like humility that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind. The public is despotic in its temper. It is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right, but quite as frequently it awards more than justice when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made entirely to its generosity. Interpreting Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal of this nature society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign countenance than she cared to be favoured with or perchance than she deserved. The rulers and the wise and learned men of the community were longer in acknowledging the influence of Hester's good qualities than the people. The prejudices which they shared in common with the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning that made it a far tougher labour to expel them. Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men of rank on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty. Nay more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin for which she had borne so long and dreary appennance, but of her many good deeds since. Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge, they would say to strangers? It is our Hester, the town's own Hester, who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted. Then it is true the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was nonetheless a fact, however, that in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves it would have kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missiles struck it and fell harmless to the ground. The effect of the symbol, or rather of the position in respect to society that was indicated by it, on the mind of Hester Prynne herself was powerful and peculiar. All the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away leaving a bare and harsh outline which might have been repulsive had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or were so completely hidden by a cap that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face for love to dwell upon, nothing in Hester's form, though majestic and statu-like, that passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace, nothing in Hester's bosom to make it ever again the pillow of affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the permits of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate and such the stern development of the feminine character and person when the woman has encountered and lived through an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or, and the outward semblance is the same, crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She who has once been a woman and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again if there were only the magic touch to affect the transformation. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever afterwards so touched and so transfigured. Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned in a great measure from passion and feeling to thought. Standing alone in the world, alone as to any dependence on society, and with little pearl to be guided and protected, alone and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable, she cast away the fragment of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged, not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode, the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage by the seashore, thoughts visited her such as dare to enter no other dwelling in New England. Shadowy guests that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door. It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly, often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action, so it seemed to be with Hester. Yet had little Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have been far otherwise. Then she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Anne Hutchinson, as the foundress of her religious sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the Puritan establishment. But in the education of her child, the mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to reek itself upon. Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to Hester's charge the German blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature had something wrong in it which continually betokened that she had been born amiss. The effluence of her mother's lawless passion, and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all. Indeed the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative and dismissed the pointers settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns it may be such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down and built up anew, then the very nature of the opposite sex or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated. Woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change, in which perhaps the ethereal essence wherein she has her truest life will be found to have evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved or only in one way. If her heart chants to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind, now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice, now starting back from a deep chasm. There was a wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times of fearful doubts drove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to heaven and go herself to such futurity as eternal justice should provide. The scarlet letter had not done its office. Now, however, her interview with the reverent Mr. Dimsdale on the night of his vigil had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister struggled or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy if he had not already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt that whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of Mr. Dimsdale's nature. Hester could not but ask herself whether they had not originally been a defect of truth, courage and loyalty on her own part in allowing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself, except by acquiescing in Roger Chiningworth's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse she had made her choice and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She had determined to redeem her error so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger Chiningworth as on that night, abased by sin and half maddened by the ignominy that was still new when they had talked together in the prison chamber. She had climbed her way since then to a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or perhaps below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for. In fine Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband and do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his grip. The occasion was not long to seek. One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician with a basket on one arm and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicine with all. End of Chapter 13 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 14 Hester and the Physician Hester, bad little Pearl, run down to the margin of the water and play with the shells and tangled seaweed, until she should have talked a while with the under-gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, and making bear her small white feet went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a full stop and peeked curiously into a pool left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Fourth peeked at her out of the pool with dark glistening curls around her head and an elf smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race with her. But the visionary little maid on her part beckoned likewise as if to say, this is a better place, come thou into the pool. And Pearl, stepping in mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom, while out of a still lower depth came a gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile floating to and fro in the agitated water. Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. I would speak a word with you, said she, a word that concerns us much. Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word for old Roger Chillingworth? answered he, raising himself from his stooping posture with all my heart. Why, Mistress, I hear good tidings of you on all hands. No longer ago than yester eve a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the council. It was debated whether or no, with safety to the common-wheel, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your bosom on my life, Hester. I made my entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forthwith. It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off the badge, calmly replied Hester. Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different purport. Nay then, wear it, if it suit you better, rejoin thee. A woman must need follow her own fancy touching the adornment of her person. The letter is gaily embroidered, and shows right bravely on your bosom. All this while Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. It was not so much that he had grown older, for though the traces of advancing life were visible, he bore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile, but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. Everon and on, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes, as if the old man's soul were on fire, and kept on smoldering duskily within his breast, until by some casual puff of passion it was blown into a momentary flame. This he repressed as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had happened. In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office. This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself for seven years to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analysed and gloated over. The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prin's bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her. What see you in my face? asked the physician, that you look at it so earnestly. Something that would make me weep if there were any tears bitter enough for it, answered she. But let it pass. It is of yonder miserable man that I would speak. And what of him? cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confident. Not to hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. So speak freely, and I will make answer. When we last spake together, said Hester, now seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy as touching the form of relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands, there seemed no choice to me save to be silent in accordance with your behest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards him, and something whispered me that I was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since that day no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and wrinkle in his heart. Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. In permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true. What choice had you? asked Roger Chillingworth. My finger pointed that this man would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, thence per adventure to the gallows. It had been better so, said Hester Prynne. What evil have I done the man? asked Roger Chillingworth again. I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from Monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest. But for my aid his life would have burnt away in torment within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret. But enough. What art can do I have exhausted on him, that he now breathes and creeps about on earth, is owing all to me. Better he had died at once, said Hester Prynne. Ye women now sayest truly, cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. Better had he died at once. Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered, and all, all, in sight of his worst enemy. He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew by some spiritual sense, for the creator never made another being so sensitive as this. He knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine. With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts. The sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge. Ye indeed he did not err. There was a fiend at his elbow. A mortal man with once a human heart has become a fiend for his especial torment. The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape which he could not recognise, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments, which sometimes occur only at the interval of years, when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably he had never before viewed himself as he did now. Hast thou not tortured him enough? said Hester, noticing the old man's look. Has he not paid thee all? No, no, he has but increased the debt, answered the physician, and as he proceeded his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. Thus thou remember me, Hester, as I was, nine years ago. Even then I was in the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of my known knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the other, faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine, few lives so rich with benefits conferred. Thus thou remember me? Was I not, though you may be, cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself, kind, true, just, and of constant, if not warm, affections? Was I not all this? All this and more, said Hester, and what am I now? demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. I have already told thee what I am. I have already told thee what I am, a fiend who made me so. It was myself, cried Hester, shuddering, it was I, not less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me? I have left thee to the scarlet letter, replied Roger Chillingworth. If that has not avenged me, I can do no more. He laid his finger on it with a smile. It has avenged thee, answered Hester Prynne. I judged no less, said the physician. And now what would stay with me touching this man? I must reveal the secret, answered Hester, firmly. He must discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result? I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair name and his earthly state and perchance his life, he is in my hands. Nor do I, whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red hot iron entering into the soul. Nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt. There is no good for him, no good for me, no good for thee. There is no good for little Pearl. There is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze. Woman, I could well nigh pity thee, said Roger Chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration, too, for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. Thou hadst great elements. Peradventure hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine. This evil had not been. I pity thee for the good that has been wasted in thy nature. An I thee, answered Hester Prynne, for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend. Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly for thine own. Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the power that claims it. I said but now that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so. There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit? Peace, Hester, peace! replied the old man with gloomy sternness. It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil, but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion. Neither am I fiendlike, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate, let the black flower blossom as it may. Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man. He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs. End of chapter 14 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 15 Hester and Pearl So Roger Chillingworth, a deformed old figure with a face that haunted men's memories longer than they liked, took leave of Hester Prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. He gathered here and there a herb, or grabbed up a root, and put it into the basket on his arm. His grey beard almost touched the ground as he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half-fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the wavering track of his footsteps, seer and brown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were which the old man was so sedulous to gather, would not the earth quicken to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye greet him with poisonous shrubs of species hitherto unknown that would start up under his fingers? Or might it suffice him that every wholesome growth should be converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch? Did the sun which shone so brightly everywhere else really fall upon him, or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way he turned himself? And wither was he now going, would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where in due course of time would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier the higher he rose towards heaven? Be it sin or no, said Hester Prynne Bitterly, as she still gazed after him, I hate the man. She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought of those long past days in a distant land, where he used to emerge at even tide from the seclusion of his study, and sit down in the firelight of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile. He needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than happy, but now was viewed through the dismal medium of her subsequent life. They clasped themselves among her ugliest remembrances. She marveled how such scenes could have been. She marveled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him. She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured, and reciprocated, the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence, committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him. That, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side. Yes, I hate him, repeated Hester, more bitterly than before. He betrayed me. He has done me worse wrong than I did him. Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart. Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to have done with this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long years under the torture of the scarlet letter inflicted so much of misery and wrought out no repentance. The emotions of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw a dark light on Hester's state of mind, revealing much that she might not otherwise have acknowledged to herself. He being on, she summoned back her child. Pearl, little Pearl, where are you? Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and, as it declined to venture, seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats out of birch bark and freighted them with snail shells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in New England, but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. She seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and made prize of several five fingers, and laid out a jellyfish to melt in the warm sun. Then she took up the white foam that streaked the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it with winged footsteps to catch the great snowflakes ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beech birds that fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and creeping from rock to rock after these small seafowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little grey bird with a white breast, Perl was almost sure had been hit by a pebble and fluttered away with a broken wing. But then the elf child sighed and gave up her sport, because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the sea breeze, or as wild as Perl herself. Her final employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, and make herself a scarf or mantle and a headdress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, Perl took some eelgrass and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's, a letter, the letter A, but freshly green instead of scarlet. The child bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest, even as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import. A wonderous mother will ask me what it means, thought Perl. Just then she heard her mother's voice, and flitting along as lightly as one of the little seabirds appeared before Hester dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament upon her bosom. My little Perl, said Hester, after a moment's silence. The green letter and on thy childish bosom has no purport, but dost thou know, my child, what this letter means, which thy mother is doomed to wear? Yes, mother, said the child, it is the great letter A, that has taught it me in the horn book. Hester looked steadily into her little face, but though there was that singular expression, which she had so often remarked in her black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Perl really attached any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to ascertain the point. Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter? Truly do I, answered Perl, looking brightly into her mother's face. It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart. And what reason is that? asked Hester, half-smiling at the absurd incongruity of the child's observation, but, on second thoughts, turning pale. What has the letter to do with any heart saved mine? Nay, mother, I have told all I know, said Perl, more seriously than she was want to speak. Ask yonder, old man, whom thou has been talking with. It may be he can tell. But in good earnest now, mother dear, what does this scarlet letter mean, and why dost thou wear it on thy bosom? And why does the minister keep his hand over his heart? She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capricious character. The thought occurred to Hester that the child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she knew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It showed Perl in an unwanted aspect. Here, too, for the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a soul-affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an April breeze, which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and its petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you when you take it to your bosom. In requital of which, misdemeanors, it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart. And this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of the child's disposition. Any other observer might have seen few but unamable traits, and have given them a far darker colouring. But now the idea came strongly into Hester's mind that Perl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could be made a friend, and entrusted with as much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted without irreverence either to the parent or the child. In the little chaos of Perl's character there might be seen emerging, and could have been from the very first, the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage, an uncontrollable will, a sturdy pride which might be disciplined into self-respect, and a bitter scorn of many things which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavours of unripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother must be great indeed if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child. Perl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her being. From the earliest epoch of her conscious life she had entered upon this as her appointed mission. Hester had often fancied that Providence had a design of justice and retribution in endowing the child with this marked propensity, but never until now had she bethought herself to ask whether, linked with that design, there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence. If little Perl were entertained with faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not be her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart and converted it into a tomb, and to help her to overcome the passion once so wild and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart. Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester's mind with as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whispered into her ear, and there was little Perl all this while holding her mother's hand in both her own and turning her face upward while she put these searching questions once and again and still the third time. What does the letter mean, mother, and why dost thou wear it, and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart? What shall I say? thought Hester to herself. No, if this be the price of the child's sympathy, I cannot pay it. Then she spoke aloud. Silly Perl, said she, what questions are these? There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about. What know I of the minister's heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for the sake of its gold thread. In all the seven bygone years Hester Prynne had never before been false to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was the talisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her, as recognising that, in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it or some old one had never been expelled. As for little Perl, the earnestness soon passed out of her face. But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop, two or three times as her mother and she went homeward, and as often at supper time, and while Hester was putting her to bed, and once, after she seemed to be fairly asleep, Perl looked up with mischief gleaming in her black eyes. Mother, said she, what does the scarlet letter mean? And the next morning the first indication the child gave of being awake was by popping up her head from the pillow and making that other inquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with her investigations about the scarlet letter. Mother, mother, why does the minister keep his hand over his heart? Hold thy tongue, naughty child! answered her mother, with an asperity that she had never permitted to herself before. Do not tease me, else I shall shut thee into the dark closet. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 of the Scarlet Letter This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Laurie Ann Walden. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Chapter 16 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 neighboring 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 die 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 talk 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, whether the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone the day before to visit the Apostle Elliot among his Indian converts. He would probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon of the morrow. Be times, 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 somber. 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 drearer, 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 it not 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 splendor, and scintillating with a 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 vigor 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 scruffula 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 luster to the child's character. She wanted what some people want throughout life, a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize 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 a weary 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 pin 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. Does thou ever meet the black man, mother? And who told you this story, Pearl? asked her mother, recognizing 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 does 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? Will 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 bell 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 locacity 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 a while to its talk. Why art thou so sad? Pluck up the 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 in as much as the current of her life gushed from a wellspring 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 but take thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder. Is it the black man? asked Pearl. Will thou go and play, child? repeated her mother. But do not stray far into the wood, and take heed that thou come in my first call. Yes, mother? answered Pearl. But if it be the black man, will thou not let me stay a moment and look at him with his big brook 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 nervous despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was woefully 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 gate, 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 forevermore. 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. Demsdale exhibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart. End of Chapter 16. Chapter 17 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Christina Boyles. Send email to educator at ScholarCat.com. Chapter 17. The Pastor and His Paritioner. Slowly as a minister walked, he had almost gone by before Hester Prynne could gather voice enough to attract his observation. At length, she succeeded. She said, faintly at first, then louder but hoarsely, Arthur Demsdale. Who speaks, answered the minister. Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, 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, clad in garments so somber and so little relieved from the grey twilight into which the clouded sky and heavy foliage had darkened the noontide that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be that his pathway through life was haunted thus by a specter that had stolen out from among his thoughts. He made a step nyer 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 Demsdale, dost thou yet live? It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was likely the first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly, shuddering in mutual dread as not yet familiar with their state, nor wanted to the companionship of disembodied beings, each a ghost and Ostrichin at the other ghost. They were Ostrichin likewise at themselves, because the crisis flung back to them their consciousness and revealed to each heart its history and experience, as life never does except at such breathless epics. The soul beheld its features in the mirror of the passing moment. It was with fear and tremulously, and as it were by a slow reluctant necessity that Arthur Demsdale put forth his hand, chill his 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, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere. Without a word more spoken, neither he nor she, assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed consent, they glided back into the shadow of the wood, when Hester had emerged and sat down on the heap of moss where she and Pearl had been sitting. When they found voice to speak, it was at first only to utter remarks and inquiries, such as any two acquaintances might have made about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and next the health of each. Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step into the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed something slight and casual to run before and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led across the threshold. And after a while the minister fixed his eyes on Hester Prynne'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, and leading such a life as mine? Were I an atheist, a man devoid of conscience, a wretch, with course and brutal instincts? 