Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Herprison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into thesunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick andmorbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to revealthe scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more realtorture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold ofthe prison than even in the procession and spectacle that havebeen described, where she was made the common infamy, at whichall mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she wassupported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all thecombative energy of her character, which enabled her to convertthe scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, aseparate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime,and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she mightcall up the vital strength that would have sufficed for manyquiet years. The very law that condemned her--a giant of sternfeatures but with vigour to support, as well as to annihilate,in his iron arm--had held her up through the terrible ordeal ofher ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prisondoor, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain andcarry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, orsink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future tohelp her through the present grief. Tomorrow would bring its owntrial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next:each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now sounutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off futurewould toil onward, still with the same burden for her to takeup, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for theaccumulating days and added years would pile up their miseryupon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up herindividuality, she would become the general symbol at which thepreacher and moralist might point, and in which they mightvivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinfulpassion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her,with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast--at her, the childof honourable parents--at her, the mother of a babe that wouldhereafter be a woman--at her, who had once been innocent--as thefigure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, theinfamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.

It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her--kept byno restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits ofthe Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure--free to returnto her birth-place, or to any other European land, and therehide her character and identity under a new exterior, ascompletely as if emerging into another state of being--andhaving also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open toher, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itselfwith a people whose customs and life were alien from the lawthat had condemned her--it may seem marvellous that this womanshould still call that place her home, where, and where only,she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, afeeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force ofdoom, which almost invariably compels human beings to lingeraround and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great andmarked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, stillthe more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Hersin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into thesoil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations thanthe first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenialto every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wildand dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth--eventhat village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainlessmaidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, likegarments put off long ago--were foreign to her, in comparison.The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling toher inmost soul, but could never be broken.

It might be, too--doubtless it was so, although she hid thesecret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out ofher heart, like a serpent from its hole--it might be thatanother feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that hadbeen so fatal. There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one withwhom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognisedon earth, would bring them together before the bar of finaljudgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a jointfuturity of endless retribution. Over and over again, thetempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester'scontemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joywith which she seized, and then strove to cast it from her. Shebarely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it inits dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe--what,finally, she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing aresident of New England--was half a truth, and half aself-delusion. Here, she said to herself had been the scene ofher guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthlypunishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shamewould at length purge her soul, and work out another purity thanthat which she had lost: more saint-like, because the result ofmartyrdom.

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of thetown, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in closevicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatchedcottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned,because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, whileits comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of thatsocial activity which already marked the habits of theemigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of thesea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump ofscrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not somuch conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that herewas some object which would fain have been, or at least ought tobe, concealed. In this little lonesome dwelling, with someslender means that she possessed, and by the licence of themagistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her,Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mysticshadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot.Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should beshut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nighenough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, orstanding in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, orcoming forth along the pathway that led townward, and,discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper offwith a strange contagious fear.

Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earthwho dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk ofwant. She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land thatafforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supplyfood for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art, then,as now, almost the only one within a woman's grasp--ofneedle-work. She bore on her breast, in the curiouslyembroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginativeskill, of which the dames of a court might gladly have availedthemselves, to add the richer and more spiritual adornment ofhuman ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed,in the sable simplicity that generally characterised thePuritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call forthe finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of theage, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of thiskind, did not fail to extend its influence over our sternprogenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which itmight seem harder to dispense with.

Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation ofmagistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms inwhich a new government manifested itself to the people, were, asa matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conductedceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deepruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroideredgloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of menassuming the reins of power, and were readily allowed toindividuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuarylaws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeianorder. In the array of funerals, too--whether for the apparel ofthe dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices ofsable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors--therewas a frequent and characteristic demand for such labour asHester Prynne could supply. Baby-linen--for babies then worerobes of state--afforded still another possibility of toil andemolument.

By degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would nowbe termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman ofso miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that givesa fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or bywhatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now,sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek invain; or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwisehave remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready andfairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit tooccupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortifyitself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, thegarments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Herneedle-work was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military menwore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it deckedthe baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed andmoulder away, in the coffins of the dead. But it is not recordedthat, in a single instance, her skill was called in to embroiderthe white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride.The exception indicated the ever relentless vigour with whichsociety frowned upon her sin.

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, ofthe plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and asimple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of thecoarsest materials and the most sombre hue, with only that oneornament--the scarlet letter--which it was her doom to wear. Thechild's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by afanciful, or, we may rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, whichserved, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began todevelop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to havealso a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter.Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of herinfant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, onwretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequentlyinsulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which shemight readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, sheemployed in making coarse garments for the poor. It is probablethat there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation,and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment indevoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in hernature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic--a taste forthe gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisiteproductions of her needle, found nothing else, in all thepossibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon. Women derivea pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicatetoil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a modeof expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life.Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbidmeddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, itis to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, butsomething doubtful, something that might be deeply wrongbeneath.

In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform inthe world. With her native energy of character and rarecapacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it hadset a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart thanthat which branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse withsociety, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if shebelonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silenceof those with whom she came in contact, implied, and oftenexpressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if sheinhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common natureby other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. Shestood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like aghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longermake itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy,nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed inmanifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror andhorrible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its bitterestscorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retainedin the universal heart. It was not an age of delicacy; and herposition, although she understood it well, and was in littledanger of forgetting it, was often brought before her vividself-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch uponthe tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom shesought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled thehand that was stretched forth to succour them. Dames of elevatedrank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of heroccupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness intoher heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, bywhich women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles;and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon thesufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon anulcerated wound. Hester had schooled herself long and well; andshe never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimsonthat rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again subsidedinto the depths of her bosom. She was patient--a martyr, indeedbut she forebore to pray for enemies, lest, in spite of herforgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing shouldstubbornly twist themselves into a curse.

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel theinnumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunninglycontrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence ofthe Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the streets, toaddress words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with itsmingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If sheentered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of theUniversal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself thetext of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; forthey had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of somethinghorrible in this dreary woman gliding silently through the town,with never any companion but one only child. Therefore, firstallowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrillcries, and the utterances of a word that had no distinct purportto their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, asproceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed toargue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew ofit; it could have caused her no deeper pang had the leaves ofthe trees whispered the dark story among themselves--had thesummer breeze murmured about it--had the wintry blast shriekedit aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a neweye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter andnone ever failed to do so--they branded it afresh in Hester'ssoul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yetalways did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. Butthen, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish toinflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. Fromfirst to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadfulagony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grewcallous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive withdaily torture.

But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months,she felt an eye--a human eye--upon the ignominious brand, thatseemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony wereshared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with still adeeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she hadsinned anew. (Had Hester sinned alone?)

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of asofter moral and intellectual fibre would have been still moreso, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking toand fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world withwhich she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared toHester--if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent tobe resisted--she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letterhad endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yetcould not help believing, that it gave her a sympatheticknowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She wasterror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What werethey? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the badangel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, asyet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity wasbut a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, ascarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides HesterPrynne'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 irreverentinopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vividaction. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give asympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister ormagistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age ofantique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowshipwith angels. "What evil thing is at hand?" would Hester say toherself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothinghuman within the scope of view, save the form of this earthlysaint! Again a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assertitself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who,according to the rumour of all tongues, had kept cold snowwithin her bosom throughout life. That unsunned snow in thematron's bosom, and the burning shame on Hester Prynne's--whathad the two in common? Or, once more, the electric thrill wouldgive her warning--"Behold Hester, here is a companion!" and,looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancingat the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted,with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks as if her purity weresomewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, whosetalisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing,whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?--suchloss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be itaccepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victimof her own frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yetstruggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty likeherself.

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were alwayscontributing a grotesque horror to what interested theirimaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which wemight readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred thatthe symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthlydye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seenglowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in thenight-time. And we must needs say it seared Hester's bosom sodeeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumour than ourmodern incredulity may be inclined to admit.