The Scarlet Letter

Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps

actually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr.

Dimmesdale reached the spot where, now so long since, Hester

Prynne had lived through her first hours of public ignominy. The

same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the

storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with

the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained

standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The minister

went up the steps.

It was an obscure night in early May. An unvaried pall of

cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon.

If the same multitude which had stood as eye-witnesses while

Hester Prynne sustained her punishment could now have been

summoned forth, they would have discerned no face above the

platform nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark

grey of the midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was no

peril of discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so

pleased him, until morning should redden in the east, without

other risk than that the dank and chill night air would creep

into his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog

his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the

expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No eye

could see him, save that ever-wakeful one which had seen him in

his closet, wielding the bloody scourge. Why, then, had he come

hither?

Was it but the mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed,

but in which his soul trifled with itself! A mockery at which

angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced with jeering

laughter! He had been driven hither by the impulse of that

Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and

closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably

drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other

impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Poor,

miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden

itself with crime? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their

choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert

their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling

it off at once! This feeble and most sensitive of spirits could

do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which

intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of

heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.

And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of

expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of

mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his

naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth,

there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous

tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power

to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud: an outcry that went

pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to

another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as

if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in

it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to

and fro.