THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 16

作者: Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

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 neighbouring 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 dye
    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 imputed suspicion where none
    could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she
    would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together-
    for all these reasons, Hester never though of meeting him in any
    narrower privacy than beneath the open sky.

At last, while attending in a sick-chamber, whither the Reverend Mr.
    Dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt that he
    had gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian     FACE="Arial"> converts. He would probably return, by a certain hour, in the     FACE="Arial"> afternoon of the morrow. Betimes, 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 sombre. Overhead was a grey 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 farther 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 drearier, because they had hoped to
    find them bright.

"Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. It FACE="Arial"> runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on FACE="Arial"> your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand FACE="Arial"> you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not FACE="Arial"> 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 FACE="Arial"> beginning of her race. "Will not it 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 FACE="Arial"> it, all brightened by its splendour, and scintillating with the FACE="Arial"> vivacity excited by rapid motion. The light lingered about the FACE="Arial"> lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had FACE="Arial"> 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 FACE="Arial"> 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 vigour
    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 scrofula, 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 lustre to the child's character. She wanted- what some
    people want throughout life- a grief that should deeply touch her,
    and thus humanise and make her capable of sympathy. But there was time
    enough yet for little Pearl.

"Come, my child!" said Hester, looking about her from the spot where FACE="Arial"> Pearl had stood still in the sunshine. "We will sit down a
little way within the wood, and rest ourselves."

"I am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. "But you may sit FACE="Arial"> 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     FACE="Arial"> 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
    pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they
    are to write their names with their own blood. And then he sets
    his mark on their bosoms! Didst thou ever meet the Black Man,
    mother?"

"And who told you this story, Pearl?" asked her mother, recognising
a common superstition of the period.

"It was the old dame in the chimney-corner, at the house where you     FACE="Arial"> 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 dost thou go to
    meet him in the night-time?"

"Didst thou ever awake, and find thy mother gone?" asked Hester.

"Not that I remember," said the child. "If thou fearest to leave     FACE="Arial"> 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?"

"Wilt thou let me be at peace if I once tell thee?" asked her FACE="Arial"> mother.

"Yes, if thou tellest me all," answered Pearl.

"Once in my life I met the Black Man!" said her mother. "This FACE="Arial"> 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 dell 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 grey 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 loquacity, 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.

"O brook! O foolish and tiresome little brook!" cried Pearl, after     FACE="Arial"> listening awhile to its talk. "Why art thou
    so sad? Pluck up a 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 inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from
    a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed
    as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced
    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     FACE="Arial"> 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
    betake thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that
    comes yonder."

"Is it the Black Man?" asked Pearl.

"Wilt thou go and play, child?" repeated her mother. "But do not FACE="Arial"> stray far into the wood. And take heed that thou come at my first FACE="Arial"> call."

"Yes, mother," answered Pearl. "But if it be the Black Man, wilt FACE="Arial"> thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book FACE="Arial"> under his arm?"

"Go, silly child!" said her mother impatiently. "It is no Black Man! FACE="Arial"> 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     FACE="Arial"> 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 crevices 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 nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably
    characterised 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 gait; as if he saw no reason for taking one
    step farther, 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, for evermore. 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. Dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of
    positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little Pearl had     FACE="Arial"> remarked, he kept his hand over his heart.

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