The victory accomplished, Pearl
returned
quietly to her
mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.
mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.
Hawthorne - Scarlett Letter
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.
[Illustration: Lonely Footsteps]
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 rumor 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
rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VI.
PEARL.
[Illustration]
We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature,
whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of
Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance
of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she
watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more
brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over
the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl! --For so had Hester called
her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the
calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the
comparison. But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great
price,--purchased with all she had,--her mother's only treasure! How
strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter,
which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy
could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct
consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely
child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally
a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne
less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been
evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be
good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding
nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that
should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.
Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its
vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs,
the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to
have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the
world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace
which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire,
however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very
garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in
rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better
understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the
arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before
the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus
arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty,
shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a
paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around
her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and
soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as
perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety;
in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full
scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the
pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there
was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost;
and if, in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she
would have ceased to be herself,--it would have been no longer Pearl!
This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly
express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared
to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but--or else Hester's fears
deceived her--it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into
which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In
giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was
a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all
in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the
point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be
discovered. Hester could only account for the child's character--and
even then most vaguely and imperfectly--by recalling what she herself
had been, during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her
soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material
of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through
which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral
life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep
stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and
the untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the
warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl.
She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness
of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and
despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated
by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but later in
the day of earthly existence might be prolific of the storm and
whirlwind.
The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more rigid
kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent application
of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were used, not merely in
the way of punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen
for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. Hester Prynne,
nevertheless, the lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk of
erring on the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own
errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender, but
strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her
charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles
and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any
calculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside,
and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical
compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. As
to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind or
heart, little Pearl might or might not be within its reach, in
accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while
Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look,
that warned her when it would be labor thrown away to insist,
persuade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable,
so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a
wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such
moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy
sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while
upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever
that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested
her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she were
hovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering light, that
comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it,
Hester was constrained to rush towards the child,--to pursue the
little elf in the flight which she invariably began,--to snatch her to
her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,--not so much from
overflowing love, as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood,
and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught,
though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than
before.
Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often
came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so
dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into
passionate tears. Then, perhaps,--for there was no foreseeing how it
might affect her,--Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and
harden her small features into a stern, unsympathizing look of
discontent. Not seldom, she would laugh anew, and louder than before,
like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or--but this
more rarely happened--she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and
sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on
proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardly
safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness; it passed, as
suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt
like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the
process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should
control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real
comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was
sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness;
until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath
her opening lids--little Pearl awoke!
How soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed! --did Pearl arrive at an
age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother's
ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would
it have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like
voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have
distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the
entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never
be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil,
emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants.
Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with
which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had
drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in
short, of her position in respect to other children. Never, since her
release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In
all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there; first as the babe
in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her
mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along
at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the
children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or at
the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion
as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church,
perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight
with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative
witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make
acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children
gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively
terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with
shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because
they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown
tongue.
The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant
brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish,
unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and
child; and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not
unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt the
sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be
supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce
temper had a kind of value, and even comfort, for her mother; because
there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of
the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's
manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again,
a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. All this
enmity and passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out of
Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle
of seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the child seemed
to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester
Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by
the softening influences of maternity.
At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not a
wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forth
from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand
objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The
unlikeliest materials--a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower--were the
puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward
change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the
stage of her inner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of
imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees,
aged, black and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy
utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as
Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children,
whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully. It was
wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her
intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing,
always in a state of preternatural activity,--soon sinking down, as if
exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life,--and succeeded by
other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as
the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exercise
of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there
might be little more than was observable in other children of bright
faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was
thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. The
singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded
all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created a
friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth,
whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to
battle. It was inexpressibly sad--then what depth of sorrow to a
mother, who felt in her own heart the cause! --to observe, in one so
young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a
training of the energies that were to make good her cause, in the
contest that must ensue.
Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees,
and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but
which made utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan,--"O
Father in Heaven,--if Thou art still my Father,--what is this being
which I have brought into the world! " And Pearl, overhearing the
ejaculation, or aware, through some more subtile channel, of those
throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon
her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play.
[Illustration: A touch of Pearl's baby-hand]
One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. The
very first thing which she had noticed in her life was--what? --not the
mother's smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint,
embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards,
and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no
means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware
was--shall we say it? --the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom! One day,
as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had been
caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and,
putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not
doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a
much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch
the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away; so
infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl's
baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonized gesture were meant only
to make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and
smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had
never felt a moment's safety; not a moment's calm enjoyment of her.
Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's gaze
might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it
would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always
with that peculiar smile, and odd expression of the eyes.
Once, this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes, while
Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of
doing; and, suddenly,--for women in solitude, and with troubled
hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions,--she fancied that
she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face, in the
small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of
smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had
known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in
them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just
then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been
tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion.
In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big
enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of
wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom;
dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the scarlet
letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her
clasped hands. But, whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling
that her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain,
she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly
into little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers,
almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast
with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew
how to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the
child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing
image of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, her mother
so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes.
"Child, what art thou? " cried the mother.
"O, I am your little Pearl! " answered the child.
But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down,
with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak
might be to fly up the chimney.
"Art thou my child, in very truth? " asked Hester.
Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment,
with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was Pearl's wonderful
intelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were not
acquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not now
reveal herself.
"Yes; I am little Pearl! " repeated the child, continuing her antics.
"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine! " said the mother,
half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came
over her, in the midst of her deepest suffering. "Tell me, then, what
thou art, and who sent thee hither. "
"Tell me, mother! " said the child, seriously, coming up to Hester, and
pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell me! "
"Thy Heavenly Father sent thee! " answered Hester Prynne.
But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of
the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or
because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her small forefinger,
and touched the scarlet letter.
"He did not send me! " cried she, positively. "I have no Heavenly
Father! "
"Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so! " answered the mother,
suppressing a groan. "He sent us all into this world. He sent even me,
thy mother. Then, much more, thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish
child, whence didst thou come? "
"Tell me! Tell me! " repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing,
and capering about the floor. "It is thou that must tell me! "
But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal
labyrinth of doubt. She remembered--betwixt a smile and a shudder--the
talk of the neighboring towns-people; who, seeking vainly elsewhere
for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes,
had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring; such as,
ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth,
through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and
wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish
enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only
child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the New
England Puritans.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VII.
THE GOVERNOR'S HALL.
[Illustration]
Hester Prynne went, one day, to the mansion of Governor Bellingham,
with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his
order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for,
though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler
to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an
honorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy.
Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of
embroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview
with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the
settlement. It had reached her ears, that there was a design on the
part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid
order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her
child. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon
origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian
interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a
stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were
really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the
elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the
fairer prospect of these advantages, by being transferred to wiser and
better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted the
design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. It
may appear singular, and indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an
affair of this kind, which, in later days, would have been referred to
no higher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, should
then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen
of eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however,
matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic
weight, than the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed
up with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. The period
was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute
concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and
bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in
an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature.
Full of concern, therefore,--but so conscious of her own right that it
seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on the one side,
and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the
other,--Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. Little
Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to run
lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion, from
morn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey than
that before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than
necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as
imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester on
the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have
spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone with
deep and vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity
both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and
which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was fire
in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a
passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had
allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play;
arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly
embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So much
strength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to
cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty,
and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced
upon the earth.
But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of the
child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded
the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon
her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet
letter endowed with life! The mother herself--as if the red ignominy
were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions
assumed its form--had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavishing
many hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between the
object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But,
in truth, Pearl was the one, as well as the other; and only in
consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to
represent the scarlet letter in her appearance.
As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the
children of the Puritans looked up from their play,--or what passed
for play with those sombre little urchins,--and spake gravely one to
another:--
"Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and, of a
truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running
along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them! "
But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her
foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening
gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put
them all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an
infant pestilence,--the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel
of judgment,--whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising
generation. She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of
sound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake
within them.
The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her
mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.
Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor
Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which
there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns;
now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the
many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that
have happened, and passed away, within their dusky chambers. Then,
however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior,
and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a
human habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed,
a very cheery aspect; the walls being overspread with a kind of
stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully
intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front
of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been
flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might have
befitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave old
Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly
cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the
age, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and had
now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times.
Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house, began to caper and
dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine
should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with.
"No, my little Pearl! " said her mother. "Thou must gather thine own
sunshine. I have none to give thee! "
They approached the door; which was of an arched form, and flanked on
each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of
which were lattice-windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at
need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester Prynne
gave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor's
bond-servants; a free-born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave.
