The Devil knew it well, and
fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger!
fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger!
Hawthorne - Scarlett Letter
I know thee, Hester; for I behold the token.
We may all see it
in the sunshine; and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou
wearest it openly; so there need be no question about that. But this
minister! Let me tell thee, in thine ear! When the Black Man sees one
of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond
as is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters
so that the mark shall be disclosed in open daylight to the eyes of
all the world! What is it that the minister seeks to hide, with his
hand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne! "
"What is it, good Mistress Hibbins? " eagerly asked little Pearl. "Hast
thou seen it? "
"No matter, darling! " responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a
profound reverence. "Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another.
They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince of the Air!
Wilt thou ride with me, some fine night, to see thy father? Then thou
shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart! "
Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the
weird old gentlewoman took her departure.
By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the
meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale were
heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept Hester
near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit
another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of
the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon
to her ears, in the shape of an indistinct, but varied, murmur and
flow of the minister's very peculiar voice.
This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment; insomuch that a
listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher
spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and
cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and
emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart,
wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through the
church-walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intentness, and
sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning
for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These,
perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser
medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low
undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended
with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and
power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of
awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes
became, there was forever in it an essential character of
plaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish,--the whisper, or
the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that
touched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of
pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid a
desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high and
commanding,--when it gushed irrepressibly upward,--when it assumed its
utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its
way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in the open
air,--still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he
could detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of a
human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret,
whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching
its sympathy or forgiveness,--at every moment,--in each accent,--and
never in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gave
the clergyman his most appropriate power.
During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the
scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there, there would
nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence
she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense
within her,--too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing
heavily on her mind,--that her whole orb of life, both before and
after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave
it unity.
Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was
playing at her own will about the market-place. She made the sombre
crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray; even as a bird of
bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage, by darting
to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the
clustering leaves. She had an undulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp and
irregular movement. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit,
which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because it
was played upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever
Pearl saw anything to excite her ever-active and wandering curiosity,
she flew thitherward and, as we might say, seized upon that man or
thing as her own property, so far as she desired it; but without
yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital.
The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less
inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the
indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her
little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked the
wild Indian in the face; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than
his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as
characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the
swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the
land; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a
flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were
gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in
the night-time.
One of these seafaring men--the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to
Hester Prynne--was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that he attempted
to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it as
impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he took
from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to
the child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist,
with such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her,
and it was difficult to imagine her without it.
"Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the seaman.
"Wilt thou carry her a message from me? "
"If the message pleases me, I will," answered Pearl.
"Then tell her," rejoined he, "that I spake again with the
black-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring
his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thy
mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt thou tell her
this, thou witch-baby? "
"Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air! " cried
Pearl, with a naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill name, I
shall tell him of thee; and he will chase thy ship with a tempest! "
Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returned
to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester's
strong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on
beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom,
which--at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister
and herself out of their labyrinth of misery--showed itself, with an
unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path.
With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the
shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to
another trial. There were many people present, from the country round
about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had
been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumors, but who
had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after
exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynne
with rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however,
it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. At
that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal
force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole
gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and
learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their
sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians
were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity,
and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes
on Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this
brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high
dignity among her people. Lastly the inhabitants of the town (their
own interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, by
sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same
quarter, and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest,
with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester
saw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who
had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years ago; all
save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose
burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so
soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the
centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her
breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it
on.
While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning
cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her forever, the
admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an
audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The
sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in the
market-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to
surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XXIII.
THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER.
The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience had
been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length came
to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as what should
follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a murmur and half-hushed
tumult; as if the auditors, released from the high spell that had
transported them into the region of another's mind, were returning
into themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In
a moment more, the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the
church. Now that there was an end, they needed other breath, more fit
to support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than
that atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame,
and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought.
In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and the
market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of
the minister. His hearers could not rest until they had told one
another of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. According
to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high,
and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day; nor had inspiration
ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through
his. Its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and
possessing him, and continually lifting him out of the written
discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must
have been as marvellous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it
appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the communities
of mankind, with a special reference to the New England which they
were here planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew towards the
close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to
its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were
constrained; only with this difference, that, whereas the Jewish seers
had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission
to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people
of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse,
there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could
not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to
pass away. Yes; their minister whom they so loved--and who so loved
them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sigh--had the
foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them in
their tears! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last
emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as if
an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings
over the people for an instant,--at once a shadow and a
splendor,--and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them.
Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale--as to most men,
in their various spheres, though seldom recognized until they see it
far behind them--an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph
than any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. He stood,
at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which
the gifts of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a
reputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New
England's earliest days, when the professional character was of itself
a lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied,
as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at the
close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing
beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still
burning on her breast!
