The Scarlet Letter - Page 35/161

"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered

the townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage

companion, "else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester

Prynne and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, I

promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church."

"You say truly," replied the other; "I am a stranger, and have

been a wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with

grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in

bonds among the heathen-folk to the southward; and am now

brought hither by this Indian to be redeemed out of my

captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tell me of Hester

Prynne's--have I her name rightly?--of this woman's offences,

and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?"

"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after

your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman,

"to find yourself at length in a land where iniquity is searched

out and punished in the sight of rulers and people, as here in

our godly New England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the

wife of a certain learned man, English by birth, but who had

long ago dwelt in Amsterdam, whence some good time agone he was

minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the

Massachusetts. To this purpose he sent his wife before him,

remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs. Marry,

good Sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman has been a

dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned

gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being

left to her own misguidance--"

"Ah!--aha!--I conceive you," said the stranger with a bitter

smile. "So learned a man as you speak of should have learned

this too in his books. And who, by your favour, Sir, may be the

father of yonder babe--it is some three or four months old, I

should judge--which Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?"

"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the

Daniel who shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the

townsman. "Madame Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the

magistrates have laid their heads together in vain. Peradventure

the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown

of man, and forgetting that God sees him."

"The learned man," observed the stranger with another smile,

"should come himself to look into the mystery."

"It behoves him well if he be still in life," responded the

townsman. "Now, good Sir, our Massachusetts magistracy,

bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and

doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall, and that, moreover,

as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea,

they have not been bold to put in force the extremity of our

righteous law against her. The penalty thereof is death. But in

their great mercy and tenderness of heart they have doomed

Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the

platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the

remainder of her natural life to wear a mark of shame upon her

bosom."