In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big
enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls
of wild flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's
bosom; dancing up and down like a little elf whenever she hit
the scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her
bosom with her clasped hands. But whether from pride or
resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought
out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat
erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's wild
eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably
hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts
for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to
seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the
child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little laughing
image of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, her
mother so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her black
eyes.
"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 and
down with the humoursome gesticulation of a little imp, whose
next 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 the
moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was
Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted
whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her
existence, and might not now reveal herself.
"Yes; I am little Pearl!" repeated the child, continuing her
antics.
"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said the
mother half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive
impulse 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 to
Hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell
me!"
"Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!" answered Hester Prynne.
But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the
acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary
freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up
her small forefinger and touched the scarlet letter.
"He did not send me!" cried she, positively. "I have no
Heavenly Father!"
"Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered the
mother, suppressing a groan. "He sent us all into the world. He
sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more thee! Or, if not, thou
strange and elfish child, whence didst thou come?"
"Tell me! Tell me!" repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but
laughing and capering about the floor. "It is thou that must
tell me!"