ARTHUR DIMMESDALE gazed into Hester's face with a look in which hope

and joy shone 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 Prynne, 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; criticising 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 been to 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

epoch, 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 trammelled 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 Prynne, the whole

seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a

preparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! 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 harrowed it; 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! O

Thou to whom I dare not lift mine 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 threw 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, unchristianised, lawless region. 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 grovelling on the

earth. Of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge

of the devotional in his mind.

"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself. "Methought

the germ of it was dead in me! O Hester, thou art my better angel! I

seem to have flung myself- sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened-

down upon these forest-leaves, and to 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 Prynne. "the past is gone!

Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With this symbol, I

undo it all, and make it as it had never been!"

So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter,

and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the

withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of

the stream. With a hand's breadth farther 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 the 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 adown the

grey trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow

hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of the little

brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's 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 death-like 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

Dimmesdale's!

Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.

"Thou must know Pearl!" said she. "Our little Pearl! Thou hast

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 wilt

love her dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her."

"Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?" asked 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-apparelled 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 splendour went and came again. She heard her mother's

voice, and approached slowly through the forest.

Pearl had not found the hour pass 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. Sombre 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 flavour. 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 threatingly, 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 a squirrel is such a choleric 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 tale 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 recognised a kindred wildness in the

human child.

And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of

the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers 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 twigs 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 dryad, or whatever else was

in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl

adorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly

back.

Slowly; for she saw the clergyman!