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 choices to have become the ministers of spiritual torment, Hester, I am most miserable. The people reverenced thee, said Hester, and surely thou workest good among them? Doth this bring thee no comfort? More misery, Hester, only the more misery, answered the clergyman with a bitter smile. As concerns the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined soul like mine affect towards the redemption of other souls, or a polluted soul, towards their purification? And as for the people's reverence, would that it would turn to scorn and hatred? Can't thou deem it, Hester, a consolation that 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? Must see my flock hungry for the truth and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking, and then look inward and discern the black reality of what they idolize? I have left in bitterness and agony of heart at the contrast between what I seem and what I am. And Satan laughs at it. You wrong yourself in this, said Hester gently. You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you in days long past. Your present life is not less holy in very truth than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? And wherefore should it not bring you peace? No, Hester, no, replied the clergyman. There is no substance in it. It is cold and dead and can do nothing for me. Of penance, I have had enough. Of penitence, there has been none else I should long ago 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 where the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom, mine burns in secret. Thou little knowest what a relief it is after the torment of a seven years' cheat to look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am. Had I won, friend, or wore it my worst enemy, to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily but take myself, and known as the vilest of all sinners, me thinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me, truth would save me, but now it is all falsehood, emptiness, all death. Hester Prynne looked into his face but hesitated to speak. Yet, uttering his long restrained emotions so vehemently as he did, 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. Again she hesitated but brought out the words with an effort. Thou hast long had such an enemy and dwellest with him under the same roof. The minister started to his feet gasping for breath and clutching at his heart as if he would have torn it out of his bosom. Ha! What sayest thou? cried he. An enemy? Another 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 and permitting him to lie for so many years or indeed for a single moment at the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. The very contiguity of his enemy beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal himself was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had been a period when Hester was less alive to this consideration or perhaps in the misanthropy of her own trouble she left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom. But of late since the night of his vigil all her sympathies towards him had been softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted not that the continual presence of Roger Chillingworth the secret poison of his malignity infecting all their air about him and his authorized interference as a physician with a minister's physical and spiritual infirmities that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of them the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated state the tendency of which was not to cure by wholesome pain but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being its result on earth could hardly fail to be insanity and hereafter that eternal alienation from the good and true of which madness is perhaps the earthly type such was the ruin to which she had brought the man once. Hey why should we not speak of it still so passionately loved. Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name and death itself as she had already told Roger Chillingworth would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to choose and now rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess she would gladly have laid down on the forest leaves and died there at Arthur Dimstale's feet. Oh Arthur cried she forgive me and all things else I have striven to be true truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast and did hold fast through all extremity save when thy good thy life thy fame were put in question then I consented to a deception but a lie is never good even though death threatened on the other side does thou not see what I would say that old man the physician 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 intermixed in more shapes than one with his higher pure softer qualities was in fact the portion of him which the devil claimed and through which she sought to win the rest never was there a blacker or 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 by suffering that even its lower energies were incapable of much 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 didn't know it was not the secret told me in the natural recoil of my heart at the first sight of him and as often as I have seen him since why did I not understand oh Hester prin thou little little noists all the horror of this thing and the shame the indelicacy the horrible ugliness of this exposure of the sick and guilty heart to the very eyes that would gloat over it woman woman thou art accountable for this I cannot forgive thee thou shalt forgive me cried Hester flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him let God punish thou shalt forgive with sudden and 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 Hester would not set him free lest he should look her sternly in the face all the world had frowned on her for seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely woman and still she bore it all nor ever once turned away her firm sad eyes heaven likewise had frowned upon her and she had not died but the frown of this pale weak sinful and sorrow-stricken man was what Hester could not bear and live wilt thou yet forgive me she repeated over and over again 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 I freely forgive you now may God forgive us both we are not Hester the worst sinners in the world there is one worse than even the polluted priest 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 asked thou forgotten it hush Hester said Arthur dimsdale rising from the ground no I have not forgotten they sat down again side by side and hand clasped in hand on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree life had never brought them a gloomier hour it was a point whether their pathway had so long been tending and darkening ever as it stole along and yet it enclosed a charm that made them linger upon it and claim another and another and after all another moment the forest was obscure around them and creaked with a blast that was passing through it the bowels were tossing heavily above their heads while one solemn old tree groaned doftly to another as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath or constrained to forbode evil to come and yet they lingered how dreary looked the forest track that led backward to the settlement where Hester prin 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 no golden light had ever been so precious as a gloom of this dark forest 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 dimsdale false to god and man might be for one moment true he started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him hester cried