The Scarlet Letter

"Heaven would show mercy," rejoined Hester, "hadst thou but the

strength to take advantage of it."

"Be thou strong for me!" answered he. "Advise me what to do."

"Is the world, then, so narrow?" exclaimed Hester Prynne, fixing

her deep eyes on the minister's, and instinctively exercising a

magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it

could hardly hold itself erect. "Doth the universe lie within

the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but

a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads

yonder forest-track? Backward to the settlement, thou sayest!

Yes; but, onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper into the

wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until some

few miles hence the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the

white man's tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would

bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to

one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough

in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of

Roger Chillingworth?"

"Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen leaves!" replied the

minister, with a sad smile.

"Then there is the broad pathway of the sea!" continued Hester.

"It brought thee hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee

back again. In our native land, whether in some remote rural

village, or in vast London--or, surely, in Germany, in France,

in pleasant Italy--thou wouldst be beyond his power and

knowledge! And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and

their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too

long already!"

"It cannot be!" answered the minister, listening as if he were

called upon to realise a dream. "I am powerless to go. Wretched

and sinful as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on

my earthly existence in the sphere where Providence hath placed

me. Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for

other human souls! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful

sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonour, when his

dreary watch shall come to an end!"

"Thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery,"

replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own

energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not

cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path:

neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to

cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath

happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou

exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so!

The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness

to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false

life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to

such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, as

is more thy nature, be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and

the most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act!

Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of

Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one,

such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou

tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so

gnawed into thy life? that have made thee feeble to will and to

do? that will leave thee powerless even to repent? Up, and

away!"