The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood more
immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprize, 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.
[Footnote 77: From Chapters XIII and XIV of "The Scarlet Letter,"
published by Houghton, Mifflin & Company.]
"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 wo--"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 groveling
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 stept
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!"
With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from 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 fixt 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. Toward 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 wo! 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 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.
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 afterward, 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
fixt it in very undesirable distinctness.