THE SCARLET LETTER.

Te Aroha News, Volume XI, Issue 1708, 23 January 1895, Page 4

THE SCARLET LETTER.

By 3JATHAHIEL HAT7THOBEB,

•., ■ -•- (Continued.) - . - Little feari at first clapped her nanos, but then lost for an instant the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence throughout the morning. She gazed silently and seemed to be borne upward, like a floating sea bird, on the long heaves and swells of sound. But she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armor of the military company which followed 1 after the music and .formed the honorary escort' of the procession. This body of soldiery, which still sustains a corporate existence and marches down from past age 3 with an ancient and honorable fame, was -composed of no mercenary > materials.' Its ranks were filled with gentlemen who felt the stirrings of martial impulse and sought to establish a kind of college of arms, where,-as in an association of Knights Templar, they might learn the science, and. so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices of war.'; ‘ \

• The high estimation then placed upon the military character might b 6 seen in the lofty port of each individual member of the company.. Some of them, indeed-, by their services in the low countries and on other fields of European warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modem display can aspire to equal. „ And yet ,the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer’s eye. Even in outward de-, meanor they showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior’s haughty stride, -look vulgar, if.not absurd. * *. * So far as a demeanor of natural authority was concerned, the mother coun-,' try need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democ-J racy adopted into the house of peers dr j made the privy council of the sovereign. Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently distinguisheddivine, from whose lips the religious dis-j course of the anniversary was expected.! His was the- profession at that era iff which intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in political life; for, leaving a higher motive out of the question,' it 'offered - inducements powerful enough in the almost worshiping re-| spect of -the community to win the most aspiring ambition into its service. Even political power, as in the case of Increase Mather, was within the grasp of a successful priest.- |

It was the observation of those who beheld him now that never, since Mr. Himmesdale first set his foot on the New England shore, had he ..exhibitedgmcl! as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step as at other times; his frame was not bent, nor did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. * *. * Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary influence \come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not, unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere and utterly beyond her t each. One glance of recog;nition, she had imagined, must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest; with its little dell of solitude and love [and anguish, and the mossy : tree trunk; where, sitting hand in hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk/with the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply had they known each other thdriF And was this the man? She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly past, enveloped, as it were/in the rich music, with the procession,! of majestic and, venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in his worldly position, and still more so in that far Vista' of.' his unsympathizin'g thoughts, through which she now 1 beheld him! n Her spirit sank with the that all must .have been a delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there couldibe no real bond . betwixt, the clergyman and herself. And thus" much of woman was there in .Hester that she could'scarcely'forgive him—least of all now,.when the heavy footstep,of, their approaching fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer—for being able so completely *to withdraw himself from their mutual world, while she gropjsd darkly and stretched forth her coldhands and found him not. i

Pearl either_saw and responded to her mother’s feelings, pr herself felt the re* motefless qnd intangibility that had fallen around the minister. - While .the procession passed the child was nneasy, fluttering up and down like a bird on .the .joint,.of.taking.flight.‘ When,the whole had by she looked pp-ihto Hester’s .' , / j

• “Mother,” said she, “was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?’ J-; : hQtold thy peace, dear little ; Pearl 1” whispered her mother. "We must not always talk ini the market place of what happens to ils in the forest.’’ ;

‘I could not be sure that it was he: so strange he looked,” continued the child. “Else 1, would have run to him and bid him kiss me now, before all the people; even as he did yonder among the dark old trees.: Whati would the minister have said, mother? Would he have clapped his hand over his heart and scowled on me and bid me be gone?" “What should he say, Pearl?” anewered Hester, “save that it was no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the market place? Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him!” * * *

By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the meeting house, and the accents of - the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale were heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears in the shape of an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister’s very neculiar,voice.

This vocal organ was in itself af ricn endowment, insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion -and pathos and emotions high or tender in a tongue native to the human heart wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage , through the church walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intentness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her entirely apart .from its. indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser medium and have clogged the spiritual-sense..-Now she .caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself;, then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive "gradations of sweetness and power, until its .-volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever in it an essential character of plain* tiveness. ;

A loud or low expression of anguish—the whisper or the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering "humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosoml At -times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid a desolate silence. ..But even when the minister’s voice grew high and commanding,-when it gushed irrepressibly upward, when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls and diffuse itself in the open air—still, if the auditor listened intently and for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. Whatwasit? The complaint of a humaq heart, sorrow laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind, beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness, at every moment, in each accent and never in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman his most appropriate power. During all this time Hester stood, statuelike, at the foot of the scaffold. II the minister’s voice had not kept there, there wo ild nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first hour of hei life of ignominy. There was a sense within her —too ill defined to be made a 'thought,-but weighing heavily on her mind —that her whole orb of life, both before and after,- was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave tunify. Little Rearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother’s side,' and was playing at her own will about the market place.She made the somber crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening fay; even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a wnoie tree or dusty ronage by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the clustering leaves., She had an undulating, but of-tcntruL-iss a sharp and irregular wmr ment. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which tod&y was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because it was played upon andyit&ated with her mother’s disquietude. Whenever - ’ Pearl saw anything“tu-e£--cite her ever active and wandering curiosity, sue new tmtnerward and, as we might say, seized upon that man or thing as her own property, so far as ais® desired it; hut without yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the ; less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the, indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure and sparkled with its activity.; She ran and looked; the wild Indian in the face; and he grew conscious o? a nature wilder than his own. Thence with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners—the swarthy cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land ; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the sea foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea fire ; that flashes beneath the prow in the night time. . . . r ,

One of these seafaring men—the ship-, master, indeed, who had spoken to Hester Prynne—was so smitten with Pearl’s aspect that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a humming bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it and threw it to .the child. Pearl immediately, twined it around her neck and waist with such happy skill that once , seen there it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine her without it.

