The Scarlet Letter

ONCLUSION.

After many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange their
thoughts in reference to the foregoing scene, there was more than one
account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold.

Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the
unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of that worn by
Hester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin, there
were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been
conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the
very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had
begun a course of penance,—which he afterwards, in so many futile
methods, followed out,—by inflicting a hideous torture on himself.
Others contended that the stigma had not been produced until a long
time subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potent
necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic and
poisonous drugs. Others, again,—and those best able to appreciate
the minister’s peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation of
his spirit upon the body,—whispered their belief, that the awful
symbol was the effect of the ever-active tooth of remorse, gnawing
from the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting Heaven’s
dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The reader
may choose among these theories. We have thrown all the light we could
acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its
office, erase its deep print out of our own brain; where long
meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.

It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were
spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have
removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that there
was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born infant’s.
Neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor even
remotely implied, any, the slightest connection, on his part, with the
guilt for which Hester Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter.
According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister,
conscious that he was dying,—conscious, also, that the reverence of
the multitude placed him already among saints and angels,—had
desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman,
to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man’s
own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind’s
spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in
order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that,
in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was to
teach them, that the holiest among us has but attained so far above
his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down,
and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would
look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so momentous, we
must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale’s story as
only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man’s
friends—and especially a clergyman’s—will sometimes uphold his
character, when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet
letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust.

The authority which we have chiefly followed,—a manuscript of old
date, drawn up from the verbal testimony of individuals, some of whom
had known Hester Prynne, while others had heard the tale from
contemporary witnesses,—fully confirms the view taken in the
foregoing pages. Among many morals which press upon us from the poor
minister’s miserable experience, we put only this into a
sentence:—“Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if
not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost
immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale’s death, in the appearance and
demeanor of the old man known as Roger Chillingworth. All his strength
and energy—all his vital and intellectual force—seemed at once to
desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away,
and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies
wilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of
his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge;
and when, by its completest triumph and consummation, that evil
principle was left with no further material to support it, when, in
short, there was no more Devil’s work on earth for him to do, it only
remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his
Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But,
to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances,—as well
Roger Chillingworth as his companions,—we would fain be merciful. It
is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and
love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development,
supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders
one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual
life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less
passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his
subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem
essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a
celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In the
spiritual world, the old physician and the minister—mutual victims as
they have been—may, unawares, have found their earthly stock of
hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love.

Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to
communicate to the reader. At old Roger Chillingworth’s decease,
(which took place within the year,) and by his last will and
testament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilson
were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property,
both here and in England, to little Pearl, the daughter of Hester
Prynne.

So Pearl—the elf-child,—the demon offspring, as some people, up to
that epoch, persisted in considering her,—became the richest heiress
of her day, in the New World. Not improbably, this circumstance
wrought a very material change in the public estimation; and, had the
mother and child remained here, little Pearl, at a marriageable period
of life, might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the
devoutest Puritan among them all. But, in no long time after the
physician’s death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, and
Pearl along with her. For many years, though a vague report would now
and then find its way across the sea,—like a shapeless piece of
drift-wood tost ashore, with the initials of a name upon it,—yet no
tidings of them unquestionably authentic were received. The story of
the scarlet letter grew into a legend. Its spell, however, was still
potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died,
and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore, where Hester Prynne had
dwelt. Near this latter spot, one afternoon, some children were at
play, when they beheld a tall woman, in a gray robe, approach the
cottage-door. In all those years it had never once been opened; but
either she unlocked it, or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her
hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments,—and, at
all events, went in.

On the threshold she paused,—turned partly round,—for, perchance,
the idea of entering all alone, and all so changed, the home of so
intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than even she
could bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant, though long
enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast.

[Illustration: Hester’s Return]

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame!
But where was little Pearl? If still alive, she must now have been in
the flush and bloom of early womanhood. None knew—nor ever learned,
with the fulness of perfect certainty—whether the elf-child had gone
thus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild, rich nature had
been softened and subdued, and made capable of a woman’s gentle
happiness. But, through the remainder of Hester’s life, there were
indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of
love and interest with some inhabitant of another land. Letters came,
with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to English
heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury
such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have
purchased, and affection have imagined for her. There were trifles,
too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance,
that must have been wrought by delicate fingers, at the impulse of a
fond heart. And, once, Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment,
with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a
public tumult, had any infant, thus apparelled, been shown to our
sober-hued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believed,—and Mr. Surveyor Pue, who
made investigations a century later, believed,—and one of his recent
successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes,—that Pearl was
not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother, and
that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely
mother at her fireside.

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England,
than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had
been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence.
She had returned, therefore, and resumed,—of her own free will, for
not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed
it,—resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never
afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome,
thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester’s life, the
scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn
and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over,
and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Hester
Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own
profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and
perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone
through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially,—in the continually
recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and
sinful passion,—or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded,
because unvalued and unsought,—came to Hester’s cottage, demanding
why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and
counselled them as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm
belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have
grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be
revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and
woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hester
had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess,
but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission of
divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with
sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow.
The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman,
indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not
through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how
sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life
successful to such an end!

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the
scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved,
near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King’s
Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave,
yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no
right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there
were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab
of slate—as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex
himself with the purport—there appeared the semblance of an engraved
escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald’s wording of which might serve
for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so
sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light
gloomier than the shadow:—

“ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.”

[Illustration]

Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected; for the details, see
below. Most illustrations have been linked to the larger versions; to
see the larger version, click on the illustration.

Typos fixed:

page 072—spelling normalized: changed ‘midday’ to ‘mid-day’
page 132—inserted a missing closing quote after ‘a child of her age’
page 137—spelling normalized: changed ‘careworn’ to ‘care-worn’
page 147—typo fixed: changed ‘physican’ to ‘physician’
page 171—typo fixed: changed ‘vocies’ to ‘voices’
page 262—removed an extra closing quote after ‘scarlet letter too!’
page 291—spelling normalized: changed ‘birdlike’ to ‘bird-like’
page 300—typo fixed: changed ‘intruments’ to ‘instruments’
page 306—spelling normalized: changed ‘deathlike’ to ‘death-like’