The Scarlet Letter

As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and little

Pearl, he threw a backward glance, half expecting that he should

discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the

mother and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the

woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be

received as real. But there was Hester, clad in her gray robe,

still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast had

overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since

been covering with moss, so that these two fated ones, with

earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together,

and find a single hour's rest and solace. And there was Pearl,

too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook--now that the

intrusive third person was gone--and taking her old place by her

mother's side. So the minister had not fallen asleep and

dreamed!

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity

of impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he

recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and

himself had sketched for their departure. It had been determined

between them that the Old World, with its crowds and cities,

offered them a more eligible shelter and concealment than the

wilds of New England or all America, with its alternatives of an

Indian wigwam, or the few settlements of Europeans scattered

thinly along the sea-board. Not to speak of the clergyman's

health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life,

his native gifts, his culture, and his entire development would

secure him a home only in the midst of civilization and

refinement; the higher the state the more delicately adapted to

it the man. In furtherance of this choice, it so happened that a

ship lay in the harbour; one of those unquestionable cruisers,

frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of

the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable

irresponsibility of character. This vessel had recently arrived

from the Spanish Main, and within three days' time would sail

for Bristol. Hester Prynne--whose vocation, as a self-enlisted

Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain

and crew--could take upon herself to secure the passage of two

individuals and a child with all the secrecy which circumstances

rendered more than desirable.

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest,

the precise time at which the vessel might be expected to

depart. It would probably be on the fourth day from the present.

"This is most fortunate!" he had then said to himself. Now, why

the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate we

hesitate to reveal. Nevertheless--to hold nothing back from the

reader--it was because, on the third day from the present, he

was to preach the Election Sermon; and, as such an occasion

formed an honourable epoch in the life of a New England

Clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode

and time of terminating his professional career. "At least, they

shall say of me," thought this exemplary man, "that I leave no

public duty unperformed or ill-performed!" Sad, indeed, that an

introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's

should be so miserably deceived! We have had, and may still

have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so

pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable,

of a subtle disease that had long since begun to eat into the

real substance of his character. No man, for any considerable

period, can wear one face to himself and another to the

multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be

the true.