Now was heard again the clangor of the music, and the measured tramp
of the military escort, issuing from the church-door. The procession
was to be marshalled thence to the town-hall, where a solemn banquet
would complete the ceremonies of the day.
Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers was
seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew back
reverently, on either side, as the Governor and magistrates, the old
and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent and
renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When they were fairly in
the market-place, their presence was greeted by a shout. This--though
doubtless it might acquire additional force and volume from the
childlike loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers--was felt to be
an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by
that high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their
ears. Each felt the impulse in himself, and, in the same breath,
caught it from his neighbor. Within the church, it had hardly been
kept down; beneath the sky, it pealed upward to the zenith. There were
human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought and symphonious
feeling, to produce that more impressive sound than the organ tones of
the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mighty
swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by the universal
impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of the many. Never,
from the soil of New England, had gone up such a shout! Never, on New
England soil, had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren as
the preacher!
How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant particles of
a halo in the air about his head? So etherealized by spirit as he was,
and so apotheosized by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the
procession, really tread upon the dust of earth?
As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes
were turned towards the point where the minister was seen to approach
among them. The shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd
after another obtained a glimpse of him. How feeble and pale he
looked, amid all his triumph! The energy--or say, rather, the
inspiration which had held him up, until he should have delivered the
sacred message that brought its own strength along with it from
heaven--was withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully performed its
office. The glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his
cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hopelessly
among the late-decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man
alive, with such a death-like hue; it was hardly a man with life in
him, that tottered on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did
not fall!
One of his clerical brethren,--it was the venerable John
Wilson,--observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by the
retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily to
offer his support. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled
the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if that movement could be
so described, which rather resembled the wavering effort of an infant,
with its mother's arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. And
now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, he
had come opposite the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold,
where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester
Prynne had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood
Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand! And there was the scarlet
letter on her breast! The minister here made a pause; although the
music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which the
procession moved. It summoned him onward,--onward to the
festival! --but here he made a pause.
Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye upon
him. He now left his own place in the procession, and advanced to give
assistance; judging, from Mr. Dimmesdale's aspect, that he must
otherwise inevitably fall. But there was something in the latter's
expression that warned back the magistrate, although a man not readily
obeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another.
The crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly
faintness was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's
celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be
wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing
dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven.
He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.
"Hester," said he, "come hither! Come, my little Pearl! "
It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was
something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The child,
with the bird-like motion which was one of her characteristics, flew
to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. Hester Prynne--slowly,
as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongest
will--likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. At this
instant, old Roger Chillingworth thrust himself through the
crowd,--or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil, was his look, he
rose up out of some nether region,--to snatch back his victim from
what he sought to do! Be that as it might, the old man rushed forward,
and caught the minister by the arm.
"Madman, hold! what is your purpose? " whispered he. "Wave back that
woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your
fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save you! Would you bring
infamy on your sacred profession? "
"Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late! " answered the minister,
encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. "Thy power is not what it
was! With God's help, I shall escape thee now! "
He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter.
"Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, "in the name
of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last
moment, to do what--for my own heavy sin and miserable agony--I
withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine
thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by
the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man
is opposing it with all his might! --with all his own might, and the
fiend's! Come, Hester, come! Support me up yonder scaffold! "
The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood more
immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so
perplexed as to the purport of what they saw,--unable to receive the
explanation which most readily presented itself, or to imagine any
other,--that they remained silent and inactive spectators of the
judgment which Providence seemed about to work. They beheld the
minister, leaning on Hester's shoulder, and supported by her arm
around him, approach the scaffold, and ascend its steps; while still
the little hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his. Old Roger
Chillingworth followed, as one intimately connected with the drama of
guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and well entitled,
therefore, to be present at its closing scene.
"Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he, looking darkly at
the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret,--no high place nor
lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,--save on this very
scaffold! "
"Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither! " answered the minister.
Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester with an expression of doubt and
anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that there was a
feeble smile upon his lips.
"Is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed of in the
forest? "
"I know not! I know not! " she hurriedly replied. "Better? Yea; so we
may both die, and little Pearl die with us! "
"For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order," said the minister;
"and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which he hath made plain
before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying man. So let me make haste
to take my shame upon me! "
Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of little
Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the dignified and
venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren; to the
people, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled, yet overflowing
with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep life-matter--which,
if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance likewise--was now
to be laid open to them. The sun, but little past its meridian, shone
down upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he
stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar
of Eternal Justice.
