The Public Holiday Mask — The Scarlet Letter

On the morning the new governor is to receive his office, Hester and Pearl come into the market-place. Craftsmen and sailors fill it. The holiday has a noise the scaffold never had, and Hester moves in it as a woman who has a ship in mind and a day left in Boston.

The letter is still on her breast. People look, because they always look, but the crowd has other business: the procession, the sermon, the feast. For the first time in years she is not the occasion. She is a person in the occasion, which is a different danger. A secret plan does not like a public square.

Across the square, in the remotest corner, she sees Roger Chillingworth. He is smiling. The smile crosses the talk and the laughter and lands on her with a meaning the holiday does not share. The ship, the minister, the clean escape: he is already standing where he can see all three. A secret departure does not like a square this full. The new governor's day gives her a crowd to stand in, and it gives Chillingworth a corner from which the whole plan is visible. Hester sees that smile and knows the holiday is no longer cover.