During that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much
a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf
wore the blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men of
that period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of England.
"Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within? " inquired Hester.
"Yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes
at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had
never before seen. "Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he hath
a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see
his worship now. "
"Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne, and the
bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and the
glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land,
offered no opposition.
So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of
entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his
building-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of
social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation after
the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here,
then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the
whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general
communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments.
At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the
two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal.
At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more
powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which we
read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned
seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the
Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as,
in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be
turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted
of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved
with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste;
the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and
heirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor's paternal home. On
the table--in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had
not been left behind--stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of
which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the
frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale.
On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of
the Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others
with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterized by the
sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as if
they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies,
and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits
and enjoyments of living men.
[Illustration: The Governor's Breastplate]
At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall, was
suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic,
but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful
armorer in London, the same year in which Governor Bellingham came
over to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a
gorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging
beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly
burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination
everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for
mere idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn
muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of
a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and
accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as his
professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had
transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman
and ruler.
Little Pearl--who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as
she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house--spent some
time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.
"Mother," cried she, "I see you here. Look! Look! "
Hester looked, by way of humoring the child; and she saw that, owing
to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was
represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be
greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she
seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upward, also, at a
similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the
elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small
physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in
the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made
Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child,
but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl's shape.
"Come along, Pearl," said she, drawing her away. "Come and look into
this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful
ones than we find in the woods. "
Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of the
hall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted with
closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt
at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have
relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of
the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for
subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening.
Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some
distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of
its gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window; as if to warn
the Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an
ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few
rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the
descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first
settler of the peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who rides
through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.
Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would
not be pacified.
"Hush, child, hush! " said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry, dear
little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, and
gentlemen along with him! "
In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons were
seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of her
mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then
became silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick
and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance
of these new personages.
[Illustration]
VIII.
THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.
Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap,--such as elderly
gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic
privacy,--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate,
and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference
of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated
fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little
like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his
aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal
age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment
wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it
is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers--though accustomed
to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and
warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life
at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such
means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp.
This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over
Governor Bellingham's shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears
and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and
that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against the
sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of
the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for
all good and comfortable things; and however stern he might show
himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions
as that of Hester Prynne, still the genial benevolence of his private
life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his
professional contemporaries.
Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests: one the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having
taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old Roger
Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or
three years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood that
this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young
minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too
unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral
relation.
The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps,
and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window, found himself
close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester
Prynne, and partially concealed her.
"What have we here? " said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise
at the scarlet little figure before him. "I profess, I have never seen
the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I
was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask!
There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time;
and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a
guest into my hall? "
"Ay, indeed! " cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of scarlet
plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures, when the
sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out
the golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the
old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy
mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian
child,--ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty
elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other
relics of Papistry, in merry old England? "
"I am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name is
Pearl! "
"Pearl? --Ruby, rather! --or Coral! --or Red Rose, at the very least,
judging from thy hue! " responded the old minister, putting forth his
hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. "But where is
this mother of thine? Ah! I see," he added; and, turning to Governor
Bellingham, whispered, "This is the selfsame child of whom we have
held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester
Prynne, her mother! "
"Sayest thou so? " cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged that
such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type
of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we will look into
this matter forthwith. "
Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed
by his three guests.
"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the
wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question
concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed,
whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our
consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder
child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the
pitfalls of this world. Speak thou, the child's own mother! Were it
not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare
that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined
strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst
thou do for the child, in this kind? "
"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this! " answered
Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.
"Woman, it is thy badge of shame! " replied the stern magistrate. "It
is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would
transfer thy child to other hands. "
"Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale,
"this badge hath taught me--it daily teaches me--it is teaching me at
this moment--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better,
albeit they can profit nothing to myself. "
"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we are
about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this
Pearl,--since that is her name,--and see whether she hath had such
Christian nurture as befits a child of her age. "
The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort to
draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch
or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window,
and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird, of
rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not
a little astonished at this outbreak,--for he was a grandfatherly sort
of personage, and usually a vast favorite with children,--essayed,
however, to proceed with the examination.
"Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to
instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the
pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee? "
Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the
daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child
about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths
which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with
such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments
of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in
the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster
Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of
those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have
more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now,
at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and
closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting
her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good
Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not
been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of
wild roses that grew by the prison-door.
This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the
Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window; together
with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in
coming hither.
Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something
in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of
skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was
startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,--how
much uglier they were,--how his dark complexion seemed to have grown
duskier, and his figure more misshapen,--since the days when she had
familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was
immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now
going forward.
"This is awful! " cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the
astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here is a
child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without
question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present
depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no
further. "
Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms,
confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce
expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole
treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed
indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to
the death.
"God gave me the child! " cried she. "He gave her in requital of all
things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness! --she is
my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes
me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being
loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for
my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first! "
[Illustration: "Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! "]
"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be
well cared for! --far better than thou canst do it! "
"God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising her
voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up! "--And here, by a
sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at
whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to
direct her eyes. --"Speak thou for me! " cried she. "Thou wast my
pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these
men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,--for
thou hast sympathies which these men lack! --thou knowest what is in my
heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they
are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look
thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it! "
At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's
situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young
minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his
heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament
was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciated
than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and
whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be,
his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and
melancholy depth.
"There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice
sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, and
the hollow armor rang with it,--"truth in what Hester says, and in the
feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too,
an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,--both
seemingly so peculiar,--which no other mortal being can possess. And,
moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation
between this mother and this child? "
"Ay! --how is that, good Master Dimmesdale? " interrupted the Governor.
"Make that plain, I pray you! "
"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it
otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator
of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no
account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This
child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the
hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so
earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her.
It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life! It was
meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a
retribution too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment;
a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled
joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor
child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her
bosom? "
"Well said, again! " cried good Mr. Wilson. "I feared the woman had no
better thought than to make a mountebank of her child! "
"O, not so! --not so! " continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She recognizes,
believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought, in the
existence of that child. And may she feel, too,--what, methinks, is
the very truth,--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to
keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths
of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her!
Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an
infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow,
confided to her care,--to be trained up by her to righteousness,--to
remind her, at every moment, of her fall,--but yet to teach her, as it
were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to
heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is the
sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's
sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them
as Providence hath seen fit to place them! "
"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old Roger
Chillingworth, smiling at him.
"And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken,"
added the Reverend Mr. Wilson. "What say you, worshipful Master
Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman? "
"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate, "and hath adduced such
arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so
long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman.
Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated
examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale's.
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.
[Illustration: Lonely Footsteps]
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 rumor 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
rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VI.
PEARL.
[Illustration]
We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature,
whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of
Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance
of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she
watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more
brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over
the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl! --For so had Hester called
her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the
calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the
comparison. But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great
price,--purchased with all she had,--her mother's only treasure! How
strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter,
which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy
could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct
consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely
child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally
a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne
less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been
evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be
good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding
nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that
should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.
Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its
vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs,
the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to
have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the
world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace
which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire,
however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very
garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in
rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better
understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the
arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before
the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus
arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty,
shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a
paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around
her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and
soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as
perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety;
in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full
scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the
pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there
was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost;
and if, in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she
would have ceased to be herself,--it would have been no longer Pearl!
This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly
express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared
to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but--or else Hester's fears
deceived her--it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into
which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In
giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was
a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all
in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the
point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be
discovered. Hester could only account for the child's character--and
even then most vaguely and imperfectly--by recalling what she herself
had been, during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her
soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material
of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through
which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral
life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep
stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and
the untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the
warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl.
She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness
of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and
despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated
by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but later in
the day of earthly existence might be prolific of the storm and
whirlwind.
The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more rigid
kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent application
of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were used, not merely in
the way of punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen
for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. Hester Prynne,
nevertheless, the lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk of
erring on the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own
errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender, but
strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her
charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles
and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any
calculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside,
and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical
compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. As
to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind or
heart, little Pearl might or might not be within its reach, in
accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while
Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look,
that warned her when it would be labor thrown away to insist,
persuade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable,
so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a
wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such
moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy
sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while
upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever
that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested
her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she were
hovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering light, that
comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it,
Hester was constrained to rush towards the child,--to pursue the
little elf in the flight which she invariably began,--to snatch her to
her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,--not so much from
overflowing love, as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood,
and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught,
though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than
before.
Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often
came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so
dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into
passionate tears. Then, perhaps,--for there was no foreseeing how it
might affect her,--Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and
harden her small features into a stern, unsympathizing look of
discontent. Not seldom, she would laugh anew, and louder than before,
like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or--but this
more rarely happened--she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and
sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on
proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardly
safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness; it passed, as
suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt
like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the
process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should
control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real
comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was
sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness;
until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath
her opening lids--little Pearl awoke!
How soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed! --did Pearl arrive at an
age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother's
ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would
it have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like
voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have
distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the
entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never
be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil,
emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants.
Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with
which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had
drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in
short, of her position in respect to other children. Never, since her
release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In
all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there; first as the babe
in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her
mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along
at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the
children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or at
the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion
as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church,
perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight
with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative
witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make
acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children
gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively
terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with
shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because
they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown
tongue.
The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant
brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish,
unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and
child; and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not
unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt the
sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be
supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce
temper had a kind of value, and even comfort, for her mother; because
there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of
the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's
manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again,
a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. All this
enmity and passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out of
Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle
of seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the child seemed
to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester
Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by
the softening influences of maternity.
At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not a
wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forth
from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand
objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The
unlikeliest materials--a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower--were the
puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward
change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the
stage of her inner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of
imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees,
aged, black and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy
utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as
Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children,
whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully. It was
wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her
intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing,
always in a state of preternatural activity,--soon sinking down, as if
exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life,--and succeeded by
other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as
the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exercise
of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there
might be little more than was observable in other children of bright
faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was
thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. The
singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded
all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created a
friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth,
whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to
battle. It was inexpressibly sad--then what depth of sorrow to a
mother, who felt in her own heart the cause! --to observe, in one so
young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a
training of the energies that were to make good her cause, in the
contest that must ensue.
Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees,
and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but
which made utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan,--"O
Father in Heaven,--if Thou art still my Father,--what is this being
which I have brought into the world! " And Pearl, overhearing the
ejaculation, or aware, through some more subtile channel, of those
throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon
her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play.
[Illustration: A touch of Pearl's baby-hand]
One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. The
very first thing which she had noticed in her life was--what? --not the
mother's smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint,
embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards,
and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no
means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware
was--shall we say it? --the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom! One day,
as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had been
caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and,
putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not
doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a
much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch
the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away; so
infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl's
baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonized gesture were meant only
to make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and
smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had
never felt a moment's safety; not a moment's calm enjoyment of her.
Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's gaze
might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it
would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always
with that peculiar smile, and odd expression of the eyes.
Once, this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes, while
Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of
doing; and, suddenly,--for women in solitude, and with troubled
hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions,--she fancied that
she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face, in the
small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of
smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had
known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in
them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just
then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been
tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion.
In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big
enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of
wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom;
dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the scarlet
letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her
clasped hands. But, whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling
that her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain,
she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly
into little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers,
almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast
with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew
how to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the
child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing
image of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, her mother
so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes.
"Child, what art thou? " cried the mother.
"O, I am your little Pearl! " answered the child.
But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down,
with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak
might be to fly up the chimney.
"Art thou my child, in very truth? " asked Hester.
Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment,
with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was Pearl's wonderful
intelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were not
acquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not now
reveal herself.
"Yes; I am little Pearl! " repeated the child, continuing her antics.
"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine! " said the mother,
half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came
over her, in the midst of her deepest suffering. "Tell me, then, what
thou art, and who sent thee hither. "
"Tell me, mother! " said the child, seriously, coming up to Hester, and
pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell me! "
"Thy Heavenly Father sent thee! " answered Hester Prynne.
But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of
the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or
because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her small forefinger,
and touched the scarlet letter.
"He did not send me! " cried she, positively. "I have no Heavenly
Father! "
"Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so! " answered the mother,
suppressing a groan. "He sent us all into this world. He sent even me,
thy mother. Then, much more, thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish
child, whence didst thou come? "
"Tell me! Tell me! " repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing,
and capering about the floor. "It is thou that must tell me! "
But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal
labyrinth of doubt. She remembered--betwixt a smile and a shudder--the
talk of the neighboring towns-people; who, seeking vainly elsewhere
for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes,
had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring; such as,
ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth,
through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and
wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish
enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only
child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the New
England Puritans.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VII.
THE GOVERNOR'S HALL.
[Illustration]
Hester Prynne went, one day, to the mansion of Governor Bellingham,
with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his
order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for,
though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler
to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an
honorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy.
Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of
embroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview
with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the
settlement. It had reached her ears, that there was a design on the
part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid
order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her
child. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon
origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian
interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a
stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were
really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the
elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the
fairer prospect of these advantages, by being transferred to wiser and
better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted the
design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. It
may appear singular, and indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an
affair of this kind, which, in later days, would have been referred to
no higher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, should
then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen
of eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however,
matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic
weight, than the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed
up with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. The period
was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute
concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and
bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in
an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature.
Full of concern, therefore,--but so conscious of her own right that it
seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on the one side,
and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the
other,--Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. Little
Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to run
lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion, from
morn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey than
that before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than
necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as
imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester on
the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have
spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone with
deep and vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity
both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and
which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was fire
in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a
passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had
allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play;
arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly
embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So much
strength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to
cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty,
and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced
upon the earth.
But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of the
child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded
the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon
her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet
letter endowed with life! The mother herself--as if the red ignominy
were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions
assumed its form--had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavishing
many hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between the
object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But,
in truth, Pearl was the one, as well as the other; and only in
consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to
represent the scarlet letter in her appearance.
As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the
children of the Puritans looked up from their play,--or what passed
for play with those sombre little urchins,--and spake gravely one to
another:--
"Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and, of a
truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running
along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them! "
But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her
foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening
gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put
them all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an
infant pestilence,--the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel
of judgment,--whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising
generation. She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of
sound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake
within them.
The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her
mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.
Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor
Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which
there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns;
now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the
many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that
have happened, and passed away, within their dusky chambers. Then,
however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior,
and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a
human habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed,
a very cheery aspect; the walls being overspread with a kind of
stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully
intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front
of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been
flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might have
befitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave old
Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly
cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the
age, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and had
now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times.
Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house, began to caper and
dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine
should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with.
"No, my little Pearl! " said her mother. "Thou must gather thine own
sunshine. I have none to give thee! "
They approached the door; which was of an arched form, and flanked on
each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of
which were lattice-windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at
need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester Prynne
gave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor's
bond-servants; a free-born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave.
During that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much
a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf
wore the blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men of
that period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of England.
"Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within? " inquired Hester.
"Yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes
at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had
never before seen. "Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he hath
a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see
his worship now. "
"Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne, and the
bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and the
glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land,
offered no opposition.
So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of
entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his
building-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of
social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation after
the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here,
then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the
whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general
communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments.
At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the
two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal.
At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more
powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which we
read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned
seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the
Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as,
in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be
turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted
of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved
with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste;
the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and
heirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor's paternal home. On
the table--in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had
not been left behind--stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of
which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the
frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale.
On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of
the Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others
with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterized by the
sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as if
they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies,
and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits
and enjoyments of living men.
[Illustration: The Governor's Breastplate]
At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall, was
suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic,
but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful
armorer in London, the same year in which Governor Bellingham came
over to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a
gorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging
beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly
burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination
everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for
mere idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn
muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of
a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and
accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as his
professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had
transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman
and ruler.
Little Pearl--who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as
she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house--spent some
time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.
"Mother," cried she, "I see you here. Look! Look! "
Hester looked, by way of humoring the child; and she saw that, owing
to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was
represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be
greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she
seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upward, also, at a
similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the
elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small
physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in
the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made
Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child,
but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl's shape.
"Come along, Pearl," said she, drawing her away. "Come and look into
this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful
ones than we find in the woods. "
Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of the
hall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted with
closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt
at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have
relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of
the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for
subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening.
Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some
distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of
its gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window; as if to warn
the Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an
ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few
rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the
descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first
settler of the peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who rides
through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.
Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would
not be pacified.
"Hush, child, hush! " said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry, dear
little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, and
gentlemen along with him! "
In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons were
seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of her
mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then
became silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick
and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance
of these new personages.
[Illustration]
VIII.
THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.
Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap,--such as elderly
gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic
privacy,--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate,
and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference
of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated
fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little
like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his
aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal
age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment
wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it
is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers--though accustomed
to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and
warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life
at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such
means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp.
This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over
Governor Bellingham's shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears
and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and
that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against the
sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of
the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for
all good and comfortable things; and however stern he might show
himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions
as that of Hester Prynne, still the genial benevolence of his private
life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his
professional contemporaries.
Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests: one the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having
taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old Roger
Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or
three years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood that
this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young
minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too
unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral
relation.
The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps,
and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window, found himself
close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester
Prynne, and partially concealed her.
"What have we here? " said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise
at the scarlet little figure before him. "I profess, I have never seen
the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I
was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask!
There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time;
and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a
guest into my hall? "
"Ay, indeed! " cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of scarlet
plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures, when the
sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out
the golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the
old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy
mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian
child,--ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty
elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other
relics of Papistry, in merry old England? "
"I am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name is
Pearl! "
"Pearl? --Ruby, rather! --or Coral! --or Red Rose, at the very least,
judging from thy hue! " responded the old minister, putting forth his
hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. "But where is
this mother of thine? Ah! I see," he added; and, turning to Governor
Bellingham, whispered, "This is the selfsame child of whom we have
held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester
Prynne, her mother! "
"Sayest thou so? " cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged that
such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type
of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we will look into
this matter forthwith. "
Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed
by his three guests.
"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the
wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question
concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed,
whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our
consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder
child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the
pitfalls of this world. Speak thou, the child's own mother! Were it
not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare
that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined
strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst
thou do for the child, in this kind? "
"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this! " answered
Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.
"Woman, it is thy badge of shame! " replied the stern magistrate. "It
is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would
transfer thy child to other hands. "
"Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale,
"this badge hath taught me--it daily teaches me--it is teaching me at
this moment--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better,
albeit they can profit nothing to myself. "
"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we are
about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this
Pearl,--since that is her name,--and see whether she hath had such
Christian nurture as befits a child of her age. "
The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort to
draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch
or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window,
and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird, of
rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not
a little astonished at this outbreak,--for he was a grandfatherly sort
of personage, and usually a vast favorite with children,--essayed,
however, to proceed with the examination.
"Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to
instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the
pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee? "
Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the
daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child
about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths
which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with
such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments
of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in
the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster
Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of
those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have
more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now,
at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and
closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting
her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good
Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not
been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of
wild roses that grew by the prison-door.
This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the
Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window; together
with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in
coming hither.
Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something
in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of
skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was
startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,--how
much uglier they were,--how his dark complexion seemed to have grown
duskier, and his figure more misshapen,--since the days when she had
familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was
immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now
going forward.
"This is awful! " cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the
astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here is a
child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without
question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present
depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no
further. "
Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms,
confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce
expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole
treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed
indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to
the death.
"God gave me the child! " cried she. "He gave her in requital of all
things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness! --she is
my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes
me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being
loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for
my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first! "
[Illustration: "Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! "]
"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be
well cared for! --far better than thou canst do it! "
"God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising her
voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up! "--And here, by a
sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at
whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to
direct her eyes. --"Speak thou for me! " cried she. "Thou wast my
pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these
men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,--for
thou hast sympathies which these men lack! --thou knowest what is in my
heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they
are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look
thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it! "
At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's
situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young
minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his
heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament
was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciated
than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and
whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be,
his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and
melancholy depth.
"There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice
sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, and
the hollow armor rang with it,--"truth in what Hester says, and in the
feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too,
an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,--both
seemingly so peculiar,--which no other mortal being can possess. And,
moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation
between this mother and this child? "
"Ay! --how is that, good Master Dimmesdale? " interrupted the Governor.
"Make that plain, I pray you! "
"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it
otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator
of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no
account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This
child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the
hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so
earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her.
It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life! It was
meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a
retribution too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment;
a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled
joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor
child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her
bosom? "
"Well said, again! " cried good Mr. Wilson. "I feared the woman had no
better thought than to make a mountebank of her child! "
"O, not so! --not so! " continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She recognizes,
believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought, in the
existence of that child. And may she feel, too,--what, methinks, is
the very truth,--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to
keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths
of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her!
Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an
infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow,
confided to her care,--to be trained up by her to righteousness,--to
remind her, at every moment, of her fall,--but yet to teach her, as it
were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to
heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is the
sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's
sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them
as Providence hath seen fit to place them! "
"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old Roger
Chillingworth, smiling at him.
"And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken,"
added the Reverend Mr. Wilson. "What say you, worshipful Master
Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman? "
"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate, "and hath adduced such
arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so
long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman.
Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated
examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale's.
