THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 3

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• Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

FROM this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and   
    universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by   
    discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of   
    her thoughts. An Indian, in his native garb, was standing there; but the red men were not   
    so infrequent visitors of the English settlements, that one of them would have attracted   
    any notice from Hester Prynne, at such a time; much less would he have excluded all other   
    objects and ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side, and evidently sustaining a   
    companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilised and   
    savage costume.

   
   

He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, could   
    hardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person   
    who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to   
    itself, and become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless   
    arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavoured to conceal or abate the   
    peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne, that one of this man's   
    shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at the first instant of perceiving that thin   
    visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom with   
    so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did   
    not seem to hear it.

   
   

At his arrival in the market-place, and some time before she saw him,   
    the stranger had bent his eyes on Hester Prynne. It was carelessly, at first, like a man   
    chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and   
    import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind. Very soon, however, his   
    look became keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself across his features,   
    like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed   
    intervolutions, in open sight. His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which,   
    nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a   
    single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. After a brief space, the   
    convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of his nature.   
    When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to   
    recognise him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air,   
    and laid it on his lips.

   
   

Then, touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood next to him, he   
    addressed him, in a formal and courteous manner.

   
   

"I pray you, good sir," said he, "who is this woman?- and   
    wherefore is she here set up to public shame?"

   
   

"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend,"   
    answered the townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage companion,   
    "else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne, and her evil doings. She   
    hath raised a great scandal, I promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church."

   
   

"You say truly," replied the other. "I am a stranger, and   
    have been a wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with grievous mishaps by sea and   
    land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen folk, to the southward; and am   
    now brought hither by this Indian, to be redeemed out of my captivity. Will it please you,   
    therefore, to tell me of Hester Prynne's- have I her name rightly?- of this woman's   
    offences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?"

   
   

"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your   
    troubles and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman, "to find yourself,   
    at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers   
    and people; as here in our godly New England. Yonder woman, sir, you must know, was the   
    wife of a certain learned man, English by birth, but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam,   
    whence, some good time agone, he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of   
    the Massachusetts. To this purpose, he sent his wife before him, remaining himself to look   
    after some necessary affairs. Marry, good sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman   
    has been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned gentleman, Master   
    Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being left to her own misguidance-"

   
   

"Ah!- aha!- I conceive you," said the stranger, with a bitter   
    smile. "So learned a man as you speak of should have learned this, too, in his books.   
    And who, by your favour, sir, may be the father of yonder babe- it is some three or four   
    months old, I should judge- which Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?"

   
   

"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the Daniel   
    who shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the townsman. "Madam Hester   
    absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their heads together in vain.   
    Peradventure the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and   
    forgetting that God sees him."

   
   

"The learned man," observed the stranger, with another smile,   
    "should come himself, to look into the mystery."

   
   

"It behooves him well, if he be still in life," responded the   
    townsman. "Now, good sir, our Massachusetts magistracy, bethinking themselves that   
    this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall- and that,   
    moreover, as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea- they have not   
    been bold to put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. The penalty   
    thereof is death. But in their great mercy and tenderness of heart, they have doomed   
    Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and   
    then and thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon   
    her bosom."

   
   

"A wise sentence!" remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his   
    head. "Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be   
    engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity   
    should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be known!- he will be   
    known!- he will be known!"

   
   

He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and, whispering a   
    few words to his Indian attendant, they both made their way through the crowd.

   
   

While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal,   
    still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger; so fixed a gaze that, at moments of intense   
    absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and   
    her. Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as   
    she now did, with the hot, mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its   
    shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her   
    arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as to a festival, staring at the features that   
    should have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a   
    home, or beneath a matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it was, she was conscious of a   
    shelter in the presence of these thousand witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so   
    many betwixt him and her, than to greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled for   
    refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection   
    should be withdrawn from her. Involved in these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice   
    behind her, until it had repeated her name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone,   
    audible to the whole multitude.

   
   

"Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!" said the voice.

   
   

It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform on which   
    Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended to the meeting-house.   
    It was the place whence proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the   
    magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public observances in those days.   
    Here, to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Governor Bellingham himself, with   
    four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honour. He wore a dark   
    feather in his hat, a border of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath;   
    a gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his wrinkles. He was not   
    ill fitted to be the head and representative of a community, which owed its origin and   
    progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the   
    stern and tempered energies of manhood, and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so   
    much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. The other eminent characters, by   
    whom the chief ruler was surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to   
    a period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of Divine   
    institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just, and sage. But, out of the whole human   
    family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous   
    persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and   
    disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom   
    Hester Prynne now turned her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy   
    she might expect, lay in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted   
    her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale and trembled.

