Hester 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 neighbouring
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 imparted 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.
At last, while attending a sick chamber, whither the Rev. 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 foot-path. 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 further 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!"