The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always
contributing a grotesque horror to what interested
their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet
letter which we might readily work up into a terrific
legend. They averred that the symbol was not
mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot,
but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen
glowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad
in the night-time. And we must needs say it
seared Hester’s bosom so deeply, that perhaps
there was more truth in the rumour than our modern
incredulity may be inclined to admit.
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 dishonoured
bosom, to connect her parent for ever 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.
Certainly there was no physical defect. By its
perfect shape, its vigour, 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 co-exist 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
