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 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 splendour 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!