The Scarlet Letters Read Online Free PDF

immediate interest in the newcomer and his seemingly equal response, at once left the field to her. Boston was certainly not like New York.
    On the first Sunday of his visit he went with the family to divine services and to hear Dr. Shattuck preach in that other, even more awesome structure of Mr. Richardson's, Trinity Church, whose vast auditorium was filled to capacity. Ambrose listened, impressed but unpersuaded, to the sometimes mellifluous, sometimes thundering oration of the great cleric. His theme was happiness, the glorious happiness that should attend a true faith, even in the midst of grievous tribulations, a faith mighty enough to have inspired early Christian martyrs to sing joyful anthems at the very moment that famished lions approached them in the arena. Ambrose could not but marvel that so much polished and splendid oratory should be expended on so fatuous a theme.
    It was a beautiful day of early spring, and he suggested to Hetty, who had sat beside him in the family pew, that they walk back to the house. Crossing the square he paused to look back at the bold and rugged magnificence of the somber temple they had just quit.
    "It's really, isn't it, to our century, at least up here in Boston, what Chartres was to France in the thirteenth? It expresses the hardy faith of the pilgrim fathers."
    "Not quite," she cautioned him. "Aren't you forgetting it's an Episcopal house of worship, a limb, if you like, of the Church of England, and that's precisely what they came over here to get away from?"
    "I guess what the British can't conquer they reconquer."
    She turned to walk on. "At least in Boston whatever a church stands for, we let it stand clear. We don't bury it under skyscrapers, the way you do in New York."
    "Not yet," he said grimly.
    "You mean we'll come to it? I suppose we must. New York, like Britain, can be counted on to win in the end."
    "Omnia vincit vulgarity!"
    "That's what Mr. Henry James seems to think. Have you read his
American Scene
?"
    "No. I find life too short for his late style." He spoke sincerely. He was no Jacobite, but it impressed him that she was.
    "That's your loss. He cites the example of Trinity Church on lower Broadway being dwarfed by its colossal neighbor, an office building erected by its very trustees!"
    "You see that as a symbol of our era? That business dominates the cross? That business
is
the cross?"
    "I'm not so keen on drawing conclusions, Mr. Vollard. But I like to face facts."
    "For what purpose? For your own diversion?"
    "Isn't that enough? Facts are really all we have to go on. But we have to be sure first that they
are
facts. Trinity Church is put out of face by an adjacent skyscraper. That seems plain enough. It gives me something to start with."
    "But the very way you state it leads inevitably to a hostile conclusion. You're a cynic, Miss Shattuck, though you may try to conceal it."
    "The way you conceal what you think about my father?"
    "How do you know what I think of your father?"
    "By the way your eyes roamed around our dining room the first night you stayed with us. You were thinking, Isn't this pretty posh for a man of the cloth? Is it the Gospel according to Saint Matthew or
Barchester Towers
?"
    "Miss Shattuck, I'm beginning to be afraid of you."
    "You mean because I spied a fact?"
    "More because I dread the conclusion."
    "And what would that be?"
    "That I'm an ungrateful and ungracious guest."
    "But I've come to no such conclusion! As to gratitude I see no call for it—you've come here to help us—and as to manners, yours have been above reproach."
    "And manners are what count?"
    "Well, certainly as much as unuttered thoughts, over which we have no power."
    "Then I needn't be afraid of you?"
    "I don't think you need be in the least afraid of me, Mr. Vollard."
    They were soon on first-name terms, and in the ensuing fortnight became good friends indeed. His duties in following the Shattuck case consisted largely in attending the court sessions; his