he here's a new horror roger chilling worth knows your purpose to reveal his true character will he continue then to keep our 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 hi how am i to live longer breathing the same air with this deadly enemy exclaimed arthur dimsdale shrinking within himself and pressing his hand nervously against his heart a gesture that had grown involuntary with him thank for me 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 eye it were far worse than death replied the minister but how to avoid it what choice remains to me shall i lie down again on these withered leaves where i cast myself when thou didst tell me what he was must i sink down there and die at once alas what a ruin has befallen these said hester with the tears gushing into her eyes will thou die for very weakness there is no other cause the judgment of god is on me answered the conscious stricken priest it is too mighty for me to struggle with heaven would show mercy rejoined hester hest thou but the strength to take advantage of it be thou strong for me answered he advise me what to do is the world then so narrow exclaimed hester prin fixing her deep eyes on the ministers and instinctively exercising a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold itself erect doth the universe lie within the compass of yonder town which only a little time ago was but a leaf strewn desert as lonely as this around us wither leads yonder forest track backward to the settlement thou sayest yes but onward to deeper it goes and deeper into the wilderness less plainly to be seen at every step until some few miles hence the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man's tread there thou art free so brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched to one where thou may still be happy is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of roger chilling worth yes hester but only under the fallen leaves replied the minister with a sad smile then there is the broad pathway of the sea continued hester it brought thee hither if thou so choose it will bear thee back again in our native land whether in some remote rural village or in vast london or surely in germany in france in pleasant italy thou would be beyond his power and knowledge and what has thou to do with all these iron men in 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 realize a dream i am powerless to go wretched and sinful as i am i have no other thought than to drag on my earthly existence in the sphere where providence hath placed me lost as my own soul is i would still do what i may for other human souls i dare not quit my post though an unfaithful sentinel who sure reward is death and dishonor when his dreary watch shall come to an end thou art crushed under the seven years weight of misery replied hester print fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy but thou shalt leave it all behind thee it shall not cumber thy steps as thou treadest along the forest path neither shalt thou freight the ship with it if thou prefer to cross the sea leave this wreck and ruin here where it had happened metal no more with it begin all anew hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial not so the future is yet full of trial and success there is happiness to be enjoyed there is good to be done exchange this false life of thine for a true one be if thy spirit summoned thee to such a mission the teacher and apostle of the red men or as is more by thy nature be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world preach right act to anything save to lie down and die give up this name of arthur dimsdale and make thyself another a high one such as thou canst wear without fear or shame why should thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life that have made thee feeble to will and to do that will leave thee powerless even to repent up in a way oh hester cried arthur dimsdale in whose eyes a fitful light kindled by her enthusiasm flashed up and died away thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him i must die here there is not the strength or courage left to 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 the word alone hester thou shalt not go alone answered she in a deep whisper then all was spoken end of novel chapter 18 of the scarlet letter this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne chapter 18 a flood of sunshine arthur dimsdale gazed into hester's face with a look in which hope and joy shown out indeed but with fear betwixt them and a kind of horror at her boldness who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at but dared not speak but hester prin with a mind of native courage and activity and for so long a period not merely estranged but outlawed from society had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman she had wandered without rule or guidance in a moral wilderness as vast as intricate and shadowy as the untamed forest amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate her intellect and heart had their home as it were in desert places where she roamed as freely as the wild indian in his woods for years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions and whatever priests or legislators had established criticizing all with hardly more reverence than the indian would feel for the clerical band the judicial robe the pillory the gallows the fireside or the church the tendency of her fate and fortunes had set her free the scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread shame despair solitude these had been her teachers stern and wild ones and they had made her strong but taught her much amiss the minister on the other hand had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws although in a single instance he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them but this had been a sin of passion not of principle nor even purpose since that wretched epic he had watched with morbid zeal and minuteness not his acts for those it was easy to arrange but each breath of emotion and his every thought at the head of the social system as the clergyman of that day stood he was only the more trampled by its regulations its principles and even its prejudices as a priest the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in as a man who had once sinned but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound he might have been supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all thus we seem to see that as regarded hester prin the whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a preparation for this very hour but arthur dimsdale were such a man once more to fall what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime none unless it avail him somewhat that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which heralded that between fleeing as an avowed criminal and remaining as a hypocrite conscience might find it hard to strike the balance that it was human to avoid the peril of death and infamy and the inscrutable machinations of an enemy that finally to this poor pilgrim on his dreary and desert path faint sick miserable there appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy a new life and a true one in exchange for the heavy doom which he was now expiating and be the stern and sad truth spoken that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never in this mortal state repaired it may be watched and guarded so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel and might even in his subsequent assaults select some other avenue in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded but there is still the ruined wall and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph the struggle if there were one need not be described let it suffice that the clergyman resolved to flee and not alone if in all these past seven years thought he I could recall one