“Thy mother is yonder woman with; the scarlet letter,” said the seaman.; “Wilt thou carry her a message fromi me?” I

“If the message pleases me I.will, answered Pearl.

“Then tell her,” rejoined he, “that I spake again with the black visaged, hump shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thy mother take no thought save for herself and thee. Wilt thou ;tell her this, thou witch baby?” “Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!” cried Pearl, with a naughty Bmile. “If thou callest me that ill name 1 shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!”

Pursuing a zigzag course across the market place the child returned to her mother and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester’s strong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank at last on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which—at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of miseryshowed itself with an unrelenting smile right in the midst of their path., With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster’s intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to another trial. There Were many people present, from the country round about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had been made, terrific by. a hundr ed

raise or ek®S> rninexo, ■ had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards- At that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal , force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators and learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their sunburned and desperado looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were affected by ,» sort of cold shadow of the white man’s curiosity, and gliding through the crowd fastened their snakelike black eyes on Hester’s bosom, conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge mnst needs be a personage of high dignity among her people. Lastly the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn out subject languidly reviving itself by sympathy with what they say others feel) lounged idly, to the same quarter and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and recognized the self same faces of that group of matrons who had awaited her forthcoming from the prison door seven years ago, all save one —the youngest and only compassionate among them —■whose, burial robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the center of more remark and excitement, and was thus rnnfift to sear her breast more painfully than at : any time since the first day she put it on, While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her forever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience whose very inmosf spirits had yielded to his controL T&8 sainted minister in the church! Tba woman of the scarlet letter in the marked place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!

; ; CHAPTER XVHL THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LKTTKS.

me eloquent voice On which the soula ®f the listening audience had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea at length came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as What should follow the utterance o! j .oracles,. Then ensued a murmur and* half hushed tumult, as if the auditors, released from the high spell that had > transported them into the reeion of another's mind, were returning into themselves with all their awe and wondei stULheayy on them. In a moment ipore thii|&wd began to gush forth from the ; f:';^||^^^M r: breath, Sn<j3re j|t-tb ! Support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed than that atmosphere which-tbe preacher had converted into wor<js of and had burdened with .the ;rich ! fragrance of his thought. ’ : : •" • v. -In the open air their rapture broke intb~speecb. The street and Ah- inarket , place absolute^"babbled -from, sider-te ! side with applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they had told one another of what each knew bettei than he could' tell Or hear. According to their unitecj testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high and so holy a spirit as he that spake this day, nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal . lips more evidently tnan it aid through his, Its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him and -possessing (him and continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvelous to himself as to his audience. His subject* it appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the communities oi shankind, with a special reference to the New England which they were here planting in the wilderness. And as he drew toward the close a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were constrained; only with this difference, that whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. , , /■'; : .. . But throughout it all and through the i whole discourse there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which icould hot be interpreted otherwise than »s the natural regret of one soon to pass , away. Yes, their minister whom they / so loved—and who so loved them aU that he could not depart heavenward without a Bigb—had the foreboding of untimely death upon him and would soon leave them in their tears! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as if an angel in his passage to the skies had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant—at once .a shadow and a splendor—and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them* Thus there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale —as to most men in their various spheres, though seldom recognized until they see it far behind them—an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one or than any which could hereafter be. He stood at this moment on the very proudest eminence of superiority to which the gifts of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence and a reputation of whitest sanctity could exalta clergyman in New England's earliest days, when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit at the close of his election sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast.

How was heard again the clangor of the music, and the measured tramp of the military escort issuing from the church door. ' The procession was to be marshaled thence to the town, hall,

wnere a solemn Danquet womu w—-. plete the ceremonies of the day. Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and .majestic fathers was seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew back reverently, on either side, as the governor and magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy 1 ministers, and all that were eminent ‘ an d renowned, advanced into the midstof them. When they were fairly in the market place their presence was greeted by a shout. This—though- dou^,less it i might acquire additional fomjflßSd vol-ume-from the childlike the age awarded to its rulersv r was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which was yet, reverberating in their ears. Each felt the impulse in himself and far the same breath caught it from his neighbor. Within the church it had hardly been kept down; beneath the sky it pealed upward to the zenith. There were human beings enough and enough of highly : wrought and syinpkonious feeling to produce that more impressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the seaeven that mighty.swell of many voices Wended into one great Voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of the many! Never from the soil of New England had gone up ouch,a shout!- Never on New." England soil had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren as. the preacher! How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head? So ethereal* feed lyr spirit as he was, and so apotheosized by worshiping admirers, did his footsteps in; the procession really tread upon the dust of earth? : As the ranks of military -men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes were turned toward the point -where the minister was. seen, to. approach among them. The shout ; died into a murmur as one portion of the crowd after another a How feeble and pale he looked amid all his triumph! The energy—or. saj\ rather, the inspiration which had theld him up until he should have delivered the sacred message that brought its own along with it from heaven—was with-, 1 drawn,; now that it had so faithfully; performed its office. The glow, which; they had just before beheld burning on; his cheek, was extinguished like a flame i that sinks down hopelessly among the late-decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with Sficb a deathlike hue; it w;as hardly a man with life in him that tottered on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fall! ' . . - (To be continued.;)