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红字-the scarlet letter(英文版)-第13章

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 A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators。Preceded by the beadle; and attended by an irregular procession ofstern…browed men and unkindly…visaged women; Hester Prynne set forthtowards the place appointed for her punishment。 A crowd of eager andcurious schoolboys; understanding little of the matter in hand; exceptthat it gave them a half…holiday; ran before her progress; turningtheir heads continually to stare into her face; and at the winkingbaby in her arms; and at the ignominious letter on her breast。 Itwas no great distance; in those days; from the prison…door to themarket…place。 Measured by the prisoner's experience; however; it mightbe reckoned a journey of some length; for; haughty as her demeanourwas; she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of thosethat thronged to see her; as if her heart had been flung into thestreet for them all to spurn and trample upon。 In our nature; however;there is a provision alike marvellous and merciful; that thesufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by itspresent torture; but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it。 Withalmost a serene deportment; therefore; Hester Prynne passed throughthis portion of her ordeal; and came to a sort of scaffold; at thewestern extremity of the market…place。 It stood nearly beneath theeaves of Boston's earliest church; and appeared to be a fixture there。  In fact; this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine;which now; for two or three generations past; has been merelyhistorical and traditionary among us; but was held; in the old time;to be as effectual an agent; in the promotion of good citizenship;as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France。 It was;in short; the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the frameworkof that instrument of discipline; so fashioned as to confine the humanhead in its tight grasp; and thus hold it up to the public gaze。 Thevery ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in thiscontrivance of wood and iron。 There can be no outrage; methinks;against our mon nature… whatever be the delinquencies of theindividual… no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit tohide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment todo。 In Hester Prynne's instance; however; as not unfrequently in othercases; her sentence bore; that she should stand a certain time uponthe platform; but without undergoing that gripe about the neck andconfinement of the head; the proneness to which was the mostdevilish characteristic of this ugly engine。 Knowing well her part;she ascended a flight of wooden steps; and was thus displayed to thesurrounding multitude; at about the height of a man's shouldersabove the street。  Had there been a papist among the crowd of Puritans; he might haveseen in this beautiful woman; so picturesque in her attire and mien;and with the infant at her bosom; an object to remind him of the imageof Divine Maternity; which so many illustrious painters have vied withone another to represent; something which should remind him; indeed;but only by contrast; of that sacred image of sinless motherhood;whose infant was to redeem the world。 Here; there was the taint ofdeepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life; working sucheffect; that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty;and the more lost for the infant that she had borne。  The scene was not without a mixture of awe; such as must alwaysinvest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow…creature; beforesociety shall have grown corrupt enough to smile; instead ofshuddering; at it。 The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had notyet passed beyond their simplicity。 They were stern enough to lookupon her death; had that been the sentence; without a murmur at itsseverity; but had none of the heartlessness of another social state;which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like thepresent。 Even if there had been a disposition to turn the matterinto ridicule; it must have been repressed and overpowered by thesolemn presence of men no less dignified than the Governor; andseveral of his counsellors; a judge; a general; and the ministers ofthe town; all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meetinghouse;looking down upon the platform。 When such personages couldconstitute a part of the spectacle; without risking the majesty orreverence of rank and office; it was safely to be inferred that theinfliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectualmeaning。 Accordingly; the crowd was sombre and grave。 The unhappyculprit sustained herself as best a woman might; under the heavyweight of a thousand unrelenting eyes; all fastened upon her andconcentrated at her bosom。 It was almost intolerable to be borne。 Ofan impulsive and passionate nature; she had fortified herself toencounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely;wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there ore terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind; that shelonged rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted withscornful merriment; and herself the object。 Had a roar of laughterburst from the multitude… each man; each woman; each littleshrill…voiced child; contributing their individual parts… HesterPrynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainfulsmile。 But; under the leaden infliction which it was her doom toendure; she felt; at moments; as if she must needs shriek out with thefull power of her lungs; and cast herself from the scaffold downupon the ground; or else go mad at once。  Yet there were intervals when the whole scene; in which she wasthe most conspicuous object; seemed to vanish from her eyes; or atleast; glimmered indistinctly before them; like a mass ofimperfectly shaped and spectral images。 Her mind; and especially hermemory。 was preternaturally active; and kept bringing up otherscenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town; on the edgeof the Western wilderness; other faces than were lowering upon herfrom beneath the brims of those steeple…crowned hats。 Reminiscences;the most trifling and immaterial; passages of infancy and school…days;sports; childish quarrels; and the little domestic traits of hermaiden years; came swarming back upon her; intermingled withrecollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; onepicture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similarimportance; or all alike a play。 Possibly; it was an instinctivedevice of her spirit; to relieve itself; by the exhibition of thesephantasmagoric forms; from the cruel weight and hardness of thereality。  Be that as it might; the scaffold of the pillory was a point of viewthat revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she hadbeen treading; since her happy infancy。 Standing on that miserableeminence; she saw her native village; in old England; and her paternalhome; a decayed house of grey stone; with a poverty…stricken aspect;but retaining a half…obliterated shield of arms over the portal; intoken of antique gentility。 She saw her father's face; with its baldbrow; and reverend white beard; that flowed over the old…fashionedElizabethan ruff; her mother's; too; with the look of heedful andanxious love which it always wore in her remembrance; and which;even since her death; had so often laid the impediment of a gentleremonstrance in her daughter's pathway。 She saw her own face;glowing with girlish beauty; and illuminating all the interior ofthe dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it。 There shebeheld another countenance; of a man well stricken in years; a pale;thin; scholar…like visage; with eyes dim and bleared by thelamplight that had served them to pore over many ponderous books。Yet those same bleared optics had a strange; perating power; whenit was their owner's purpose to read the human soul。 This figure ofthe study and the cloister; as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failednot to recall; was slightly deformed; with the left shoulder atrifle higher than the right。 Next rose before her; in memory'spicture…gallery; the intricate and narrow thoroughfares; the tall greyhouses; the huge cathedrals; and the public edifices; ancient indate and quaint in architecture; of a Continental city; where a newlife had awaited her; still in connection with
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