"Never," replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but
into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is
too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I
might endure his agony as well as mine!"
"Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly,
proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold, "Speak; and give
your child a father!"
"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death, but
responding to this voice, which she too surely recognised. "And
my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know an
earthly one!"
"She will not speak!" murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over
the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the
result of his appeal. He now drew back with a long respiration.
"Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! She will
not speak!"
Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind,
the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the
occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all
its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious
letter. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour
or more during which his periods were rolling over the people's
heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and
seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal
pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal
of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference.
She had borne that morning all that nature could endure; and as
her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too
intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter
itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the
faculties of animal life remained entire. In this state, the
voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly,
upon her ears. The infant, during the latter portion of her
ordeal, pierced the air with its wailings and screams; she
strove to hush it mechanically, but seemed scarcely to
sympathise with its trouble. With the same hard demeanour, she
was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within
its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered by those who peered
after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the
dark passage-way of the interior.