The Scarlet Letter

ESTER 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 an 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?

[Illustration: “He gathered herbs here and there”]

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

[Illustration: Pearl on the Sea-Shore]

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 snail-shells, 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 horseshoe 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 snow-flakes 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 sea-weed, 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 misdemeanors, 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 coloring. 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 be 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,—a
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 flavors 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 recognizing 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 inquiry, 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 shut thee into the dark closet!”

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XVI.