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CHAPTER II. THE MARKET-PLACE
The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain
summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by
a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with
their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door.
Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history
of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded
physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful
business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the
anticipated execution of some rioted culprit, on whom the
sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of
public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan
character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be
drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful
child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority,
was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that an
Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be
scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the
white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to
be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might
be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered
widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either
case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the
part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion
and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were
so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of
public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre,
indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look
for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a
penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking
infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern
a dignity as the punishment of death itself.
It was a circumstance to he noted on the summer morning when our
story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were
several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in
whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age
had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety
restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping
forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial
persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the
scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there
was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old English
birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from
them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout
that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted
to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty,
and a slighter physical frame, if not
character of less force and solidity than her own. The women who
were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than
half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been
the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They
were her countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land,
with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into
their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on
broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy
cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly
yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England.
There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among
these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle
us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its
volume of tone.
"Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I'll tell ye a
piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof if
we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute,
should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester
Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for
judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together,
would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful
magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not"
"People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master
Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart
that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation."
"The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful
overmuch--that is a truth," added a third autumnal
matron. "At the very least, they should have put the brand of a
hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madame Hester would have
winced at that, I warrant me. But she--the naughty baggage --
little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown
Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like.
heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever"
"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a
child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang
of it will be always in her heart. "
"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of
her gown or the flesh of her forehead?" cried another female, the
ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted
judges. "This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to
die; Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the
Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who
have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives
and daughters go astray"
"Mercy on us, goodwife" exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there
no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of
the gallows? That is the hardest word yet Hush now, gossips for
the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress
Prynne herself. "
The door of the jail being flung open from within there
appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into
sunshine, the grim and gristly presence of the town-beadle, with
a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. This personage
prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the
Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in
its final and closest application to the offender. Stretching
forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon
the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward, until,
on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an
action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and
stepped into the open air as if by her own free will. She bore
in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked
and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day;
because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance
only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome
apartment of the prison.
When the young woman--the mother of this child--stood fully
revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to
clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse
of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a
certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In
a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame
would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her
arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a
glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her
townspeople and neighbours. On the breast of her gown, in fine
red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic
flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so
artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous
luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting
decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a
splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly
beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the
colony.
The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a
large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it
threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides
being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of
complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and
deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the
feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain
state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and
indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication.
And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the
antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the
prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to
behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were
astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone
out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she
was enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer,
there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her attire,
which indeed, she had wrought for the occasion in prison, and had
modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude
of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its
wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all
eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer--so that both
men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with
Hester Prynne were now impressed as if they beheld her for the
first time--was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically
embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of
a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity,
and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.
"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked
one of her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this
brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? Why, gossips,
what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates,
and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a
punishment?"
"It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames,
"if we stripped Madame Hester's rich gown off her dainty
shoulders; and as for the red letter which she hath stitched so
curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel to
make a fitter one!"
"Oh, peace, neighbours--peace!" whispered their youngest
companion; "do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that
embroidered letter but she has felt it in her heart. "
The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "Make way,
good people--make way, in the King's name!" cried he. "Open a
passage; and I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where
man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel
from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the
righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged
out into the sunshine! Come along, Madame Hester, and show your
scarlet letter in the market-place!"
A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators.
Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession
of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set
forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd
of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the
matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran
before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare
into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the
ignominious letter on her breast. It was no great distance, in
those days, from the prison door to the market-place. Measured
by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a
journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she
perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that
thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the
street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature,
however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful,
that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he
endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that
rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore,
Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came
to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the
market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's
earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.
In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine,
which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely
historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old
time, to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good
citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France.
It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose
the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as
to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up
to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and
made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be
no outrage, methinks, against our common nature--whatever be
the delinquencies of the individual--no outrage more flagrant
than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was
the essence of this punishment to do. In Hester Prynne's
instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her
sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the
platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and
confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most
devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her
part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus
displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a
man's shoulders above the street.
Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might
have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire
and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind
him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious
painters have vied with one another to represent; something which
should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred
image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the
world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most
sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world
was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for
the infant that she had borne.
The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always
invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature,
before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead
of shuddering at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace
had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern
enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence,
without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the
heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a
theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there
been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have
been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no
less dignified than the governor, and several of his counsellors,
a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town, all of whom
sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon
the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of
the spectacle, without risking the majesty, or reverence of rank
and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a
legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning.
Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit
sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight
of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and
concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be
borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified
herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public
contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there
was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn
mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all
those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and
herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the
multitude--each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced
child, contributing their individual parts--Hester Prynne might
have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But,
under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she
felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full
power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon
the ground, or else go mad at once.
Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was
the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or,
at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of
imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially
her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up
other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on
the edge of the western wilderness: other faces than were lowering
upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats.
Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages of
infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the
little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back
upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest
in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as
another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a
play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to
relieve itself by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms,
from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.
Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was
a point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track
along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy.
Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native
village, in Old England, and her paternal home: a decayed house
of grey stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a
half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of
antique gentility. She saw her father's face, with its bold
brow, and reverend white beard that flowed over the old-fashioned
Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and
anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which,
even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a
gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own
face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the
interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze
at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well
stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes
dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore
over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a
strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to
read the human soul. This figure of tile study and the cloister,
as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was
slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than
the right. Next rose before her in memory's picture-gallery, the
intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the
huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and
quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new life had
awaited her, still in connexion with the misshapen scholar: a
new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft
of green moss on a crumbling
wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the
rude market-place of the Puritan, settlement, with all the
townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at
Hester Prynne--yes, at herself--who stood on the scaffold of
the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet,
fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.
Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her
breast that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at
the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to
assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes
these were her realities--all else had vanished!
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