The Scarlet Letters Read Online Free PDF Page B

evenings were free to dine with the Shattucks or take Hetty and one of her sisters to a concert or play. And sometimes they would sit apart from the others in a corner of the long dark-paneled parlor, glinting with old silver pieces, and talk. Nobody interrupted them. He was marked as Hetty's beau.
    Perhaps it was a bit premature. He found her provocative but reserved, challenging in her inquiries but moderate in her tone, tending to be at once sarcastic and commonsensical. She never said or did anything that would be classified as flirting, yet he was convinced that he had made a definite dent in her affections. Had he wanted to? He wasn't sure. He certainly hadn't wanted not to. Still, there was no question in his mind that she was the very opposite of the florid type of beauty that had thus far stirred his senses. He had no particular hankering to sleep with her, but he was sufficiently aware of the cruder side of his nature—as revealed in sundry episodes—to know that he was quite capable of mating with any passably attractive female.
    One evening he amused himself by probing into the question of her attitude towards her famous father and his hearty evangelicalism. He scented dissent behind the bland wall of her apparently total loyalty.
    "I can't help wondering what sort of a Christian you are, Hetty. You're certainly not strictly orthodox. I mean you don't strike me as one who swallows the story of Jonah's being swallowed by the whale."
    "Can't there be different ways of interpreting scripture?"
    "You mean you can twist it to mean anything you please?"
    "No. To mean what a serious and impartial mind can deduce."
    "And that will be God's truth?"
    "One hopes it will be truth."
    "You're elusive, Hetty. I can never pin you down."
    "Why should you want to?"
    "Oh, to know where I stand with you, I suppose. Or even if I want to stand with you. I don't really think I'm a Christian at all. I certainly don't have any truck with the idea that Jesus was divine. I guess I fit into the school that holds he was a simple and rather harmless fanatic about whom a monstrous legend was created by a clever priesthood. My family's religious attitude has always struck me as the quintessence of hollow gentility."
    Hetty smiled. She was not in the least shocked. "In Boston we might call you a transcendentalist."
    "That would clean me up, would it?"
    "Well, enough so we could ask you to dinner. Or at least to come in afterwards."
    He was suddenly almost angry. "Can you never take anything seriously?"
    Her face became blank at this. "Oh, I'm serious enough. Isn't it you who are being rather reckless? Isn't it you who's rocking the boat?"
    "Don't boats sometimes need rocking?"
    "It's better to wait till we're a little closer to shore."
    "You'd die, wouldn't you, Hetty, to maintain the status quo? To keep intact the little world that meekly worships your father and his God?"
    Something almost like a frown for a moment clouded her brow. "My father does no harm to anyone. And he makes hundreds of people happier than they otherwise might be."
    "By stuffing their heads with fairy tales!" Of course, he knew that he had gone too far. He didn't care. The unruffled pallor of her attention stifled him.
    "What would you offer them instead?" was her cool inquiry.
    "Oh, maybe something that you just called truth."
    "I can only respond with Pilate's question."
    At this he threw what last discretion he had to the winds. The others had already retired for the night, and they were now alone in the parlor, having assured Dr. Shattuck that they would turn off the lights. Ambrose had even started to do so, and the increased darkness suited his blackening mood. He turned back to her.
    "You have no concept of what sort of man I am!" he exclaimed. "You'd despise me if you did!"
    "Don't be too sure of that."
    "How would you feel if I told you that one of your attractions to me was your money?"
    She had remained quietly seated while he busied himself about the