Chương Chương 15 · HESTER AND PEARL

. HESTER AND PEARL

So Roger Chillingworth—a deformed old figure with a face that haunted

men’s memories longer than they liked—took leave of Hester Prynne, and

went stooping away along the earth. He gathered here and there a herb,

or grubbed up a root and put it into the basket on his arm. His gray

beard almost touched the ground as he crept onward. Hester gazed after

him a little while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see

whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath

him and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown,

across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were

which the old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not the earth,

quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with

poisonous shrubs of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under

his fingers? Or might it suffice him that every wholesome growth should

be converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch? Did

the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him?

Or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving

along with his deformity whichever way he turned himself? And whither

was he now going? Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a

barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen

deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable

wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous

luxuriance? Or would he spread bat’s wings and flee away, looking so

much the uglier the higher he rose towards heaven?

“Be it sin or no,” said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as still she gazed

after him, “I hate the man!”

She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or

lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought of those long-past days in

a distant land, when he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion

of his study and sit down in the firelight of their home, and in the

light of her nuptial smile. He needed to bask himself in that smile, he

said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books

might be taken off the scholar’s heart. Such scenes had once appeared

not otherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal medium

of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among her ugliest

remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes could have been! She

marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him! She

deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured

and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the

smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it

seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which

had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no

better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side.

“Yes, I hate him!” repeated Hester more bitterly than before. “He

betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!”

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it

the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable

fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth’s, when some mightier touch than

their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached

even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they

will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. But Hester ought long

ago to have done with this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven

long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much

of misery and wrought out no repentance?

The emotion of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the

crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw a dark light on

Hester’s state of mind, revealing much that she might not otherwise

have acknowledged to herself.

He being gone, she summoned back her child.

“Pearl! Little Pearl! Where are you?”

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for

amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs. At

first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image

in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and—as it declined to

venture—seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable

earth and unattainable sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or

the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made

little boats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snailshells,

and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in New

England; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. She

seized a live horse-shoe by the tail, and made prize of several

five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. Then

she took up the white foam that streaked the line of the advancing

tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it with winged

footsteps to catch the great snowflakes ere they fell. Perceiving a

flock of beach-birds that fed and fluttered along the shore, the

naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from

rock to rock after these small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity

in pelting them. One little gray bird, with a white breast, Pearl was

almost sure had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken

wing. But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport, because it

grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the

sea-breeze, or as wild as Pearl herself.

Her final employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, and make

herself a scarf or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect

of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother’s gift for devising

drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid’s garb, Pearl

took some eel-grass and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom

the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother’s. A

letter—the letter A—but freshly green instead of scarlet. The child

bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with

strange interest, even as if the one only thing for which she had been

sent into the world was to make out its hidden import.

“I wonder if mother will ask me what it means?” thought Pearl.

Just then she heard her mother’s voice, and, flitting along as lightly

as one of the little sea-birds, appeared before Hester Prynne dancing,

laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament upon her bosom.

“My little Pearl,” said Hester, after a moment’s silence, “the green

letter, and on thy childish bosom, has no purport. But dost thou know,

my child, what this letter means which thy mother is doomed to wear?”

“Yes, mother,” said the child. “It is the great letter A. Thou hast

taught me in the horn-book.”

Hester looked steadily into her little face; but though there was that

singular expression which she had so often remarked in her black eyes,

she could not satisfy herself whether Pearl really attached any meaning

to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to ascertain the point.

“Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter?”

“Truly do I!” answered Pearl, looking brightly into her mother’s face.

“It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his

heart!”

“And what reason is that?” asked Hester, half smiling at the absurd

incongruity of the child’s observation; but on second thoughts turning

pale.

“What has the letter to do with any heart save mine?”

“Nay, mother, I have told all I know,” said Pearl, more seriously than

she was wont to speak. “Ask yonder old man whom thou hast been talking

with,—it may be he can tell. But in good earnest now, mother dear, what

does this scarlet letter mean?—and why dost thou wear it on thy

bosom?—and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?”

She took her mother’s hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes

with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capricious

character. The thought occurred to Hester, that the child might really

be seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing what

she could, and as intelligently as she knew how, to establish a

meeting-point of sympathy. It showed Pearl in an unwonted aspect.

Heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a

sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return

than the waywardness of an April breeze, which spends its time in airy

sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in

its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take

it to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanours it will sometimes,

of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful

tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its

other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart. And this,

moreover, was a mother’s estimate of the child’s disposition. Any other

observer might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have given them

a far darker colouring. But now the idea came strongly into Hester’s

mind, that Pearl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might

already have approached the age when she could have been made a friend,

and intrusted with as much of her mother’s sorrows as could be

imparted, without irreverence either to the parent or the child. In the

little chaos of Pearl’s character there might be seen emerging and

could have been from the very first—the steadfast principles of an

unflinching courage—an uncontrollable will—sturdy pride, which might be

disciplined into self-respect—and a bitter scorn of many things which,

when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them.

She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable,

as are the richest flavours of unripe fruit. With all these sterling

attributes, thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her

mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this

elfish child.

Pearl’s inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the scarlet

letter seemed an innate quality of her being. From the earliest epoch

of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointed

mission. Hester had often fancied that Providence had a design of

justice and retribution, in endowing the child with this marked

propensity; but never, until now, had she bethought herself to ask,

whether, linked with that design, there might not likewise be a purpose

of mercy and beneficence. If little Pearl were entertained with faith

and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might

it not be her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her

mother’s heart, and converted it into a tomb?—and to help her to

overcome the passion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead nor

asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart?

Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester’s mind, with

as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whispered

into her ear. And there was little Pearl, all this while, holding her

mother’s hand in both her own, and turning her face upward, while she

put these searching questions, once and again, and still a third time.

“What does the letter mean, mother? and why dost thou wear it? and why

does the minister keep his hand over his heart?”

“What shall I say?” thought Hester to herself. “No! if this be the

price of the child’s sympathy, I cannot pay it.”

Then she spoke aloud—

“Silly Pearl,” said she, “what questions are these? There are many

things in this world that a child must not ask about. What know I of

the minister’s heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for the

sake of its gold thread.”

In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never before been

false to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was the talisman of

a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her; as

recognising that, in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new

evil had crept into it, or some old one had never been expelled. As for

little Pearl, the earnestness soon passed out of her face.

But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. Two or three

times, as her mother and she went homeward, and as often at

supper-time, and while Hester was putting her to bed, and once after

she seemed to be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up, with mischief gleaming

in her black eyes.

“Mother,” said she, “what does the scarlet letter mean?”

And the next morning, the first indication the child gave of being

awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and making that other

enquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with her

investigations about the scarlet letter—

“Mother!—Mother!—Why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?”

“Hold thy tongue, naughty child!” answered her mother, with an asperity

that she had never permitted to herself before. “Do not tease me; else

I shall put thee into the dark closet!”

XVI.