VI.-PEARL.

We have as yet hardly spoken
of the infant; that little creature,
whose innocent life had
sprung, by the inscrutable decree
of Providence, a lovely
and immortal flower, out of
the rank luxuriance of a guilty
passion. How strange it seemed
to the sad woman, as she
watched the growth, and the
beauty that became every day
more brilliant, and the intelligence
that threw its quivering
sunshine over the tiny features
of this child! Her Pearl!—For
so had Hester called her;
not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of
the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated
by the comparison. But she named the infant “Pearl,” as being
of great price,—purchased with all she had,—her mother’s only
treasure! How strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman’s
sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous
efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were
sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which
man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place
was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever
with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed
soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less
with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been
evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would
be good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child’s
expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild
peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which
she owed her being.WeCertainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape,
its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried
limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden;
worthy to have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels,
after the world’s first parents were driven out. The child had a
native grace which does not invariably coexist with faultless
beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder
as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But
little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a
morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had
bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed
her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration
of the dresses which the child wore, before the public eye.
So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed, and such
was the splendor of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining through
the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness,
that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her,
on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn
and soiled with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just
as perfect. Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite
variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending
the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a
peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess.
Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain
depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any of her changes,
she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself,—it
would have been no longer Pearl!This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly
express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature
appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but—or else
Hester’s fears deceived her—it lacked reference and adaptation
to the world into which she was born. The child could not be
made amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great law
had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements
were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder; or with
an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety
and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered.
Hester could only account for the child’s character—and even
then most vaguely and imperfectly—by recalling what she herself
had been, during that momentous period while Pearl was
imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame
from its material of earth. The mother’s impassioned state had
been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn
infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear
originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold,
the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light of
the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester’s
spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize
her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her
temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and
despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now
illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child’s disposition,
but later in the day of earthly existence might be prolific
of the storm and whirlwind.The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more
rigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent
application of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were
used, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences,
but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all
childish virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the lonely mother
of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side of undue
severity. Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes,
she early sought to impose a tender, but strict control over the
infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the
task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles and frowns,
and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable
influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside,
and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical
compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it
lasted. As to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed
to her mind or heart, little Pearl might or might not be within
its reach, in accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment.
Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with
a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labor
thrown away to insist, persuade, or plead. It was a look so
intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious,
but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester
could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were
a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after
playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage
floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that
look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested
her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she
were hovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering
light, that comes we know not whence, and goes we know not
whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards
the child,—to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably
began,—to snatch her to her bosom, with a close pressure
and earnest kisses,—not so much from overflowing love, as to
assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly
delusive. But Pearl’s laugh, when she was caught, though full of
merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than before.Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so
often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had
bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes
burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps,—for there was no
foreseeing how it might affect her,—Pearl would frown, and
clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a stern,
unsympathizing look of discontent. Not seldom, she would laugh
anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent
of human sorrow. Or—but this more rarely happened—she
would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob
out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent
on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Hester
was hardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness;
it passed, as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these
matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but,
by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to
win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible
intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child
lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and
tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until—perhaps
with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening
lids—little Pearl awoke!How soon—with what strange rapidity, indeed!—did Pearl
arrive at an age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond
the mother’s ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then
what a happiness would it have been, could Hester Prynne have
heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of
other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her
own darling’s tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of
sportive children! But this could never be. Pearl was a born
outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and
product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing
was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with
which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that
had drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity,
in short, of her position in respect to other children.
