THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 8

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• Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM, in a loose gown and easy cap- much 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 grey beard, in the antiquated fashion  
    of King James' 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 naturalised 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 labours 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 favour 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 thyself."

   

"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 favourite 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 millionfold  
    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 re-echoed, 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,  
    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 recognised 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!"

   

"Oh, not so!- not so!" continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "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 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 had 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 analyse 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 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 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.  
   

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 2
3. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11
4. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 10
5. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 7
6. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 5
7. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 9
8. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 20
9. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 6
10. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 4
11. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 23
12. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 3
13. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 1
14. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 12
15. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 14
16. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 16