XVI.-A FOREST WALK.

ester Prynne remained constant in her
resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale,
at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior
consequences, the true character of the man
who had crept into his intimacy. For several
days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity
of addressing him in some of the meditative walks which
she knew him to be in the habit of taking, along the shores of
the peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighboring country.
There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to
the holy whiteness of the clergyman’s good fame, had she
visited him in his own study; where many a penitent, ere now,
had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened
by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the
secret or undisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth,
and partly that her conscious heart imputed suspicion where
none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister
and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while
they talked together,—for all these reasons, Hester never thought
of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open
sky.esterAt last, while attending in a sick-chamber, whither the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer, she
learnt that he had gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle
Eliot, among his Indian converts. He would probably return,
by a certain hour, in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes,
therefore, the next day, Hester took little Pearl,—who was
necessarily the companion of all her mother’s expeditions, however
inconvenient her presence,—and set forth.The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula
to the mainland, was no other than a footpath. It straggled
onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed
it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side,
and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that,
to Hester’s mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in
which she had so long been wandering. The day was chill and
sombre. Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred,
however, by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine
might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path.
This flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of
some long vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight—feebly
sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the
day and scene—withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the
spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped
to find them bright.“Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you.
It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something
on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way
off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but
a child. It will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my
bosom yet!”“Nor ever will, my child, I hope,” said Hester.“And why not, mother?” asked Pearl, stopping short, just
at the beginning of her race. “Will not it come of its own
accord, when I am a woman grown?”“Run away, child,” answered her mother, “and catch the
sunshine! It will soon be gone.”Pearl set forth, at a great pace, and, as Hester smiled to perceive,
did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the
midst of it, all brightened by its splendor, and scintillating with
the vivacity excited by rapid motion. The light lingered about
the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother
had drawn almost nigh enough to step into the magic circle too.“It will go now,” said Pearl, shaking her head.“See!” answered Hester, smiling. “Now I can stretch out
my hand, and grasp some of it.”As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to
judge from the bright expression that was dancing on Pearl’s
features, her mother could have fancied that the child had
absorbed it into herself, and would give it forth again, with a
gleam about her path, as they should plunge into some gloomier
shade. There was no other attribute that so much impressed
her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigor in Pearl’s
nature, as this never-failing vivacity of spirits; she had not the
disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter days,
inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors.
Perhaps this too was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild
energy with which Hester had fought against her sorrows, before
Pearl’s birth. It was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a
hard, metallic lustre to the child’s character. She wanted—what
some people want throughout life—a grief that should
deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of
sympathy. But there was time enough yet for little Pearl.“Come, my child!” said Hester, looking about her from the
spot where Pearl had stood still in the sunshine. “We will sit
down a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves.”“I am not aweary, mother,” replied the little girl. “But
you may sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile.”“A story, child!” said Hester. “And about what?”“O, a story about the Black Man,” answered Pearl, taking
hold of her mother’s gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half
mischievously, into her face. “How he haunts this forest, and
carries a book with him,—a big, heavy book, with iron clasps;
and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen
to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they
are to write their names with their own blood. And then he
sets his mark on their bosoms! Didst thou ever meet the
Black Man, mother?”“And who told you this story, Pearl?” asked her mother,
recognizing a common superstition of the period.“It was the old dame in the chimney-corner, at the house
where you watched last night,” said the child. “But she fancied
me asleep while she was talking of it. She said that a thousand
and a thousand people had met him here, and had written in
his book, and have his mark on them. And that ugly-tempered
lady, old Mistress Hibbins, was one. And, mother, the old
dame said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man’s mark on
thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him
at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And
dost thou go to meet him in the night-time?”“Didst thou ever awake, and find thy mother gone?” asked
Hester.“Not that I remember,” said the child. “If thou fearest to
leave me in our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee.
I would very gladly go! But, mother, tell me now! Is there
such a Black Man? And didst thou ever meet him? And is
this his mark?”“Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?” asked
her mother.“Yes, if thou tellest me all,” answered Pearl.“Once in my life I met the Black Man!” said her mother.
“This scarlet letter is his mark!”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.