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 those new personages.
Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap—such
as elderly gentlemen loved to endue themselves with,
in their domestic privacy—walked foremost,
and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating
on his projected improvements. The wide circumference
of an elaborate ruff, beneath his grey beard, in the
antiquated fashion of King James’s reign, caused
his head to look not a little like that of John the
Baptist in a charger. The impression made by
his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten
with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping
with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith
he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself.
But it is an error to suppose that our great forefathers—though
accustomed to speak and think of human existence as
a state merely of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly
prepared to sacrifice goods and life at the behest
of duty—made it a matter of conscience
to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as
lay fairly within their grasp. This creed was
never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was
seen over Governor Bellingham’s shoulders, while
its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet
be naturalised in the New England climate, and that
purple grapes might possibly be compelled to flourish
against the sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman,
nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church,
had a long established and legitimate taste for all
good and comfortable things, and however stern he might
show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof
of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still,
the genial benevolence of his private life had won
him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his
professional contemporaries.
Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other
guests—one, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale,
whom the reader may remember as having taken a brief
and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne’s
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old
Roger Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic,
who for two or three years past had been settled in
the town. It was understood that this learned
man was the physician as well as friend of the young
minister, whose health had severely suffered of late
by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labours
and duties of the pastoral relation.
