Nathaniel Hawthorne/Nathaniel Hawthorne.iso/pc/articles/a1/t0017

Text File | 1998-01-06 | 13.7 KB | 207 lines

                                                         XV                                                   199
                                               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 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?
                     The Scarlet Letter -- XV. Hester and Pearl                    200

     "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 fire-light 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
                     The Scarlet Letter -- XV. Hester and Pearl                    201

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?"
     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
                     The Scarlet Letter -- XV. Hester and Pearl                    202

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,
                     The Scarlet Letter -- XV. Hester and Pearl                    203

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 it
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
                     The Scarlet Letter -- XV. Hester and Pearl                    204

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 begone 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 stedfast 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
                     The Scarlet Letter -- XV. Hester and Pearl                    205

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
                     The Scarlet Letter -- XV. Hester and Pearl                    206

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!"