We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that littlecreature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutabledecree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of therank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed tothe sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty thatbecame every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threwits quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! HerPearl--for so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive ofher aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassionedlustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she namedthe infant "Pearl," as being of great price--purchased with allshe had--her mother's only treasure! How strange, indeed! Manhad marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had suchpotent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy couldreach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a directconsequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her alovely child, whose place was on that same dishonoured bosom, toconnect her parent for ever with the race and descent ofmortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet thesethoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope thanapprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she couldhave no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Dayafter day she looked fearfully into the child's expandingnature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiaritythat should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed herbeing.

Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape,its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of all itsuntried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forthin Eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything ofthe angels after the world's first parents were driven out. Thechild had a native grace which does not invariably co-exist withfaultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressedthe beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely becameit best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Hermother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understoodhereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could beprocured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play inthe arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the childwore before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figurewhen thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl's ownproper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which mighthave extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolutecircle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor. Andyet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play,made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbuedwith a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there weremany children, comprehending the full scope between thewild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, inlittle, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, therewas a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she neverlost; and if in any of her changes, she had grown fainter orpaler, she would have ceased to be herself--it would have beenno longer Pearl!

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairlyexpress, the various properties of her inner life. Her natureappeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but--or elseHester's fears deceived her--it lacked reference and adaptationto the world into which she was born. The child could not bemade amenable to rules. In giving her existence a great law hadbeen broken; and the result was a being whose elements wereperhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with anorder peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of varietyand arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered.Hester could only account for the child's character--and eventhen most vaguely and imperfectly--by recalling what she herselfhad been during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibingher soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from itsmaterial of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been themedium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant therays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally,they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fierylustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light of theintervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spiritat that epoch was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize herwild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper,and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondencythat had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated by themorning radiance of a young child's disposition, but, later inthe day of earthly existence, might be prolific of the storm andwhirlwind.

The discipline of the family in those days was of a far morerigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequentapplication of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, wereused, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences,but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of allchildish virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the loving motherof this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side ofundue severity. Mindful, however, of her own errors andmisfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender but strictcontrol over the infant immortality that was committed to hercharge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing bothsmiles and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatmentpossessed any calculable influence, Hester was ultimatelycompelled to stand aside and permit the child to be swayed byher own impulses. Physical compulsion or restraint waseffectual, of course, while it lasted. As to any other kind ofdiscipline, whether addressed to her mind or heart, little Pearlmight or might not be within its reach, in accordance with thecaprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while Pearl was yetan infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look, thatwarned her when it would be labour thrown away to insist,persuade or plead.

It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, perverse,sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flowof spirits, that Hester could not help questioning at suchmoments whether Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather anairy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for alittle while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with amocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright,deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness andintangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, andmight vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know notwhence and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester wasconstrained to rush towards the child--to pursue the little elfin the flight which she invariably began--to snatch her to herbosom with a close pressure and earnest kisses--not so much fromoverflowing love as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh andblood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she wascaught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother moredoubtful than before.

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that sooften came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she hadbought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimesburst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps--for there was noforeseeing how it might affect her--Pearl would frown, andclench her little fist, and harden her small features into astern, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom she wouldlaugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable andunintelligent of human sorrow. Or--but this more rarelyhappened--she would be convulsed with rage of grief and sob outher love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent onproving that she had a heart by breaking it. Yet Hester washardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness: itpassed as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters,the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by someirregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to winthe master-word that should control this new andincomprehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was whenthe child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure ofher, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness;until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering frombeneath her opening lids--little Pearl awoke!

How soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed did Pearl arrive atan age that was capable of social intercourse beyond themother's ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what ahappiness would it have been could Hester Prynne have heard herclear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of otherchildish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her owndarling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group ofsportive children. But this could never be. Pearl was a bornoutcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem andproduct of sin, she had no right among christened infants.Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed,with which the child comprehended her loneliness: the destinythat had drawn an inviolable circle round about her: the wholepeculiarity, in short, of her position in respect to otherchildren. Never since her release from prison had Hester met thepublic gaze without her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl,too, was there: first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as thelittle girl, small companion of her mother, holding a forefingerwith her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three orfour footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the children of thesettlement on the grassy margin of the street, or at thedomestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashionsas the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going tochurch, perchance, or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps ina sham fight with the Indians, or scaring one another withfreaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently,but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she wouldnot speak again. If the children gathered about her, as theysometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her punywrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill,incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, becausethey had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in someunknown tongue.

