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Fire and Water

My wife has always had a curious twist to her nature, something like caprice and something like passion and utterly beyond my understanding.

The day I met her I thought it was the loveliest thing I had ever seen. Her temperament kindled her aspect with a spark of vivacity. She glowed with youth, health, and vitality; her glossy dark curls tumbled about her face. I could scarcely believe that the drab woman beside her, clad in unrelieved gray, was her mother. Still, I knew them to be Pearl and Hester Prynne, lately returned from the town of Boston, in the New World. I marveled at the sharp lines of the older woman’s face; she was cold as ashes, while her daughter radiated light and warmth like a flickering flame. Soon, however, I forgot the mother entirely. Pearl captured my full attention. She was beautiful, wealthy, and willing to marry me.

That was long ago. Now my wife’s face has sharpened, and her temper with it, but the flame is not extinguished. In her eyes I see none of the despair and resignation that marked her mother’s worn face. She sits before the fire each evening, indulging her ingenious fancy and displaying her talent for embroidery in exquisite needlework. Her long, slender fingers guide the flashing needle with ease and skill, and her white hands move with assurance the cloth. And if her work is somewhat too elaborate for a sober, God-fearing goodwife, what am I to do about it? Although I am a well-respected man in our town—indeed, much responsibility lies on my shoulders and my judgment is held in high esteem—I cannot imagine telling my Pearl what she must or must not do. She has little in her of submission and less of patience, quick to snap at our young son or at the servants. I do not understand her.

Our maid, Abigail, came daily to light the fires, scrub the floors, and curtsy to her mistress. I can see her face; pale, with a long nose, the tip of which was always reddened and chapped by the wind. But there was something in the way she moved, light as thistledown, and in the fall of her fair hair, to gladden a man’s heart. Her every movement held both purpose and grace. Her smile—her smile was serene and lovely as mist rising from the river in the morning, and disappeared as quickly.

The morning Abigail disappeared, my wife lingered in her chamber writing a long letter to her mother in Boston. Even so, she soon noticed the girl was missing. By the end of the day, Abigail was still nowhere to be found, and the whole town wondered why. She seemed to have vanished during the night. Her parents maintained the poor girl had lost her wits and wandered away. Most held that she had run away to join young Henry, a towheaded good-for-nothing who had left our town to seek an easier fortune in the city. I kept my own counsel, but privately I refused to believe that Abigail would run away for the sake of some lout with porridge for brains.

Three days later, a village lad called William and I were walking across the fields in the chill hour before sunrise. The morning was chilly and uninviting. Each breath we took was clammy in our throats and cold as death. As we neared the river, the gray light of dawn filtered down and illuminated a huddled shape floating at its edge.

Her fair hair tangled in the reeds at the shore and straggled down over her face. I looked closer, not wanting to, and saw purple marks barely visible at the side of her neck, like the prints of four fingers and a thumb. Both her heavy woolen cloak and her apron were gone. Muddy water saturated her plain woolen dress. The sodden cloth clung to the curve of her belly and betrayed what she had hidden from us all, these last few months. I felt my legs give way beneath me, and I collapsed kneeling beside Abigail’s body.

William’s voice broke the spell, rough and unceremonious. “Likely the lass told Henry about the babe, and he shut her up for good. Poor lass, she didn’t know when to keep quiet. Strangled…” He trailed off.

“No,” I said harshly, my voice sounding unfamiliar in my ears. “The girl was drowned. Drowned,” I repeated, and fixed him with my gaze.

It was my painful duty to announce the sad news of Abigail’s drowning to her parents and then to the rest of our community. She was buried in their family plot without delay. That evening Pearl and I sat side by side before the hearth. Her fingers, as usual, flew over her needlework while I gazed deep into the flickering fire. After a time, and almost without realizing it, I murmured, “So young…” My wife glanced at me inquiringly. I continued, “You may think me morbid, but still I cannot keep my mind from dwelling on the accident that befell poor Abigail.”

Calmly and clearly she said, “It was no accident.”

I turned and looked long and hard at my wife. Her hands absentmindedly twisted a strand of silk—strong, white hands, with long and supple fingers. Hands capable of a grip like a vise. I looked at her face in the firelight, her tranquil smile, a flicker of flame reflected in her dark and inscrutable eyes.

“God punishes the guilty,” she said softly.


The assignment, for my American Lit class, was to imagine what effects Pearl's childhood, as depicted in Hawthorne's classic The Scarlet Letter, might have on her life as an adult. My imagination ran away with me a little.



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