C 7 ‘
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, thereforeÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 otherÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 beautyÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 herselfÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯as if the red ignominy
were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions
assumed its formÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 player what passed for
play with those sombre little urchinsÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 pestilenceÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel
of judgmentÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 mossÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯
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 be fitted
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 servantÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 cushion 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 tableÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯in token that the sentiment
of old English hospitality had not been left behindÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 draining 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 exigenties 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, childÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯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 motion of obedience, but
because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited
by the appearance of those new personages.
