VIII.-THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.

overnor 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.overnor BellinghamBehind 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!”“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.