XXIV.-CONCLUSION.

fter 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.fterMost 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.SCARLET LETTERIt 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.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.”On a field, sable, the letter A, gules

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 —spelling normalized: changed ‘midday’ to ‘mid-day’
page —inserted a missing closing quote after ‘a child of her age’
page —spelling normalized: changed ‘careworn’ to ‘care-worn’
page —typo fixed: changed ‘physican’ to ‘physician’
page —typo fixed: changed ‘vocies’ to ‘voices’
page —removed an extra closing quote after ‘the scarlet letter too!’
page —spelling normalized: changed ‘birdlike’ to ‘bird-like’
page —typo fixed: changed ‘intruments’ to ‘instruments’
page —spelling normalized: changed ‘deathlike’ to ‘death-like’
Transcriber’s NotesObvious 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 —spelling normalized: changed ‘midday’ to ‘mid-day’
page —inserted a missing closing quote after ‘a child of her age’
page —spelling normalized: changed ‘careworn’ to ‘care-worn’
page —typo fixed: changed ‘physican’ to ‘physician’
page —typo fixed: changed ‘vocies’ to ‘voices’
page —removed an extra closing quote after ‘the scarlet letter too!’
page —spelling normalized: changed ‘birdlike’ to ‘bird-like’
page —typo fixed: changed ‘intruments’ to ‘instruments’
page —spelling normalized: changed ‘deathlike’ to ‘death-like’page —spelling normalized: changed ‘midday’ to ‘mid-day’page —inserted a missing closing quote after ‘a child of her age’page —spelling normalized: changed ‘careworn’ to ‘care-worn’page —typo fixed: changed ‘physican’ to ‘physician’page —typo fixed: changed ‘vocies’ to ‘voices’page —removed an extra closing quote after ‘the scarlet letter too!’page —spelling normalized: changed ‘birdlike’ to ‘bird-like’page —typo fixed: changed ‘intruments’ to ‘instruments’page —spelling normalized: changed ‘deathlike’ to ‘death-like’