THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 15

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• Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

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 the earth. He gathered here and there   
    an herb, or grubbed up a root, and put it into the basket on his arm.   
    His grey 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, and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere   
    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 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 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 nightshade, dogwood,   
    henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate   
    could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or would   
    he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier,   
    the higher he rose towards heaven? "Be it sin or no,"   
    said Hester Prynne bitterly, as she still gazed after him,   
    "I hate the man!"

  
   

She upbraided herself for 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 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 classed themselves among   
    her ugliest remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes could have   
    been! She marvelled 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,     FACE="Arial"> and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt     FACE="Arial"> into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger     FACE="Arial"> Chillingworth, than any which had since been done him, that, in the     FACE="Arial"> time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy     FACE="Arial"> herself happy by his side.

  
   

"Yes, I hate him!" repeated Hester, more bitterly than before. "He     FACE="Arial"> betrayed me! He has done me 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     FACE="Arial"> fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some mightier touch     FACE="Arial"> than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be     FACE="Arial"> reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of     FACE="Arial"> 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 stood gazing after the crooked   
    figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw 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.

  
   

"Pearl! Little Pearl! Where are you?"

  
   

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for   
    amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs.   
    At first, as already 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. 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 horse-shoe by the tail,   
    and made prize of several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish   
    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   
    ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds, that 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   
    grey 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 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 the sea-breeze, or   
    as wild as Pearl herself.

  
   

Her final employment was to gather sea-weed, of various kinds, and make   
    herself a scarf, or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect   
    of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devising   
    drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid 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- 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 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     FACE="Arial"> letter, and on thy childish bosom, 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 A. Thou     FACE="Arial"> hast taught me in the horn-book."

  
   

Hester looked steadily into her little face; but, though there was that   
    singular expression which she had so often remarked in her black   
    eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Pearl really attached   
    any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to ascertain   
    the point.

  
   

"Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter?"

  
   

"Truly do I!" answered Pearl, looking brightly into her mother's     FACE="Arial"> 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     FACE="Arial"> absurd incongruity of the child's observation; but, on second     FACE="Arial"> thoughts, turning pale. "What has the letter to do with any   
    heart, save mine?"

  
   

"Nay, mother, I have told all I know," said Pearl, more seriously     FACE="Arial"> than she was wont to speak. "Ask yonder old man whom thou hast   
    been talking with! It may be 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 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 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 soul   
    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, 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 misdemeanours,   
    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   
    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 colouring.   
    But now the idea came strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl,   
    with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, 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   
    either to 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 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 flavours of unripe fruit. With   
    all these sterling attributes, thought Hester, the evil which   
    she inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if a noble   
    woman do 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 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 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     FACE="Arial"> neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same   
    tomb-like 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     FACE="Arial"> upward, while she put these searching questions, once, and again,     FACE="Arial"> and still a third time.

  
   

"What does the letter mean, mother?- and why dost thou wear it?- and     FACE="Arial"> why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?"

  
   

"What shall I say?" thought Hester to herself. "No! If this be the     FACE="Arial"> price of the child's sympathy, I cannot pay it."

  
   

Then she spoke aloud.

  
   

"Silly Pearl," said she, "what questions are these? There are many     FACE="Arial"> things in this world that a child must not ask about. What know I of     FACE="Arial"> the minister's heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for   
    the sake of its gold thread."

  
   

In all the seven bygone 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 yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her; as   
    recognising 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 or three times,   
    as her mother and she went homeward, and as often at     FACE="Arial"> suppertime, and while Hester was putting her to bed, and once after     FACE="Arial"> she seemed to be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up, with mischief     FACE="Arial"> gleaming in her black eyes.

  
   

"Mother," said she, "what does the scarlet letter mean?"

  
   

And the next morning, the first indication the 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     FACE="Arial"> asperity that she had never permitted to herself before. "Do not   
    tease me; else I shall shut thee into the dark closet!"  
   

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 2
3. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11
4. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 10
5. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 8
6. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 23
7. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 5
8. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 6
9. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 4
10. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 9
11. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 3
12. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 20
13. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 1
14. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 13
15. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 21
16. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 19