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the mostintolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea ofsomething outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinaryfashions, in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them intheir hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with theirtongues. Pearl felt the sentiment, and requited it with thebitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childishbosom. These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value,and even comfort for the mother; because there was at least anintelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitfulcaprice that so often thwarted her in the child'smanifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here,again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed inherself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl inherited, byinalienable right, out of Hester's heart. Mother and daughterstood together in the same circle of seclusion from humansociety; and in the nature of the child seemed to be perpetuatedthose unquiet elements that had distracted Hester Prynne beforePearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by thesoftening influences of maternity.

At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wantednot a wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of lifewent forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicateditself to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flamewherever it may be applied. The unlikeliest materials--a stick,a bunch of rags, a flower--were the puppets of Pearl'switchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward change, becamespiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of herinner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of imaginarypersonages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged,black, and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholyutterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figureas Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were theirchildren, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted most unmercifully.It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threwher intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up anddancing, always in a state of preternatural activity--soonsinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide oflife--and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. Itwas like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of thenorthern lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy, however, andthe sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be a little morethan was observable in other children of bright faculties;except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was thrownmore upon the visionary throng which she created. Thesingularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the childregarded all these offsprings of her own heart and mind. Shenever created a friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcastthe dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies,against whom she rushed to battle. It was inexpressiblysad--then what depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her ownheart the cause--to observe, in one so young, this constantrecognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of theenergies that were to make good her cause in the contest thatmust ensue.

Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon herknees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain havehidden, but which made utterance for itself betwixt speech and agroan--"O Father in Heaven--if Thou art still my Father--what isthis being which I have brought into the world?" And Pearl,overhearing the ejaculation, or aware through some more subtilechannel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid andbeautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-likeintelligence, and resume her play.

One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to betold. The very first thing which she had noticed in her life,was--what?--not the mother's smile, responding to it, as otherbabies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth,remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fonddiscussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means! But thatfirst object of which Pearl seemed to become aware was--shall wesay it?--the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom! One day, as hermother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had beencaught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about theletter; and putting up her little hand she grasped at it,smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave herface the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath,did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctivelyendeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the tortureinflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl's baby-hand. Again,as if her mother's agonised gesture were meant only to makesport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile.From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester hadnever felt a moment's safety: not a moment's calm enjoyment ofher. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during whichPearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter;but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke ofsudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and oddexpression of the eyes.

Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes whileHester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fondof doing; and suddenly for women in solitude, and with troubledhearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions she fanciedthat she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but anotherface in the small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face,fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance offeatures that she had known full well, though seldom with asmile, and never with malice in them. It was as if an evilspirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth inmockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured, thoughless vividly, by the same illusion.

In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew bigenough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfulsof wild flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother'sbosom; dancing up and down like a little elf whenever she hitthe scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover herbosom with her clasped hands. But whether from pride orresignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wroughtout by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and saterect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's wildeyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariablyhitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurtsfor which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how toseek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, thechild stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little laughingimage of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, hermother so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her blackeyes.

"Child, what art thou?" cried the mother.

"Oh, I am your little Pearl!" answered the child.

But while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up anddown with the humoursome gesticulation of a little imp, whosenext freak might be to fly up the chimney.

"Art thou my child, in very truth?" asked Hester.

Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for themoment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such wasPearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubtedwhether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of herexistence, and might not now reveal herself.

"Yes; I am little Pearl!" repeated the child, continuing herantics.

"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said themother half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportiveimpulse came over her in the midst of her deepest suffering."Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?"

"Tell me, mother!" said the child, seriously, coming up toHester, and pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tellme!"

"Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!" answered Hester Prynne.

But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape theacuteness of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinaryfreakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put upher small forefinger and touched the scarlet letter.

"He did not send me!" cried she, positively. "I have noHeavenly Father!"

"Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered themother, suppressing a groan. "He sent us all into the world. Hesent even me, thy mother. Then, much more thee! Or, if not, thoustrange and elfish child, whence didst thou come?"

"Tell me! Tell me!" repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, butlaughing and capering about the floor. "It is thou that musttell me!"

But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in adismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered--betwixt a smile and ashudder--the talk of the neighbouring townspeople, who, seekingvainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing someof her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl wasa demon offspring: such as, ever since old Catholic times, hadoccasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of theirmother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose.Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was abrat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child to whomthis inauspicious origin was assigned among the New EnglandPuritans.