The Scarlet Letter

Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor

Bellingham, with a pair of gloves which she had fringed and

embroidered to his order, and which were to be worn on some

great occasion of state; for, though the chances of a popular

election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two

from the highest rank, he still held an honourable and

influential place among the colonial magistracy.

Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a

pair of embroidered gloves, impelled Hester, at this time, to

seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity

in the affairs of the settlement. It had reached her ears that

there was a design on the part of some of the leading

inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid order of principles in

religion and government, to deprive her of her child. On the

supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin,

these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian

interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a

stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand,

were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed

the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy

all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred

to wiser and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's.

Among those who promoted the design, Governor Bellingham was said to

be one of the most busy. It may appear singular, and, indeed,

not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which in

later days would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction

than that of the select men of the town, should then have been a

question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence

took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however,

matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less

intrinsic weight than the welfare of Hester and her child, were

strangely mixed up with the deliberations of legislators and

acts of state. The period was hardly, if at all, earlier than

that of our story, when a dispute concerning the right of

property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in

the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important

modification of the framework itself of the legislature.

Full of concern, therefore--but so conscious of her own right

that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on

the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of

nature, on the other--Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary

cottage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now

of an age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and,

constantly in motion from morn till sunset, could have

accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often,

nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to

be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be let down

again, and frisked onward before Hester on the grassy pathway,

with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have spoken of Pearl's

rich and luxuriant beauty--a beauty that shone with deep and

vivid tints, a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both

of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and

which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was

fire in her and throughout her: she seemed the unpremeditated

offshoot of a passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the

child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her

imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson velvet

tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and

flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of colouring, which

must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter

bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made her the

very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the

earth.