The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

  XXII.

  THE PROCESSION.

  Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and considerwhat was practicable to be done in this new and startling aspect ofaffairs, the sound of military music was heard approaching along acontiguous street. It denoted the advance of the procession ofmagistrates and citizens, on its way towards the meeting-house; where,in compliance with a custom thus early established, and ever sinceobserved, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver an ElectionSermon.

  New England Worthies]

  Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and statelymarch, turning a corner, and making its way across the market-place.First came the music. It comprised a variety of instruments, perhapsimperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill;but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of drum andclarion addresses itself to the multitude,--that of imparting a higherand more heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye.Little Pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost, for aninstant, the restless agitation that had kept her in a continualeffervescence throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemedto be borne upward, like a floating sea-bird, on the long heaves andswells of sound. But she was brought back to her former mood by theshimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armor of themilitary company, which followed after the music, and formed thehonorary escort of the procession. This body of soldiery--which stillsustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages withan ancient and honorable fame--was composed of no mercenary materials.Its ranks were filled with gentlemen, who felt the stirrings ofmartial impulse, and sought to establish a kind of College of Arms,where, as in an association of Knights Templars, they might learn thescience, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, thepractices of war. The high estimation then placed upon the militarycharacter might be seen in the lofty port of each individual memberof the company. Some of them, indeed, by their services in the LowCountries and on other fields of European warfare, had fairly wontheir title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entirearray, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage noddingover their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no moderndisplay can aspire to equal.

  And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind themilitary escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's eye. Evenin outward demeanor, they showed a stamp of majesty that made thewarrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an agewhen what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but themassive materials which produce stability and dignity of character agreat deal more. The people possessed, by hereditary right, thequality of reverence; which, in their descendants, if it survive atall, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force,in the selection and estimate of public men. The change may be forgood or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day, theEnglish settler on these rude shores--having left king, nobles, andall degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty andnecessity of reverence were strong in him--bestowed it on the whitehair and venerable brow of age; on long-tried integrity; on solidwisdom and sad-colored experience; on endowments of that grave andweighty order which gives the idea of permanence, and comes under thegeneral definition of respectability. These primitive statesmen,therefore,--Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and theircompeers,--who were elevated to power by the early choice of thepeople, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by aponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They hadfortitude and self-reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril,stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against atempestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated were wellrepresented in the square cast of countenance and large physicaldevelopment of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a demeanor ofnatural authority was concerned, the mother country need not have beenashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted intothe House of Peers, or made the Privy Council of the sovereign.

  Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminentlydistinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse of theanniversary was expected. His was the profession, at that era, inwhich intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in politicallife; for--leaving a higher motive out of the question--it offeredinducements powerful enough, in the almost worshipping respect of thecommunity, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service. Evenpolitical power--as in the case of Increase Mather--was within thegrasp of a successful priest.

  It was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never, sinceMr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England shore, had heexhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which hekept his pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step, asat other times; his frame was not bent; nor did his hand restominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed,his strength seemed not of the body. It might be spiritual, andimparted to him by angelic ministrations. It might be the exhilarationof that potent cordial, which is distilled only in the furnace-glow ofearnest and long-continued thought. Or, perchance, his sensitivetemperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music, thatswelled heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave.Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questionedwhether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the music. There was his body,moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But where was his mind?Far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternaturalactivity, to marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soonto issue thence; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing,of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the feebleframe, and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and convertingit to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon intellect, who have grownmorbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into whichthey throw the life of many days, and then are lifeless for as manymore.

  Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a drearyinfluence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not; unlessthat he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond herreach. One glance of recognition, she had imagined, must needs passbetween them. She thought of the dim forest, with its little dell ofsolitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where,sitting hand in hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talkwith the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply had they knowneach other then! And was this the man? She hardly knew him now! He,moving proudly past, enveloped, as it were, in the rich music, withthe procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainablein his worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of hisunsympathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld him! Her spiritsank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that,vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt theclergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was there in Hester,that she could scarcely forgive him,--least of all now, when the heavyfootstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer,nearer!--for being able so completely to withdraw himself from theirmutual world; while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her coldhands, and found him not.

  Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or herselffelt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen around theminister. While the procession passed, the child was uneasy,fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of taking flight.When the whole had gone by, she looked up into Hester's face.

  "Mother," said she, "was that the same minister that kissed me by thebrook?"

  "Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We mustnot always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in theforest."

  "I could not be sure that it was he; so strange he looked," continuedthe child. "Else I would have run to him, and bid him kiss me now,before all the people; even as he did yonder among the dark old trees.What would the minister have said,
mother? Would he have clapped hishand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me be gone?"

  "What should he say, Pearl," answered Hester, "save that it was notime to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the market-place?Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him!"

  Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr. Dimmesdale,was expressed by a person whose eccentricities--or insanity, as weshould term it--led her to do what few of the towns-people would haveventured on; to begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarletletter, in public. It was Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed in greatmagnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown ofrich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see theprocession. As this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequentlycost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor inall the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, thecrowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of hergarment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen inconjunction with Hester Prynne,--kindly as so many now felt towardsthe latter,--the dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins was doubled, andcaused a general movement from that part of the market-place in whichthe two women stood.

