The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. Let it
suffice that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone.
"If in all these past seven years," thought he, "I could recall
one instant of peace or hope, I would yet endure, for the sake
of that earnest of Heaven's mercy. But now--since I am
irrevocably doomed--wherefore should I not snatch the solace
allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution? Or, if
this be the path to a better life, as Hester would persuade me,
I surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it! Neither can
I any longer live without her companionship; so powerful is she
to sustain--so tender to soothe! O Thou to whom I dare not lift
mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me?"
"Thou wilt go!" said Hester calmly, as he met her glance.
The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its
flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the
exhilarating effect--upon a prisoner just escaped from the
dungeon of his own heart--of breathing the wild, free atmosphere
of an unredeemed, unchristianised, lawless region. His spirit
rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect
of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept him
grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious temperament,
there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in his mood.
"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself.
"Methought the germ of it was dead in me! Oh, Hester, thou art
my better angel! I seem to have flung myself--sick, sin-stained,
and sorrow-blackened--down upon these forest leaves, and to have
risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that
hath been merciful! This is already the better life! Why did we
not find it sooner?"
"Let us not look back," answered Hester Prynne. "The past is
gone! Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With this
symbol I undo it all, and make it as if it had never been!"
So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet
letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance
among the withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the
hither verge of the stream. With a hand's-breadth further
flight, it would have fallen into the water, and have given the
little brook another woe to carry onward, besides the
unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about. But
there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel,
which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be
haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and
unaccountable misfortune.
The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the
burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O
exquisite relief! She had not known the weight until she felt
the freedom! By another impulse, she took off the formal cap
that confined her hair, and down it fell upon her shoulders,
dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its
abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features.
There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a
radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very
heart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek,
that had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole
richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the
irrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her maiden hope,
and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this
hour. And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the
effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their
sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth
burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure
forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow
fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the
solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto,
embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brook
might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of
mystery, which had become a mystery of joy.