Betimes in the morning of the day on which the new Governor wasto receive his office at the hands of the people, Hester Prynneand little Pearl came into the market-place. It was alreadythronged with the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants ofthe town, in considerable numbers, among whom, likewise, weremany rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked them asbelonging to some of the forest settlements, which surroundedthe little metropolis of the colony.

On this public holiday, as on all other occasions for sevenyears past, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth.Not more by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity inits fashion, it had the effect of making her fade personally outof sight and outline; while again the scarlet letter brought herback from this twilight indistinctness, and revealed her underthe moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so longfamiliar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude whichthey were accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask; or,rather like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's features;owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that Hester wasactually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and haddeparted out of the world with which she still seemed to mingle.

It might be, on this one day, that there was an expressionunseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be detected now;unless some preternaturally gifted observer should have firstread the heart, and have afterwards sought a correspondingdevelopment in the countenance and mien. Such a spiritual seermight have conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of themultitude through several miserable years as a necessity, apenance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure,she now, for one last time more, encountered it freely andvoluntarily, in order to convert what had so long been agonyinto a kind of triumph. "Look your last on the scarlet letterand its wearer!"--the people's victim and lifelong bond-slave,as they fancied her, might say to them. "Yet a little while, andshe will be beyond your reach! A few hours longer and the deep,mysterious ocean will quench and hide for ever the symbol whichye have caused to burn on her bosom!" Nor were it aninconsistency too improbable to be assigned to human nature,should we suppose a feeling of regret in Hester's mind, at themoment when she was about to win her freedom from the pain whichhad been thus deeply incorporated with her being. Might therenot be an irresistible desire to quaff a last, long, breathlessdraught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which nearly allher years of womanhood had been perpetually flavoured. The wineof life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeedrich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and goldenbeaker, or else leave an inevitable and weary languor, after thelees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as with acordial of intensest potency.

Pearl was decked out with airy gaiety. It would have beenimpossible to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owedits existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, atonce so gorgeous and so delicate as must have been requisite tocontrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved atask perhaps more difficult, in imparting so distinct apeculiarity to Hester's simple robe. The dress, so proper was itto little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable developmentand outward manifestation of her character, no more to beseparated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from abutterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a brightflower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all ofone idea with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, therewas a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood,resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, thatsparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast onwhich it is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in theagitations of those connected with them: always, especially, asense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind,in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gemon her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance ofher spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marblepassiveness of Hester's brow.

This effervescence made her flit with a bird-like movement,rather than walk by her mother's side.

She broke continually into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, andsometimes piercing music. When they reached the market-place,she became still more restless, on perceiving the stir andbustle that enlivened the spot; for it was usually more like thebroad and lonesome green before a village meeting-house, thanthe centre of a town's business.

"Why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "Wherefore have all thepeople left their work to-day? Is it a play-day for the wholeworld? See, there is the blacksmith! He has washed his sootyface, and put on his Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if hewould gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach himhow! And there is Master Brackett, the old jailer, nodding andsmiling at me. Why does he do so, mother?"

"He remembers thee a little babe, my child," answered Hester.

"He should not nod and smile at me, for all that--the black,grim, ugly-eyed old man!" said Pearl. "He may nod at thee, if hewill; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest the scarlet letter.But see, mother, how many faces of strange people, and Indiansamong them, and sailors! What have they all come to do, here inthe market-place?"

"They wait to see the procession pass," said Hester. "For theGovernor and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers,and all the great people and good people, with the music and thesoldiers marching before them."

"And will the minister be there?" asked Pearl. "And will hehold out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to himfrom the brook-side?"

"He will be there, child," answered her mother, "but he will notgreet thee to-day, nor must thou greet him."

"What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speakingpartly to herself. "In the dark nighttime he calls us to him,and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on thescaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the oldtrees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee,sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, sothat the little brook would hardly wash it off! But, here, inthe sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; normust we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand alwaysover his heart!"

"Be quiet, Pearl--thou understandest not these things," said hermother. "Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, andsee how cheery is everybody's face to-day. The children havecome from their schools, and the grown people from theirworkshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, to-day,a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so--as has beenthe custom of mankind ever since a nation was firstgathered--they make merry and rejoice: as if a good and goldenyear were at length to pass over the poor old world!"

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity thatbrightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season ofthe year--as it already was, and continued to be during thegreater part of two centuries--the Puritans compressed whatevermirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity;thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for thespace of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more gravethan most other communities at a period of general affliction.

