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CHAPTER XXII. THE PROCESSION
Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and
consider what was practicable to be done in this new and
startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military music was
heard approaching along a contiguous street. It denoted the
advance of the procession of magistrates and citizens on its way
towards the meeting-house: where, in compliance with a custom
thus early established, and ever since observed, the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale was to deliver an Election Sermon.
Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and
stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across the
market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety of
instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and
played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object
for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the
multitude--that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to
the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at
first clapped her hands, but then lost for an instant the
restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence
throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to be
borne upward like a floating sea-bird on the long heaves and swells
of sound. But she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer
of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armour of the military
company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary
escort of the procession. This body of soldiery--which still
sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages
with an ancient and honourable fame--was composed of no
mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled with gentlemen who
felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to establish a
kind of College of Arms, where, as in an association of Knights
Templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful
exercise would teach them, the practices of war. The high
estimation then placed upon the military character might be seen
in the lofty port of each individual member of the company. Some
of them, indeed, by their services in the Low Countries and on
other fields of European warfare, had fairly won their title to
assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array,
moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over
their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern
display can aspire to equal.
And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind
the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's
eye. Even in outward demeanour they showed a stamp of majesty
that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not
absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less
consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce
stability and dignity of character a great deal more. The people
possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence, which, in their
descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion,
and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and estimate
of public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is partly,
perhaps, for both. In that old day the English settler on these
rude shores--having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful
rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence
was strong in him--bestowed it on the white hair and venerable
brow of age--on long-tried integrity--on solid wisdom and
sad-coloured experience--on endowments of that grave and
weighty order which gave the idea of permanence, and comes under
the general definition of respectability. These primitive
statesmen, therefore--Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham,
and their compeers--who were elevated to power by the early
choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but
distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of
intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of
difficulty or peril stood up for the welfare of the state like a
line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The traits of
character here indicated were well represented in the square cast
of countenance and large physical development of the new colonial
magistrates. So far as a demeanour of natural authority was
concerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see
these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted into the House
of Peers, or make the Privy Council of the Sovereign.
Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently
distinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse of
the anniversary was expected. His was
the profession at that era in which intellectual ability
displayed itself far more than in political life; for--leaving
a higher motive out of the question it offered inducements
powerful enough in the almost worshipping respect of the
community, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service.
Even political power--as in the case of Increase Mather--was
within the grasp of a successful priest.
It was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never,
since Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England
shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and
air with which he kept his pace in the procession. There was no
feebleness of step as at other times; his frame was not bent, nor
did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the
clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the
body. It might be spiritual and imparted to him by angelical
ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that potent
cordial which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest
and long-continued thought. Or perchance his sensitive
temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music that
swelled heaven-ward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave.
Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned
whether Mr. Dimmesdale ever 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 preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of stately
thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw nothing,
heard nothing, knew nothing of what was around him;
but the spiritual element took up the feeble frame and
carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and
converting it to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon intellect,
who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty
effort, into which they throw the life of many days and then are
lifeless for as many more.
Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary
influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not,
unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly
beyond her reach. One glance of recognition she had imagined
must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest,
with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the
mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand-in-hand, they had mingled
their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the
brook. How deeply had they known each other then! And was this
the man? She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly past,
enveloped as it were, in the rich music, with the procession of
majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in his
worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his
unsympathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld him! Her
spirit sank 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 the clergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was
there in Hester, that she could scarcely forgive him--least of
all now, when the heavy footstep of their approaching Fate
might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!--for
being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual
world--while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold
hands, and found him not.
Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or
herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen
around the minister. 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
the brook?"
"Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We
must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in
the forest."
"I could not be sure that it was he--so strange he looked,"
continued the 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 his hand over his heart, and scowled on me,
and bid me begone?"
"What should he say, Pearl," answered Hester, "save that it was
no time 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--insanity, as we should term it--led her to
do what few of the townspeople would have
ventured on--to begin a conversation with the wearer of the
scarlet letter in public. It was Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed
in great magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher,
a gown of rich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to
see the procession. As this ancient lady had the renown (which
subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a
principal actor in all the works of necromancy that were
continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and
seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the
plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester
Prynne--kindly as so many now felt towards the latter--the
dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins had doubled, and caused a
general movement from that part of the market-place in which the
two women stood.
"Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it?" whispered the
old lady confidentially to Hester. "Yonder divine man! That
saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and as--I must
needs say--he really looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the
procession, would think how little while it is since he went
forth out of his study--chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in
his mouth, I warrant--to take an airing in the forest! Aha!
we know what that means, Hester Prynne! But truly, forsooth, I
find it hard to believe him the same man. Many a church member
saw I, walking behind the music, that has danced in the same
measure with me, when Somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an
Indian powwow or a Lapland wizard changing hands with
us! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But
this minister. Couldst thou surely tell, Hester, whether he was
the same man that encountered thee on the forest path?"
"Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered Hester Prynne,
feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet strangely
startled and awe-stricken by the confidence with which she
affirmed a personal connexion between so many persons (herself
among them) and the Evil One. "It is not for me to talk lightly
of a learned and pious minister of 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 yet no skill to judge who else has been there?
Yea, though no leaf of the wild garlands which they wore while
they danced be left in their hair! I know thee, Hester, for I
behold the token. We may all see it in the sunshine! and it
glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it openly, so
there need be no question about that. But this minister! Let me
tell thee in thine ear! When the Black Man sees one of his own
servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters
so that the mark shall be disclosed, in open daylight, to the
eyes of all the world! What is that the minister seeks to hide,
with his hand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne?"
"What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?" eagerly asked little Pearl.
"Hast thou seen it?"
"No matter, darling!" responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a
profound reverence. "Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or
another. They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince
of Air! Wilt thou ride with me some fine night to see thy
father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his
hand over his heart!"
Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the
weird old gentlewoman took her departure.
By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the
meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale
were heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling
kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much
thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close
beside the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient
proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of
an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister's very
peculiar voice.
This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a
listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the
preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the
mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion
and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to
the human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by
its passage through the church walls, Hester Prynne listened with
such intenseness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon
had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its
indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might
have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense.
Now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to
repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through
progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume
seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn
grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there
was for ever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. A
loud or low expression of anguish--the whisper, or the shriek,
as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a
sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of pathos
was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard sighing amid a
desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high
and commanding--when it gushed irrepressibly upward--when it
assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church
as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself
in the open air--still, if the auditor listened intently, and
for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was
it? The complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance
guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the
great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,--at
every moment,--in each accent,--and never in vain! It
was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman
his most appropriate power.
During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of
the scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there,
there would, nevertheless, have been an inevitable magnetism in
that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy.
There was a sense within her--too ill-defined to be made a thought,
but weighing heavily on her mind--that her whole orb of life, both
before and after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point
that gave it unity.
Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was
playing at her own will about the market-place. She made the
sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray, even as
a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky
foliage by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid
the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an undulating,
but oftentimes a sharp and irregular movement. It indicated the
restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly
indefatigable in its tip-toe dance, because it was played upon
and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever Pearl saw
anything to excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she
flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man or
thing as her own property, so far as she desired it, but without
yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in
requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none
the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from
the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone
through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She
ran and looked the wild Indian in the face, and he grew conscious
of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity,
but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the
midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the
ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and they gazed
wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the
sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted
with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in the
night-time.
One of these seafaring men the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken
to Hester Prynne was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that he
attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss.
Finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird
in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted
about it, and threw it to the 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 the
black-a-visaged, hump shouldered old doctor, and he engages to
bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So
let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt
thou tell her this, thou witch-baby?"
"Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" cried
Pearl, with a naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill-name,
I shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a
tempest!"
Pursuing a zigzag course across the marketplace, the child
returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had
said. Hester's strong, calm steadfastly-enduring spirit almost
sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an
inevitable doom, which at the moment when a passage seemed to
open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of
misery--showed itself with an unrelenting smile, right in the
midst of their path.
With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the
shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to
another trial. There were many people present from the country
round about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to
whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated
rumours, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes.
These, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged
about Hester Prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness.
Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer
than a circuit of several yards. At that distance they
accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the
repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of
sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and
learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their
sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the
Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's
curiosity and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their
snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom, conceiving, perhaps,
that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must
needs be a personage of high dignity among her people. Lastly, the
inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out
subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw
others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented
Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool,
well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and
recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who had
awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door seven years ago; all
save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose
burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was
so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely
become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus
made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since
the first day she put it on.
While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the
cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for
ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred
pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to
his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of
the scarlet letter in the marketplace! What imagination would
have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching
stigma was on them both!
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