“Wherefore dost thou desire it?” inquired
Hester, shrinking, she hardly knew why, from this
secret bond. “Why not announce thyself
openly, and cast me off at once?”
“It may be,” he replied, “because
I will not encounter the dishonour that besmirches
the husband of a faithless woman. It may be
for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to
live and die unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband
be to the world as one already dead, and of whom no
tidings shall ever come. Recognise me not, by
word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret,
above all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst
thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his
position, his life will be in my hands. Beware!”
“I will keep thy secret, as I have his,”
said Hester.
“Swear it!” rejoined he.
And she took the oath.
“And now, Mistress Prynne,” said old Roger
Chillingworth, as he was hereafter to be named, “I
leave thee alone: alone with thy infant and the
scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth
thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep?
Art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?”
“Why dost thou smile so at me?” inquired
Hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes.
“Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the
forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into
a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?”
“Not thy soul,” he answered, with another
smile. “No, not thine!”
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.
