The Scarlet Letter

HE 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.