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HESTER PRYNNE'S term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door

was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike,

seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the

scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first

unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and

spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all

mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension

of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to

convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated

event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of

economy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet

years. The very law that condemned her- a giant of stern features, but with vigour to

support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm- had held her up, through the terrible

ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison-door, began the

daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources

of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her

through the present grief. To-morrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next

day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so

unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still

with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down;

for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of

shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general

symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and

embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would

be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast- at her, the child

of honourable parents- at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman- at

her, who had once been innocent- as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her

grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument. .

It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her- kept by no

restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so

remote and so obscure- free to return to her birthplace, or to any other European land,

and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if

emerging into another state of being- and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable

forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people

whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her- it may seem

marvellous, that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only,

she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible

and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings

to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has

given the colour to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge

that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil.

It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted the

forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester

Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth- even that village

of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her

mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago- were foreign to her, in comparison. The

chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could

never be broken. .

It might be, too- doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from

herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its

hole- it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been

so fatal. There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected

in a union, that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final

judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution.

Over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's

contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized, and

then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to

bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe- what, finally, she reasoned

upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of New England- was half a truth, and half a

self-delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should

be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame

would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost;

more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom. .

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the town,

within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation,

there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and

abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its

comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already

marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the

sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone

grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote

that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed.

In this little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the

license of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester

established herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately

attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should

be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her

plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in her

little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward; and, discerning the

scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagious fear. .

Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who

dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art that

sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to

supply food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art- then, as now, almost the

only one within a woman's grasp- of needlework. She bore on her breast, in the curiously

embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames

of a court might gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual

adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed, in the sable

simplicity that generally characterised the Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an

infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age,

demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail to extend its

influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it

might seem harder to dispense with. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the

installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which a new

government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a

stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep

ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves were all deemed

necessary to the official state of men assuming the reins of power; and were readily

allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade

these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order. In the array of funerals,

too-whether for the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic-devices

of sable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors- there was a frequent and

characteristic demand for such labour as Hester Prynne could supply. Baby-linen- for

babies then wore robes of state- afforded still another possibility of toil and emolument. .

By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be

termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or

from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless

things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to

bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hester really filled a

gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly

requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it

may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the

garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her needle-work was seen on the ruff

of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his hand; it

decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the

coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was

called in aid to embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride.

The exception indicated the ever relentless vigour with which society frowned upon her

sin. .

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the

plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child.

Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue; with only that one

ornament- the scarlet letter- which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the

other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic

ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop

itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak

further of it hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her

infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable

than herself, and who not infrequently insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time,

which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in

making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance in

this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment, in

devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous,

Oriental characteristic- a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the

exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her

life, to exercise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex,

from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of

expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she

rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter

betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful,

something that might be deeply wrong, beneath. .

In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in the

world. With her native energy of character, and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast

her off, although it had set a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart than

that which branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with society, however, there

was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and

even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed,

that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or

communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human

kind. She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that

revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile

with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in

manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. These

emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she

retained in the universal heart. It was not an age of delicacy; and her position, although

she understood it well, and was in little danger of forgetting it, was often brought

before her vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the

tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be the objects

of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succour them. Dames of

elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were

accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of

quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtile poison from ordinary trifles; and

sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast

like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Hester had schooled herself long and well; she

never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over

her pale cheek, and again subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patient- a

martyr, indeed- but she forbore to pray for her enemies; lest, in spite of her forgiving

aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into a curse. .

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable

throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the

ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the street to address

words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the

poor, sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the

Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. She

grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of

something horrible in this dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with never any

companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a

distance with shrill cries, and the utterance of a word that had no distinct purport to

their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that

babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all

nature knew of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang, had the leaves of the trees

whispered the dark story among themselves- had the summer breeze murmured about it- had

the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new

eye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter- and none ever failed to do so-

they branded it afresh into Hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely

refrain, yet always did refrain, from .

covering the symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye

had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable.

From first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a

human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow

more sensitive with daily torture. .

But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt

an eye- a human eye- upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief,

as if half of her agony were shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with

still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. Had Hester

sinned alone? .

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer

moral and intellectual fibre, would have been still more so, by the strange and solitary

anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world

with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester- if altogether

fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted- she felt or fancied, then, that the

scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not

help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other

hearts. She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were they?

Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have

persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of

purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter

would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or, must she receive those

intimations- so obscure, yet so distinct-as truth? In all her miserable experience, there

was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked

her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action.

Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed

near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age

of antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with angels. "What

evil thing is at hand?" would Hester say to herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes,

there would be nothing human within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly

saint! Again, a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the

sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumour of all tongues, had kept

cold snow within her bosom throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and

the burning shame on Hester Prynne's- what had the two in common? Or, once more, the

electric thrill would give her warning- "Behold, Hester, here is a

companion!"-and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at

the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted, with a faint, chill crimson in

her cheeks; as if her purity were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend,

whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age,

for this poor sinner to revere?- such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of

sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own

frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no

fellow-mortal was guilty like herself. .

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a

grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet

letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred, that the

symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with

infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad

in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps

there was more truth in the rumour than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.

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