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CHAPTER XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER
Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before
Hester Prynne could gather voice enough to attract his
observation. At length she succeeded.
"Arthur Dimmesdale!" she said, faintly at first, then louder,
but hoarsely--"Arthur Dimmesdale!"
"Who speaks?" answered the minister. Gathering himself quickly
up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood
to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes
anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a
form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little
relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and
the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not
whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be that his pathway
through life was haunted thus by a spectre that had stolen out
from among his thoughts.
He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter.
"Hester! Hester Prynne!', said he; "is it thou? Art thou in
life?"
"Even so." she answered. "In such life as has been mine these
seven years past! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou yet live?"
It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual
and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So
strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the
first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who
had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood
coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their
state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings.
Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost. They were
awe-stricken likewise at themselves, because the crisis flung
back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its
history and experience, as life never does, except at such
breathless epochs. The soul beheld its features in the mirror of
the passing moment. It was with fear, and tremulously, and, as
it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that Arthur Dimmesdale
put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of
Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as it was, took away what was
dreariest in the interview. They now felt themselves, at least,
inhabitants of the same sphere.
Without a word more spoken--neither he nor she assuming the
guidance, but with an unexpressed consent--they glided back
into the shadow of the woods whence Hester had emerged, and sat
down on the heap of moss where she and Pearl had before been
sitting. When they found voice to speak, it was at first only to
utter remarks and inquiries such as any two acquaintances might
have made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and,
next, the health of each. Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step
by step, into the themes that were brooding deepest in their
hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed
something slight and casual to run before and throw open the
doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led
across the threshold.
After awhile, the minister fixed his eyes on Hester Prynne's.
"Hester," said he, "hast thou found peace?"
She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.
"Hast thou?" she asked.
"None--nothing but despair!" he answered. "What else could I
look for, being what I am, and leading such a life as mine? Were
I an atheist--a man devoid of conscience--a wretch with
coarse and brutal instincts--I might have found peace long ere
now. Nay, I never should have lost it. But, as matters stand
with my soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in
me, all of God's gifts that were the choicest have become the
ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, I am most miserable!"
"The people reverence thee," said Hester. "And surely thou
workest good among them! Doth this bring thee no comfort?"
"More misery, Hester!--Only the more misery!" answered the
clergyman with a bitter smile. "As concerns the good which I may
appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a
delusion. What can a ruined soul like mine effect towards the
redemption of other souls?--or a polluted soul towards their
purification? And as for the people's reverence,
would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem
it, Hester, a consolation that I must stand up in my pulpit, and
meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of
heaven were beaming from it!--must see my flock hungry for the
truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were
speaking!--and then look inward, and discern the black reality
of what they idolise? I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of
heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And
Satan laughs at it!"
"You wrong yourself in this," said Hester gently.
"You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind
you in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy,
in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no
reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works?
And wherefore should it not bring you peace?"
"No, Hester--no!" replied the clergyman. "There is no
substance in it] It is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me!
Of penance, I have had enough! Of penitence, there has been
none! Else, I should long ago have thrown off these garments of
mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see
me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the
scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!
Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a
seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognises me for
what I am! Had I one friend--or were it my worst enemy!--to
whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could
daily betake myself, and known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks
my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth
would save me! But now, it is all falsehood!--all emptiness!--all death!"
Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. Yet,
uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he did,
his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in
which to interpose what she came to say. She conquered her
fears, and spoke:
"Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for," said she, "with
whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it!"
Again she hesitated, but brought out the words with an effort
"Thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under
the same roof!"
The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and
clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his
bosom.
"Ha! What sayest thou?" cried he. "An enemy! And under mine
own roof! What mean you?"
Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which
she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie
for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy
of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. The
very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter
might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere
of a being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had been a
period when Hester was less alive to this consideration; or,
perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the
minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more
tolerable doom. But of late, since the night
of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both
softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more
accurately. She doubted not that the continual presence of Roger
Chillingworth--the secret poison of his malignity, infecting
all the air about him--and his authorised interference, as a
physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual
infirmities--that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel
purpose. By means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been
kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to
cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his
spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be
insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the Good
and True, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type.
Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once--nay,
why should we not speak it?--still so passionately loved!
Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and
death itself, as she had already told Roger Chillingworth, would
have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had
taken upon herself to choose. And now, rather than have had this
grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have laid down on the
forest leaves, and died there, at Arthur Dimmesdale's feet.
"Oh, Arthur!" cried she, "forgive me! In all things else, I have
striven to be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have
held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity; save when
thy good--thy life--thy fame--were put in question! Then I
consented to a deception. But a lie is never good, even
though death threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see what
I would say? That old man!--the physician!--he whom they
call Roger Chillingworth!--he was my husband!"
