The Scarlet Letter

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 for 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?"