Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained
the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself
on the bed, where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only
chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her.
She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt
that--having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if so
it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do for the relief of
physical suffering--he was next to treat with her as the man
whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured.
"Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how thou hast
fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the
pedestal of infamy on which I found thee. The reason is not far
to seek. It was my folly, and thy weakness. I--a man of
thought--the book-worm of great libraries--a man already in
decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of
knowledge--what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine
own? Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself
with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical
deformity in a young girl's fantasy? Men call me wise. If sages
were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen all
this. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and
dismal forest, and entered this settlement of Christian men, the
very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester
Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people.
Nay, from the moment when we came down the old church-steps
together, a married pair, I might have beheld the bale-fire of
that scarlet letter blazing at the end of our path!"
"Thou knowest," said Hester--for, depressed as she was, she
could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her
shame--"thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love,
nor feigned any."
"True," replied he. "It was my folly! I have said it. But, up
to that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had
been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for
many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire.
I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream--old as I
was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was--that the
simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind
to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee
into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm
thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!"
"I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.
"We have wronged each other," answered he. "Mine was the first
wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and
unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has
not thought and philosophised in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot
no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs
fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us
both! Who is he?"