"People of New England! " cried he, with a voice that rose over them,
high, solemn, and majestic,--yet had always a tremor through it, and
sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse
and woe,--"ye, that have loved me! --ye, that have deemed me
holy! --behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last! --at
last! --I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have
stood; here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength
wherewith I have crept hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadful
moment, from grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter
which Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk
hath been,--wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to
find repose,--it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible
repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you,
at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered! "
It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder
of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the bodily
weakness,--and, still more, the faintness of heart,--that was striving
for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and stepped
passionately forward a pace before the woman and the child.
"It was on him! " he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so
determined was he to speak out the whole. "God's eye beheld it! The
angels were forever pointing at it!
The Devil knew it well, and
fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger! But he
hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a
spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world! --and sad, because
he missed his heavenly kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands up
before you! He bids you look again at Hester's scarlet letter! He
tells you, that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow
of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red
stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart!
Stand any here that question God's judgment on a sinner? Behold!
Behold a dreadful witness of it! "
[Illustration: "Shall we not meet again? "]
With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from
before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to describe
that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the horror-stricken
multitude was concentred on the ghastly miracle; while the minister
stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the
crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the
scaffold! Hester partly raised him, and supported his head against her
bosom. Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank,
dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed.
"Thou hast escaped me! " he repeated more than once. "Thou hast escaped
me! "
"May God forgive thee! " said the minister. "Thou, too, hast deeply
sinned! "
He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on the
woman and the child.
"My little Pearl," said he, feebly,--and there was a sweet and gentle
smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now
that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be
sportive with the child,--"dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now?
Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt? "
Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief,
in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her
sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were
the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor
forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her
mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was all
fulfilled.
"Hester," said the clergyman, "farewell! "
"Shall we not meet again? " whispered she, bending her face down close
to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely,
surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! Thou lookest
far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! Then tell me what
thou seest? "
"Hush, Hester, hush! " said he, with tremulous solemnity. "The law we
broke! --the sin here so awfully revealed! --let these alone be in thy
thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot our
God,--when we violated our reverence each for the other's soul,--it
was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an
everlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and He is merciful! He hath
proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me this
burning torture to bear upon my breast! By sending yonder dark and
terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat! By bringing
me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people!
Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever!
Praised be his name! His will be done! Farewell! "
That final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath. The
multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe
and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur
that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XXIV.
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 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'
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in the sunshine; and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou
wearest it openly; so there need be no question about that. But this
minister! Let me tell thee, in thine ear! When the Black Man sees one
of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond
as is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters
so that the mark shall be disclosed in open daylight to the eyes of
all the world! What is it that the minister seeks to hide, with his
hand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne! "
"What is it, good Mistress Hibbins? " eagerly asked little Pearl. "Hast
thou seen it? "
"No matter, darling! " responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a
profound reverence. "Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another.
They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince of the Air!
Wilt thou ride with me, some fine night, to see thy father? Then thou
shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart! "
Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the
weird old gentlewoman took her departure.
By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the
meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale were
heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept Hester
near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit
another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of
the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon
to her ears, in the shape of an indistinct, but varied, murmur and
flow of the minister's very peculiar voice.
This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment; insomuch that a
listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher
spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and
cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and
emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart,
wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through the
church-walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intentness, and
sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning
for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These,
perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser
medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low
undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended
with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and
power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of
awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes
became, there was forever in it an essential character of
plaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish,--the whisper, or
the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that
touched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of
pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid a
desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high and
commanding,--when it gushed irrepressibly upward,--when it assumed its
utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its
way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in the open
air,--still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he
could detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of a
human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret,
whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching
its sympathy or forgiveness,--at every moment,--in each accent,--and
never in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gave
the clergyman his most appropriate power.
During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the
scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there, there would
nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence
she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense
within her,--too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing
heavily on her mind,--that her whole orb of life, both before and
after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave
it unity.
Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was
playing at her own will about the market-place. She made the sombre
crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray; even as a bird of
bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage, by darting
to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the
clustering leaves. She had an undulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp and
irregular movement. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit,
which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because it
was played upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever
Pearl saw anything to excite her ever-active and wandering curiosity,
she flew thitherward and, as we might say, seized upon that man or
thing as her own property, so far as she desired it; but without
yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital.
The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less
inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the
indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her
little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked the
wild Indian in the face; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than
his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as
characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the
swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the
land; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a
flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were
gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in
the night-time.
One of these seafaring men--the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to
Hester Prynne--was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that he attempted
to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it as
impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he took
from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to
the child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist,
with such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her,
and it was difficult to imagine her without it.
"Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the seaman.
"Wilt thou carry her a message from me? "
"If the message pleases me, I will," answered Pearl.
"Then tell her," rejoined he, "that I spake again with the
black-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring
his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thy
mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt thou tell her
this, thou witch-baby? "
"Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air! " cried
Pearl, with a naughty smile. "If thou callest me that ill name, I
shall tell him of thee; and he will chase thy ship with a tempest! "
Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returned
to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Hester's
strong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on
beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom,
which--at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister
and herself out of their labyrinth of misery--showed itself, with an
unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path.
With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the
shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to
another trial. There were many people present, from the country round
about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had
been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumors, but who
had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after
exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynne
with rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however,
it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. At
that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal
force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole
gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and
learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their
sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians
were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity,
and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes
on Hester's bosom; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this
brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high
dignity among her people. Lastly the inhabitants of the town (their
own interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, by
sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same
quarter, and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest,
with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester
saw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who
had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years ago; all
save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose
burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so
soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the
centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her
breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it
on.
While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning
cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her forever, the
admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an
audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The
sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in the
market-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to
surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XXIII.
THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER.
The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience had
been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length came
to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as what should
follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a murmur and half-hushed
tumult; as if the auditors, released from the high spell that had
transported them into the region of another's mind, were returning
into themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In
a moment more, the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the
church. Now that there was an end, they needed other breath, more fit
to support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than
that atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame,
and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought.
In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and the
market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of
the minister. His hearers could not rest until they had told one
another of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. According
to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high,
and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day; nor had inspiration
ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through
his. Its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and
possessing him, and continually lifting him out of the written
discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must
have been as marvellous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it
appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the communities
of mankind, with a special reference to the New England which they
were here planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew towards the
close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to
its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were
constrained; only with this difference, that, whereas the Jewish seers
had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission
to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people
of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse,
there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could
not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to
pass away. Yes; their minister whom they so loved--and who so loved
them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sigh--had the
foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them in
their tears! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last
emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as if
an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings
over the people for an instant,--at once a shadow and a
splendor,--and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them.
Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale--as to most men,
in their various spheres, though seldom recognized until they see it
far behind them--an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph
than any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. He stood,
at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which
the gifts of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a
reputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New
England's earliest days, when the professional character was of itself
a lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied,
as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at the
close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing
beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still
burning on her breast!
Now was heard again the clangor of the music, and the measured tramp
of the military escort, issuing from the church-door. The procession
was to be marshalled thence to the town-hall, where a solemn banquet
would complete the ceremonies of the day.
Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers was
seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew back
reverently, on either side, as the Governor and magistrates, the old
and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent and
renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When they were fairly in
the market-place, their presence was greeted by a shout. This--though
doubtless it might acquire additional force and volume from the
childlike loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers--was felt to be
an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by
that high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their
ears. Each felt the impulse in himself, and, in the same breath,
caught it from his neighbor. Within the church, it had hardly been
kept down; beneath the sky, it pealed upward to the zenith. There were
human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought and symphonious
feeling, to produce that more impressive sound than the organ tones of
the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mighty
swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by the universal
impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of the many. Never,
from the soil of New England, had gone up such a shout! Never, on New
England soil, had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren as
the preacher!
How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant particles of
a halo in the air about his head? So etherealized by spirit as he was,
and so apotheosized by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the
procession, really tread upon the dust of earth?
As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes
were turned towards the point where the minister was seen to approach
among them. The shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd
after another obtained a glimpse of him. How feeble and pale he
looked, amid all his triumph! The energy--or say, rather, the
inspiration which had held him up, until he should have delivered the
sacred message that brought its own strength along with it from
heaven--was withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully performed its
office. The glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his
cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hopelessly
among the late-decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man
alive, with such a death-like hue; it was hardly a man with life in
him, that tottered on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did
not fall!
One of his clerical brethren,--it was the venerable John
Wilson,--observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by the
retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily to
offer his support. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled
the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if that movement could be
so described, which rather resembled the wavering effort of an infant,
with its mother's arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. And
now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, he
had come opposite the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold,
where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester
Prynne had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood
Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand! And there was the scarlet
letter on her breast! The minister here made a pause; although the
music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which the
procession moved. It summoned him onward,--onward to the
festival! --but here he made a pause.
Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye upon
him. He now left his own place in the procession, and advanced to give
assistance; judging, from Mr. Dimmesdale's aspect, that he must
otherwise inevitably fall. But there was something in the latter's
expression that warned back the magistrate, although a man not readily
obeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another.
The crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly
faintness was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's
celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be
wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing
dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven.
