VII

The Governor’s Hall

Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellingham, with a pair of gloves which she had fringed and embroidered to his order. Another and far more important reason impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the settlement. It had reached her ears that there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother’s soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, then it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than Hester Prynne’s. Among those who promoted the design was Governor Bellingham.

Full of concern, therefore – but so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other – Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. We have spoken of Pearl’s rich and luxuriant beauty. Her mother, in contriving the child’s garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of colouring was admirably adapted to Pearl’s beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame.

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and of the child’s whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter endowed with life!

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the Puritans looked up from their play and spoke gravely one to another.

“Behold, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!”

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an angel of judgment, whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.

Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor Bellingham. They approached the door. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor’s bond servant.

“Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within?” inquired Hester.

“Yea, forsooth, his honourable worship is within. But he hath a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see his worship now.”

“Nevertheless, I will enter,” answered Hester Prynne; and the bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, offered no opposition.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall windows which we read of in old books. The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste, heirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor’s paternal home.

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage. All were characterised by the sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on. At about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall was suspended a suit of mail. It was so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, for, though bred a lawyer, the exigencies of this new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman and ruler. Little Pearl, who was greatly pleased with the gleaming armour spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.

“Mother,” cried she, “I see you here. Look! Look!”

Hester looked by way of humouring the child; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed at a similar picture in the head-piece; smiling with the elfish intelligence.

“Come along, Pearl,” said she, drawing her away, “Come and look into this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful ones than we find in the woods.”

Pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden walk, carpeted with closely-shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil, the native English taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the hall window. There were a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees. Pearl, seeing the rosebushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified.

“Hush, child!” said her mother, earnestly. “Do not cry, dear little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, and gentlemen along with him.”

In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue, a number of persons were seen approaching towards the house. Pearl became silent, not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance of those new personages.

VIII

The Elf-Child and the Minister

Governor Bellingham walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements. Venerable pastor, John Wilson was seen over Governor Bellingham’s shoulders. 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.

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. “How gat such a guest into my hall?”

“Ay, indeed!” cried good old Mr. Wilson. “What little bird of scarlet plumage may this be? 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? Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies?”

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

“Pearl? – Ruby, rather 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 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. “This badge hath taught me 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 and see whether she hath had such Christian nurture as befits a child of her age.”

“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. Pearl could have borne a fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms. 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. The child 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 phantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the Governor’s red roses together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in coming hither.

“This is awful!” cried the Governor. “Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! 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 millionfold the power of retribution for my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!”

And here by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale. “Speak thou for me!” cried she. “Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. 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! I will not lose the child! Look to it!”

At this wild and singular appeal, 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 re-echoed – “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 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.

“It must be even so,” resumed the minister. “For, if we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father made of no account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This child of its father’s guilt and its mother’s shame has 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 the one blessing of her life! It was meant, doubtless, for a retribution, too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; 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? She recognises, 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! 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 teach her, as if it were by the Creator’s sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring its parents 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 Rev. 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. 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?” 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.

“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 analyse that child’s nature, and, from it make a mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?”

“Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clue of profane philosophy,” said Mr. Wilson. “Better to fast and pray upon it.”

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, 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.

“Hist, hist!” said she, “Wilt thou go with us tonight? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I well-nigh 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!”

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

But here 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.