The Scarlet Letter

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.