THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 21

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• Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

BETIMES in the morning of the day on which the new Governor was to receive   
    his office at the hands of the people, Hester Prynne and little   
    Pearl came into the market-place. It was already thronged with   
    the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, in considerable   
    numbers; among whom, likewise, were many rough figures, whose   
    attire of deer-skins marked them as belonging to some of the forest   
    settlements, which surrounded the little metropolis of the colony.

   
   

On this public holiday, as on all other occasions, for seven years past,   
    Hester was clad in a garment of coarse grey cloth. Not more by its   
    hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it had   
    the effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline; while,   
    again, the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilight indistinctness,   
    and revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination.   
    Her face, so long familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble   
    quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. It was like   
    a mask; or, rather, like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's features;   
    owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that Hester was actually   
    dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had departed out   
    of the world with which she still seemed to mingle.

   
   

It might be, on this one day, that there was an expression unseen before,   
    nor, indeed, vivid enough to be detected now; unless some preternaturally   
    gifted observer should have first read the heart, and have   
    afterwards sought a corresponding development in the countenance   
    and mien. Such a spiritual seer might have conceived, that,   
    after sustaining the gaze of the multitude through seven miserable   
    years as a necessity, a penance, and something which it was a   
    stern religion to endure, she now, for one last time more, encountered   
    it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had so long   
    been agony into a kind of triumph. "Look your last on the scarlet letter   
    and its wearer!"- the people's victim and life-long bond-slave, as   
    they fancied her, might say to them. "Yet a little while, and she will   
    be beyond your reach! A few hours longer, and the deep, mysterious   
    ocean will quench and hide for ever the symbol which ye have   
    caused to burn upon her bosom!" Nor were it an inconsistency too   
    improbable to be assigned to human nature, should we suppose a feeling   
    of regret in Hester's mind, at the moment when she was about to   
    win her freedom from the pain which had been thus deeply incorporated   
    with her being. Might there not be an irresistible desire to   
    quaff a last, long, breathless draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes,   
    with which nearly all her years of womanhood had been perpetually   
    flavoured? The wine of life, henceforth to be presented to her   
    lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased   
    and golden beaker; or else leave an inevitable and weary languor,   
    after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as   
    with a cordial of intensest potency.

   
   

Pearl was decked out with airy gaiety. It would have been impossible   
    to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed its existence to     FACE="Arial"> the shape of gloomy grey; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and     FACE="Arial"> so delicate as must have been requisite to contrive the child's     FACE="Arial"> apparel, was the same that had achieved a task perhaps more   
    difficult, in imparting so distinct a peculiarity to Hester's   
    simple robe. The dress, so proper was it to little Pearl, seemed   
    an effluence, or inevitable development and outward   
    manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her   
    than the many-hued brilliancy from a butterfly's wing, or the   
    painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower. As with these,   
    so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature.   
    On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular   
    inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so   
    much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the   
    varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Children have   
    always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them; always,   
    especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever   
    kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the   
    gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of   
    her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness   
    of Hester's brow.

   
   

This effervescence made her flit with a birdlike movement, rather than   
    walk by her mother's side. She broke continually into shouts of a wild,   
    inarticulate, and sometimes piercing music. When they reached the   
    market-place, she became still more restless, on perceiving the stir   
    and bustle that enlivened the spot; for it was usually more like   
    the broad and lonesome green before a village meetinghouse, than   
    the centre of a town's business.

   
   

"Why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "Wherefore have all the     FACE="Arial"> people left their work to-day? Is it a play-day for the whole world?     FACE="Arial"> See, there is the blacksmith! He has washed his sooty face, and put   
    on his Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would gladly be   
    merry, if any kind body would only teach him how! And there is   
    Master Brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling at me. Why   
    does he do so, mother?"

   
   

"He remembers thee a little babe, my child," answered Hester.     FACE="Arial">

   
   

"He should not nod and smile at me for all that- the black, grim,     FACE="Arial"> ugly-eyed old man!" said Pearl. "He may nod at thee, if he   
    will; for thou art clad in grey, and wearest the scarlet letter.   
    But see, mother, how many faces of strange people, and Indians   
    among them, and sailors! What have they all come to do, here in   
    the market-place?"

   
   

"They wait to see the procession pass," said Hester. "For the     FACE="Arial"> Governor and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and     FACE="Arial"> all the great people and good people, with the music and the     FACE="Arial"> soldiers marching before them."

   
   

"And will the minister be there?" asked Pearl. "And will he hold out     FACE="Arial"> both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the     FACE="Arial"> brook-side?"

   
   

"He will be there, child," answered her mother. "But he will not     FACE="Arial"> greet thee to-day; nor must thou greet him."

   
   

"What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking     FACE="Arial"> partly to herself. "In the dark night-time he calls us to him,   
    and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the   
    scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old   
    trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee,   
    sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, so   
    that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But here, in the   
    sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must   
    we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over   
    his heart!"

   
   

"Be quiet, Pearl! Thou understandest not these things," said her     FACE="Arial"> mother. "Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and   
    see how cheery is everybody's face to-day. The children have   
    come from their schools, and the grown people from their   
    workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy. For, to-day,   
    a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so- as has been   
    the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered-   
    they make merry and rejoice; as if a good and golden year were   
    at length to pass over the poor old world!"

   
   

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that brightened   
    the faces of the people. Into this festal season of the year- as   
    it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of   
    two centuries- the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy   
    they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling   
    the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday,   
    they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at   
    a period of general affliction.

