The Scarlet Letter

"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

child--another and the same--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 hand--with that gesture

so habitual as to have become involuntary--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.