On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the
forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, some with armour on their
breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All
were characterised by the sternness and severity which old
portraits so invariably put on, as if they were the ghosts,
rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing
with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and
enjoyments of living men.
At about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall was
suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral
relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured
by a skilful armourer in London, the same year in which Governor
Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel
head-piece, a cuirass, a gorget and greaves, with a pair of
gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the
helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with
white radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about
upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle
show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn muster
and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of
a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and
accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch, as his
professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had
transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a
statesman and ruler.
Little Pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming
armour as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the
house, spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the
breastplate.
"Mother," cried she, "I see you here. Look! Look!"
Hester looked by way of humouring the child; and she saw that,
owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet
letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions,
so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her
appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it.
Pearl pointed upwards also, at a similar picture in the
head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence
that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy.
That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the
mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it
made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her
own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into
Pearl's shape.
"Come along, Pearl," said she, drawing her away, "Come and look
into this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there;
more beautiful ones than we find in the woods."
Pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further end of
the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden walk, carpeted
with closely-shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and
immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared
already to have relinquished as hopeless, the effort to
perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil, and
amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English
taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight;
and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the
intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic products
directly beneath the hall window, as if to warn the Governor
that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament
as New England earth would offer him. There were a few
rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the
descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the
first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage
who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a
bull.