He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.
"Hester," said he, "come hither! Come, my little Pearl! "
It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was
something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The child,
with the bird-like motion which was one of her characteristics, flew
to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. Hester Prynne--slowly,
as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongest
will--likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. At this
instant, old Roger Chillingworth thrust himself through the
crowd,--or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil, was his look, he
rose up out of some nether region,--to snatch back his victim from
what he sought to do! Be that as it might, the old man rushed forward,
and caught the minister by the arm.
"Madman, hold! what is your purpose? " whispered he. "Wave back that
woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your
fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save you! Would you bring
infamy on your sacred profession? "
"Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late! " answered the minister,
encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. "Thy power is not what it
was! With God's help, I shall escape thee now! "
He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter.
"Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, "in the name
of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last
moment, to do what--for my own heavy sin and miserable agony--I
withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine
thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by
the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man
is opposing it with all his might! --with all his own might, and the
fiend's! Come, Hester, come! Support me up yonder scaffold! "
The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood more
immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so
perplexed as to the purport of what they saw,--unable to receive the
explanation which most readily presented itself, or to imagine any
other,--that they remained silent and inactive spectators of the
judgment which Providence seemed about to work. They beheld the
minister, leaning on Hester's shoulder, and supported by her arm
around him, approach the scaffold, and ascend its steps; while still
the little hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his. Old Roger
Chillingworth followed, as one intimately connected with the drama of
guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and well entitled,
therefore, to be present at its closing scene.
"Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he, looking darkly at
the clergyman, "there was no one place so secret,--no high place nor
lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,--save on this very
scaffold! "
"Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither! " answered the minister.
Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester with an expression of doubt and
anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that there was a
feeble smile upon his lips.
"Is not this better," murmured he, "than what we dreamed of in the
forest? "
"I know not! I know not! " she hurriedly replied. "Better? Yea; so we
may both die, and little Pearl die with us! "
"For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order," said the minister;
"and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which he hath made plain
before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying man. So let me make haste
to take my shame upon me! "
Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of little
Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the dignified and
venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren; to the
people, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled, yet overflowing
with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep life-matter--which,
if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance likewise--was now
to be laid open to them. The sun, but little past its meridian, shone
down upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he
stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar
of Eternal Justice.
"People of New England! " cried he, with a voice that rose over them,
high, solemn, and majestic,--yet had always a tremor through it, and
sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse
and woe,--"ye, that have loved me! --ye, that have deemed me
holy! --behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last! --at
last! --I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have
stood; here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength
wherewith I have crept hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadful
moment, from grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter
which Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk
hath been,--wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to
find repose,--it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible
repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you,
at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered! "
It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder
of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the bodily
weakness,--and, still more, the faintness of heart,--that was striving
for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and stepped
passionately forward a pace before the woman and the child.
"It was on him! " he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so
determined was he to speak out the whole. "God's eye beheld it! The
angels were forever pointing at it!
The Devil knew it well, and
fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger! But he
hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a
spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world! --and sad, because
he missed his heavenly kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands up
before you! He bids you look again at Hester's scarlet letter! He
tells you, that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow
of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red
stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart!
Stand any here that question God's judgment on a sinner? Behold!
Behold a dreadful witness of it! "
[Illustration: "Shall we not meet again? "]
With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from
before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to describe
that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the horror-stricken
multitude was concentred on the ghastly miracle; while the minister
stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the
crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the
scaffold! Hester partly raised him, and supported his head against her
bosom. Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank,
dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed.
"Thou hast escaped me! " he repeated more than once. "Thou hast escaped
me! "
"May God forgive thee! " said the minister. "Thou, too, hast deeply
sinned! "
He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on the
woman and the child.
"My little Pearl," said he, feebly,--and there was a sweet and gentle
smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now
that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be
sportive with the child,--"dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now?
Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt? "
Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief,
in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her
sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were
the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor
forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her
mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was all
fulfilled.
"Hester," said the clergyman, "farewell! "
"Shall we not meet again? " whispered she, bending her face down close
to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely,
surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! Thou lookest
far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! Then tell me what
thou seest? "
"Hush, Hester, hush! " said he, with tremulous solemnity. "The law we
broke! --the sin here so awfully revealed! --let these alone be in thy
thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot our
God,--when we violated our reverence each for the other's soul,--it
was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an
everlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and He is merciful! He hath
proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me this
burning torture to bear upon my breast! By sending yonder dark and
terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat! By bringing
me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people!
Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever!
Praised be his name! His will be done! Farewell! "
That final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath. The
multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe
and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur
that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XXIV.
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 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'
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