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.