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.