The Scarlet Letter Penguin English Library
Sofie Kovalcheck
Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment appearedthat individual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowdhad been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter.He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence,but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing ofhim, until the magistrates should have conferred with the Indiansagamores respecting his ransom. His name was announced asRoger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into theroom, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quietthat followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had immediatelybecome as still as death, although the child continued to moan.
Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of thetown, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinityto any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. Ithad been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because thesoil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparativeremoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activitywhich already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood onthe shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-coveredhills, towards the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone[94]grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottagefrom view, as seem to denote that here was some object whichwould fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. Inthis little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that shepossessed, and by the license of the magistrates, who still keptan inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, withher infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediatelyattached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehendwherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphereof human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold herplying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in thedoorway, or laboring in her little garden, or coming forth alongthe pathway that led townward; and, discerning the scarletletter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagiousfear.
But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acutenessof the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness,[117]or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up hersmall forefinger, and touched the scarlet letter.
Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same positionin which we beheld her during the earlier periods of herignominy. Years had come and gone. Pearl was now sevenyears old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast,glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiarobject to the towns-people. As is apt to be the case when aperson stands out in any prominence before the community, and,at the same time, interferes neither with public nor individualinterests and convenience, a species of general regard had ultimatelygrown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to thecredit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness isbrought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred,by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love,unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritationof the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of HesterPrynne, there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. She neverbattled with the public, but submitted, uncomplainingly, to itsworst usage; she made no claim upon it, in requital for whatshe suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. Then,also, the blameless purity of her life during all these years inwhich she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned largelyin her favor. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind,and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything,it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that hadbrought back the poor wanderer to its paths.
And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-trackthat led backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne musttake up again the burden of her ignominy, and the minister thehollow mockery of his good name! So they lingered an instantlonger. No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloomof this dark forest. Here, seen only by his eyes, the scarletletter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman!Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to Godand man, might be, for one moment, true![241]
While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, wherethe cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed herforever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the[301]sacred pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits hadyielded to his control. The sainted minister in the church!The woman of the scarlet letter in the market-place! Whatimagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise thatthe same scorching stigma was on them both!