C 19
“Thou will love her dearly,” repeated Hester Prynne, as she and the
minister sat watching little Pearl. “Dost thou not think her beautiful?
And see with what natural skill she has made those simple flowers
adorn her! Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies in
the wood, they could not have become her better! She is a splendid
child! But I know whose brow she has!”
“Dost thou know, Hester,” said Arthur Dimmesdale, with an unquiet
smile, “that this dear child, tripping about always at thy side, hath
caused me many an alarm? MethoughtÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯oh, Hester, what a thought
is that, and how terrible to dread it!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯that my own features were
partly repeated in her face, and so strikingly that the world might see
them! But she is mostly thine!”
“No, no! Not mostly!” answered the mother, with a tender smile. “A
little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose child
she is. But how strangely beautiful she looks with those wild flowers
in her hair! It is as if one of the fairies, whom we left in dear old
England, had decked her out to meet us.”
It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before
experienced, that they sat and watched Pearl’s slow advance. In her
was visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to the
world, these seven past years, as the living hieroglyphic, in which
was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hideÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯all written in
this symbolÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯all plainly manifestÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯had there been a prophet or
magician skilled to read the character of flame! And Pearl was the
oneness of their being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how could
they doubt that their earthly lives and future destinies were conjoined
when they beheld at once the material union, and the spiritual idea,
in whom they met, and were to dwell immortally together; thoughts
like theseÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯and perhaps other thoughts, which they did not
acknowledge or defineÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯threw an awe about the child as she came
onward.
“Let her see nothing strangeÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯no passion or eagernessÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯in thy
way of accosting her,” whispered Hester. “Our Pearl is a fitful and
fantastic little elf sometimes. Especially she is generally intolerant of
emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and
wherefore. But the child hath strong affections! She loves me, and
will love thee!”
“Thou canst not think,” said the minister, glancing aside at Hester
Prynne, “how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns for it! But,
in truth, as I already told thee, children are not readily won to be
familiar with me. They will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear,
nor answer to my smile, but stand apart, and eye me strangely. Even
little babes, when I take them in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl,
twice in her little lifetime, hath been kind to me! The first timeÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯thou
knowest it well! The last was when thou ledst her with thee to the
house of yonder stern old Governor.”
“And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!”
answered the mother. “I remember it; and so shall little Pearl. Fear
nothing. She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to
love thee!”
By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood
on the further side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman, who
still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk waiting to receive her. Just
where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool so smooth
and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all
the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of
flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than
the reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living Pearl,
seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and
intangible quality to the child herself. It was strange, the way in which
Pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium
of the forest gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of
sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In
the brook beneath stood another childÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯another and the sameÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯with
likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some indistinct
and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl, as if the child, in her
lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in
which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly
seeking to return to it.
There were both truth and error in the impression; the child and
mother were estranged, but through Hester’s fault, not Pearl’s. Since
the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been admitted
within the circle of the mother’s feelings, and so modified the aspect
of them all, that Pearl, the returning wanderer, could not find her
wonted place, and hardly knew where she was.
“I have a strange fancy,” observed the sensitive minister, “that this
brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou canst never
meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends
of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream?
Pray hasten her, for this delay has already imparted a tremor to my
nerves.”
“Come, dearest child!” said Hester encouragingly, and stretching
out both her arms. “How slow thou art! When hast thou been so
sluggish before now? Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy
friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much love henceforward as thy
mother alone could give thee! Leap across the brook and come to
us. Thou canst leap like a young deer!”
Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet
expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she fixed
her bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and now
included them both in the same glance, as if to detect and explain to
herself the relation which they bore to one another. For some
unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt the child’s eyes
upon himself, his handÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯with that gesture so habitual as to have
become involuntaryÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯stole over his heart. At length, assuming a
singular air of authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small
forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her mother’s
breast. And beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower-
girdled and sunny image of little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger
too.
“Thou strange child! why dost thou not come to me?” exclaimed
Hester.
Pearl still pointed with her forefinger, and a frown gathered on her
browÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯the more impressive from the childish, the almost baby-like
aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother still kept
beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit of
unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a yet more
imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was the fantastic
beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its pointed finger, and
imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the aspect of little Pearl.
“Hasten, Pearl, or I shall be angry with thee!” cried Hester Prynne,
who, however, inured to such behaviour on the elf-child’s part at
other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly deportment
now. “Leap across the brook, naughty child, and run hither! Else I
must come to thee!”
