| HESTER AND PEARL 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 a herb, or grubbed up a root and put it into the basket on his arm. His gray 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 still she 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, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side.
"Yes, I hate him!" repeated Hester more bitterly than before.
"He 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 ion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of 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 emotion 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 age 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 snailshells, 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 gray 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 seaweed 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's 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 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 hast taught me in the horn-book." |
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ESTER Y PERLA DE este modo Roger Chillingworth,—viejo, deforme, y con un rostro que se quedaba grabado en la memoria de los hombres ms tiempo de lo que hubieran querido,—se despidi de Ester y continu su camino en la tierra. Iba recogiendo aqu una hierba, arrancaba ms all una raz, y lo pona todo en el cesto que llevaba al brazo. Su barba gris casi tocaba el suelo cuando, inclinado, prosegua hacia adelante. Ester le contempl un momento, con cierta extraa curiosidad, para ver si las tiernas hierbas de la temprana primavera no se marchitaran bajo sus pies, dejando un negro y seco rastro al travs del alegre verdor que cubra el suelo. Se preguntaba qu clase de hierbas seran esas que el anciano recoga con tanto cuidado. No le ofrecera la tierra, avivada para el mal, en virtud del influjo de su maligna mirada, races y hierbas venenosas de especies hasta ahora desconocidas que brotaran al o de sus dedos? no bastara ese mismo o para convertir en algo deletreo y mortfero los productos ms saludables del seno de la tierra? El sol, que con tanto esplendor brillaba donde quiera, derramaba realmente sobre l sus rayos benficos? acaso, como ms bien pareca, le rodeaba un crculo de fatdica sombra que se mova a par de l donde quiera que dirigiera sus pasos? Y a dnde iba ahora? No se hundira de repente en la tierra, dejando un lugar estril y calcinado que con el curso del tiempo se cubrira de mortfera yerba mora, beleo, cicuta, apcima, y toda otra clase de hierbas nocivas que el clima produjese, creciendo all con horrible abundancia? tal vez extendera enormes alas de murcilago, y echando a volar en los espacios, parecera tanto ms feo cuanto ms ascendiera hacia el cielo?
—Sea o no un pecado,—dijo Ester con amargura y con la mirada fija en el viejo mdico,—odio a ese hombre!
Se reprendi a s misma a causa de ese sentimiento, pero ni pudo sobreponerse a l ni disminuir su intensidad. Para conseguirlo, pens en aquellos das, ya muy lejanos, en que Roger acostumbraba dejar su cuarto de estudio a la cada de la tarde, y vena a sentarse junto a la lumbre del hogar, a los rayos de luz de su sonrisa nupcial. Deca entonces que necesitaba calentarse al resplandor de aquella sonrisa, para que desapareciera de su corazn de erudito el fro producido por tantas horas solitarias pasadas entre sus libros. Escenas semejantes le parecieron en otro tiempo investidas de cierta felicidad; pero ahora, contempladas al travs de los acontecimientos posteriores, se haban convertido en sus recuerdos ms amargos. Se maravillaba de que hubiera habido tales escenas; y sobre todo, de que se hubiera dejado inducir a casarse con l. Consideraba eso el crimen mayor de que tuviera que arrepentirse, as como haber correspondido a la fra presin de aquella mano, y haber consentido que la sonrisa de sus labios y de sus ojos se mezclara a las de aquel hombre. Y le pareca que el viejo mdico, al persuadirla, cuando su corazn inexperto nada saba del mundo, al persuadirla que se imaginase feliz a su lado, haba cometido una ofensa mayor que todo lo que a l se le hubiere hecho.
—S, le odio!—repiti Ester con ms intenso rencor que antes.—Me ha engaado! Me hizo un mal mucho mayor que cuanto yo le he inferido!
Tiemble el hombre que consigue la mano de una mujer, si al mismo tiempo no obtiene por completo todo el amor de su corazn! De lo contrario, le acontecer lo que a Roger Chillingworth, cuando un acento ms poderoso y elocuente que el suyo despierte las dormidas pasiones de la mujer; entonces le echarn en cara hasta aquel apacible contento, aquella fra imagen de la felicidad que se la hizo creer era la calurosa realidad. Pero Ester hace tiempo que deba haberse desentendido de esta injusticia. Qu significaba? Acaso los siete largos aos de tortura con la letra escarlata haban producido dolores indecibles sin que en su alma hubiese penetrado el remordimiento?
Las emociones de aquellos breves instantes, en que estuvo contemplando la figura contrahecha del viejo Roger, arrojaron una luz en el espritu de Ester, revelando muchas cosas de que, de otro modo, ella misma no se habra dado cuenta.
Una vez que el mdico hubo desaparecido, llam a su hijita.
—Perla! Perlita! dnde ests?
Perla, cuya actividad de espritu jams flaqueaba, no haba carecido de distracciones mientras su madre hablaba con el anciano herbolario. Al principio se divirti contemplando su propia imagen en un charco de agua; luego hizo pequeas embarcaciones de corteza de abedul y las carg de conchas martimas, zozobrando la mayor parte; despus se empe en tomar entre sus dedos la blanca espuma que dejaban las olas al retirarse, y la esparca al viento; percibiendo luego una bandada de pajarillos ribereos, que revoloteaban a lo largo de la playa, la traviesa nia se llen de pequeos guijarros el delantal, y deslizndose de roca en roca en persecucin de estas avecillas, despleg una destreza notable en apedrearlas. Un pajarito de pardo color y pecho blanco fue alcanzado por un guijarro, y se retir revoloteando con el ala quebrada. Pero entonces la nia ces de jugar, porque le caus mucha pena haber hecho dao a aquella criaturita tan caprichosa como la brisa del mar o como la misma Perla. Su ltima ocupacin fue reunir algas marinas de varias clases, haciendo con ellas una especie de banda o manto y un adorno para la cabeza, lo que le daba el aspecto de una pequea sirena. Perla haba heredado de su madre la facultad de idear trajes y adornos. Como ltimo toque a su vestido de sirena, tom algunas algas y se las puso en el pecho imitando, lo mejor que pudo, la letra A que brillaba en el seno de su madre y cuya vista le era tan familiar, con la diferencia de que esta A era verde y no escarlata. La nia inclin la cabecita sobre el pecho y contempl este ornato con extrao inters, como si la nica cosa para que hubiera sido enviada al mundo fuese para desentraar su oculta significacin.
—Quisiera saber si mi madre me preguntar qu significa esto?—pens Perla.
Precisamente oy entonces la voz de su madre, y corriendo con la misma ligereza que revoloteaban los pajaritos ribereos, se present ante Ester, bailando, riendo, y sealando con el dedo el adorno que se haba fijado en el pecho.
—Mi Perlita,—dijo la madre despus de un momento de silencio,—la letra verde y en tu seno infantil no tiene objeto. Pero sabes t, hija ma, lo que significa la letra que tu madre tiene que llevar?
—S, madre,—dijo la nia,—es la A mayscula. T me lo has enseado en la cartilla. |
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