The Scarlet Letter

HE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.

Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap,—such as elderly
gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic
privacy,—walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate,
and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference
of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated
fashion of King James’s reign, caused his head to look not a little
like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his
aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal
age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment
wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it
is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers—though accustomed
to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and
warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life
at the behest of duty—made it a matter of conscience to reject such
means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp.
This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over
Governor Bellingham’s shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears
and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and
that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against the
sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of
the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for
all good and comfortable things; and however stern he might show
himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions
as that of Hester Prynne, still the genial benevolence of his private
life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his
professional contemporaries.

Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests: one the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having
taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne’s
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old Roger
Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or
three years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood that
this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young
minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too
unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral
relation.

The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps,
and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window, found himself
close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester
Prynne, and partially concealed her.

“What have we here?” said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise
at the scarlet little figure before him. “I profess, I have never seen
the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James’s time, when I
was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask!
There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time;
and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a
guest into my hall?”

“Ay, indeed!” cried good old Mr. Wilson. “What little bird of scarlet
plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures, when the
sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out
the golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the
old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy
mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian
child,—ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty
elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other
relics of Papistry, in merry old England?”

“I am mother’s child,” answered the scarlet vision, “and my name is
Pearl!”

“Pearl?—Ruby, rather!—or Coral!—or Red Rose, at the very least,
judging from thy hue!” responded the old minister, putting forth his
hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. “But where is
this mother of thine? Ah! I see,” he added; and, turning to Governor
Bellingham, whispered, “This is the selfsame child of whom we have
held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester
Prynne, her mother!”

“Sayest thou so?” cried the Governor. “Nay, we might have judged that
such a child’s mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type
of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we will look into
this matter forthwith.”

Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed
by his three guests.

“Hester Prynne,” said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the
wearer of the scarlet letter, “there hath been much question
concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed,
whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our
consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder
child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the
pitfalls of this world. Speak thou, the child’s own mother! Were it
not, thinkest thou, for thy little one’s temporal and eternal welfare
that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined
strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst
thou do for the child, in this kind?”

“I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!” answered
Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.

“Woman, it is thy badge of shame!” replied the stern magistrate. “It
is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would
transfer thy child to other hands.”

“Nevertheless,” said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale,
“this badge hath taught me—it daily teaches me—it is teaching me at
this moment—lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better,
albeit they can profit nothing to myself.”

“We will judge warily,” said Bellingham, “and look well what we are
about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this
Pearl,—since that is her name,—and see whether she hath had such
Christian nurture as befits a child of her age.”

The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort to
draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch
or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window,
and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird, of
rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not
a little astonished at this outbreak,—for he was a grandfatherly sort
of personage, and usually a vast favorite with children,—essayed,
however, to proceed with the examination.

“Pearl,” said he, with great solemnity, “thou must take heed to
instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the
pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?”

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the
daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child
about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths
which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with
such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments
of her three years’ lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in
the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster
Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of
those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have
more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now,
at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and
closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting
her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good
Mr. Wilson’s question, the child finally announced that she had not
been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of
wild roses that grew by the prison-door.

This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the
Governor’s red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window; together
with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in
coming hither.

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something
in the young clergyman’s ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of
skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was
startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,—how
much uglier they were,—how his dark complexion seemed to have grown
duskier, and his figure more misshapen,—since the days when she had
familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was
immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now
going forward.

“This is awful!” cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the
astonishment into which Pearl’s response had thrown him. “Here is a
child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without
question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present
depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no
further.”

Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms,
confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce
expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole
treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed
indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to
the death.

“God gave me the child!” cried she. “He gave her in requital of all
things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!—she is
my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes
me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being
loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for
my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!”

[Illustration: “Look thou to it! I will not lose the child!”]

“My poor woman,” said the not unkind old minister, “the child shall be
well cared for!—far better than thou canst do it!”

“God gave her into my keeping,” repeated Hester Prynne, raising her
voice almost to a shriek. “I will not give her up!”—And here, by a
sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at
whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to
direct her eyes.—“Speak thou for me!” cried she. “Thou wast my
pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these
men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,—for
thou hast sympathies which these men lack!—thou knowest what is in my
heart, and what are a mother’s rights, and how much the stronger they
are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look
thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!”

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne’s
situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young
minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his
heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament
was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciated
than as we described him at the scene of Hester’s public ignominy; and
whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be,
his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and
melancholy depth.

“There is truth in what she says,” began the minister, with a voice
sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, and
the hollow armor rang with it,—“truth in what Hester says, and in the
feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too,
an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,—both
seemingly so peculiar,—which no other mortal being can possess. And,
moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation
between this mother and this child?”

“Ay!—how is that, good Master Dimmesdale?” interrupted the Governor.
“Make that plain, I pray you!”

“It must be even so,” resumed the minister. “For, if we deem it
otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator
of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no
account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This
child of its father’s guilt and its mother’s shame hath come from the
hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so
earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her.
It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life! It was
meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a
retribution too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment;
a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled
joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor
child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her
bosom?”

“Well said, again!” cried good Mr. Wilson. “I feared the woman had no
better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!”

“O, not so!—not so!” continued Mr. Dimmesdale. “She recognizes,
believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought, in the
existence of that child. And may she feel, too,—what, methinks, is
the very truth,—that this boon was meant, above all things else, to
keep the mother’s soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths
of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her!
Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an
infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow,
confided to her care,—to be trained up by her to righteousness,—to
remind her, at every moment, of her fall,—but yet to teach her, as it
were by the Creator’s sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to
heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is the
sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne’s
sake, then, and no less for the poor child’s sake, let us leave them
as Providence hath seen fit to place them!”

“You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness,” said old Roger
Chillingworth, smiling at him.

“And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken,”
added the Reverend Mr. Wilson. “What say you, worshipful Master
Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman?”

“Indeed hath he,” answered the magistrate, “and hath adduced such
arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so
long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman.
Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated
examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale’s.
Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she
go both to school and to meeting.”

The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had withdrawn a few steps
from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in the
heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his figure,
which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the
vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty little elf,
stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her
own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so
unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself,—“Is
that my Pearl?” Yet she knew that there was love in the child’s heart,
although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her
lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. The
minister,—for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is
sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded
spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply
in us something truly worthy to be loved,—the minister looked round,
laid his hand on the child’s head, hesitated an instant, and then
kissed her brow. Little Pearl’s unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no
longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily, that
old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the
floor.

“The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess,” said he to Mr.
Dimmesdale. “She needs no old woman’s broomstick to fly withal!”

“A strange child!” remarked old Roger Chillingworth. “It is easy to
see the mother’s part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher’s
research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyze that child’s nature, and,
from its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?”

“Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clew of
profane philosophy,” said Mr. Wilson. “Better to fast and pray upon
it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it,
unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby, every good
Christian man hath a title to show a father’s kindness towards the
poor, deserted babe.”

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with
Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it is
averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open, and
forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress Hibbins,
Governor Bellingham’s bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few
years later, was executed as a witch.

“Hist, hist!” said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed to
cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. “Wilt thou go
with us to-night? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I
wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make
one.”

“Make my excuse to him, so please you!” answered Hester, with a
triumphant smile. “I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little
Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with
thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man’s book too,
and that with mine own blood!”

“We shall have thee there anon!” said the witch-lady, frowning, as she
drew back her head.

But here—if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and
Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable—was already an
illustration of the young minister’s argument against sundering the
relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus
early had the child saved her from Satan’s snare.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

IX.