Nathaniel Hawthorne/Nathaniel Hawthorne.iso/pc/articles/a1/t0009

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                                                         VII                                                   112
                                            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 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,
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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 more 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
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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,
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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 elder 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
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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 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 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-
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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
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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 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.
     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 armour as she
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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,
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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.