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Mary Roberts Rinehart - "Sight Unseen"

William Bray - "Extracts from the Diary of William Bray, Esq. 1760 1800"

Honore de Balzac - "Unconscious Comedians"

Ralph Parlette - "The University of Hard Knocks"

The Scarlet Letter

H >> Hawthorne >> The Scarlet Letter




Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale--as to
most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognised
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 or
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 clamour 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
were 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 marketplace, their presence was greeted by a
shout. This--though doubtless it might acquire additional
force and volume from the child-like 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 neighbour.
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 honoured 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 etherealised
by spirit as he was, and so apotheosised 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 had 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 nervously, 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--inward
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 dishonour! 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 judgement 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 children.

"It was on him!" he continued, with a kind of
fierceness; so determined was he to speak out tile whole. "God's
eye beheld it! The angels were for ever 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!"

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 concentrated 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 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 I--the sin here 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 for ever! 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.



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--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 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, that 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.

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