   
   

But we perhaps exaggerate the grey or sable tinge, which undoubtedly   
    characterised the mood and manners of the age. The persons now in   
    the market-place of Boston had not been born to an inheritance of   
    Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen, whose fathers had lived   
    in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan epoch; a time when the   
    life of England, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been   
    as stately, magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed.   
    Had they followed their hereditary taste, the New England settlers   
    would have illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires,   
    banquets, pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have been   
    impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine   
    mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque   
    and brilliant embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation,   
    at such festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an attempt   
    of this kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the political   
    year of the colony commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered   
    splendour, a colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what   
    they had beheld in proud old London- we will not say at a royal   
    coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's show- might be traced in the customs   
    which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the annual installation   
    of magistrates. The fathers and founders of the commonwealth-   
    the statesman, the priest, and the soldier- deemed it a duty   
    then to assume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance   
    with antique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of public   
    or social eminence. All came forth to move in procession before the   
    people's eye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple framework   
    of a government so newly constructed.

   
   

Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in relaxing   
    the severe and close application to their various modes of rugged   
    industry, which, at all other times, seemed of the same piece and   
    material with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the appliances   
    which popular merriment would so readily have found in the   
    England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James- no rude shows of a   
    theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor   
    gleeman, with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks   
    of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude   
    with jests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but still effective,   
    by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy.   
    All such professors of the several branches of jocularity would   
    have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law,   
    but by the general sentiment which gives law its vitality. Not the   
    less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled-grimly, perhaps, but widely   
    too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had   
    witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country fairs and on   
    the village-greens of England; and which it was thought well to   
    keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness   
    that were essential in them. Wrestling-matches, in the different   
    fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire, were seen here and there   
    about the market-place; in one corner, there was a friendly bout at   
    quarterstaff; and- what attracted most interest of all- on the platform   
    of the pillory, already so noted in our pages, two masters of defence   
    were commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But,   
    much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter business was broken   
    off by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea of permitting   
    the majesty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one of   
    its consecrated places.

   
   

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole (the people being then   
    in the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring of sires   
    who had known how to be merry, in their day), that they would compare   
    favourably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants,   
    even at so long an interval as ourselves. Their immediate posterity,   
    the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest   
    shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it,   
    that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have   
    yet to learn again the forgotten art of gaiety.

   
   

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint   
    was the sad grey, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet   
    enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians- in their savage   
    finery of curiously embroidered deer-skin robes, wampum-belts,   
    red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and   
    arrow and stone-headed spear- stood apart, with countenances of   
    inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain.   
    Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest   
    feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed   
    by some mariners-a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish   
    Main- who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day.   
    They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and   
    an immensity of beard; their wide, short trousers were confined about   
    the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and   
    sustaining always a long knife, and, in some instances, a sword. From   
    beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which,   
    even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity.   
    They transgressed, without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour   
    that were binding on all others; smoking tobacco under the beadle's   
    very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling;   
    and quaffing, at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae   
    from pocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping   
    crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality   
    of the age, rigid as we call it, that a license was allowed the   
    seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more   
    desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would   
    go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little   
    doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable   
    specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty,     FACE="Arial"> as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce,     FACE="Arial"> such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of     FACE="Arial"> justice.

   
   

But the sea in those old times, heaved, swelled, and foamed, very much   
    at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly   
    any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave   
    might relinquish his calling, and become at once, if he chose, a   
    man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his   
    reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable   
    to traffic, or casually associate. Thus, the Puritan elders, in   
    their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats,   
    smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these   
    jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor anim-adversion,   
    when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the   
    physician, was seen to enter the market-place, in close and   
    familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

   
   

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far as apparel   
    went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. He wore a profusion   
    of ribbons on his garment, and gold lace on his hat, which was   
    also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a feather. There   
    was a sword at his side, and a sword-cut on his forehead, which, by   
    the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than   
    hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this   
    face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without   
    undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring   
    fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. As   
    regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as pertaining   
    to the character, as to a fish his glistening scales.

   
   

After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristol ship   
    strolled idly through the market-place; until, happening to approach   
    the spot where Hester Prynne was standing, he appeared to recognise,   
    and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually the case   
    wherever Hester stood, a small vacant area- a sort of magic circle-   
    had formed itself about her, into which, though the people were   
    elbowing one another at a little distance, none ventured, or felt disposed   
    to intrude. It was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which   
    the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own reserve,   
    and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly,   
    withdrawal of her fellow-creatures. Now, if never before, it answered   
    a good purpose, by enabling Hester and the seaman to speak together   
    without the risk of being overheard; and so changed was Hester   
    Prynne's repute before the public, that the matron in town most eminent   
    for rigid morality could not have held such intercourse with less   
    result of scandal than herself.

   
   

"So, mistress," said the mariner, "I must bid the steward make ready     FACE="Arial"> one more berth than you bargained for! No fear of scurvy or     FACE="Arial"> ship-fever, this voyage! What with the ship's surgeon and this other     FACE="Arial"> doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more by token, as     FACE="Arial"> there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which I traded for with   
    a Spanish vessel."

   
   

"What mean you?" inquired Hester, startled more than she permitted     FACE="Arial"> to appear. "Have you another passenger?"

   
   

"Why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physician     FACE="Arial"> here- Chillingworth, he calls himself- is minded to try my     FACE="Arial"> cabin-fare with you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me     FACE="Arial"> he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke   
    of- he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan   
    rulers!"

   
   

"They know each other well, indeed," replied Hester, with a mien     FACE="Arial"> of calmness, though in the utmost consternation. "They have long   
    dwelt together."

   
   

Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne. But, at   
    that instant, she beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself, standing   
    in the remotest corner of the market-place, and smiling on her;   
    a smile which- across the wide and bustling square, and through all   
    the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests   
    of the crowd- conveyed secret and fearful meaning.   
   

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 2
3. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11
4. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 10
5. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 7
6. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 8
7. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 5
8. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 9
9. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 20
10. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 6
11. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 4
12. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 23
13. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 3
14. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 1
15. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 12
16. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 14