instant of peace or hope I would yet endure for the sake of that earnest of heaven's mercy but now since I am irrevocably doomed wherefore should I not snatch the solace allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution or if this be the path to a better life as hester would persuade me I surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it neither can I any longer live without her companionship so powerful is she to sustain so tender to soothe oh thou to whom I dare not lift my eyes wilt thou yet pardon me thou wilt go said hester calmly as he met her glance the decision once made a glow of strange enjoyment through its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast it was the exhilarating effect upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own heart of breathing the wild free atmosphere of an unredeemed unchristianized lawless religion his spirit rose as it were with a bound and attained a nearer prospect of the sky than throughout all the misery which had kept him groveling on the earth of a deeply religious temperament there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in his mood do I feel joy again cried he wondering at himself me thought the germ of it was dead in me oh hester thou art my better angel I seem to have flung myself sick sin stained and sorrow blackened down upon these forest leaves and who have risen up all made anew and with new powers to glorify him that hath been merciful this is already the better life why did we not find it sooner let us not look back answered hester prin the past is gone wherefore should we linger upon it now see with this symbol I undo it all and make it as if it had never been so speaking she undid the clasp that fastened to the scarlet letter and taking it from her bosom through it to a distance among the withered leaves the mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the stream with a handsbreath further flight it would have fallen into the water and have given the little brook another woe to carry onward besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about but there lay the embroidered letter glittering like a lost jewel which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up and thenceforth be haunted by strange phantoms of guilt sinkings of the heart and unaccountable misfortune the stigma gone hester heaved a long deep sigh in which the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit oh exquisite relief she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom by another impulse she took off the formal cap that confined her hair and down it fell upon her shoulders dark and rich with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance and imparting the charm of softness to her features there played around her mouth and beamed out of her eyes a radiant and tender smile that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood a crimson flush was glowing on her cheek that had been long so pale her sex her youth and the whole richness of her beauty came back from what men call the irrevocable past and clustered themselves with her maiden hope and a happiness before unknown within the magic circle of this hour and as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts it vanished with their sorrow all at once as with a sudden smile of heaven forth burst the sunshine pouring a very flood into the obscure forest gladdening each green leaf transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold and gleaming down the gray trunks of the solemn trees the objects that had made a shadow hither to embodied the brightness now the course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the woods heart of mystery which had become a mystery of joy such was the sympathy of nature that wild heathen nature of the forest never subjugated by human law nor illumined by higher truth with the bliss of these two spirits love whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber must always create a sunshine filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows upon the outward world had the forest still kept its gloom it would have been bright in hester's eyes and bright in arthur dimsdale's hester looked at him with a thrill of another joy thou must know pearl said she our little pearl thou has seen her yes i know it but thou wilt see her now with other eyes she is a strange child i hardly comprehend her but thou will love her dearly as i do and will advise me how to deal with her does thou think the child will be glad to know me ask the minister somewhat uneasily i have long shrunk from children because they often show a distrust a backwardness to be familiar with me i have even been afraid of little pearl ah that was sad answered the mother but she will love thee dearly and thou her she is not far off i will call her pearl pearl i see the child observed the minister yonder she is standing in a streak of sunshine a good way off on the other side of the brook so thou thinkest the child will love me hester smiled and again called to pearl who was visible at some distance as the minister had described her like a bright apparel vision in a sunbeam which fell down upon her through an arch of boughs the ray quivered to and fro making her figure dim or distinct now like a real child now like a child's spirit as the splendor went and came again she heard her mother's voice and approached slowly through the forest pearl had not bound the hour past wearisomely while her mother sat talking with the clergyman the great black forest stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its bosom became the playmate of the lonely infant as well as it knew how somber as it was it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her it offered her the partridge berries the growth of the preceding autumn but ripening only in the spring and now red as drops of blood upon the withered leaves these pearl gathered and was pleased with their wild flavor the small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to move out of her path a partridge indeed with a brood of ten behind her ran forward threateningly but soon repented of her fierceness and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid a pigeon alone on a low branch allowed pearl to come beneath and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm a squirrel from the lofty depths of his domestic tree chattered either in anger or merriment for the squirrel is such a caloric and humorous little personage that it is hard to distinguish between his moods so he chattered at the child and flung down a nut upon her head it was a last year's nut and already gnawed by his sharp tooth a fox startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves looked inquisitively at pearl as doubting whether it were better to steal off or renew his nap on the same spot a wolf it is said but here the tail has surely lapsed into the improbable came up and smelt of pearl's robe and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand the truth seems to be however that the mother forest and these wild things which it nourished all recognized a kindred wilderness in the human child and she was gentler here than in the grassy margin streets of the settlement or in her mother's cottage the bowers appeared to know it and one and another whispered as she passed adorn thyself with me thou beautiful child adorn thyself with me and to please them pearl gathered the violets and anemones and columbines and some tweaks of the freshest green which the old trees held down before her eyes with these she decorated her hair and her young waist and became a nymph child or an infant triad or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood in such guys had pearl adorned herself when she heard her mother's voice and came slowly back slowly for she saw the clergyman end of chapter 18 recorded by rachel ellen near yosemite california march 19 2007