| THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER "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 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?""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 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 a blessing—for the one blessing of her life! It was meant, doubtless, 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 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. |
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LA NIA DUENDE Y EL MINISTRO —Esto es horrible!—exclam el Gobernador volviendo lentamente del asombro que le haba causado la respuesta de Perla. He aqu una nia de tres aos de edad, que no sabe quin la ha creado. No hay duda de que en la misma ignorancia se encuentra respecto a su alma, su actual perversidad y su futuro destino. Me parece, caballeros, que no hay necesidad de proseguir adelante.
Ester tom entonces a Perla y la estrech entre sus brazos, mirando al viejo magistrado puritano casi con una feroz expresin en los ojos. Sola en el mundo, arrojada de l como fruto podrido, y con este nico tesoro que era el consuelo de su corazn, tena la conciencia de que posea derechos indestructibles contra las pretensiones del mundo, y se hallaba dispuesta a defenderlos a todo trance.
—Dios me ha dado a esta nia, exclam. Me la ha dado en desquite de todo aquello de que he sido despojada por vosotros. Es mi felicidad, y al mismo tiempo mi tormento. Perla es quien me sostiene viva en este mundo. Perla tambin me castiga. No veis que ella es la letra escarlata, capaz solamente de ser amada y dotada de un poder infinito de retribucin por mi falta? No me la quitaris: primero morir.
—Pobre mujer, dijo con cierta bondad el anciano eclesistico, la nia ser muy bien cuidada, tal vez mejor que lo que t puedes hacer.
—Dios la confi a mi cuidado, repiti Ester esforzando la voz. No la entregar.
Y entonces, como movida de impulso repentino se dirigi al joven eclesistico, al Sr. Dimmesdale, a quien, hasta ese momento apenas haba mirado, y exclam:
—Habla por m! T eras mi pastor, y tenas mi alma a tu cargo, y me conoces mejor que estos hombres. Yo no quiero perder a mi hija. Habla por m: t sabes,—porque ests dotado de la conmiseracin de que carecen estos hombres,—t sabes lo que hay en mi corazn, y cules son los derechos de una madre, y que son mucho ms poderosos cuando esa madre tiene slo a su hija y la letra escarlata. Mrala! Yo no quiero perder la nia. Mrala!
este llamamiento frentico y singular que indicaba que la posicin actual de Ester casi la haba privado del juicio, el joven eclesistico se adelant plido y llevndose la mano al corazn, como era su costumbre siempre que su nervioso temperamento le pona en un estado de suma agitacin. Pareca ahora ms lleno de zozobra y ms extenuado que cuando lo describimos en la escena de la pblica ignominia de Ester; y bien sea por lo quebrantado de su salud, o por otra causa cualquiera, sus grandes ojos negros revelaban un mundo de dolor en la expresin inquieta y melanclica de sus miradas.
—Hay mucha verdad en lo que esta mujer dice,—comenz el Sr. Dimmesdale con voz dulce y trmula, aunque vigorosa, que reson en todos los mbitos del vestbulo;—hay verdad en lo que Ester dice, y en los sentimientos que la inspiran. Dios le ha dado la nia, y al mismo tiempo un conocimiento instintivo de la naturaleza y las necesidades de ese tierno ser, que parecen muy peculiares, conocimiento que ningn otro mortal puede poseer. Y, adems, no hay algo inmensamente sagrado entre las relaciones de esta madre y de esta nia?
—Ah! cmo es eso, buen Sr. Dimmesdale?—interrumpi el Gobernador,—os ruego que aclaris este punto.
—As tiene que ser,—continu el joven eclesistico,—porque, si pensamos de otro modo, no implicara que el Padre Celestial, el Creador de todas las cosas de este mundo, ha tenido en poco una accin pecaminosa, y no ha dado mucha importancia a la diferencia que existe entre un amor puro y uno impuro? Esta hija de la culpa del padre y la vergenza de la madre ha venido, enviada por Dios, a influir de varios modos en el corazn de la que ahora con tanta vehemencia y con tal amargura reclama el derecho de conservarla a su lado. Fue creada para una bendicin, para la nica felicidad de su vida. Fue creada sin duda, como la madre misma nos lo ha dicho, para que fuera tambin una retribucin; un tormento de todas las horas; un dardo, una congoja, una agona siempre latente en medio de un gozo pasajero. No ha expresado ella este pensamiento en el traje de la pobre nia, que de una manera tan eficaz nos recuerda el smbolo rojo que abrasa su seno?
—Bien dicho, bien dicho! exclam el buen Sr. Wilson. Yo tema que la mujer pensaba solo en hacer de su hija una saltimbanquis.
—Oh! no, no; continu Dimmesdale. La madre, credmelo, reconoce el solemne milagro que Dios ha operado en la existencia de esa criatura. Pueda tambin comprender,—lo que es para m una verdad indiscutible,—que este don, ante todo, tiene por objeto conservar el alma de la madre en estado de gracia y librarla de los abismos profundos del pecado en que de otro modo Satans la hubiera hundido. Por lo tanto, es un bien para esta pobre mujer pecadora tener a su cargo un alma infantil, un ser capaz de eterna dicha o de eterna pena,—un ser que sea educado por ella en los senderos de la justicia, que a cada instante le recuerde su cada, pero que al mismo tiempo le haga tener presente, como si fuera una sagrada promesa del Creador, que si la madre educa a la nia para el cielo, la nia llevar tambin all a su madre. Y en esto, la madre pecadora es ms feliz que el padre pecador. De consiguiente, en beneficio de Ester Prynne, no menos que en el de la pobre nia, dejmoslas como la Providencia ha considerado conveniente situarlas.
—Hablis, amigo mo, con extraa vehemencia,—le dijo el viejo Roger con una sonrisa. |
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