The Scarlet Letter / Алая буква. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Why dost thou smile so at me?” inquired Hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes. “Art thou like the Black Man[11 - the Black Man – дьявол] that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?”

“Not thy soul,” he answered, with another smile. “No, not thine!”

V

Hester at Her Needle

Hester Prynne’s term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which seemed to her as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate event, to meet which she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison door, began the daily custom. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it, so would the next day. The accumulating days and added years would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast – at her, the child of honourable parents – at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman – at her, who had once been innocent – as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.

It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her – free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, – and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her – it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.

It might be, too – doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself – that another feeling kept her within the scene that had been so fatal. There trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. What she compelled herself to believe was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. Here, she said to herself had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment.

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills. In this little lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window or labouring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange contagious fear.

Lonely as was Hester’s situation, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art that sufficed to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art of needle-work. She bore on her breast, in the curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill.

Here, indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterised the Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age did not fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense with.

Public ceremonies were marked by a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming the reins of power, and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order. In the array of funerals, too there was a frequent and characteristic demand for such labour as Hester Prynne could supply. Baby-linen afforded still another possibility of toil and emolument.

By degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle.

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic description. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue, with only that one ornament – the scarlet letter – which it was her doom to wear. The child’s attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we may rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else to exercise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong beneath.

In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in the world. In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere. It was not an age of delicacy; and her position, although she understood it well, and was in little danger of forgetting it, was often brought before her vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the tenderest spot. The poor often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succour them. Dames of elevated rank, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart. Hester had schooled herself long and well; and she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek. She was patient – a martyr, indeed but she forebore to pray for enemies, lest, in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into a curse.

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the streets, to address words of exhortation. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman gliding silently through the town, with never any companion but one only child. Therefore they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterances of a word that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her. Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter they branded it afresh in Hester’s soul. But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable.

But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eye – a human eye – upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. (Had Hester sinned alone?)

Her imagination was somewhat affected by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps she felt that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne’s? Or, must she receive those intimations – so obscure, yet so distinct – as truth? In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice. A mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumour of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. Or, once more, the electric thrill would give her warning and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly, with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks as if her purity were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere? – such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man’s hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.

The vulgar had a story that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say it seared Hester’s bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumour than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.

VI

Pearl

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl – for so had Hester called her – as being of great price – purchased with all she had – her mother’s only treasure! How strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day after day she looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.

Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden. The child had a native grace which does not invariably co-exist with faultless beauty. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl’s own proper beauty that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost.

This outward mutability indicated the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety. But the child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder. Hester could only account for the child’s character by recalling what she herself had been during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world. The mother’s impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester’s spirit at that epoch was perpetuated in Pearl.

Mindful of her own errors and misfortunes, Hester Prynne early sought to impose a tender but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labour thrown away to insist, persuade or plead.

It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning at such moments whether Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child to snatch her to her bosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive.

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between herself and her sole treasure, who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate tears. Then, Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a stern, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom she would laugh like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or, rarely, she would be convulsed with rage of grief and sob out her love for her mother in broken words. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until little Pearl awoke!

How soon indeed did Pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social intercourse beyond the mother’s ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! What a happiness would it have been could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices. But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct with which the child comprehended her loneliness, the whole peculiarity of her position in respect to other children. Never since her release from prison had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there: first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl tripping along at the rate of three footsteps to one of Hester’s. She saw the children of the settlement disporting themselves in such grim fashions as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance, or at scourging Quakers, or taking scalps in a sham fight with the Indians, or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about her, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that had so much the sound of a witch’s anathemas in some unknown tongue.

These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value for the mother; because there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child’s manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl inherited out of Hester’s heart.

At home Pearl wanted not a wide circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects. The unlikeliest materials without undergoing any outward change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. The pine-trees, aged, black and flinging groans, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but always in a state of preternatural activity. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded all these offsprings of her own heart and mind. She never created a friend, but armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad to observe, in one so young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of the energies that were to make good her cause in the contest that must ensue.

One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be told. The very first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom! One day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and putting up her little hand she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the token, instinctively endeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of baby-hand. Again, as if her mother’s agonised gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile. From that epoch Hester had never felt a moment’s safety. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares and always with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.

Once while Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of doing; suddenly she fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face in the small black mirror of Pearl’s eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion.