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 gray lichens. All these
giant trees and bowlders 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
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
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 stray
far into the wood. And take heed that thou come at my first call.”
“Yes, mother,” answered Pearl. “But if it be the Black Man, wilt thou
not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book under his
arm?”
“Go, silly child!” said her mother, impatiently. “It is no Black Man!
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 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
characterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other
situation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was
wofully 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, forevermore. 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
remarked, he kept his hand over his heart.
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 no