Sorrow in Miss Walladmor wore its most touching shape: as yet it had made no ravages in her beauty; and, if it had laid a hand of gentle violence upon her health, it had as yet cropped only the luxuriance of her youthful charms. It was clear to every eye that Miss Walladmor was not one of those persons who surrender themselves unresisting victims to dejection, and sink without a struggle into premature valetudinarians. Somewhat indeed her early acquaintance with grief had dimmed the lustre of her fine blue eyes; and had given a pensive timidity to her manner. But, if her eye were less bright, it was still full of spirit and intelligence: and, if the roses were stolen from her cheek, her paleness was rather the paleness of thought than of constitutional languor; or to express it in the exquisite lines of a modern poet, if she wore 'a pale face' it was however a pale face
'--------that seem'd undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be:'
and her whole person and deportment expressed that naturally she was of redundant health and gaiety, but suffering under the shocks of a trial to which she had been summoned too early for her youthful fortitude.
Having mounted on horseback only at the entrance of Machynleth, Miss Walladmor did not wear a riding-habit; but had gratified her uncle by assuming the plain white morning dress, white ribbons, and cap, which ancient custom had consecrated to the occasion; adding only, in consideration of the frosty day, an ermine tippet. The horse she rode was a white palfrey of the beautiful breed so much valued by Charles I.; and in fact traced its pedigre from the famous White Rose which had been presented by the sister of that prince [the Electress Palatine] to an ancestor of Sir Morgan's, who had attended her to Heidelberg. At the moment of passing the inn,--one of the doves, which Miss Walladmor had been in the habit of feeding, quitted the hand of the young bearer behind, and perched upon the shoulder of her mistress; making up a picture of innocent beauty somewhat fanciful and allegoric, but not on that account the less fitted to harmonize with the antique pageantries of this heraldic solemnity.
Such were the two central and presiding figures: every eye strained after them, and all that followed was unnoticed: the bailiff of Talyllyn with the surcoat, and the silver spurs of Llewellyn; the high constable of Aber-glas-llyn, with his gorgeous display of antique liveries; the tawny coats of the Bishop of St. Asaph, who came to ride the boundaries of the old episcopal demesne of Aberkilvie, in company with the retainers of Sir Morgan; the Mayor and Corporation of Machynleth, in their crimson robes;--all alike passed unheeded: and the spectators were first roused from the fascination of the departing spectacle by the clangor of the band, which with the Barmouth sea-fencibles--two troops of dragoons and the cortége of the Sheriff of Carnarvonshire brought up the rear of the cavalcade.
As fast as the procession cleared the ground, with the fluent motion of water, the crowd closed up in its wake--all eager to press after it into the church. Bertram, who had shared deeply in the general admiration and pity expressed for Miss Walladmor, sympathized no less with the national feeling belonging to the day. Who can blame him? The spectacle of a whole multitude swayed by one feeling, however little the object of that feeling may be approved by the judgment of the spectator, appeals irresistibly to his sympathies, if he be not more than usually cold-hearted: and I remember well that, though myself a faithful son of the Scotish church, I was once seduced by such an occasion into an involuntary act of idolatrous compliance with popery. It was at Orleans: the day was splendid: the bells proclaimed a festival: a vast procession of a mixed composition, religious and military, was streaming towards the cathedral; and by a moral compulsion, rather than by any physical pressure of the crowd, I was swept along into the general vortex. Suddenly an angle of the road brought me into such a position with respect to all who were in advance of my station, that I could see the whole vast line bent into the form of a crescent, and with its head entering at the great-doors of the cathedral: I gazed on the tossing of the plumes and the never ending dance of heads succeeding to heads as they plunged into what seemed the dark abysses of the church: one after one I beheld the legions and their eagles, the banners and the lilies of France swallowed up by the cathedral: then, as I came nearer and nearer, I could hear the great blair of the organ--throwing off its clouds of ascending music, like incense fuming from an altar: nearer still I could look through the high portals into the nave of the church, and could distinguish the opposite windows storied with gorgeous emblazonries of saints and martyrs, angels and archangels, whilst above them were seen the Madonna, and "the Lamb of God" with the cross; and through the upper panes streamed in the golden rays of the sun, and the blue light of the unfathomable heavens: then, as I myself was entering, suddenly the shattering trumpet-stop was opened: and I heard the full choir singing the great anthem of Pergolesi--"And the Dead shall arise:" at which instant I also wept with the multitude, and acknowledged a common faith and a common hope: and for a moment I will confess that I apostatized to the church of Rome for the sake of her pomps and vanities: a sin which I trust is forgiven me, as I can assure the church of Scotland that it is the single occasion throughout my life on which I have had any wanderings of thought from her pure and orthodox creed.
Under a similar impulse, caught from the contagion of public enthusiasm, Bertram pressed after the procession into the church. He was carried by the crowd into a situation from which he could overlook the entire nave which was in the simplest style of Gothic architecture and naked of all the ornaments which belong to the florid Gothic of a later age. The massy pillars were left unviolated by the petty hand of household neatness: they stood severe in monumental granite, unwhitewashed, unstuccoed, without tricks or frippery. All the gingerbread work of plinths to the base, or fretted cornices to the capitals, had been banished by the austerity of the presiding taste. And it struck Bertram also, as a picturesque circumstance in the whole effect and at the same time a circumstance of rude grandeur which well accorded with the spirit of the architecture, that there was no ceiling: the whole was open to the slates; and the vast beams and joists of oak, which had been laid for upwards of four hundred years, were clearly distinguishable. Below these were suspended antique banners which floated at times in the currents of air: and all the pillars were hung with shields, helmets, shirts of mail, and other ancient records of warlike achievements--arranged in the manner of trophies. All these were covered with venerable dust, the deposition of centuries, which no loyal-hearted Welchman would on any account have disturbed.
The service, as is usual at Machynleth--at Bangor Cathedral and other great churches in North Wales, was partly performed in Welch and partly in English. The singing, which was fine and supported by an organ of prodigious power, was chiefly of a triumphant and (as it appeared to Bertram) almost martial character. Just before the sermon however an ancient ceremony showed that, if the religion of the day clothed itself in the attire of earthly pride and exultation, the martial patriotism of Wales could sometimes soar into a religious expression. The people divided to the right and the left, leaving a lane from the great door: a trumpet sounded; and in rode Golden-spear, lance in rest, the whole length of the nave--passed into the choir--and halted before a monument of black marble. He paused for a few moments: then cried with a loud voice in Welch, English, and Latin, "Bastard of Walladmor!" to which summons the choir sang a penitential antiphony. Then he raised his spear and struck the outside of the tomb: to which again the organ muttered and the choir sang a response. Then a second time he raised the golden spear, and plunged it through an iron grating which occupied the place of heart in the stony figure of a knight recumbent on the tomb: the spear sank within a foot of the head: and again the organ muttered some sad tones; after which he pronounced these words:
"God, who in six days and seven nights created heaven--and earth--the sea and all that in them is, send up thy guilty soul into this grave, so long as the sea and the earth endure, on St. David's day;--annually to hear the message which I bring from Walladmor and Harlech:--The death, which thou gavest to the Pagan dogs, was given in vain: the treason, which should have trampled on the cross, was confounded by God's weak instruments a falcon and a dove: the crescent was dimmed at Walladmor, and the golden spear prevailed at Harlech: and the banner of Walladmor is flying to this day: So let it fly until Arthur shall come again in power and great beauty: on which day thy treason be forgiven thee!"