The clergyman of the parish, who had been sent to Bertram as a ghostly adviser and summoner to repentance, could not boast of much success with his subject in that character. In fact the young stranger had been too much interested by some of the books[[1]] furnished from Sir Morgan's library to have leisure for such serious thoughts. But a thing or a person, that is of no use in one function, may do excellent service in another: and the Reverend Mr. Williams, who had failed in his spiritual mission, was turned to good worldly account by Bertram as a gossiper and a mine of information upon all questions which had arisen to excite his curiosity in the course of his recent adventures.
The case of poor Mrs. Godber, his aged hostess in Anglesea, was easily explained.
Four and twenty years ago her eldest son, at that time about seventeen years old, had participated in some smuggling transaction during which two revenue officers had been killed under circumstances which the law adjudged to be murder. Nobody suspected young Godber of having (in the English sense of the word) assisted in this murder, foreseen it, or approved it: but in the French sense he did 'assist:' that is, he was present: and therefore in the eye of the law an accessary. As such, he was put upon his trial--found guilty--and sentenced to death. Unfortunately at this time the outrages of the smugglers upon the coast of Wales had become so frequent and terrific, that it was judged necessary to make an example. The case came before the Privy Council: the opinion of Sir Morgan Walladmor, as lord lieutenant of the two counties chiefly infested by the smugglers, naturally weighed a good deal with the council: and this opinion was unfavorable to the poor young criminal.
"But in later years," said Mr. Williams, "and when Sir Morgan had come to think very differently on some parts of that unhappy affair, I have often heard him protest with earnestness that in giving the opinion he did at the council hoard he was simply reporting the universal judgment of the magistracy throughout the maritime counties of North Wales. This, Mr. Bertram, I am sure was true. But that was known to few; and Sir Morgan from his high station drew the whole blame upon himself: and perhaps in one view not unjustly. For, though he was not single in the opinion which decided the case against the poor boy, it was generally believed that his single voice on the other side the question would have outweighed all opposition, and have obtained the mercy of the crown. So at least the poor boy's mother thought: and she addressed herself to Sir Morgan morning, noon, and night. The lad was her darling child; indeed her other son, Tom, was then only an infant; and, as the time drew near for his execution, she was like a mad thing. Never was there such an agony of intercession. She wept, and prayed, and clung about Sir Morgan's knees, and tore her hair: she rushed through all the servants, ran up stairs, and found out lady Walladmor's room: lady Walladmor was then ill, and sitting in her dressing-room: but she (God love her!) was the kindest creature in the world: and she was easily won to come and beg for the poor distracted mother. In the great hall she kneeled to Sir Morgan: but all wouldn't do. I have heard Sir Morgan say that his heart relented even at that time: and he had a sort of misgiving upon him that night, as he looked back upon the frantic woman from the head of the great stair-case, that all could not go right--and that some evil would fall upon him for standing out against such pleadings as he had just heard. Still his sense of duty, according to the notion he then had of his duty, obliged him to persist: and besides he told them both that, after what had been said to the council, it was now impossible to make another application on the case--unless some new circumstance in the boy's favor had come out. This was very unadvised in Sir Morgan: for it confirmed the mother in her belief that it was his representations which had determined the fate of her son.
"Mr. Bertram, you have read Virgil: and in that fine episode of Mezentius, which we all admire so much (and which, by the way, seems to me finer even than the 'Shield of Æneas,' or with the critics' leave than any thing in the sixth book), there are two grand hemistichs applied to the case of Mezentius in the moment of his mounting his horse to avenge the death of his gallant son who (you will remember) had fallen a sacrifice to his filial piety:
"----mixtoque insania luctu, Et furiis agitatus amor----"
"I remember them well," said Bertram "and Virgil has reflected rather a weakening effect on them by afterwards applying the same words to a case of inferior passion."
"He has so. But, to return to the case of Mrs. Godber, these fine words of the Roman poet may convey some picture of her state of mind; it was truly the state of Mezentius--'mixtoque insania luctu'--frenzy mixed with grief; and the tenderness of maternal love, that love which is taken in Scripture as the express image of the love which exists in the divine nature, tarnished and darkened by earthly--I may say by hellish--passions. Even then, and from that very night, she altered much: as one passed her, she muttered indistinctly; often she would lift up her hands in the air, clench them, and shake them as if at some figure that she saw in the clouds; and at times she slunk into corners, refused all comfort or society, and sank wholly into herself."
"And how meantime did her son behave?"
"Oh, Sir, incomparably well. He knew his mother's temper: and the very night before he suffered, as he hung about her neck and kissed her at their farewell interview, he wrung her hand and prayed her to put aside all thoughts of vengeance. I attended him to the last: and his final words to me on the scaffold, as the executioner prepared to draw the cap over his face, were--'God bless you. Sir, and remember!' by which he meant to remind me of his only request; and that was that I would visit his mother, and endeavour to soothe her into resignation, and persuade her to let him sleep unremembered in his grave; and not to recal the memory of his unhappy end to people's minds by any action that might make shipwreck of her own conscience. Young as he was, Mr. Bertram, these were the thoughts that made the bitterness of death to him; 'thoughts high for one so tender:'[[2]]--most of all the thought afflicted him that he should be made the occasion of overthrowing the peace of mind of her whom he loved beyond all things in the world. Sir Morgan mused much when he heard this report of the boy's latter hours; and afterwards much more, when two of the older smugglers were taken and condemned for the same murders: for their confessions wholly exonerated him from all knowledge of their worst actions: he was considered by the whole gang as a mere child; so indeed he was: and nothing was ever communicated to him of their schemes: nor was he ever present at any of them except by mere accident. The extent of his connexion appeared to have been this--that now and then he had given them a helping hand in stowing away their smuggled goods; and that only for the sake of his mother, who was very poor, having just become a widow,--and in this way obtained a few groceries or other additions to her domestic comforts. This it was that made the sharpest sting in the mother's wretchedness: she knew that all had been done for her; that, but for her sake, he would never have gone near the smugglers; and that, without perhaps directly giving her sanction to such connexions, she had never decidedly opposed them--and had availed herself of their profits. Some were unfeeling enough to throw this in the poor creature's teeth, whose heart was already wounded beyond what she could bear; and after that she became perfectly frantic."