VIII
The Elf-Child and the
Minister
Governor Bellingham, in a
loose gown and easy cap,—such as elderly gentlemen loved to indue
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 flourish, 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’ 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.1 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 Babylon!s 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 Catechism,2 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!”
“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 careworn 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 reëchoed, and the hollow armour 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, more over, 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 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-ment 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, GovernorBellingham’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.