The Scarlet Letter: A Romance - Section 18 - Hester and Pearl

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section eighteen of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Chapter fifteen. 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

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the earth. He gathered here and there a 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,

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and show the wavering track of his footsteps sear 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

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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

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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 night shade,
dog wood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the

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climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance. Or would
he spread bats wings and flee away, looking so much
the uglier the higher he rose towards Heaven. Be it
sin or no, said Hesterbrynne bitterly, as still she gazed
after him. I hate the man. She upbraided herself for

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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 firelight of their home, and in the light
of her nuptial smile. He needed to bask himself in

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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 clasped themselves among her
ugliest remembrances. She marveled how such scenes could have been.

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She marveled 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 fowl or offense

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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

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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 may have awakened, and
all her sensibilities to be reproached, even for the calm content,

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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

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stood gazing after the crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth
through 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, Pell, little pal,
where are you? Pell, whose activity of spirit never flagged,

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had been at no loss for amusement while her mother
talked with the old gatherer of herbs. At first, as
a reready 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.

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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

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by the tail and made prize of several five fingers,
and laid out a jellyfish to melt in the warm sun.
Then she took up the white foam that streaked the
line of the advancing tide and threw it upon the breeze,
scampering after it with winged footsteps to catch the great snowflakes.
There they fell, perceiving a flock of beech birds that

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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 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

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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 a sea breeze, or as
wild as Pearl herself. Her final employment was to gather
seaweed of various kinds and make herself a scarf or
mantle and a head dress, and thus assume the aspect

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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,

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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

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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 and on thy childish bosom

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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 ah thou
hast taught me in the horn book. Hester looked steadily
into her little face. But though there was that singular

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expression which she had so often remarked in her black eyes,
she could not satisfy herself where the pearl really attached
any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire
to ascertain the point. Dost thou, no, child, wherefore thy
mother wears this letter? Truly do, I answered Pearl, looking

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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

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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 maybe 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

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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

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she knew how to establish a meeting point of 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,

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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 misdemeanors 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
be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy

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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,

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might already have approached the age when she could be
made a friend and entrusted with as much of her
mother's sorrows as could be imparted without irreverence to either
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 steadfast principles of an
unflinching courage, an uncontrollable will, a sturdy pride which might

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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,

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the evil which she inherited from her mother must be great. Indeed,
if a noble woman did 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

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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

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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

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same tomblike 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

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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?

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There are many things in this world that a child
must not ask about. What no eye 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
by gone 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

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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

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or three times as her mother and she went homeward,
and as often as 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

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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

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herself before. Do not tease me else, I shall shut
thee into the dark closet. End of Section eighteen