"I cannot be sorry she is dying if I burn in hell for it. Hester Prynne."
Roger and I stared at each other, the same thought in our minds. I had imagined many things about the mysterious Hester, but never that she bore that name, as a matter of simple fact. The connection with Caliban had been too much for my overtrained imagination, and heaven knows what baseless theories I had woven around what was at best (or worst) a mere coincidence. For me the scarlet letter had flamed upon what I now know to have been a blameless breast, and in my excited fancy a stormy nature had suffered picturesque remorse where, as a matter of fact, only a deep and patient devotion had endured its unrecorded martyrdom of love unguessed and unreturned. So much for Literature!
Next came two folded half-columns from a newspaper, one containing only that dreadful list of the dead that our mothers read, white-cheeked and dry-eyed, in the war time. Opposite the names of Col. J. Breckenridge Lee and Lieut. J. Breckenridge Lee, Jr., were hasty, blotted crosses. The other half-column, cut from another and better printed sheet, recorded with a terrible, terse clearness the shocking deaths of the aged Col. J.B. Lee and his son Lieut. J.B. Lee, Jr., of the Confederate Army, at the hand of his son-in-law, Capt. Lockwood Prynne, who was defending an encampment of the Northern forces from a skirmishing party led by the rebel officers. Captain Prynne recognised what he had done as the young lieutenant caught his father in his arms and turned to stagger back, and rushing forward had endeavoured to drag them to safety, receiving a shot himself that shattered his arm, wounding him severely. His recovery was doubtful.
Under our sympathetic eyes the old tragedy lived again, the crisp, cruel lines seemed printed in blood. It needed only the letter that lay beneath to make everything clear.
"Dear Bob," the letter began in the unmistakable neat hand we had read on the top of the box, "I cannot leave you without this word. I cannot explain—my brain is on fire, I think—but try to judge with lenience. Blood-poisoning set in, and my father died in hospital last week. On his dying bed I swore to him that I would never raise my hand against his country. I can't repeat all he said, but he's right, Bob, the South is wrong! Secession is wrong. I brought the body home, but mother could not come to the funeral. She is not at all violent, but she will never be the same again—she didn't know me, Bob. I can't describe how pitiful she is. Uncle James was her twin brother, you know, and they were everything to each other. When we heard of Fort Sumter she was nearly wild, and I promised her with my hand on her Bible never to fight the South. I meant it then—my friends, my home and you all. But I would have got her to release me if I could. But she couldn't release me now, and I would die before I broke that promise, the way she is now. I can't stay here. I couldn't look anybody in the face. I wish I could be shot. I may be, yet. I am going to Italy to see about those silk-worms for the plantation, that father was interested in. The war can't last much longer and it will be something to do. Mother is well looked after and I can't stay in this country—it's not decent. Can you write to me, Bob? I don't ask much—just write a line. What could I do? Write, for God's sake.
"Lockwood Lee Prynne."
Below this signature, in a different hand, was scrawled:
"I return this letter. I have nothing to say.
"R. S. L."
Alas, alas, the pity of it! The grey moss and the blue forget-me-nots grow together now over many a nameless grave, and Northern youth and Southern maid pull daisy petals beside the sunken cannon ball; but the ancient scar ploughed deep, and old records like this have heat enough in them yet to sear the nerves of us who trembled, maybe, in the womb, when those black lists of the wounded trembled in our mother's hands.