“Hush, Hester—hush!” said he,
with tremulous solemnity. “The law we
broke!—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 scarletletter—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.
