Bab Bab 24 · CONCLUSION

. CONCLUSION

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—connexion 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 amongst

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

demeanour 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 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

unhumanised 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 fife 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 driftwood tossed 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 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.

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 recognised 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 tomb-stone 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 may 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.”