But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, whichundoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age. Thepersons now in the market-place of Boston had not been born toan inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen,whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethanepoch; a time when the life of England, viewed as one greatmass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, andjoyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed theirhereditary taste, the New England settlers would haveillustrated all events of public importance by bonfires,banquets, pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have beenimpracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, tocombine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as itwere, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great robe ofstate, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. There wassome shadow of an attempt of this kind in the mode ofcelebrating the day on which the political year of the colonycommenced. The dim reflection of a remembered splendour, acolourless and manifold diluted repetition of what they hadbeheld in proud old London--we will not say at a royalcoronation, but at a Lord Mayor's show--might be traced in thecustoms which our forefathers instituted, with reference to theannual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders ofthe commonwealth--the statesman, the priest, and thesoldier--seemed it a duty then to assume the outward state andmajesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was lookedupon as the proper garb of public and social eminence. All cameforth to move in procession before the people's eye, and thusimpart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a governmentso newly constructed.

Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, inrelaxing the severe and close application to their various modesof rugged industry, which at all other times, seemed of the samepiece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, werenone of the appliances which popular merriment would so readilyhave found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that ofJames--no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with hisharp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing tohis music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; noMerry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps ahundred years old, but still effective, by their appeals to thevery broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professorsof the several branches of jocularity would have been sternlyrepressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by thegeneral sentiment which give law its vitality. Not the less,however, the great, honest face of the people smiled--grimly,perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as thecolonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the countryfairs and on the village-greens of England; and which it wasthought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of thecourage and manliness that were essential in them. Wrestlingmatches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire,were seen here and there about the market-place; in one corner,there was a friendly bout at quarterstaff; and--what attractedmost interest of all--on the platform of the pillory, already sonoted in our pages, two masters of defence were commencing anexhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But, much to thedisappointment of the crowd, this latter business was broken offby the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea ofpermitting the majesty of the law to be violated by such anabuse of one of its consecrated places.

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the peoplebeing then in the first stages of joyless deportment, and theoffspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day),that they would compare favourably, in point of holiday keeping,with their descendants, even at so long an interval asourselves. Their immediate posterity, the generation next to theearly emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and sodarkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequentyears have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learnagain the forgotten art of gaiety.

The picture of human life in the market-place, though itsgeneral tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the Englishemigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A partyof Indians--in their savage finery of curiously embroidereddeerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, andfeathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headedspear--stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity,beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild aswere these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature ofthe scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by somemariners--a part of the crew of the vessel from the SpanishMain--who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day.They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces,and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers wereconfined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a roughplate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in someinstances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats ofpalm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature andmerriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressedwithout fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that werebinding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's verynose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling;and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitaefrom pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gapingcrowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incompletemorality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence wasallowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks onshore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element.The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a piratein our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that thisvery ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of thenautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it,of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would haveperilled all their necks in a modern court of justice.

But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed verymuch at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind,with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. Thebuccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become atonce if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, evenin the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as apersonage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casuallyassociate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks,starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled notunbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jollyseafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversionwhen so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, thephysician, was seen to enter the market-place in close andfamiliar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so faras apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. Hewore a profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold lace on hishat, which was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmountedwith a feather. There was a sword at his side and a sword-cut onhis forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemedanxious rather to display than hide. A landsman could hardlyhave worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown themboth with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern questionbefore a magistrate, and probably incurring a fine orimprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. Asregarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon aspertaining to the character, as to a fish his glistening scales.

After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristolship strolled idly through the market-place; until happening toapproach the spot where Hester Prynne was standing, he appearedto recognise, and did not hesitate to address her. As wasusually the case wherever Hester stood, a small vacant area--asort of magic circle--had formed itself about her, into which,though the people were elbowing one another at a littledistance, none ventured or felt disposed to intrude. It was aforcible type of the moral solitude in which the scarlet letterenveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own reserve, andpartly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly,withdrawal of her fellow-creatures. Now, if never before, itanswered a good purpose by enabling Hester and the seaman tospeak together without risk of being overheard; and so changedwas Hester Prynne's repute before the public, that the matron intown, most eminent for rigid morality, could not have held suchintercourse with less result of scandal than herself.

"So, mistress," said the mariner, "I must bid the steward makeready one more berth than you bargained for! No fear of scurvyor ship fever this voyage. What with the ship's surgeon and thisother doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more bytoken, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which Itraded for with a Spanish vessel."

"What mean you?" inquired Hester, startled more than shepermitted to appear. "Have you another passenger?"

"Why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physicianhere--Chillingworth he calls himself--is minded to try mycabin-fare with you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for hetells me he is of your party, and a close friend to thegentleman you spoke of--he that is in peril from these sour oldPuritan rulers."

"They know each other well, indeed," replied Hester, with a mienof calmness, though in the utmost consternation. "They have longdwelt together."

Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne.But at that instant she beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself,standing in the remotest corner of the market-place and smilingon her; a smile which--across the wide and bustling square, andthrough all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods,and interests of the crowd--conveyed secret and fearful meaning.