The Scarlet Letter

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, 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 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.