  "Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it!" whispered the oldlady, confidentially, to Hester. "Yonder divine man! That saint onearth, as the people uphold him to be, and as--I must needs say--hereally looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, wouldthink how little while it is since he went forth out of hisstudy,--chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in his mouth, Iwarrant,--to take an airing in the forest! Aha! we know what thatmeans, Hester Prynne! But, truly, forsooth, I find it hard to believehim the same man. Many a church-member saw I, walking behind themusic, that has danced in the same measure with me, when Somebody wasfiddler, and, it might be, an Indian powwow or a Lapland wizardchanging hands with us! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows theworld. But this minister! Couldst thou surely tell, Hester, whether hewas the same man that encountered thee on the forest-path?"

  "Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered Hester Prynne, feelingMistress Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely startled andawe-stricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personalconnection between so many persons (herself among them) and the EvilOne. "It is not for me to talk lightly of a learned and pious ministerof the Word, like the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale!"

  "Fie, woman, fie!" cried the old lady, shaking her finger at Hester."Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times, and have yetno skill to judge who else has been there? Yea; though no leaf of thewild garlands, which they wore while they danced, be left in theirhair! I know thee, Hester; for I behold the token. We may all see itin the sunshine; and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thouwearest it openly; so there need be no question about that. But thisminister! Let me tell thee, in thine ear! When the Black Man sees oneof his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bondas is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering mattersso that the mark shall be disclosed in open daylight to the eyes ofall the world! What is it that the minister seeks to hide, with hishand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne!"

  "What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?" eagerly asked little Pearl. "Hastthou seen it?"

  "No matter, darling!" responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl aprofound reverence. "Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another.They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince of the Air!Wilt thou ride with me, some fine night, to see thy father? Then thoushalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart!"

  Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, theweird old gentlewoman took her departure.

  By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in themeeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale wereheard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept Hesternear the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admitanother auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold ofthe pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermonto her ears, in the shape of an indistinct, but varied, murmur andflow of the minister's very peculiar voice.

  This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment; insomuch that alistener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacherspoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone andcadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, andemotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart,wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through thechurch-walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intentness, andsympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaningfor her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These,perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grossermedium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the lowundertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascendedwith it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness andpower, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere ofawe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimesbecame, there was forever in it an essential character ofplaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish,--the whisper, orthe shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, thattouched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain ofpathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid adesolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high andcommanding,--when it gushed irrepressibly upward,--when it assumed itsutmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst itsway through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in the openair,--still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, hecould detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of ahuman heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret,whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseechingits sympathy or forgiveness,--at every moment,--in each accent,--andnever in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gavethe clergyman his most appropriate power.

  During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of thescaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there, there wouldnevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whenceshe dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sensewithin her,--too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighingheavily on her mind,--that her whole orb of life, both before andafter, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gaveit unity.

  Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and wasplaying at her own will about the market-place. She made the sombrecrowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray; even as a bird ofbright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage, by dartingto and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of theclustering leaves. She had an undulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp andirregular movement. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit,which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because itwas played upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. WheneverPearl saw anything to excite her ever-active and wandering curiosity,she flew thitherward and, as we might say, seized upon that man orthing as her own property, so far as she desired it; but withoutyielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital.The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the lessinclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from theindescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through herlittle figure, and sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked thewild Indian in the face; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder thanhis own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve ascharacteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, theswarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of theland; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if aflake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and weregifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow inthe night-time.

  One of these seafaring men--the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken toHester Prynne--was so smitten with Pearl's aspect,
that he attemptedto lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it asimpossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he tookfrom his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it tothe child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist,with such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her,and it was difficult to imagine her without it.

  "Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the seaman."Wilt thou carry her a message from me?"

  "If the message pleases me, I will," answered Pearl.

  "Then tell her," rejoined he, "that I spake again with theblack-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bringhis friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thymother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt thou tell herthis, thou witch-baby?"

  "Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" criedPearl, with a naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill name, Ishall tell him of thee; and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!"

  Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returnedto her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester'sstrong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, onbeholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom,which--at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the ministerand herself out of their labyrinth of misery--showed itself, with anunrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path.

  With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which theshipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected toanother trial. There were many people present, from the country roundabout, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it hadbeen made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumors, but whohad never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, afterexhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynnewith rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however,it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. Atthat distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugalforce of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The wholegang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, andlearning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust theirsunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the Indianswere affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity,and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyeson Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of thisbrilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of highdignity among her people. Lastly the inhabitants of the town (theirown interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, bysympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the samequarter, and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest,with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hestersaw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, whohad awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years ago; allsave one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whoseburial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was sosoon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become thecentre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear herbreast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put iton.

  While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunningcruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her forever, theadmirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon anaudience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. Thesainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in themarket-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough tosurmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!