The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

  VII.

  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 hisorder, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for,though the chances of a popular election had caused this former rulerto descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held anhonorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy.

  Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair ofembroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interviewwith a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of thesettlement. It had reached her ears, that there was a design on thepart of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigidorder of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of herchild. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demonorigin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christianinterest in the mother's soul required them to remove such astumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, werereally capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed theelements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all thefairer prospect of these advantages, by being transferred to wiser andbetter guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted thedesign, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. Itmay appear singular, and indeed, not a little ludicrous, that anaffair of this kind, which, in later days, would have been referred tono higher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, shouldthen have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmenof eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however,matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsicweight, than the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixedup with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. The periodwas hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a disputeconcerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce andbitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted inan important modification of the framework itself of the legislature.

  Full of concern, therefore,--but so conscious of her own right that itseemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on the one side,and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on theother,--Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. LittlePearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to runlightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion, frommorn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey thanthat before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice thannecessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon asimperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester onthe grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We havespoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone withdeep and vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensityboth of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, andwhich, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was firein her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of apassionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, hadallowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play;arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantlyembroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So muchstrength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect tocheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty,and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever dancedupon the earth.

  But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of thechild's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably remindedthe beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear uponher bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarletletter endowed with life! The mother herself--as if the red ignominywere so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptionsassumed its form--had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavishingmany hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between theobject 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 inconsequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly torepresent the scarlet letter in her appearance.

  As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, thechildren of the Puritans looked up from their play,--or what passedfor play with those sombre little urchins,--and spake gravely one toanother:--

  "Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and, of atruth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter runningalong by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!"

  But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping herfoot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threateninggestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and putthem all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, aninfant pestilence,--the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angelof judgment,--whose mission was to punish the sins of the risinggeneration. She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume ofsound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quakewithin them. The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to hermother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.

  Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of GovernorBellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of whichthere are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns;now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with themany sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, thathave 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 ahuman habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed,a very cheery aspect; the walls being overspread with a kind ofstucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifullyintermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the frontof the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had beenflung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might havebefitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave oldPuritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seeminglycabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of theage, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and hadnow grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times.

  Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house, began to caper anddance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshineshould be stripped off its front, and given her to play with.

  "No, my little Pearl!" said her mother. "Thou must gather thine ownsunshine. I have none to give thee!"

  They approached the door; which was of an arched form, and flanked oneach side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both ofwhich were lattice-windows, with wooden shutters to close over them atneed. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester Prynnegave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor'sbond-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 mucha commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serfwore the blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men ofthat 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 eyesat the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he hadnever before seen. "Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he hatha godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not seehis worship now."

  "Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne, and thebond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and theglittering 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 ofentrance. With many variations, suggested
by the nature of hisbuilding-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode ofsocial life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation afterthe residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here,then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through thewhole depth of the house, and forming a medium of generalcommunication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments.At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of thetwo towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal.At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was morepowerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which weread of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushionedseat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of theChronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as,in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to beturned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consistedof some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carvedwith wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste;the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, andheirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor's paternal home. Onthe table--in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality hadnot been left behind--stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom ofwhich, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen thefrothy remnant of a recent draught of ale.

  On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers ofthe Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and otherswith stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterized by thesternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as ifthey were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies,and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuitsand enjoyments of living men.

  The Governor's Breastplate]

  At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall, wassuspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic,but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilfularmorer in London, the same year in which Governor Bellingham cameover to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, agorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hangingbeneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highlyburnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illuminationeverywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant formere idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemnmuster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head ofa regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, andaccustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as hisprofessional associates, the exigencies of this new country hadtransformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesmanand ruler.

  Little Pearl--who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor asshe had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house--spent sometime 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, owingto the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter wasrepresented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to begreatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, sheseemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upward, also, at asimilar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with theelfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her smallphysiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected inthe mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it madeHester 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 intothis fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautifulones than we find in the woods."

  Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of thehall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted withclosely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attemptat shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to haverelinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side ofthe Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle forsubsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening.Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at somedistance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one ofits gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window; as if to warnthe Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich anornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a fewrose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably thedescendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the firstsettler of the peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who ridesthrough our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.

  Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and wouldnot be pacified.

  "Hush, child, hush!" said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry, dearlittle Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, andgentlemen along with him!"

  In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons wereseen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of hermother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and thenbecame silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quickand mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearanceof these new personages.