XVIII.
A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE.
Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in which hopeand joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind ofhorror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, butdared not speak.
But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and forso long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, hadhabituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogetherforeign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance,in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as theuntamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding acolloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart hadtheir home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freelyas the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked fromthis estranged point of view at human institutions, and whateverpriests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardlymore reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, thejudicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church.The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. Thescarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women darednot tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been herteachers,--stern and wild ones,--and they had made her strong, buttaught her much amiss.
The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experiencecalculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws;although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed oneof the most sacred of them. But this had been a sin of passion, not ofprinciple, nor even purpose. Since that wretched epoch, he hadwatched, with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts,--for those itwas easy to arrange,--but each breath of emotion, and his everythought. At the head of the social system, as the clergymen of thatday stood, he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, itsprinciples, and even its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of hisorder inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but whokept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the frettingof an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer within theline of virtue than if he had never sinned at all.
Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the whole sevenyears of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a preparationfor this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! Were such a man once moreto fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime? None;unless it avail him somewhat, that he was broken down by long andexquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by thevery remorse which harrowed it; that, between fleeing as an avowedcriminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find it hardto strike the balance; that it was human to avoid the peril of deathand 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 andsympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doomwhich he was now expiating. And be the stern and sad truth spoken,that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul isnever, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded;so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, andmight even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, inpreference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there is stillthe ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the foe thatwould win over again his unforgotten triumph.
The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. Let itsuffice, that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone.
"If, in all these past seven years," thought he, "I could recall oneinstant of peace or hope, I would yet endure, for the sake of thatearnest of Heaven's mercy. But now,--since I am irrevocablydoomed,--wherefore should I not snatch the solace allowed to thecondemned culprit before his execution? Or, if this be the path to abetter life, as Hester would persuade me, I surely give up no fairerprospect by pursuing it! Neither can I any longer live without hercompanionship; so powerful is she to sustain,--so tender to soothe! OThou 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 itsflickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was theexhilarating effect--upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon ofhis own heart--of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of anunredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region. His spirit rose, as itwere, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, thanthroughout all the misery which had kept him grovelling on the earth.Of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of thedevotional in his mood.
"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself. "Methought thegerm of it was dead in me! O Hester, thou art my better angel! I seemto have flung myself--sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened--downupon these forest-leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and withnew powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is already thebetter 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 undoit 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 thewithered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of thestream. With a hand's breadth farther flight it would have fallen intothe water, and have given the little brook another woe to carryonward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuringabout. But there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lostjewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth behaunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, andunaccountable misfortune.
A Gleam of Sunshine]
The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burdenof shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite relief! Shehad not known the weight, until she felt the freedom! By anotherimpulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and downit fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and alight in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to herfeatures. There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, aradiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart ofwomanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had beenlong so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of herbeauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, andclustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness beforeunknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom ofthe earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortalhearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a suddensmile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood intothe obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellowfallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemntrees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied thebrightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by itsmerry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become amystery of joy.
Such was the sympathy of Nature--that wild, heathen Nature of theforest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by highertruth--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 theoutward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have beenbright 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 seenher,--yes, I know it!--but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. Sheis a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love herdearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her."
"Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?" asked theminist
er, somewhat uneasily. "I have long shrunk from children,because they often show a distrust,--a backwardness to be familiarwith me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!"
"Ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "But she will love theedearly, 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 ina 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 somedistance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelledvision, in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch ofboughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim ordistinct,--now like a real child, now like a child's spirit,--as thesplendor went and came again. She heard her mother's voice, andapproached slowly through the forest.
Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while her mother sattalking with the clergyman. The great black forest--stern as it showeditself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world intoits bosom--became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as itknew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods towelcome her. It offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of thepreceding autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red asdrops of blood upon the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and waspleased with their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wildernesshardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with abrood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repentedof her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. Apigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, anduttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from thelofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger ormerriment,--for a squirrel is such a choleric and humorous littlepersonage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods,--so hechattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was alast year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox,startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, lookedinquisitively at Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to stealoff, or renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said,--but herethe tale has surely lapsed into the improbable,--came up, and smelt ofPearl'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 wildthings which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in thehuman child.
And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of thesettlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared to knowit; and one and another whispered as she passed, "Adorn thyself withme, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!"--and, to pleasethem, Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, andsome twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down beforeher eyes. With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, andbecame a nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was inclosest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearladorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowlyback.
Slowly; for she saw the clergyman.
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