Never, since her release from prison, had Hester met the public
gaze without her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl, too,
was there; first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little
girl, small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with
her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four
footsteps to one of Hester’s. She saw the children of the settlement,
on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic
thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the
Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church,
perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a
sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks
of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never
sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak
again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did,
Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching
up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations,
that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the
sound of a witch’s anathemas in some unknown tongue.The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant
brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something
outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in
the mother and child; and therefore scorned them in their hearts,
and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt
the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can
be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These outbreaks of
a fierce temper had a kind of value, and even comfort, for her
mother; because there was at least an intelligible earnestness
in the mood, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted
her in the child’s manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless,
to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had
existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl inherited,
by inalienable right, out of Hester’s heart. Mother and
daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from
human society; and in the nature of the child seemed to be
perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester
Prynne before Pearl’s birth, but had since begun to be soothed
away by the softening influences of maternity.At home, within and around her mother’s cottage, Pearl wanted
not a wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life
went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself
to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it
may be applied. The unlikeliest materials—a stick, a bunch
of rags, a flower—were the puppets of Pearl’s witchcraft, and,
without undergoing any outward change, became spiritually
adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner
world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary
personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged,
black and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy
utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure
as Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their
children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully.
It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which
she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting
up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activity,—soon
sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a
tide of life,—and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild
energy. It was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play
of the northern lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy, however,
and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be
little more than was observable in other children of bright faculties;
except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was
thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. The
singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded
all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created
a friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon’s
teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom
she rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad—then what
depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the
cause!—to observe, in one so young, this constant recognition
of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of the energies that
were to make good her cause, in the contest that must ensue.Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon
her knees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain
have hidden, but which made utterance for itself, betwixt speech
and a groan,—“O Father in Heaven,—if Thou art still my
Father,—what is this being which I have brought into the
world!” And Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware, through
some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn
her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with
sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play.One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be
told. The very first thing which she had noticed in her life was—what?—not
the mother’s smile, responding to it, as other
babies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered
so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion
whether it were indeed a smile. By no means! But that first
object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was—shall we
say it?—the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom! One day, as
her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been
caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter;
and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not
doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the
look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did
Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring
to tear it away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent
touch of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if her mother’s agonized
gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little
Pearl look into her eyes, and smile! From that epoch, except
when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment’s
safety; not a moment’s calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is
true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze might
never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it
would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and
always with that peculiar smile, and odd expression of the eyes.Once, this freakish, elvish cast came into the child’s eyes,
while Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers
are fond of doing; and, suddenly,—for women in solitude, and
with troubled hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions,—she
fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but
another face, in the small black mirror of Pearl’s eye. It was
a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance
of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a
smile, and never with malice in them. It was as if an evil spirit
possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery.
Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured, though less
vividly, by the same illusion.In the afternoon of a certain summer’s day, after Pearl grew
big enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering
handfuls of wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her
mother’s bosom; dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever
she hit the scarlet letter. Hester’s first motion had been
to cover her bosom with her clasped hands. But, whether from
pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best
be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse,
and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl’s
wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably
hitting the mark, and covering the mother’s breast with hurts
for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how
to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the
child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing
image of a fiend peeping out—or, whether it peeped or no,
her mother so imagined it—from the unsearchable abyss of her
black eyes.“Child, what art thou?” cried the mother.“O, I am your little Pearl!” answered the child.But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance
up and down, with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp,
whose next freak might be to fly up the chimney.“Art thou my child, in very truth?” asked Hester.Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the
moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was
Pearl’s wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted
whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her
existence, and might not now reveal herself.“Yes; I am little Pearl!” repeated the child, continuing
her antics.“Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!”
said the mother, half playfully; for it was often the case that
a sportive impulse came over her, in the midst of her deepest
suffering. “Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee
hither.”“Tell me, mother!” said the child, seriously, coming up to
Hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. “Do thou tell
me!”“Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!” answered Hester Prynne.But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness
of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness,
or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her
small forefinger, and touched the scarlet letter.“He did not send me!” cried she, positively. “I have no
Heavenly Father!”“Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!” answered
the mother, suppressing a groan. “He sent us all into this
world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more, thee!
Or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence didst thou
come?”“Tell me! Tell me!” repeated Pearl, no longer seriously,
but laughing, and capering about the floor. “It is thou that
must tell me!”But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal
labyrinth of doubt. She remembered—betwixt a smile and
a shudder—the talk of the neighboring towns-people; who, seeking
vainly elsewhere for the child’s paternity, and observing some
of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was
a demon offspring; such as, ever since old Catholic times, had
occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their
mother’s sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose.
Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was
a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child to
whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the New
England Puritans.