The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence
of passion, which--intermixed in more shapes than one with his
higher, purer, softer qualities--was, in fact, the portion of
him which the devil claimed, and through which he sought to win
the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than
Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it lasted, it
was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been so much
enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were
incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down on the
ground, and buried his face in his hands.
"I might have known it," murmured he--"I did know it! Was not
the secret told me, in the natural recoil of my heart at the
first sight of him, and as often as I have seen him since? Why
did I not understand? Oh, Hester Prynne, thou little, little
knowest all the horror of this thing! And the shame!--the
indelicacy!--the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick
and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!
Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this!--I cannot forgive
thee!"
"Thou shalt forgive me!" cried Hester, flinging herself on the
fallen leaves beside him. "Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!"
With sudden and desperate tenderness she threw her arms around
him, and pressed his head against her bosom, little caring though
his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. He would have released himself,
but strove in vain to do so. Hester would not set him free, lest he
should look her sternly in the face. All the world had frowned on
her--for seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely
woman--and still she bore it all, nor ever once turned away her firm,
sad eyes. Heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had
not died. But the frown of this pale, weak, sinful, and
sorrow-stricken man was what Hester could not bear, and live!
"Wilt thou yet forgive me?" she repeated, over and over again.
"Wilt thou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?"
"I do forgive you, Hester," replied the minister at length, with
a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. "I
freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both. We are not,
Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than
even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been
blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the
sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!"
"Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration
of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other. Hast thou
forgotten it?"
"Hush, Hester!" said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground.
"No; I have not forgotten!"
They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on
the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them
a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so
long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along--and
yet it unclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim
another, and another, and, after all, another
moment. The forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a
blast that was passing through it. The boughs were tossing
heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned
dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair
that sat beneath, or constrained to forbode evil to come.
And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-track that
led backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up
again the burden of her ignominy and the minister the hollow
mockery of his good name! So they lingered an instant longer.
No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this
dark forest. Here seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need
not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here seen only by
her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for
one moment true!
He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.
"Hester!" cried he, "here is a new horror! Roger Chillingworth
knows your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he
continue, then, to keep our secret? What will now be the course
of his revenge?"
"There is a strange secrecy in his nature," replied Hester,
thoughtfully; "and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices
of his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the
secret. He will doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark
passion."
"And I! --how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with
this deadly enemy?" exclaimed Arthur Dimmesdale, shrinking
within himself, and pressing his hand
nervously against his heart--a gesture that had grown
involuntary with him. "Think for me, Hester! Thou art strong.
Resolve for me!"
"Thou must dwell no longer with this man," said Hester, slowly
and firmly. "Thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!"
"It were far worse than death!" replied the minister. "But how
to avoid it? What choice remains to me? Shall I lie down again
on these withered leaves, where I cast myself when thou didst
tell me what he was? Must I sink down there, and die at once?"
"Alas! what a ruin has befallen thee!" said Hester, with the
tears gushing into her eyes. "Wilt thou die for very weakness?
There is no other cause!"
"The judgment of God is on me," answered the conscience-stricken
priest. "It is too mighty for me to struggle with!"
"Heaven would show mercy," rejoined Hester, "hadst thou but the
strength to take advantage of it. "
"Be thou strong for me!" answered he. "Advise me what to do."
"Is the world, then, so narrow?" exclaimed Hester Prynne, fixing
her deep eyes on the minister's, and instinctively exercising a
magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it
could hardly hold itself erect. "Doth the universe lie within
the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but
a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads
yonder forest-track? Backward to the settlement, thou sayest!
Yes; but, onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper into the
wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until some few
miles hence the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white
man's tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would
bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to
one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough
in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of
Roger Chillingworth?"
"Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen leaves!" replied the
minister, with a sad smile.
"Then there is the broad pathway of the sea!" continued Hester.
"It brought thee hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee
back again. In our native land, whether in some remote rural
village, or in vast London--or, surely, in Germany, in France,
in pleasant Italy--thou wouldst be beyond his power and
knowledge! And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and
their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too
long already!"
"It cannot be!" answered the minister, listening as if he were
called upon to realise a dream. "I am powerless to go. Wretched
and sinful as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on
my earthly existence in the sphere where Providence hath placed
me. Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for
other human souls! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful
sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonour, when his
dreary watch shall come to an end!"
"Thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery,"
replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own
energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not
cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path: neither
shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea.
Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no
more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility
in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet
full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed!
There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of thine for
a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the
teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, as is more thy nature,
be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of
the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save
to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and
make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear
without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one
other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life?
that have made thee feeble to will and to do? that will leave
thee powerless even to repent? Up, and away!"
"Oh, Hester!" cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful
light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, "thou
tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering
beneath him! I must die here! There is not the strength or
courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult
world alone!"
It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit.
He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within
his reach.
He repeated the word--"Alone, Hester!"
"Thou shall not go alone!" answered she, in a deep whisper.
Then, all was spoken!
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