XXII.-THE PROCESSION.

efore Hester Prynne could call together her
thoughts, and consider what was practicable
to be done in this new and startling aspect
of affairs, the sound of military music was
heard approaching along a contiguous street.
It denoted the advance of the procession of
magistrates and citizens, on its way towards the meeting-house;
where, in compliance with a custom thus early established, and
ever since observed, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver
an Election Sermon.efore

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow
and stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across
the market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety
of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and
played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object
for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to
the multitude,—that of imparting a higher and more heroic air
to the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at
first clapped her hands, 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 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 ages 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
Templars, 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 be
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 modern display can aspire to equal.
Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow
and stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across
the market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety
of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and
played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object
for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to
the multitude,—that of imparting a higher and more heroic air
to the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at
first clapped her hands, 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 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 ages 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
Templars, 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 be
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 modern 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 demeanor, they showed a stamp
of majesty that made the warrior’s haughty stride look vulgar,
if not absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had
far less consideration than now, but the massive materials which
produce stability and dignity of character a great deal more.
The people possessed, by hereditary right, the quality of reverence;
which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in
smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force, in the
selection and estimate of public men. The change may be for
good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day,
the English settler on these rude shores—having left king,
nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the
faculty and necessity of reverence were strong in him—bestowed
it on the white hair and venerable brow of age; on long-tried
integrity; on solid wisdom and sad-colored experience; on
endowments of that grave and weighty order which gives the
idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of
respectability. These primitive statesmen, therefore,—Bradstreet,
Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their compeers,—who were
elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to
have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous
sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They had fortitude
and self-reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood up
for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous
tide. The traits of character here indicated were well
represented in the square cast of countenance and large physical
development of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a
demeanor of natural authority was concerned, the mother country
need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an
actual democracy adopted into the House of Peers, or made
the Privy Council of the sovereign.Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently
distinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse
of the anniversary was expected. His was the profession,
at that era, in 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
worshipping respect 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. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New
England shore, had he exhibited such energy 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.
Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed
not of the body. It might be spiritual, and imparted to him
by angelic ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that
potent cordial, which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of
earnest and long-continued thought. Or, perchance, his sensitive
temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music,
that swelled heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave.
Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned
whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the music. There was his
body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But
where was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying
itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of
stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw
nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, of what was around him;
but the spiritual element took up the feeble frame, and carried
it along, unconscious of the burden, and converting it to spirit
like itself. Men of uncommon intellect, who have grown morbid,
possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which they
throw the life of many days, and then are lifeless for as many
more.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 reach. One glance of recognition,
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 then! 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 unsympathizing
thoughts, through which she now beheld him! Her spirit sank
with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that,
vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be 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 groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands,
and found him not.Pearl either saw and responded to her mother’s feelings, or
herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen
around the minister. While the procession passed, the child
was uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point
of taking flight. When the whole had gone by, she looked up
into Hester’s face.“Mother,” said she, “was that the same minister that kissed
me by the brook?”“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!” whispered her mother.
“We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens
to us in the forest.”“I could not be sure that it was he; so strange he looked,”
continued the child. “Else I 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. What 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,” answered 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!”Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr.
Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose eccentricities—or
insanity, as we should term it—led her to do what few of
the towns-people would have ventured on; to begin a conversation
with the wearer of the scarlet letter, in public. It was
Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a
triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and
a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. As
this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her
no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all
the works of necromancy that were continually going forward,
the crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch
of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous
folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester Prynne,—kindly as so
many now felt towards the latter,—the dread inspired by Mistress
Hibbins was doubled, and caused a general movement
from that part of the market-place in which the two women
stood.“Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it!” whispered
the old lady, confidentially, to Hester. “Yonder divine
man! That saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be,
and as—I must needs say—he really looks! Who, now, that
saw him pass in the procession, would think how little while it
is since he went forth out of his study,—chewing a Hebrew
text of Scripture in his mouth, I warrant,—to take an airing
in the forest! Aha! we know what that means, Hester Prynne!
But, truly, forsooth, I find it hard to believe him the same
man. Many a church-member saw I, walking behind the music,
that has danced in the same measure with me, when Somebody
was fiddler, and, it might be, an Indian powwow or a Lapland
wizard changing hands with us! That is but a trifle, when a
woman knows the world. But this minister! Couldst thou
surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same man that encountered
thee on the forest-path?”“Madam, I know not of what you speak,” answered Hester
Prynne, feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of infirm mind; yet
strangely startled and awe-stricken by the confidence with which
she affirmed a personal connection between so many persons (herself
among them) and the Evil One. “It is not for me to
talk lightly of a learned and pious minister of the Word, like
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale!”“Fie, woman, fie!” cried the old lady, shaking her finger at
Hester. “Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many
times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there?
Yea; though no leaf of the wild garlands, which they wore
while they danced, be left in their hair! I know thee, Hester;
for I behold the token. We may all see it in the sunshine;
and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it
openly; so there need be no question about that. But this
minister! Let me tell thee, in thine ear! When the Black
Man sees one of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy
of owning to the bond as is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he
hath a way of ordering matters so that the mark shall be disclosed
in open daylight to the eyes of all the world! What is
it that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over
his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne!”“What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?” eagerly asked little
Pearl. “Hast thou seen it?”“No matter, darling!” responded Mistress Hibbins, making
Pearl a profound reverence. “Thou thyself wilt see it, one time
or another. They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the
Prince of the Air! Wilt thou ride with me, some fine night,
to see thy father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister
keeps his hand over his heart!”Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her,
the weird old gentlewoman took her departure.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 peculiar voice.This vocal organ was in itself a rich 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 plaintiveness. 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 bosom! 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. What was it?
The complaint of a human 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, statue-like, at the foot of
the scaffold. If the minister’s voice had not kept her there,
there would nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in
that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her 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 it unity.Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother’s side, and
was playing at her own will about the market-place. She made
the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray;
even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of
dusky foliage, by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed
amid the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an
undulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp and irregular movement. It
indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was
doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because it was played
upon and vibrated with her mother’s disquietude. Whenever
Pearl saw anything to excite her ever-active and wandering
curiosity, she flew thitherward and, as we might say, seized
upon that man or thing as her own property, so far as she
desired it; but 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 of 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.One of these seafaring men—the shipmaster, 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 from me?”“If the message pleases me, I will,” answered Pearl.“Then tell her,” rejoined he, “that I spake again with the
black-a-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 smile. “If thou callest me that
ill name, I 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 misery—showed 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 hundred false or
exaggerated rumors, but who 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
sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the
Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white
man’s curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their
snake-like black eyes on Hester’s bosom; conceiving, perhaps,
that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must 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 saw 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 selfsame 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 centre of more
remark and excitement, and was thus made 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 inmost spirits had
yielded to his control. The sainted minister in the church!
The woman of the scarlet letter in the market-place! What
imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that
the same scorching stigma was on them both!