   
   

The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and   
    famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his   
    contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. This last   
    attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and   
    was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him. There he stood,   
    with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while his grey eyes, accustomed to   
    the shaded light of his study, were winking, like those of Hester's infant, in the   
    unadulterated sunshine. He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed   
    to old volumes of sermons; and had no more right than one of those portraits would have,   
    to step forth, as he now did, and meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and   
    anguish.

   
   

"Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, "I have striven with   
    my young brother here, under whose preaching of the Word you have been privileged to   
    sit"- here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young man beside him-   
    "I have sought, I say, to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you,   
    here in the face of Heaven, and before these wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of   
    all the people, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowing your natural   
    temper better than I, he could the better judge what arguments to use, whether of   
    tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy; insomuch   
    that you should no longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. But   
    he opposes to me (with a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond his years) that it   
    were wronging the very nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart's secrets in   
    such broad daylight, and in presence of so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to   
    convince him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of it   
    forth. What say you to it, once again, brother Dimmesdale! Must it be thou, or I, that   
    shall deal with this poor sinner's soul?"

   
   

There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of the   
    balcony; and Governor Bellingham gave expression to its purport, speaking in an   
    authoritative voice, although tempered with respect towards the youthful clergyman whom he   
    addressed.

   
   

"Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of   
    this woman's soul lies greatly with you. It behooves you, therefore, to exhort her to   
    repentance, and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof."

   
   

The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the   
    Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale; a young clergyman, who had come from one of the great English   
    universities, bringing all the learning of the age into our wild forest-land. His   
    eloquence and religious fervour had already given the earnest of high eminence in his   
    profession. He was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending   
    brow, large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed   
    it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of   
    self-restraint. Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there   
    was an air about this young minister- an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look-   
    as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human   
    existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as   
    his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy bypaths, and thus kept himself simple and   
    childlike; coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy   
    purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like the speech of an angel.

   
   

Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor had   
    introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing of all men,   
    to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred even in its pollution. The trying nature of   
    his position drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous.

   
   

"Speak to the woman, my brother," said Mr. Wilson. "It is   
    of moment to her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful Governor says, momentous to thine   
    own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the truth!"

   
   

The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, in silent prayer, as it   
    seemed, and then came forward.

   
   

"Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony, and   
    looking down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good man says, and   
    seest the accountability under which I labour. If thou feelest it to be for thy soul's   
    peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I   
    charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent   
    from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for believe me, Hester, though he were to   
    step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet   
    better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for   
    him, except it tempt him- yea, compel him, as it were- to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven   
    hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over   
    the evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him-who,   
    perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself- the bitter, but wholesome, cup   
    that is now presented to thy lips!"

   
   

The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken.   
    The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words,   
    caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of   
    sympathy. Even the poor baby, at Hester's bosom, was affected by the same influence; for   
    it directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms,   
    with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So powerful seemed the minister's appeal, that   
    the people could not believe but that Hester Prynne would speak out the guilty name; or   
    else that the guilty one himself, in whatever high or lowly place he stood, would be drawn   
    forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, and compelled to ascend the scaffold.

   
   

Hester shook her head.

   
   

"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!"   
    cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before. "That little babe hath been   
    gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out   
    the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy   
    breast."

   
   

"Never!" replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson,   
    but into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is too deeply   
    branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony, as well as   
    mine!"

   
   

"Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly,   
    proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold. "Speak; and give your child a   
    father!"

   
   

"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death,   
    but responding to this voice, which she too surely recognized. "And my child must   
    seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one!"

   
   

"She will not speak!" murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning   
    over the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his appeal. He   
    now drew back, with a long respiration. "Wondrous strength and generosity of a   
    woman's heart! She will not speak!"

   
   

Discerning the impractible state of the poor culprit's mind, the elder   
    clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion, addressed to the multitude   
    a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious   
    letter. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his   
    periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new terrors in their   
    imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit.   
    Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and   
    an air of weary indifference. She had borne, that morning, all that nature could endure;   
    and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too intense suffering by a   
    swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while   
    the faculties of animal life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher   
    thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant, during the latter   
    portion of her rdeal, pierced the air with its wailings and screams; she strove to hush   
    it, mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathise with its trouble. With the same hard   
    demeanour, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within its   
    iron-clamped portal. It was whispered, by those who peered after her, that the scarlet   
    letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark passage-way of the interior.   
   

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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 1
14. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 12
15. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 14
16. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 16