The Scarlet Letter

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.