Kabanata Kabanata 7 · THE GOVERNOR'S HALL

. THE GOVERNOR'S HALL

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

honourable 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 select men 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 let

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 in

fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of colouring,

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 spoke 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, the 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 customary garb of serving-men at 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 honourable 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 armour on their breasts, and others

with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterised 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.

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

armourer 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 armour 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 humouring 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 upwards 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 further 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

those new personages.

VIII.