But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother’s threats any more than
mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a fit of passion,
gesticulating violently, and throwing her small figure into the most
extravagant contortions She accompanied this wild outbreak with
piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on all sides, so that,
alone as she was in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed
as if a hidden multitude were lending her their sympathy and
encouragement. Seen in the brook once more was the shadowy
wrath of Pearl’s image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but
stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still
pointing its small forefinger at Hester’s bosom.
“I see what ails the child,” whispered Hester to the clergyman, and
turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her trouble and
annoyance, “Children will not abide any, the slightest, change in the
accustomed aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearl
misses something that she has always seen me wear!”
“I pray you,” answered the minister, “if thou hast any means of
pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered wrath of
an old witch like Mistress Hibbins,” added he, attempting to smile, “I
know nothing that I would not sooner encounter than this passion in
a child. In Pearl’s young beauty, as in the wrinkled witch, it has a
preternatural effect. Pacify her if thou lovest me!”
Hester turned again towards Pearl with a crimson blush upon her
cheek, a conscious glance aside clergyman, and then a heavy sigh,
while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a
deadly pallor.
“Pearl,” said she sadly, “look down at thy feet! There!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯before
thee!Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯on the hither side of the brook!”
The child turned her eyes to the point indicated, and there lay the
scarlet letter so close upon the margin of the stream that the gold
embroidery was reflected in it.
“Bring it hither!” said Hester.
“Come thou and take it up!” answered Pearl.
“Was ever such a child!” observed Hester aside to the minister.
“Oh, I have much to tell thee about her! But, in very truth, she is right
as regards this hateful token. I must bear its torture yet a little longer
Ä�ā‚¬ā€¯only a few days longerÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯until we shall have left this region, and
look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of. The forest
cannot hide it! The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and
swallow it up for ever!”
With these words she advanced to the margin of the brook, took
up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom. Hopefully,
but a moment ago, as Hester had spoken of drowning it in the deep
sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her as she thus
received back this deadly symbol from the hand of fate. She had
flung it into infinite space! she had drawn an hour’s free breath! and
here again was the scarlet misery glittering on the old spot! So it
ever is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself
with the character of doom. Hester next gathered up the heavy
tresses of her hair and confined them beneath her cap. As if there
were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and
richness of her womanhood, departed like fading sunshine, and a
gray shadow seemed to fall across her.
When the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand to
Pearl.
“Dost thou know thy mother now, child?”, asked she, reproachfully,
but with a subdued tone. “Wilt thou come across the brook, and own
thy mother, now that she has her shame upon herÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯now that she is
sad?”
“Yes; now I will!” answered the child, bounding across the brook,
and clasping Hester in her arms “Now thou art my mother indeed!
and I am thy little Pearl!”
In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew
down her mother’s head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks.
But thenÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯by a kind of necessity that always impelled this child to
alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give with a throb of
anguishÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯Pearl put up her mouth and kissed the scarlet letter, too
“That was not kind!” said Hester. “When thou hast shown me a
little love, thou mockest me!”
“Why doth the minister sit yonder?” asked Pearl.
“He waits to welcome thee,” replied her mother. “Come thou, and
entreat his blessing! He loves thee, my little Pearl, and loves thy
mother, too. Wilt thou not love him? Come he longs to greet thee!”
“Doth he love us?” said Pearl, looking up with acute intelligence
into her mother’s face. “Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we
three together, into the town?”
“Not now, my child,” answered Hester. “But in days to come he will
walk hand in hand with us. We will have a home and fireside of our
own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach thee many
things, and love thee dearly. Thou wilt love himÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯wilt thou not?”
“And will he always keep his hand over his heart?” inquired Pearl.
“Foolish child, what a question is that!” exclaimed her mother.
“Come, and ask his blessing!”
But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with
every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from whatever
caprice of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no favour to the
clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force that her mother
brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance
by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her babyhood, she had
possessed a singular variety, and could transform her mobile
physiognomy into a series of different aspects, with a new mischief
in them, each and all. The ministerÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯painfully embarrassed, but
hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into the child’s
kindlier regardsÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯bent forward, and impressed one on her brow.
Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to the
brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome
kiss was quite washed off and diffused through a long lapse of the
gliding water. She then remained apart, silently watching Hester and
the clergyman; while they talked together and made such
arrangements as were suggested by their new position and the
purposes soon to be fulfilled.
And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was to
be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their
multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed
there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would
add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was
already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring
babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages
heretofore.
