XVIII.-A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE.

rthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester’s
face with a look in which hope and joy
shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt
them, and a kind of horror at her boldness,
who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at,
but dared not speak.rthurBut Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity,
and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed,
from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation
as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered,
without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate
and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of
which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide
their fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were,
in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian
in his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged
point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators
had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence
than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial
robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The
tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The
scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women
dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been
her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her
strong, but taught her much amiss.The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an
experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally
received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully
transgressed one of the most sacred of them. But this
had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.
Since that wretched epoch, he had watched, with morbid zeal
and minuteness, not his acts,—for those it was easy to arrange,—but
each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the
head of the social system, as the clergymen of that day stood,
he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles,
and even its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of
his order inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once
sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive
by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been
supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never
sinned at all.Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the
whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other
than a preparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale!
Were such a man once more to fall, what plea could
be urged in extenuation of his crime? None; unless it avail
him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite
suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very
remorse which harrowed it; that, between fleeing as an avowed
criminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find
it hard to strike the balance; that it was human to avoid the
peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable machinations of
an enemy; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and
desert path, faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a glimpse of
human affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in
exchange for the heavy doom which he was now expiating. And
be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt
has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal
state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded; so that the
enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might
even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in
preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there
is still the ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the
foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph.The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. Let
it suffice, that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone.“If, in all these past seven years,” thought he, “I could
recall one instant of peace or hope, I would yet endure, for the
sake of that earnest of Heaven’s mercy. But now,—since I
am irrevocably doomed,—wherefore should I not snatch the
solace allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution?
Or, if this be the path to a better life, as Hester would persuade
me, I surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it!
Neither can I any longer live without her companionship; so
powerful is she to sustain,—so tender to soothe! O Thou to
whom I dare not lift mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me!”“Thou wilt go!” said Hester, calmly, as he met her glance.The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw
its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was
the exhilarating effect—upon a prisoner just escaped from the
dungeon of his own heart—of breathing the wild, free atmosphere
of an unredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region. His
spirit rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect
of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept
him grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious temperament,
there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in his
mood.“Do I feel joy again?” cried he, wondering at himself.
“Methought the germ of it was dead in me! O Hester, thou
art my better angel! I seem to have flung myself—sick, sin-stained,
and sorrow-blackened—down upon these forest-leaves,
and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to
glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is already the better
life! Why did we not find it sooner?”“Let us not look back,” answered Hester Prynne. “The
past is gone! Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See!
With this symbol, I undo it all, and make it as it had never
been!”So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter,
and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the
withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge
of the stream. With a hand’s breadth farther flight it would
have fallen into the water, and have given the little brook
another woe to carry onward, besides the unintelligible tale which
it still kept murmuring about. But there lay the embroidered
letter, glittering like a lost jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer
might pick up, and thenceforth be haunted by strange phantoms
of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and unaccountable misfortune.The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which
the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O
exquisite relief! She had not known the weight, until she felt
the freedom! By another impulse, she took off the formal cap
that confined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders,
dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance,
and imparting the charm of softness to her features. There
played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant
and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of
womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that
had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness
of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable
past, and clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a
happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour.
And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the
effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow.
All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the
sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening
each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and
gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects
that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now.
The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam
afar into the wood’s heart of mystery, which had become a mystery
of joy.Such was the sympathy of Nature—that wild, heathen Nature
of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by
higher truth—with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether
newly born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always
create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it
overflows upon the outward world. Had the forest still kept
its gloom, it would have been bright in Hester’s eyes, and
bright in Arthur Dimmesdale’s!Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.“Thou must know Pearl!” said she. “Our little Pearl!
Thou hast seen her,—yes, I know it!—but thou wilt see her
now with other eyes. She is a strange child! I hardly comprehend
her! But thou wilt love her dearly, as I do, and wilt
advise me how to deal with her.”“Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?”
asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. “I have long shrunk
from children, because they often show a distrust,—a backwardness
to be familiar with me. I have even been afraid of
little Pearl!”“Ah, that was sad!” answered the mother. “But she will
love thee dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call
her! Pearl! Pearl!”“I see the child,” observed the minister. “Yonder she is,
standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other
side of the brook. So thou thinkest the child will love me?”Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible, at
some distance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelled
vision, in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her
through an arch of boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making
her figure dim or distinct,—now like a real child, now like
a child’s spirit,—as the splendor went and came again. She
heard her mother’s voice, and approached slowly through the
forest.Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while her
mother sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest—stern
as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and
troubles of the world into its bosom—became the playmate of
the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was,
it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered
her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn,
but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood
upon the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was pleased
with their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wilderness
hardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed,
with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but
soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones
not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed
Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting
as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic
tree, chattered either in anger or merriment,—for a squirrel is
such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to
distinguish between his moods,—so he chattered at the child, and
flung down a nut upon her head. It was a last year’s nut,
and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from
his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively
at Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, or
renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said,—but here
the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable,—came up, and
smelt of Pearl’s robe, and offered his savage head to be patted
by her hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest,
and these wild things which it nourished, all recognized
a kindred wildness in the human child.And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets
of the settlement, or in her mother’s cottage. The flowers
appeared to know it; and one and another whispered as she
passed, “Adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn
thyself with me!”—and, to please them, Pearl gathered the
violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the
freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes.
With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, and
became a nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was
in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had
Pearl adorned herself, when she heard her mother’s voice, and
came slowly back.Slowly; for she saw the clergyman.